10.17.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll at 2:29 pm by George Smith
There are no Holy Grails or epiphanies to be had in Nazareth, PA. It is not a town of treasure or import. Trust me. Been there many times. The Highway Kings rehearsed in a Pleasant-Valley-Sunday-style tract home in Nazareth. But over the weekend the New York Times ran a piece on another bifurcation in New America’s Culture of Lickspittle, in this case, the acoustic guitar, a musical instrument designed to be cheap and for everyone to play, now something domestically made as a collector’s item for the wealthy and their upper middle class shoe-shiners who haven’t yet been obsoleted.
The genesis and use of the acoustic guitar in this country does not lie in the heart of the aristocracy.
However, like everything else in the society that has two tiers, the very rich and the poor and getting poorer, if one is to survive making a material good in America, you must evolve it into a snob artisan commodity.
And that’s where Martin Guitars of Nazareth, PA, and the New York Times come in.
From this weekend:
NAZARETH, Pa. — For guitar aficionados, a visit to the C. F. Martin & Company factory is akin to a religious experience. They talk in reverential tones about the handcrafted instruments that have been coming off the production floor here for more than 150 years, even referring to certain models in online discussion forums as “the Holy Grail??? of the acoustic guitar.
The reason for this unintentionally laugh-out-loud news is a coffee table book on Martin guitars, Inventing the American Guitar, and the exhibit of them at the Metropolitan.
“The text of the book, which is in coffee table format, is supplemented by lush color photographs of the guitars themselves, many of them close-up shots that highlight design features or the sheen or grain of the wood that Martin used,” informs the Times’ reviewer, Larry Rohter. “The effect is similar to that of viewing a Georgia O’Keeffe painting that magnifies the stamen of a flower or part of a cow skull …”
The quality of praise arcs ever upward:
“We’re seeing the appreciation of these things as objects, not just as tools, which is why you’re seeing them in an art museum,??? Arian Sheets, the “curator of stringed instruments at the National Music Museum at the University of South Dakota” told the newspaper.
“[Classic] Martins can sell for well into six figures, reflect how these vintage instruments — including the banjos, ukuleles and mandolins that the company has also manufactured at various times in its history — are being elevated to the status of works of art.”
New Martins cost between $1,000 and $11,000.
Like Fender Musical Instruments, Martin almost went out of business in the Eighties. Bad management and the emergence of dance, disco. and rap/hip-hop hurt the company’s market, reducing production at its lowest point to 3,000 instruments in a year.
A bit over a decade ago the American guitar instrument split into two divisions. One made cheap instruments that people could still afford to buy by scrapping their old factories and moving production to Mexico, then China. The other half, much smaller in terms of manufacturing floor space and workers employed, devolving into “custom shops” providing domestically made snob-priced instruments for musicians with recording contracts and lawyers and bankers who might have played in crappy bands in their college years, now with greatly expanded disposable incomes.
Like Martin acoustic guitars, domestically made electric guitars became investments, paradoxically priced out of the purchasing range of most of the employees now pushing them on show room floors.
Woody Guthrie’s acoustic guitar had a sticker. It read “This Machine Kills Fascists.” Now they should could come with an update: These machines are for corporate fascists.
“Sorry.”
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10.14.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Psychopath & Sociopath, WhiteManistan at 8:29 am by George Smith
Last week:
“The president should schedule town meetings in the districts of the most radical Republicans … He will certainly face vitriol … He will show that he doesn’t write off any American, even those who demonize him. This will be far more powerful than going to friendly audiences for staged events — and it will make clear to independents that he can break out of the usual partisan script.??? –Peter Liu, CNN pundit
The upside of the spectacle is that with these photos, the Tea Party fucked the dog in front of everyone, dragging the Republican Party along. The entire tribe’s now fit for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The WhiteManistan photo collection.
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10.12.13
Posted in WhiteManistan at 11:30 am by George Smith
Hunter Thompson, 1970:
“The last really functional weapon that got mentioned in The Police Chief was the Nutcracker Flail, a combination club and pincers about three feet long that can cripple almost anybody. It works like a huge pair of pliers, the officer first flails the living shit out of anybody he can reach … and then, when a suspect falls he swiftly applies the ‘nutcracker’ action, gripping the victim’s neck, extremities or genitals with the powerful pincers at the ‘reaching’ end of the tool, then squeezing until all resistance ceases.”
Onstage about half-way in.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Rock 'n' Roll at 12:14 am by George Smith
For a friend’s birthday.
Don’t you think everyone deserves a song?
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10.11.13
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, WhiteManistan at 12:13 pm by George Smith
A video triptych from where it all began. Viewing it easily convinced that if the tribe ever gained political power, it would be calamitous. And so it is.
From “Dr. King was a Republican!” to “I love capitalism” to Craig Miller of Pennsylvania, nationally famous for three minutes. Emblematic.
“I’m a nudist!” Women’s laughter. Fade to black.
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10.10.13
Posted in WhiteManistan at 3:14 pm by George Smith
Yes, right where the front part of his fist meets your face.
“The president should schedule town meetings in the districts of the most radical Republicans …” – third tier CNN pundit advice
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Posted in Psychopath & Sociopath, Ted Nugent, WhiteManistan at 3:08 pm by George Smith
Ted Nugent has the cure for Detroit:
“Huge swaths of the abandoned dead city should literally be given to private industry for them to build new industries. These industries that build there should be promised, in writing, that their taxes will be the lowest of any city in America. Because Detroit is broke and bankrupt, industries that take the offer would be responsible for paying for their own police, fire, schools for the children of their employees and other services typically reserved for government employees … only industry can potentially save Detroit from doom.”
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10.09.13
Posted in Cyberterrorism, Psychopath & Sociopath, WhiteManistan at 12:20 pm by George Smith
A WhiteManistan Republican, Tom Cotton of Arkansas, tried to badmouth the website implementation of Obamacare on MSNBC.
“Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who opposes Obamacare, was particularly vocal on MSNBC about the issues he saw with the new system,” reads Politifact today. “He said lawmakers now realize some of the downfalls of the system, including technical concerns.”
Cotton: “They realize that the websites aren’t ready, that there’s no privacy protections, that there’s likely to be data breaches.”
Politifact got in touch with yours truly and I had a significant hand in explaining that no such claims could be made.
On-line data protection on with secure sites is a complicated business. Further, Obamacare access is not even centralized through one site, which Cotton addressed, healthcare.gov.
Depending on where you live you can be directed offsite to another secure page that is maintained by a state (as with California), not the US government. In other words, the Obamacare system has many partners and portals. It is distributed across the nation.
Politifact didn’t use this quote, they opted for another about secure practices, but it summarizes the matter:
“There is a complexity to the matter that in no way lends itself to a blanket assertion about risk delivered by a politician.”
Unsurprisingly, someone like Cotton would literally have no idea. Politifact dubbed his statements false.
The Politifact piece.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, WhiteManistan at 12:12 pm by George Smith
What could go wrong?
Best suggestion from six figure explainer at CNN on how to end GOP-caused Constitutional crisis, ever!
Eric Liu recommends the Prez go deep into the heart of WhiteManistan for town meetings with his haters (no link):
“The president should schedule town meetings in the districts of the most radical Republicans … He will certainly face vitriol … He will show that he doesn’t write off any American, even those who demonize him. This will be far more powerful than going to friendly audiences for staged events — and it will make clear to independents that he can break out of the usual partisan script.”
I don’t know why anyone else hasn’t thought of it! The Prez needs to go and just have some friendly talk with rabid groups who don’t believe he’s an American. When he does that the Tea Party shut down will end and everyone will get candy and cake!
All they need is some love and respect.
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10.07.13
Posted in WhiteManistan at 4:10 pm by George Smith
It’s tough getting old in WhiteManistan, informed the New York Times today in a story about 10 counties where only white people live in Colorado. They are fed up and want to form a new state.
Too many liberals, too many gay people, too many not-white people, too much dope smoking in the rest of Colorado. The people of “New Colorado” or, maybe “North Colorado,” feel the need to restore “liberty” so their children, who can’t stand them and are all moving away, get back the “heritage” of the old country.
The damn state even voted for Obama twice, fer cryin’ out loud! That ain’t right.
NYT:
Here in Cheyenne County, where 82 percent of people voted for Mitt Romney last year, residents say they feel as if their state changed on them. There have never been more than about 3,700 people here, and the last two decades have brought sharp population declines as children moved away … The county’s population is now 1,870 …
The kids know it’s good to put WhiteManistan in the rear view mirror, apparently.
There’s a German expression for the disturbed folk of WhiteManistan: Fremdschamen.
Essentially, it’s about experiencing embarrassment at witnessing others so acutely so but oblivious to it that, like a disease, it infects you.
And there is nothing more clueless and embarrassing than WhiteManistan’s collective nervous breakdown, from attempts to bring down the federal government to Hector Heathcote uniforms and the near constant complaints about the other people, to the angry wish to live in more pure lands.
There’s a movement in northern California just like it, where the white people want to form a new state called “Jefferson,” because of all the, you know, not-white people in the rest of the state.
They’ve been trying since 1941.
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