Moaning with Mona on Way to Monterey - Hopefully

So it's Tuesday, the day that is officially "not as lame as Monday, but no Hump Day either"


I am hopefully about to head down to Monterey, for a few days of mindless meandering...

but first I need to sign for an important package...

So here I wait, jacked on Black Coffee ... the package in question was last seen 2.5 miles from my here some 3 hours ago...

Somehow these documents made it approx 2500 miles from Memphis to Oakland CA, but can't get 15 blocks in the same amount of time...

Ah... the urgency, and lo, I pine for the ol' pony express, when at least the horses could be blamed, not some guy taking a long lunch break...


so as long as we have some downtime... I read the news & share some more tunes...


Auto Giant's Product Placement Involves Brooklyn Band Ratatat

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- A controversy over the editorial coverage of Hummer's new "rock band" has further unscored the behind-the-scenes war raging over product placement in print magazines.

http://adage.com/news.cms?newsId=45807

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Google Earth Images Help Terrorists

Dutch authorities are concerned that certain locations in the Netherlands could be made vulnerable to terrorists thanks to the detailed aerial images available via Google Earth. Australia's ministry of defense describes Google Earth as a potential threat to national security.

http://www.dmeurope.com/default.asp?ArticleID=9618

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Post Drops Plan to Promote Pentagon Event

The Washington Post is backing out of a co-sponsorship of a Pentagon-organized 9/11 event to support the troops in Iraq and listen to country music. The newspaper says it aims to "avoid activities that might lead readers to question the objectivity of the Post's news coverage."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/15/AR2005081501523.html


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Yahoo! has said it is paying $1 billion for Alibaba.com, China's leading online retailer that is said to be a leader in distributing counterfeit American merchandise -- from knock-off Duracell batteries to phony Marlboro cigarettes.

Forbes.com - story



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Post Drops Plan to Promote Pentagon Event

The Washington Post is backing out of a co-sponsorship of a Pentagon-organized event next month to remember the victims of 9/11 and support the troops in Iraq. The newspaper says it aims to "avoid activities that might lead readers to question the objectivity of the Post\'s news coverage."

post statement

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Voice Staff Threaten Walkout

Staffers at the Village Voice are threatening to walk out if the alternative weekly makes good on its pledge to slash the rates it pays its writers, say sources inside the paper. The strife comes amid rumors that the Voice is in merger talks with national alternative weekly publisher New Times.

http://www.nypost.com/business/51897.htm

From Filter Mag, I saw they have posted a new Eels track, in which the man called E puts down a slightly Mid Eastern tinged electronica track called Jelly Dancers on a new tribute CD to a label called "Dimension 5".

Eels - Jelly Dancers

Here's a low fi oldie but a goodie, the late Peter Tosh of The Wailers jamming with the Skatalites circa 1965. Pete's bringing light to a "real" scanless' situation that is bringing bringing Shame & Scandal in the family... I'll dedicate it to the fools that populate just about every Montel moment, and so called "reality" shows I've ever seen...

Peter Tosh & Skatalites - Shame & Scandal

Janet Weiss, was once the drummer for a band called ED, and for a minute she switched over to guitar and played for a bit in a band I was in. She was doing us a favor, and dating our mandolin guy, but she was way more fun than than the guitarist she was filling in for... I was so bummed when he came back from vacation... and missed her presence at practice for sure...

Then she hooked up with some other dude, and they moved up north to "The Woods "and I hardly ever saw here again...until...

Anyhow, it's neat to see her pounding away on the Letterman show and rocking the world like I always knew she could... here's one from her obscure lil' band's latest album...

Sleater-Kinney - Jumpers

pssst...read an interview with Janet from Drummergirl

Next up, is some tracks from a Brazilian singer that I was sorting digging on the other day... the stuff is ain't too bad...

I have got three tracks from a 2004 release by Mona Gadelha, who comes from the northeastern part of her country. On her third full length album "Everything Is Moved", she lays down sultry dancefloor worthy tuneage somewhere in the smooth grooves neighborhood between Sade & Astrud Gilberto or something like that.




Mona Gadelha - Saint Denis Ceara


Mona Gadelha - Felicidae Pra Mim





Mona Gadelha - Block of Solitude

and here's one last track

a melancholy lil old school number from miss Nina Simone

Since I Fell For You...


anyhow...y'all have fun...

Uh,
I'm still waiting for that package and it's sorta starting to piss me off...

Happy 70th Anniversary of Social Security - Time Is On Your Side

Before we satiate your curiosity with digital downloads, I thought it would be appropriate to realize that Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the bill creating Social Security ( a.k.a Economic Security Act ) in the US 70 years ago today.

It's a far cry from the creep in chief & his cronies sitting in Crawford TX for 5 weeks this summer and ignoring the mother of a dead soldier parked outside their ranch. Meanwhile, Bush & Cheney Inc. are conspiring to yank the safety net of ordinary working Americans in order to privatize the funds, and benefit the corrupt Wall St. establishment and it's Billionaire Boys Club.



It may seem like an obscure and remote issue to young people decades from retirement age, sitting in front of their computers on a sunny Sunday afternoon, but there are few things to be more concerned about if you are a working U.S Citizen.

I encourage to read on, and contact your elected representatives and do what you can to speak up, and protect ths program that is truly vital to our citizenry, despite that it's critics would have you believe, that as it stands " Social Security goes against The American Way". To contact your represntatives, you can easily do so here if you would like to express your opposistion to changing the basic formula of Social Security.

Don't be fooled by neo-con claims that Bush's proposed overhaul will only make the program stronger, and modernize the agency.

The Social Security program has been overhauled and tweaked every 15 or so years, but at it's core, still stable, solvent, simple in it's mission, functional and likely the most important austerity measure ever enacted in this country. It is not "welfare", as the majority of these benefits are paid for by the recipients themselves.

Since it's inception in 1935, Social Security has always existed as a pay as you go system. Payroll taxes are collected from workers and then paid out as benefits to current Social Security recipients. Currently more revenue is stockpiled than what is needed to pay benefits, and so there is a surplus, a Social Security trust fund invested in U.S. Treasury securities, with a return of approx 2 percent.

The false cries that the program is bankrupt, is really just a smokescreen to obscure a philosophical difference with the program itself.

Social Security is a target of Bush & his neo-con clansmen because it is symbolic, in that it is an iconic emblem of Roosevelt's New Deal, which lifted the country out of the depression and insured benefits for all workers , black or white, rich or poor. This socialist idea represents a legacy that strikes at the heart of the conservative Republican agenda, and is ultimately the antithesis of how they'd like to see the country run. They would like nothing more than to transfer the assets in the Social Security program over to their private investment firms, save the helping hand only for businesses, and eventually take FDR's face off the dime and replace him with the image of Ronald Reagen. [Seriously : Rabid Republicans pushing Reagan dime]

While Long Island Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) calls Social Security “one of the most successful government programs in history”, right wing Think Tank wankers belittle the concept, saying the government controlled program goes "against The American Way". The proponents of so-called "reform" push for "private investment accounts", that could be ripe for plenty "private" mismanagement. The recent accounting debacles at high levels in so many of our nation's leading firms proves that money is a temptation that far exceeds the ability of regulators to control abuse. It is almost flabbergasting to see politicians suggest our nation's Social Security trust account be opened up for exploitation by private brokers and greedy investment houses, merely so that the trust could, in theory, glean potential gains of a few pecentage points in the stock market.

Republican reformists, rebuffed in the last session, plan to make another push for Social Security private accounts when Congress returns for its fall session, with Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, leading the charge.

Don't believe the hype

Art of Noise - Instruments of Darkness

If Bush's foreign policy agenda across the sea includes the abdegnation of human rights agreements, systematic destruction of civilian lives and the privatization of publically owned assets in other countries, what makes you think it isn't in effect here?


Some Social Security Facts:

48 million Americans currently receive & likely rely on Social Security benefits.

Social Security is the sole source of income for almost 25% percent of it's recipients, and it represents approx 40 percent of income for all elderly people.


The first monthly benefit - $22.54 - was issued to Ida May Fuller, a legal secretary from Ludlow, Vt., in 1940. She received more than $22,000 in total benefits before dying at age 100 in 1975.

Designed to provide "guaranteed" income, not a promise of growing wealth...

The original 1935 law contained the first national unemployment compensation program, aid to the states for various health and welfare programs, and the Aid to Dependent Children program. (Full text of the 1935 law.) A 1939 change in the law added survivors benefits and benefits for a deceased retiree's spouse and children. In 1956 disability benefits were added.

The SSA also keeps a record of the most common registered baby names each year, a list from the 1880's til 2004 is found here. Jacob & Emma are #1 for 2004, John & Mary were the top choices in 1880.

FDR upon signing the bill on Aug 14th 1935 :

Young people have come to wonder what will be there lot when they came to old age.

The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.

This social security measure gives at least some protection to 50 millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions, and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.

We can never insure 100 percent of the population against 100 percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-stricken old age.

*This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.

I congratulate all of you ladies and gentlemen, all of you in the Congress, in the executive departments and all of you who come from private life, and I thank you for your splendid efforts in behalf of this sound, needed and patriotic legislation.

It seems to me that if the Senate and the House of Representatives, in this long and arduous session, had done nothing more than pass this security Bill, Social Security Act, the session would be regarded as historic for all time."

download this FDR speech as an mp3

Lou Glasse, former president of the Older Women's League (far left) and William J. vanden Heuvel, of the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute (2nd from left) join Commissioner of Social Security Jo Anne Barnhart and James Roosevelt, Jr., grandson of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (far right) in cutting the 'Social Security 70th Birthday Cake' on the grounds of the FDR Presidential Library and Home in Hyde Park, New York. (photo: Anders Krusberg/U.S. Newswire)



Crowd gathers in Hyde Park to celebrate 70th anniversary of Social Security

Saving Social Security @ AlterNet

Lil Mike's frequent reader MP3 rewards program :

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Here's a few songs whose title sorta has a Social Security style theme.

My Morning Jacket - I Will Be There When You Die

Tennesee's pop hopes expound for y'all ...

Kai Winding - Time Is On My Side

The original version released circa 1963 on Verve

Joe Tex - I Want To Do Everything For You

the late iconic soul man puttin' it down sweet circa 1965,
surreptitious bandwidth courtesy DoginSweater.com


and then for no particular reason I'ma get all Brazilian Portogee on ya azz:


Tom Ze' - Politicar

The Brazilian bad ass, who started with the psychedelic Os Mutantes, gives up a later solo track from a Y2K Luaka Bop release, on one of his least fave subjects: politicians...

Fistful of Friday Fluff w/ Enablers, Hilly Kristal, Grass Roots etc

A Compendium of Half Cocked Crap For The Curious :


Looks like CBGB's is getting a reprieve, and will not have to pay $60,000 in alleged backrent to the building's landlord.

Here's an mp3 of club owner Hilly Kristal from a 1976 7" he put out called mud. More info on this unique audio artifact is available here

if yer still flabbergasted at the pic at the top of this post, it was snagged from the World of Wonder site, and I think we all are still wondering as well...and likely will for long after this weekend slinks away...


in other news:
A Hong Kong councilman reportedly had the big idea that Cheung Chau, one of the territory's little islands where over the last eight years 20 people have committed suicide and five have tried to, should be turned into a suicide theme park. ( story @ News.com.au )


Smokler.com has news about Pandora, a service from the folks behind the Music Genome Project, that is akin to audioscrobbler but differs as well... check out the beta testing as it develops and read more at http://www.pandora.com/mgp.do

The former Tiffany network CBS, is looking to keep it's marketshare in the web realm and is advertising a new position available for an avid podcaster...

Want to be CBS's first podcaster? The network is searching for an amateur DJ to interview CBS stars and create a podcast about the new fall season. The podcaster will join the nation’s top DJs at the CBS Radio Junket on September 10 in Hollywood to interview CBS talent for the podcast, which will be made available to millions via CBS.com and Infinity Broadcasting’s San Francisco-based KYOURADIO, the world’s first-ever podcasting radio station. For consideration, you'll need to upload a mock three-minute interview.

now dig the downloads:



First The Tunes:

A triple threat of darkly atmospheric .mp3 tracks with haunting narratives from SF based band thee Enablers. Guys that are likely either touring some obscure Eastern European clubs or maybe drinking at the seedy bar I work at right now...

These are from their debut release

Enablers - Glimpses, Audio: Driving Late

Enablers - About Last Night

Enablers - Pauly's Days In Cinema

The band is a lanky erstwhile pedigreed bunch featuring dudes who've done time in The Swans, Toiling Midgets, Tarnation, Nice Strong Arm and TimCo. The musician's instrumental skills work the room, scrape, tug, yank, build high tension wire strung platforms that arise behind the dry babbling wordsmith up front. The band members honed themselves for over a year, performing as "Touched By A Janitor" before finding the meandering maintenance man of their dreams. That would be vocalizer Pete Simonelli, a character I've long referred to as the world's youngest grumpy old man...

But, with two tours of duty overseas completed, all the stage time has lifted our irrascible neighborhood bartender/poet into a league of ranters and ravers ala Saccharine Trust's Jack Brewer, but perha[s shy of the show biz big leaguers like Jim Morrison & Hank Rollins and the mighty Nick Cave...

Enablers page at Neurot...

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other stuff to break up the monotony....

The City On Film (a.k.a Robert Nanna w/ Lauren LoPiccolo of Sundays) :

http://www.heymercedes.com/cityonfilm/summertime.mp3

I've always been fond of Canadian hitmakers The Grass Roots , and today seems as good as any to throw in an oldie but a goodie

Grass Roots - Temptation Eyes


Getting Back to The Future: Willotoons alerts me that Sub Pop has a new Rogue Wave mp3 up called "10:1" from their upcoming release

Absolutely Kosher has posted an MP3 called Disco from The Moggs new album "The White Belt IS Not Enough"

Incidentally, Absolutely Kosher, joins Fat Wreck Chords, Burning Heart, Hush, Spinart, Lookout, Taang!, Side One Dummy, and a number of others as official members on the RIAA Membership List.

A website that provides readings for the blind offers up numerous audio programs including a half hour podcast style overview from a New Yorker article of New Hampshire's most infamous girl group The Shaggs...

here's a Shagg's cover of their song "Who Are Parents" from the Danielson Famile featured on a 2002 Shaggs tribute disc

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Now For Some Videos:

A Real Video clip I shot of Deke Dickerson rocking at Speedy's Wig City @ SF's Elbo Room



a video lookback at the ill fated Axl vs GnR tribute act from their 2004 tour:

GNR Video Medley. I'll likely be catching the Rocket Queens on Weds Night @ the Elbo room, who supposedly stick to the 1987 GNR setlist and look...
Guns -n- Roses -n- Burlesque!

a trailer for the Klaus Nomi movie, ( out now on DVD )
Nomi Song Widescreen

$16.69

http://www.manparrish.com/video/nomi.mov

		in a truly special exploitive tribute to our friends from down under that likely don't belong to PETA , I share this clip
		A pub gets a baby kangaroo drunk on beer
		WATCH VIDEO HIGH LOW

BoingBoing offers upa 1.7 mb .mov of The Pink Elephant scene from Dumbo with a Sun Ra twist

And now one last blast from Penn Gillette's new film "The Aristocrats", is the South Park clip seen here...

http://cartmanthearistocrat.com/

Enjoy yer weekend...

When in S.F stop by Sunday Nights for a cocktail with me @ Sadie's Flying Elephant