Land Deals In Paraguay

Oh boy! Strike up the band, Johnny. Here we go again with a treasure trove of snarky comments regarding Bush's revelation that he too uses "the Google." Don't miss #187. Sonny's likely bought-up all the good stuff, though. Even Second Life's gonna be hard to get in on with all the mainstream buzz they're stirrin' up.

Someone Is More Pissed Off Funny Than You

And I found him! The dude, Bob Lefsetz, is an aging, ugly and angry music biz attorney who truly answers to no one. In other words, one of the last great pompous shagger types, full of shit and full of themselves, the kinda guys who were just crazy-great in bed -- before the years of getoverself-medication took their best parts away and left them to, at last, overwork their mighty fine brains instead. Whether with prescriptions or booze, it seems to happen to the best of 'em. But I diverge.

Bobby "Lestat's" caustic honesty is wicked, hilarious and unflinching -- unrivaled by any, except for the great DTL. (Oh, don't you too wish that boy would blog?? Think of the chick-fans who would line-up to do his, uh, bidding! Some of 'em might be a little matronly and grey at this point, but the feminine vital skills get nothing but better with age. That's the rub isn't it? And you dumb fucks out there chasing young trim are so missing out on the good stuff, besides being laughed at royally behind your backs.) Anyways, I diverge again...

Here's an excerpt from Ugly Bobby -- the best blogger out there. Full blog here:

Oh, don’t you LAUGH when baby boomers start railing against MySpace? These same personages who hitchhiked all over America are fearful that Little Benjamin and Madison are too fucking dumb to ferret out true from false online and some bogeyman is going to knock on the front door, since the kids proferred their address and cell number, and whisk them away into slavery, if not DEATH!

We live in a land of rampant falsehoods perpetrated by baby boomers all proffered in the name of keeping those uttering them in CONTROL! You doubt me? Just look at the President.

WARNING: I don't recommend subscribing to his stuff though, as he's totally manic and your Inbox will get flooded with ranting. Then again, maybe that's your kinda thing. Just more advice you didn't ask for.

HA-HA NOTE: I may be the last person in America to have seen these, but Gawd, they will crack you the fuck up! Thanks Tania, for the clue-in. I can't stop watching! Hilarious. It's good stuff, especially if you loathe Fundies. (Oh jeez, it just gets worse and worse as it plays out.)

This post put together by DrivinNCryin: "Playing records, Patti Smith and Howlin' Wolf." A special prize to the first person who can name the song & LP that line is from.

Technorati tags: Great blogs, Culture meltdown, music

Fall Festival

Hey Angry Scarletts fan(s) -- TrueGritz Episode #10, in which Sas and Pauline go all political at the State Fair, is now online for your broadband pleasure. Lemme take you there now.

Or, keeping with the multimedia fest of this one entry alone, check-out one of my archived podcasts about political corruption and big bad telcos here. Wait 'til those folks at BellSouth/AT&T control the Internet! Blog while you can, before they shut the whole thing down, is my advice you never asked for.

Ahhh.... Young Love

... is really quite stressful it seems, as a New Orleans couple I (and the NYT of course) once noted in a blog entry in the aftermath of Katrina is now dead. Very dead. Dude first killed, dismembered and cooked (I shit you not) his best gal, went and made merry one last time, then hurled himself off of a high place. Good Gawd Awmighty, you sure made misery on folks with that storm, now didn't you?

And for all you sickos who keep hitting this blog with your Google "Zachery Bowen Addie Hall suicide pictures" searches, sorry -- you won't find any such horror here. Keep away ghoulish creeps.

Rest in peace Addie, hon. If that's possible. Your boyfriend was a gen-u-ine freak, so he can rot in hell. But I bet you'd heard that before, n'est pas?

No Shiney Happy Workers At Florida Wal-Mart

"If something affects my brothers and sisters, it affects me." Yahima Morales, Wal-Mart Dept. Manager

I was all excited about the Howell Mill Station Wal-Mart grand opening today, and was getting ready to head over there to drop a load of cash for a load of things I'd convince myself I had to have to run my household more efficiently.

But per the routine, I first dropped by the computer to read-in on the day, and was sickened by the BusinessWeek tale told by workers at a Florida Wal-Mart as they walked-off the job two days ago.

Here's the rub part from reporter Pallavi Gogoi at BusyWeek online:

The protest wasn't led by any union group. Rather, it was instigated by two department managers, Guillermo Vasquez and Rosie Larosa. The department managers were not affected directly by the changes, but they felt that the company had gone too far with certain new policies. Among them were moves to cut the hours of full-time employees from 40 hours a week to 32 hours, along with a corresponding cut in wages, and to compel workers to be available for shifts around the clock.

In addition, the shifts would be decided not by managers, but by a computer at company headquarters. Employees could find themselves working 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. one week and noon to 9 p.m. the next. "So workers cannot pick up their children after school everyday, and part-timers cannot keep another job because they can be called to work anytime," says Vasquez.

As my time nor my money nor my life, thank God, is decided by a computer program, think I'll just unload my money at Target. Or since I really don't need any more stuff right this moment, I might send the money to these folks in Florida.

GUERILLA MEDIA TIP OF THE DAY: If you want to get on local news tonight, which isn't hard to do, but isn't my style (that's too often the tacky behavior used by book banners in Gwinnett County), you could simply make a sign right now that says something like "Send your Grand Opening money to Guillermo Vasquez and Rosie Larosa in Florida," walk over to where all the press will be today at the Howell Mill Rd. Wal-Mart, and just sit there on the sidewalk. Of course, anyone is welcome to this free speech/photo op. Around 11:45am or about 4:45pm is a good time for the locals. Or stay until about 6pm if the nets are there! Bonus tip: have copies of the BusinessWeek article to hand-out to interested people.

Or how about this for your signage: For All You've Done, or Not Done, This Week Alone! Shame, Wal-Mart, Shame.

Technorati tags: Wal-Mart, Atlanta, Media

Good PR Firm, Good

At my request in a blog comment today, Edelman did remove my editorial from the Georgia Families For Wal-Mart site. At once. Edelman hizseff contacted me by email to honor my request. I really appreciate this responsiveness on their part, and I told 'em that they were free to put the article back on the site, if it (their site) suddenly became "more transparent."

This is the power of the blogosphere, folks. YOU now own media. You, the individual, don't you see? And all before lunch! Now everybody... shut-up and shop!

Technorati tags: Wal-Mart, Edelman, PR

Bad PR Firm, Bad

Edleman, the massive PR agency with clients like, oh say... Wal-Mart, the second (?) largest corporation in the history of capitalism, has admitted, finally, to their ethically dubious behavior. In a nutshell, and you can click yourself into a mia culpa frenzy reading all about it on your own time, Edelman created phoney sites and blogs and world f-ing tours and a host of other $$$-generated smoke and mirrors for their bestest client, Wal-Mart.

Seemed the smarties in the blogosphere, as opposed to the general public, weren't too confused for too long. (I mean...duh... what were they thinking? That people would seriously believe there was a genuine, grassroots, pro-Wal-Mart effort afoot in the land? Do we LOOK stupid here in the blogosphere?!) And guess what, folks got pissed and called 'em out. Imagine that.

I, too, got caught-up in the whole fake Wal-Mart PR campaign, a practice refered to as "astroturfing," when my editorial for The Georgia Political Digest ended-up on the Georgia Families For Wal-Mart site. It's still there. I asked Edelman today to remove the editorial until the whole campaign/site is made more transparent. (UPDATE as of 12:05pm EDT: they did.)

I stand-by my editorial direction in the article. I like Wal-Mart, and plan to shop there when the new intown store opens tomorrow in my 'hood. (Shit, I'm a single working mom; we're programmed to love Wal-Mart due to our historically slim budgets alone.) I just don't like being used on a highly un-transparent site.

Technorati tags: Wal-Mart, Edelman, PR

I Am Woman See Me Knock Over A Light

After nearly 20 years in production, this was my first all-women shoot, outside of TrueGritz. This one, with me as DP, was for Gorgeous Ladies of Comedy. Didn't make a dime, but I felt like I'd finally reached the top of a really steep mountain. Trust me, the view is beautiful here!

It's All Mainstream Now, Baby Blue

Just take your stupid tee shirt and back quietly out of the room.

We've Heard Enough Now Shut-Up

I need to take a smallish blog-break this week to:

a.) build a fallout shelter
b.) actually work

Gotta crank-out a real video for a real client real quick, so no real blogging until Friday.

I do have a bit of real information for you though, in that I had an e-mail exchange with Dana Tofig, Director of Communications for the Georgia Department of Education, about the status of that case belonging only to the personal, religious crusade of that hideous, Umbridge-like woman, Laura Mallory -- the hapless hag who wants to rid Gwinnett County of imaginary menaces from the Harry Potter books. And forceably detach, one must assume, our children from their beloved characters, as well as their own imaginations.

Tofig had this to say about the status of the book-banning case we wish was just a bad dream:

Mr. Buckland (a hearing officer for the state who recently heard an appeal) will not make a recommendation publicly and there will not be a public hearing. The (state education) board's decision, expected in December, will be posted on the internet at http://www.gadoe.org/. This is how appeal hearings are handled in every case.

This case will be handled like any other. State law allows this mother the right to be heard and the case will be decided on the merits of state school law and board rule and nothing else.

Decisions are made behind closed doors only? And all results are posted only on the Internet? Hmmm... I'm sure that Misguided Mallory will be more than happy to oblige the press when the decision does get "posted" wherever.

Let's hope, for this Communication Director's sake alone, that rational minds will prevail, in private or otherwise. Should something ludicrously drastic happen to the sensibilities of state board members and the Harry Potter books are taken away, we in Georgia will rival only North Korea for seismic activity, only any vibrations felt 'round the world from these parts will be generated by global levels of laughter and scorn heaped upon us Southerners for our backwardsass ways - again.

The Atlantic Station Verses

The great writer, Salman Rushdie, is to be writer-in-residence at Emory -- for brief spells only. Still, this has Literati Disaster written all over it, given that Rushdie's bound to be overwhelmed with babbling Buckhead socialites inviting him over to their overwraught McMansions for a martini or two. And we all know that the only book ever read by any Buckhead Betty would be a cookbook by overweight, overwraught Pat Conroy.

Speaking of overweight and overwraught, raise a glass to the king of elitist, name-dropper prose when you hit the bar for happy hour tonight. The NYT master, R.W. Apple, died Wednesday. (Apple's on the left.)

Healthcare In America SUCKS

So many people fly under the health insurance radar, especially musicians, writers and artists, as they are moreorless self-employed. So when something serious happens, as it has to Athens musician Wendy Musick, then the uninsured are forced way-up the harrowing creek of ludicrously exploded healthcare costs in this country.

Fortunately for Ms. Musick, she has some great friends, and they've organized a series of cool events to help raise money for her surgery... which is likely occuring right about now. Below is event info. The fun and fundraising begin tonight at the 40 Watt Club, the place where Wendy was a sound engineer for many years.

So road-trip it on over to Athens, enjoy yourself, then come on home and support legislation to reform our totally off-the-wheels healthcare "system." Folks, if Newt Gingrich and Hillary Clinton can get together to work for better healthcare legislation, then so can we!

MUSICK FEST BENEFIT, is a 2 night music event and 3 week art show ending in an art auction to raise money for local uninsured musician, Wendy Musick. Wendy currently plays in Southern Bitch, Kimberly Morgan and the Everlovin' Band.

Schedule of Events: Thurs., Oct. 5th, 40 Watt, $15, doors 8pm
Clay Leverett (Lona, Now It's Overhead)
Dave Marr
David Barbe & the Quick Hooks
Will Johnson (Centro-matic, South San Gabriel)
Don Chambers & GOAT
Patterson Hood & the Screwtopians

Fri., Oct. 6th, Nuci's Space, $10, doors 7pm
Still Small Voice and the Joyfull Noise
Betsy Franck
Kimberly Morgan
Diet Rockstar
Mother Jackson
Patterson Hood

Horcrux This Hag

Umbridge Lives!!!! Umbridge Lives!!! Right here in metro Atlanta!!! Run for your lives children, 'cause book-banner Laura Mallory is coming for you and your own good judgement and imagination.

I bet this publicity-crazed Mallory hag would burn I Will Only Read The Bible (non King James version) into the back of my hand (and all my friends too), just as Umbridge burned her wicked rhetoric onto Harry (in Book Five for you non-readers), as fast as you can mutter Detention With Delores.

If Mad Mallory would shut-up with her idiot-babble, thinly veiled as her Fundamentalist agenda, for two seconds and read the damn books, she might recognize her insidious behavior in many of the most evil characters and knock it off.

Some HP characters and their accompanying personality afflictions who spring to mind when I read about Mad Mallory are: Umbridge of course, a huge dose of Dursley, a flicker of Filch and a lashing of Bellatrix Lestrange.

Guard your minds, kiddies, against The Ministry of (Your) Mind Control and their wannabee High Inquisitor like this stupid, stupid Mallory woman. Fiction has become reality I'm afraid.

You CAN Do Something

Especially you blogging parents and taxpayers. Jeff Jarvis is calling for a citizen journalism effort - RIGHT NOW. Says Jarvis today:

I would be eager to see hundreds of thousands of us contact our school districts today to find out the state of their security, in light of the latest rash of tragic murders in schools across the country.

Jarvis asks that when you get responses to the questions below (by emailing them to your school district), to then post the answers to your own blog and tag them schoolsecurity so that all blog posts show-up under the Technorati tag, schoolsecurity.

An explaination of what good this might do for our country's children is here. Questions are as follows. Copy and paste and email to your school or school district. Add your own q's too.

* Are all doors at all schools locked at all times? If not, what are the exceptions? How are the doors monitored?

* Are there security cameras in the schools? If so, how many? And if so, where and by whom are the monitored?

* How often are staff, faculty, and students trained in emergency procedures?

* Is there onsite security in the schools?

* If, God forbid, there were a threat within a school, what should we as parents expect to happen?

Well, get emailing! There's power in numbers.

tag: schoolsecurity

N. Georgia State Fair

Below, a tree preps:

Above, the TrueGritz State Fair field production team. Got 'r done!

And one mystery dude below,

who appears to know something we don't.

To The Batmobile, Robin

Holy TypePad Batman!!! This road trip thing is catching fire! We gotta get the hell outta here!!! BLOG SPOT SPLAT TYPE TAPE UPLOAD KAPOWEEE!!!!!!!!

Narcissistic Graffiti begins the send-up of Amanda Across America it has coming to it. Hold on to your BatCams!!!

The Altar of Simplicity

How will the angels hear us now? Seems Southerners are making a less joyful noise unto the Lord. With some interesting gnashing of teeth and observations, Gainesville Times columnist, Rhonda Rich, laments how we are fast losing the lyrical beauty of our unique, southern speech. And Ms. Rich places the blame right on the bland, dumbed-down heads of our megachurch-going populace.

From today's Gainesville Times.com:

What has happened here is that the Bible Belt is no longer reading the King James version of the Bible. It, with its difficulty in language, has been traded in by the majority of Southerners for simpler translations that tell stories straight out by using today's contemporary language.

These versions are bland, uninteresting but completely understandable. By moving en mass to plainer versions of the Bible, we have sacrificed our gorgeous language, laying it, without thought or concern, at the altar of simplicity.

Ms. Rich's excellent column in full here.

I'd say language erosion is not just a southern phenomenon, and that cultural homogenization via mass media has been a more significant contributing factor than the loss of the very confounding King James Bible. Social media technologies will no doubt finish-off the victim too, given that most folks under 30 don't even bother to create complex language structure at all; rather, they furiously scratch-out acronyms, symbolic grunts and grins, and rude hand gestures via text messaging. Maybe we're de-evolving back to sign language?

Then again, when I blog, even though I try to keep it as "real" as possible, I often experiment in placing interesting words in just the appropriate places, words I'd never have a chance of utilizing in everyday interaction. Blogging offers a linguistically intriguing medium, should one care to use it that way. It's a shame so many of the most popular blogs are written by technology-motivated non-writers who lack the slightest flicker of poetic sensibility, let alone basic social skills. But that's another topic altogether.

Working with words is one of the reasons I bother to blog at all. And notice the use of language on The Colbert Report, how he plays with interesting words and unusual, chiefly snarky, interpretations in The Word segment. Perhaps mass media shouldn't be written off entirely. Just rethought. After we have, of course, stormed the Media Bastille.

Still, blaming Southern Baptists and the mega-church suburbanista crowd for all our cultural woes is always a ton of fun. Let's not give it up just yet! But if you're missing religious grandiosity in your life, as well as the King James version, I suggest you get to know the Episcopal Church service and its gorgeous, ceremonious, liturgical comforts - timelessly reassuring with a full display of the traditional grandeur of the high church, uh, performance.

I know that after a really hard, hideous week in the often pointless and culturally barren urban minefields of a relentless ATL, when I walk into an All Saints' service, where majestic voices from that stunning choir and the pipes of the blaring organ literally crash into me at first note, a power-ridden divine beauty radiates from the red and gold vaults and instantly drives doubt and despair away, renewing my psyche, my actual body, with something far more substantial.

Simplicity has its place, but should never be given a cultural credit it has not earned and does not deserve.

Around The Bend

ADD ON: Rusty and Amber, co-creators of the Georgia Podcast Network, just won a Creative Loafing "Best of Atlanta" award. A million congratulations to you guys!! Air kisses all around. And lots of bubbly too, when we can share. (Can you sneak me in to the "Best Of" party?) Just goes to show that innovation, creativity, hard-ass work, long hours and self-belief/preservation always win out.

This is the entry where I'd apologize for yesterday's outburst over Amanda Congdon's un-inspired sellout. But since I'm not the least bit sorry, I'll move on.

In a sec... it's just that I had such high hopes for Ms. Amanda. She had this Mary Tyler Moore, kinda zany, kinda wacky, kinda cute and sweet, and always very bright and smart quality. Still does. But even a pro like Jeff Jarvis couldn't help being taken aback when he saw that hybrid car she was "tripping" about in. The camera told all.

Meanwhile, back at Rancho ATL, the state fair's going on, so I gotta go just to get Sas one of these, with a unicorn of course. See below.

Lordy, I'd say I'm pre-menopausal as I've been emotionally so all over the place this morning. But since I've got the Hemi version of a reproductive system, that's not the case. Must be just pure, natural moodiness. I've gone from laughing my ass off at Tania's and Jen's multi-media antics to crying, again, over one of TR's poems. She's just that good. I'm such a girl. Thank God.

This entry put together by Lee Ann Womack's: There's More Where That Came From.
When You Get To Me

Hell

Isn't it adorable when the MySpace gen discovers "the road trip?" Fucking precious. Now paid for and sponsored by hybrid cars and Ford and environmental groups and other STUPID FUCKIN' CORPORATE SHIT!!! (Click image below) AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Wake me up when the major pharmaceuticals start throwing money on me to travel with their products, 'cause I'm taking to my bed now with the blackest, goth despair only an eighties party gal, once brilliantly capable of conjuring-up beautiful, pure, homegrown, totally organic party times on her own, can wallow in.

Dear God, just let me sleep until this "social media" nightmare is over. One bit of advice before I turn out the light though... Amanda hon, never roll with the top down.

He'd Have Been A Good Man...

"... if he'd had a bad rocker to bash him in the head every day."

Since a couple of you have enquired into the matter, let me direct you to the blog thread from over a year ago in which someone (I'll never tell) posted the "Tony Paris is buried in the Kremlin" comment. Many choice eighties-Atlanta references lie within, if you're over 38 and still alive.

In a devilish new twist, the plot of the Fox TV show, Vanished, set in Atlanta and on Monday nights at 9pm, hints of a romp through the "Atlanta underground music scene." Such a story line should make for intense TV -- how about that wanker redneck drummer from Duluth who once did blow with Ashley Smith lounging about on your East Atlanta Ikea couch for three weeks instead of the one week it promised in the first place? Now that would be frightening.

It's a shame the show does not incorporate the truly evil and horrid realities of Atlanta's much more infamous and always-flourishing sex trade business instead. That could indeed scare someone.

While bad TV, Vanished does make for an excellent drinking game. For instance, you can drink every time they botch an Atlanta reference. Something along the lines of I-20 going through Stone Mountain. You'll be crocked by 9:15, if you can make it through the laughable, very unsouthern-esque acting for that long.

One other note, wanna hear something real pretty? Check out the song on Caroline Monroe's MySpace. Just as lovely as it can be. We were delighted to have her on TrueGritz twice. Caroline's surely a star in the making.