Monday, August 22, 2005


Switched-On Gender

Excerpt from NPR's obituary for Robert Moog:

It's been said that the Moog synthesizer is as important to popular music as the electric guitar. Robert Moog, a pioneer in the world of electronic music, died Sunday at age 71. He had been known to be suffering from a brain tumor in the last months of his life.

They went on to attribute the commercial success of the synthesizer to Wendy Carlos' best-selling album, "Switched-On Bach."  What they neglected to mention was that Wendy Carlos was born Walter Carlos, and later had gender change surgery.  Try doing that with a synthesizer. 


6:04:56 PM    

Semper Fi

Today's Bush speech at the VFW convention in Salt Lake City featured the usual display of odd body language, including his trademark smirk, deployed at incongruous moments.   He laid on the Texas accent with a trowel ("The United States") and dropped his Gs to sound folksy . ("We're workin' to defeat the terrorists" . . . "We're gettin' results" . . . "They're producin' a constitution").  He looked like he couldn't decide whether he was Churchill or Audie Murphy.

Karl Rove could save everyone a lot of time and money by just re-running footage of old Bush speeches, since they're all basically the same, designed to maintain the image of decisiveness (soundbites transcribed by me from CNN broadcast):

"This is a different kind of war" (even if Chuck Hagel thinks it looks like Vietnam)
"They're tryin' to shake our will." (meaning his will)
"As Iraqis stand up, Americans will stand down."
"Iraq is a central front in the war on terror." (and he made it that way)
"Free societies are peaceful societies."
"We're movin' forward with resolve." (That household cleaner again, Resolve)

In other words, "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, but I'm going to keep on doing it."

At one point he tried to conflate the fiasco in Iraq with WWII and Korea:

"From the beaches of Normandy to the shores of Korea . . ."

I fully expected him to burst into song: "From the halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli . . ."

Well, at least he didn't wear his flight suit.


11:46:04 AM