Drapes

Emmy the Great with her song "Canopies and Drapes".

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

What's worse than a Muslim?

Ann Coulter today opened his (her?) gaping maw and ejaculated that Obama was not, in fact, a Muslim. Rather, he was something worse, something so horrifying that ordinary Americans should run screaming in horror at the very sight of the man. Yes, Obama may be... maybe... AN ATHEIST!

The horror! Oh the horror! Why, everybody knows that atheists are so horrible and evil that, like, they burn people at the stake or cut off their heads or other stuff like that! And everybody knows that atheists are such despicable people that they regularly bomb abortion clinics, blow up truck bombs outside of federal buildings, and crash planes into buildings. Surely atheist clergy have been regularly arrested for fucking little kids up every orifice, stealing money from their congregations, and shouting "God damn America!" at the top of their lungs from the pulpit, right? Right?!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

The Catfood Commissioner strikes again

Not content with wanting to cut the benefits of Social Security recipients (who paid into the system for their entire lives) to the point where they have to eat cat food because they can't afford real food, now Obama's favorite cat food commissioner, Alan Simpson, proposes that disabled veterans be the next cat food commission victims. Because, you know, the government had nothing to do with them becoming disabled, so should do nothing for them. After all, Alan Simpson's rich motherfucking oligarchs need that money worse than people that, like, those oligarchs sent overseas to die for oil. I suppose though that this is just par for the course for the Republican plan for America. The Republican health care plan: Just die, already. The Republican Social Security plan: Just die, already. The Republican plan for disabled veterans: Just die, already. Fuck, the Republican Party makes Dr. Kevorkian look like a fuckin' angel of life and joy and happiness, yo. They ought to just rename themselves the Party of Death and quit playin' around with the onesies and twosies.

Republicans: They want you to just die, already.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

French lab

Stereolab with their song "Les Yper Sound" from the album Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Love them or hate them, Stereolab were decidedly unique...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Vacation ending

Sigh! Tomorrow it's back to work -- at the new job, though, which will be exciting :). So this evening I'm getting everything together for moving into my new cubicle tomorrow...

- Badtux the Busy Penguin

Bedsheets

Shorter Tea Party: "We aren't racist because out of our hundreds of thousands of members, three or four of them are brown!"

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Kiwi Torch

New Zealand by way of London band Howling Bells with "A Ballad for Bleeding Hearts" off of their album Radio Wars. This relatively new band's output is somewhat uneven, but when they're good, they're good....

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Illegal immigrant crimelord caught!

A major illegal immigrant crime lord has been arrested. This illegal immigrant is notoriously vicious, known for beheading his enemies as he tried to assert control over a major drug cartel. But don't bother listening for Glen Beck or Lou Dobbs to use this guy as an example of why all illegal immigrants are criminals who should be rounded up and put into concentration camps... because "La Barbie" is an American, who committed his crimes in Mexico.

Yeppers. "La Barbie" is an illegal alien... in Mexico. The United States is the source of the guns, money, and in some cases even the manpower, that fuels the drug cartels in Mexico that have turned life down there into a living hell for many Mexicans. But for some reason ole' Weepy ain't so interested in that problem. Huh, go figger...

-- Badtux the Bedsheet-glimpsin' Penguin

Dashed hopes and regrets

Yes, I know I did a Dex Romweber Duo song just a couple of days ago, but this song just stuck to me because I know where Dex is coming from, us fat old farts know far too much about dashed hopes and regrets. This is the Dex Romweber Duo (Dex and his sister) with "People Places and Things" off of their recent album, Ruins of Berlin.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Breakfast of champions

Slaid Cleaves, "Breakfast in Hell" off his Broke Down CD. An old-fashioned working man's ballad.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

All it needs is an aircraft carrier and a Mission Accomplished sign

Just sayin'.

Anybody who thinks we're really leaving Iraq anytime soon is crazier than Weepy Beck. After all, there's oil in them thare sands... and Halliburton ain't finished suckin' it out.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Still alive

Just vacating. Err, vacationing. Getting body and soul ready for starting at the new job.

Here, have some fuzz on fuzz action:

Makes me sleepy just lookin' at it...

-- Badtux the Sleepy Penguin

Hopelessly sad

Townes van Zandt once said that his songs weren't sad, just hopeless. But can songs that make you cry be anything but sad?

This is "Marie".

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

Fat man fuckin' *rocks*

Old fart Dexter Romweber and his sister (on drums) show what rock'n'roll is all about. He may be fat, and he may be old. But he knows how to thrash that antique axe of his and shout into the mike, and his sister knows how to pound them drums.

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

It's a free country (*)

Today I made the trek to the Federal Building to apply for a replacement Social Security card. I made this trek because they need to see my government ID before they condescend to send me a card that isn't a government ID with a Social Security number that I provided them (i.e., I already know my SSN, all I need is the card to show my employer instead of my passport). I arrived at 1:30PM and promptly was directed to stand in a line outside the federal building. We were then called one at a time and subjected to the same screening that you get at airports to verify that we didn't have any stray nail files that might be used to gut a Social Security worker and that we had the proper papers to prove our identity to the satisfaction of the security screener. Then, and only then, were we allowed to enter the building and go to the almost-empty Social Security office (almost-empty because nobody was allowed to enter until somebody left the building). That was at 2:15PM for me.

I remember when you could just walk into a Social Security office, do your business, and walk out. But that was back when the Soviet Union was around, when the United States prided itself on being different from the Soviet Union. "In the Soviet Union", Reader's Digest proudly proclaimed, "you can't walk down the street without an armed police officer stopping you and asking you for your papers. We don't do that in free countries." For once, that right-wing loon DeWitt Wallace was right...

-- Badtux the Sovok Penguin
(*)For some definition of "free" that isn't in the dictionary.

Duty Meow for the Future

Only Devo would do a video where they play with a room full of cats in order to celebrate their first new album in, uhm, decades? Devolution, indeed! (Of course, the whole Bush II era is sorta proof of that, eh?)

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

BP and U.S. government colluding to protect BP?

Naw, it must be just a coincidence that independent researchers are being blocked from evaluating the effects of the Gulf blowout. Because the Obama administration is an eeeevil soshalist government thingy that hates big business, which is why they're making sure that nobody can independently refute BP and the U.S. government's claims about how peachy-keen everything in the Gulf is now that the well is capped...

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Going to the beach....

It's too friggin' hot to hang around here.

Edit at 7:30PM: And I'm *BACK*. The wind shifted and it's now 75F at my duplex, after getting up past 95F by 1PM. Here, have some birds... the full-size pic would make a great screen background. - Badtux the overheated Penguin

Love

L.A. dream pop duo Devics, with their song "Song for a Sleeping Girl" from their 2006 album Push the Heart. Sadly, it appears they're no longer active... a shame, they had a number of well-written and gorgeous tunes...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin

It is 101F in Santa Clara, CA

And it is 88F inside my house, thanks to the thermal mass of a bunch of masonry for the fireplace and the tile base in the bathroom. I shut up the house at 7AM this morning, when it was 66F inside after the window fans had been running all night pulling outside air through the house. The sad thing is that even 88F feels good compared to the outside temperature...

-- Badtux the Overheated Penguin

And it is done...

Today was the last day at my prior employer, I cleaned out my office this morning and handed in my keys, the rest of the time until the 31st is going to be taken from my PTO and sick leave while I take a little de-stressing vacation. On September 1, I start at my new employer. I spent 4 1/2 years at my prior employer and worked on a lot of cool things there, but the last thing we worked on just didn't get any market traction, alas. So it goes. Change simply is.

- Badtux the now Happily-employed Penguin

Madness

Baltimore band Lower Dens with their song "Rosie" from their first album, 2010's Twin-Hand Movement. Nice atmospherics, a bit tedious if you're not in the right herbal mood beforehand (if you know what I mean)...

-- Badtux the Music Penguin