I usually don’t turn to vapid fashion magazines for political facts that galvanize my opinion on a given topic, but in this case, Details came through in the clutch. Amid articles like ‘She’s Pregnant: Is it Time to Go?’ and descriptions like ‘your wallet should be thin, effortless and elegant, just like a woman,’ I a one-sentence blurb caught my eye.

‘1992:,’ it read (I’m recreating the sentence from memory, mind you), ‘The year Karl Rove was fired from George H. W. Bush’s campaign for planting a false story with columnist Robert Novak‘ (emphasis mine). Recall that Rove has been at the center of an ongoing scandal regarding the leakage of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame’s name to reporter Matthew Cooper. References: New York Times article, beatnikindustries post. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but this 1992 revelation is just icing on the cake.

Just as this had faded from the popular consciousness - much to the relief of Rove, I’m sure - I had dismissed the issue as something that would eventually pan out, whether the outcome be full-scale investigations or a complete wash. However, my interest was again piqued this morning, as Judith Miller (pictured above with Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr.) was released from prison yesterday, and I was reminded of the peculiar intersection of politics, journalism and skulduggery in this particular slice of current events.

To recap:

Item the first.
Good for journalism. Good for Miller’s stand. Granted, she’s not exactly blameless, given her track record of reporting on (apparently imagined) Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but, to crib a line from Goodfellas, ‘what’s important is that you kept your mouth shut.’

Item the second.
Karl Rove is a scurrilous little shit. More digging reveals that the Novak-Rove connection runs even deeper, as Rove was also dismissed from Bush the First’s vice-presidential campaign in 1980 for allegedly leaking information to Novak - in addition to his 1992 and 2003 infractions.

And to conclude.
From a purely philosphical viewpoint, all these happenings are Good for journalists and Bad for conspiring politicians. In a more realistic view, however, the whole affair is enough to inspire complete apathy in all but the most inspired and motivated among us.

The whole thing is almost enough to make me renew my Details subscription - just to read more about how the hoodies-under-a-blazer trend is so over: Bite-sized journalism for peace of mind.

Foodie trend of the week: The preponderance of mango. Mango chutney. Mango salsa. Chicken roasted in a tomato-and-mango glaze. Just an observation - I’m kinda liking the trend.

The longer I live, the more subcultures I find. Most are harmless pastimes - reciting sports trivia, playing 16-inch softball, performing improv comedy - I find academically interesting, yet hold no real fascination for me. Occasionally, however, I come across a few I simply can’t get my head around - bull riding, NASCAR, sudoku - and I can do little else other than watch these activities in horror.

Muskie hunting sorta explained
I found another one of these and-people-do-this-why?-sort of behavior Saturday night. Apparently there’s a sport called ‘muskie hunting,’ the ‘muskie’ being ‘an angry, really big fish,’ and the ‘hunting’ being ‘a euphemism for fishing all day and seeing no results.’ I get my information from exhaustive Internet research.

So on this particular night, after a very nice, very refined Italian dinner, a friend and I take a cab to some bar described as ‘the one with the moose in the backyard,’ which turns out to be an apt descriptor - there was a, you know, eight-foot high moose in the backyard. We had arrived at that time of the night when the entertainment had ended and the streets had been overrun by drunkards. FIne, great, sure, but under the watchful eye of Big Brother Moose, the effect was slightly unnerving.

Meet Jess, the Muskie Queen
I then found out the event was held to crown Muskie Queen 2005. Suddenly, it all made sense. A Wisconsin bar. Large stuffed fish on the walls. A stuffed moose. Jess, crowned Muskie Queen 2005, was making the rounds and I had the pleasure of snapping my picture with her. She had that air of tired celebrity about her, sick of the meet-and-greet and ready for bed. I think we talked about the University of Dayton. Who knows.

Needless to say, that was enough North Woods fun for me - my quota’s full for the next, oh, ten years. Now if only I could score tickets to the next NASCAR race, I’d be well on my way to scratching off another entry on my list of Stuff I Don’t Want To Do.

Movie I’m still thinking about: Broken Flowers. A friend gave me the perfect adjective to describe Jim Jarmusch films: subtle. Nothing happens, but you’re not quite sure that’s a bad thing. How about this for an Idea? Get depressed - get drunk, lose your job, all that - and go see Broken Flowers. You just may get some existential understanding from it. Me? I just left the theater, puzzled that a movie that flat and uneventful could end so abruptly. But I’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks, so maybe it warrants a second viewing.

Bill Murray, you’re brilliant, as always, but I gotta tell ya, Bill, you should start branching out from disaffected, emotionally bankrupt middle-age Oscar-bait characters. Just a quick memo.

After years of going to concerts, I’ve noticed quite a few instances of the I’m Pretty Much Ready to Go Home phenomenon.

I’m at a show - either highly anticipated or run-of-the-mill, it doesn’t appear to matter - and after 45 minutes or so, I’m ready to go. I could be listening to (read: enjoying) the CD at home, actually understanding the lyrics, not going deaf by virtue of the sadistic sound guy putting his levels too high and free of drunken, flailing people, rather than remaining at the overpacked, hot concert venue. I’m guessing we’ve all felt this same impulse, at one time or another.

I thus preface my discussion of last night’s show with the above disclaimer, because nothing about Sìgur Rós at the Chicago Theater last night matched those situations.

I had listened to the band on the recommendation of nearly every music critic in the world, who characterize the Icelandic quartet’s sounds as ’sprawling’, ‘atmospheric’ and ‘a cathartic blast of tautly constructed group noise.’ (All of these are meant in the most positive way, of course.) Sure, it’s good, but it’s not the type of record you put on a party. I found it great for headphone listening while writing, late at night, tho. Then I went to the show. I did so much spacing out - just thinking about life and scheming to take of the world, that sort of thing - to this background of noise that was somehow appropriate to every thought I had. Then the lead singer - who spoke only Icelandic, marking the first time I’ve been to a show at which the band never directly addressed the audience - started freaking wailing on his guitar with his cello bow. My reverie broken, I felt the music reach a crescendo, as the singer’s bow strings frayed and broke. Amid the chaotic changing images projected on the stage’s screen, he fell to his knees just as the band hit the final chord of the evening.

That was pretty OK, in a spine-tingly, holy-crap-that-was-amazing way.

The above picture sucks, I know. Granted, as I took it, I was greeted with a chorus of ‘Lame!’ by my partner in crime for the evening, Michelle, who’s a black-and-white film-only photographer. Snob. I’m proud of the fact that the image was snapped with a digital phone camera.

And I did get to see Dressy Bessy last Tuesday too. Too bad the picture’s not as good as last time. Like I planned, I did not do anything reprehensibly stupid, and even said hello to the band. I would highly recommend the two-person collective Talkdemonic, the opener. I’m pretty sure everyone that stayed until the end of the show were the same ones who attended the band’s last show two months ago - the same ten people. That’s the definition of a hardcore fan base.

Sit down. Relax. Want a drink? No? How about you just lie back and make yourself at home. I’m going to ask you to put aside your political affiliations for a moment.

No, no, come back. Sit down. This is going to be fine … nothing painful, I swear.

Think back to the good ol’ 2004 elections. As opposed to the 2000 debacle, at least people were having fun with the Kerry/Bush decision, sticking cutouts of the presidential candidates’ heads on toothpicks for their Martini. After the third one, they were flinging them at their opponents in the bar, but I’m not remembering a moment of genuine animosity.

And you watched television the whole time – couldn’t miss a moment. There was drama, there was tension. There was an emotional arc to watching your home state go red, then blue, then purple – the networks couldn’t make up their damn minds as CNN gave one state to Bush and MSNBC gave the same to Kerry.

There was literally so much information that you stopped trying to process the debacle and you watched pundits duke it out as exit-polling data trickled in.

Ah, the good old days.

This morning, I had the pleasure of attending a German election party downtown at the Goethe Institute, a subdued affair at which I was one of perhaps three people who don’t speak German fluently. There were little Germans playing on the floor, twentysomething Germans milling about eating sandwiches, older Germans drinking large glasses of Riesling and a large projection set up so a satellite feed could show Germany-based Germans musing on the results of the election that were taking place that moment. I won’t describe the circumstances of the election, though, so read up on that by yourself.

From what I could discern, however, Germany doesn’t perform exit polling, making accurate predictions notoriously difficult. When projections were finally announced, the entire crowd gasped – imagine not knowing the results of the 2004 election until all votes were nearly counted. And apparently the election in Dresden is going to be postponed for two weeks on account of the death of one of the candidates.* If the margin is too close in the national election, the entire country will have to wait for one city’s results. It’s kinda like Florida in 2000, but markedly less frantic.

And the Supreme Court most likely won’t be involved.

While it may make for sound politics – less hoopla, less sound bites, less focus on poll numbers as opposed to real issues – the entertainment value is pretty low.

We left not knowing the election results and, nearly 10 hours later, the election still hasn’t been put to bed – something about coalitions and such. All I know is that the phenomenon of toothpick-throwing-amateur-pundit parties doesn’t translate across the Atlantic.

Too bad for them. They don’t know what they’re missing.

Photo of current (future?) Chancellor Gehard Schröeder courtesy Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

*[Correction, 9:01 a.m., Sept. 19, 2005: The Dresden election has been postponed due to the death of a third-party, not a leading, candidate, as the sentence originally stated. See comments.]

The magical interweb has fundamentally altered my perception of reality. Browse below and you’ll agree - a small sample of ten minutes of good, hard surfing will get you enough jaw-dropping experiences and inside-joke fodder to last at least, oh, a year. Or a month, if you’re ADD.

Hot chicks. Playing Dungeons and Dragons.
That’s it: Hot chicks, playing Dungeons and Dragons. Nothing else to see here. Move along, now.

Inanity, in a daily, sketchy form.
Every few weeks or so, I have to head back to Toothpaste for Dinner, as apparently I’ve developed a Pavlovian response to cynical, snide humor expressed through quick black-and-white sketches.

Fifth graders performing an exact reproduction of Devo’s ‘Whip It’ video.
Thanks, BoingBoing!
Yep, those kids are young. And yep, they’re doing a great job with ‘Whip It.’ And those hats! The style was so hip it was used only one other place, which was, I believe the video for ‘Land Down Under’ by Men at Work.

I stop at three because oh! The funny!

So last night I came home after a long day at the office and the gym and other such yuppie activities - and realized it was nearly 11 p.m. And for some reason, the Taco Bell from 4 in the afternoon wasn’t holding me over. I took stock of the cabinets: some canned peas, some peanut butter. The freezer: ice and popsicles. The fridge: pickles and horseradish mustard. No dice.

I began the desperate scan of the kitchen, hoping either a) something materializes out of the ether in a cabinet or b) I get a stroke of genius to combine the peanut butter with Honey Crunches of Oats for a sticky cookie-like thing. But neither happens, as my apartment is subject to the laws of physics and we don’t have any cereal. Instead, I looked to the middle of the kitchen table, where I found my answer.

In the Sunday Chicago Tribune, the outer bag contained a pouch of Quaker’s new Weight Control oatmeal. After I got over my ‘what the hell is that?’ moment, I chuckled and put it on the table for my roommates to find, thinking it would make a great ‘what the hell is that?’ sort of moment for them.

Instead, I found myself eating it 36 hours later. Let me reiterate: I was eating a foodstuff that came bundled with my Sunday paper. I don’t even know if my roommates saw the stuff.

After the Atkins anti-carb backlash, I suppose it’s fine for the popular consciousness to have a food item - one entirely composed of carbohydrates - that’s a diet item. In this case, the seven grams of protein and six grams of fiber are supposed to ‘help with your weight management plan.’ Sure, great, fine. However, I pulled the regular, comforting canister of Quaker Oats from the cabinet to compare labels, and we find ourselves with a clear-cut case of advertising spin.

Sure, Weight Control has six grams of fiber, but regular oatmeal has four. Twenty-three percent of your recommended daily allowance versus 16. And the seven grams of protein aren’t much more than the five in old-fashioned Quaker Oats: 10 percent of your protein RDA versus 6. And the diet crap has 270 milligrams more sodium, and 15 more calories. Diet, my ass.

And can you imagine what diet cinnamon-flavored oatmeal tastes like? That’s exactly what it tasted like.

Remember, kids. Only the foolhardy play the guinea pig by eating the food from a newspaper handout. Don’t try this at home - only under dietary supervision.

Or in times of extreme duress from hunger. That’s OK too.

Twenty minutes later, I was eating frozen vegetables cooked in butter. So much for Weight Control.

Excitement of the Moment: I’m going to see Dressy Bessy tomorrow. Again. The last time was July 22, as in less than two months ago. Hopefully I don’t black out this time and jump on the stage and have arguments about getting into a cab and scream profanities and … a bunch of other stuff that allegedly happened. Cross your fingers.

There are only a few people trustworthy enough with a fall playlist to make suggestions for track addenda … and one of them spoke up. Thus appendix A of the Official 2005 Fall Playlist.

The Young Dubliners, ‘Bodhran.’ As the first track off their album Red, ‘Bodhran’ sets the mood with Irish fiddles over an undeniably catchy beat. The Young Dubs will forever be linked to the autumn season by virtue of the fact that we discovered them while they were opening for Jethro Tull.

The Guess Who, ‘New Mother Nature/No Sugar Tonight.’ Falling two songs after the best breakup song of all time, ‘No Time,’ off their album American Woman, this is one of those songs to which you already know the lyrics (or at least the hook). It starts slowly, unauspiciously, but before long you’re rocking out, chanting the Sound of Music-esque lyrics ‘da doo da dah dah dah da dow …’ And, try as they might, any onlookers who would normally make fun of you are rocking out too.

Ben Folds Five, ‘Battle of Who Could Care Less.’ Because you think ‘The Rockford Files’ actually is cool and postmodern songs with ironic aesthetic distance can be self-referntially hip. And the fact that ‘Battle’ makes a great singalong helps too.

For the last two days, I’ve been following the ongoing discussion about linguistic appropriateness in regards to Katrina coverage, specifically, the use of the word ‘refugee.’ Apparently the Rev. Jesse Jackson feels the word is racist – ‘It is racist to call American citizens refugees,’ he claimed – but for the life of me, I can’t see why.

As a person who latches on to slight connotations of words in order to make a point, I can understand when a word may or may not offend. The point of language is to evolve, to constantly adapt to meet the changing needs of a culture. Take words like ‘pimp,’ for instance. While this four-letter common noun still has seedy, horrible undertones of a forced sex trade, that would now appear a perhaps definition number four on the list, behind

1 interj. an exclamation of approval (‘that’s so pimp’)

2 v.tr. to improve to the point of transcendence (MTV’s Pimp my Ride)

3 n. a attractive person, typically male, very successful in coupling with members of the opposite sex (or the same sex too, I suppose)

Only then do we find the ‘traditional’ definition of ‘pimp’ in the popular consciousness.

The point is that words take on new meanings as they are implicitly assigned by majority opinion and usage. Reclaiming the definition of ‘pimp’ to ones with more positive connotations would be an example of this upward shift in usage.

However, when a major public figure like Jackson suddenly assigns negative connotation to a word – a subtext that, I would argue, did not previously exist – because the majority of those affected by Katrina are black, he does the English language the disservice of losing that word forever. Those displaced in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s (who were mostly white, mind you) were termed ‘refugees.’ According to my trusty unabridged Webster’s Third, definition number one is ‘one that flees to a place of safety.’

I would say that applies here. Some of the substitutes used by an Associated Press that has partially caved to Jackson’s ridiculous request of ceasing to use the word – including the Washington Post, the Miami Herald and the Boston Globe - include ‘evacuee,’ ‘survivor’ and ‘displaced,’ none of which have the correct connotations. At least the AP, in general, is ‘continuing to use the word where it is deemed appropriate,’ according to the New York Times.

This entire debate will disappear relatively soon, as the New Orleans refugees are re-settled and sheltered elsewhere – they’ll cease to become refugees, and will become residents of other cities. So, needless to say, I’ll continue to use the word – when appropriate, with a nod to the AP – without regard for imagined racial implications. That’s pretty pimp of me, I’d say.

Additional fodder for the argument: Slate just posted a story today with the tag ‘My second week as a refugee.’ The author refers to his doctoral internship and the Montessori day-care center for his one-year-old, so draw whatever socio-politico-ethno conclusions you want.

Song of the Day: ‘Refugee,’ Tom Petty. Hey, it’s a good song. And it’s appropriate. It don’t make no difference to me, baby. Everybody’s had to fight to be free. You see, you don’t have to live like a refugee.

I’ve started a few posts, but most of them ended up as rants against placing blame on the true causes of Hurricane Katrina, or banal discussions about this one episode of MTV’s ‘My Super Sweet 16’ that ended with the line ‘try and beat that party, bitches.’

Actually, maybe I will post on ‘My Super Sweet 16.’

But there is one thing for sure: It’s (close enough to) the fall season. And for some reason, songs you hear in the autumn stay with you, as opposed to saccharine summer tracks that you claim ‘this is my jam’ for about two weeks, then forget ever existed. Fall is a season for open windows, for eating pumpkin pie, for wearing jeans and sweaters. Without further adieu, the Official Fall 2005 Playlist:

Andrew Bird, ‘A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left.’ I still haven’t heard the rest of his new album, The Mysterious Production of Eggs. I’m guessing it’s as good as this, though, since Bird rarely fails to deliver haunting melodies, with plucked violin, bowed violin and guitars layers building before breaking into a two-person vocal harmony. And when was the last time you heard the word ‘bereft’ in a pop song?

Beck, ‘Black Tambourine.’ I’m slowly coming to appreciate Guero more and more. I take a track at a time, listen to it for a week or so, chew on the fatty parts and move on. ‘Black Tambourine’ is simply the latest in a line of standout Beck tracks. It’s got a great bassline, dig?

Common, ‘Testify.’ I’m still trying to figure out if the ‘before you lock my love away’ hook is a sample or not. Either way, the only thing that brings this track down is when the female vocals compete with Common’s flow. He’s a better MC than Kanye. Get over it.

Elysian Fields, ‘Black Acres.’ From the album Queen of the Meadow, this song entered permanent fall rotation last year. Slow. Somber. Sexy. Jennifer Charles, possibly the breathiest voice in pop music, sings ‘it’s so refined, this little death,’ referring to the French ‘le petit mort.’ Figure out that Victorian reference on your own.

Euphoria, ‘Delirum’ (Fila Brazilia mix). I found this one on Fila Brazilia’s Brazilificaion: Remixes 95-99 disc, and my first impulse was that I should have been listening to it in some dark lounge, drinking a Manhattan. And I like that feeling, so on the playlist it goes.

Franz Ferdinand, ‘Do You Want To.’ Sure, it’s not even yet released, but dammit, Franz has me hooked on hipster dance rock. True story: A friend came back from a Franz show, and was floored by the number of scenster hipsters that were actually moving - they’re just that damn catchy.

Handsome Boy Modeling School feat. Roisin and J-Live, ‘The Truth.’ Funkiest. Beat. Ever. J-Live’s a little weak, but he does work in a rhyme for ‘ceteris parabus,’ so he’s forgiven.

Jethro Tull, ‘Sossity; You’re a Woman,’ or ‘Acres Wild’ or … pretty much any song. Jethro Tull is the reason fall is so great. Jethro Tull is fall music. Stop listening to Aqualung and experience one of the other 20 or so albums.

Matthew Sweet, ‘Ugly Truth Rock.’ Much like Beck, I discover Matthew Sweet songs one at a time, despite owning both Girlfriend and Altered Beast. The latter has recently delivered ‘Ugly Truth Rock,’ which was recommended with the footnote of ‘one of my favorite cruising songs while the leaves are turning … I can smell the piles of leaves burning in my hometown,’ by Dave.

Red Snapper, ‘Keeping Pigs Together.’ It’s pretty much your favorite spy movie, only set to better music. This isn’t the hayride sort of fall soundtrack, this is more the driving-at-sunset-with-the-windows-open fall soundtrack.

Van Morrison, ‘Days Like This.’ As it was explained to me, this is the all-purpose fall song. And that’s right: No matter your affect at any given time, from despondent to content, this song fits. The only other track I can think of right now that fits that criterion is Otis Redding’s ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay,’ which is obviously a summer song. So Van Morrison it is.

Wilco, ‘Theologians.’ The thing about Jeff Tweedy songs is that I understand them. Or so I say. Then I get to lyrics like ‘I’m all emotion / I’m a cherry ghost’ and I think, ‘no, I don’t understand this.’ But I still get it, at least.