From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V8 #45 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Tuesday, February 9 1999 Volume 08 : Number 045 Today's Subjects: ----------------- R.E.M. & "Party of Five" [Griffith Davies ] Re: you gotta love these guys! (jeme and eddie?) [Bayard ] burnin cocks nd lovin dicks [LORDK@library.phila.gov] burnin cocks nd lovin dicks [LORDK@library.phila.gov] Re: death of the record companies [Stephen Buckalew ] Re: Atlas Sneezed [Capuchin ] Re: R.E.M. & "Party of Five" [Capuchin ] soft boys on npr? [Thomas Rodebaugh ] Elliott Smith's Satyricon show ["carole reichstein" Subject: R.E.M. & "Party of Five" I was thoroughly disappointed when I read that R.E.M. were rumoured to be making an appearance on the Fox program "Party of Five". After receiving my free ticket to attend the filming, I'm not as disappointed.... griffith _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 15:00:47 -0500 (EST) From: Bayard Subject: Re: you gotta love these guys! (jeme and eddie?) > Now now... while "site" for "cite" can be considered a typo (by my > admittedly fucked-up definition), What is your definition? Seems liek a Dvorakian slip! And yes I do mean LIEK! Look it up! > > EXCELLENT newsletter, Counterpunch. Allow me to give you some anagrams: CIA PUNCH A CHIN CUP A CHIC PUN CHINA CUP and only one real good one for counterpunch: CUTE PORCH NUN Let me close with a famous and wise quote: "He who eats schoolmarms for breakfast should see to it that in the process he does not become a schoolmarm." I forget who said it.... mr. post-too-much aka "CHIA FEG" ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 20:08:31 +0000 (GMT) From: Michael Wolfe Subject: Atlas Sneezed Hi all. A couple of points came up recently that I feel I have to address. This may be long and boring for many of you, sorry. I'm always one for a spirited political debate. Joel Mullins pontificated: >Well, I think you're overlooking the underlying theme in Rand's works. >Her main point is that people should be paid according to their merit, >instead of their need. This goes against the people who would say "Bill >Gates is already a rich bastard, why does he need another 10 million?" >But Rand would say that it doesn't matter if he needs it or not. All >that matters is that he earned the money and so he deserves it. I >completely agree with this. I think it's bullshit of the highest order. How does Gates "merit" getting paid more money in the time it takes to give his nose a good picking than most of us will see in a year? Does Gates work harder than Mexican migrant workers who pick strawberries and get paid 18 cents a pound? Not likely. Does Gates put himself in danger, routinely facing death the way firefighters do? Nope. Is the upper class somehow superior, morally and intelectually, to starving Somalians? I sincerely doubt it. Are all of the people who go to bed hungry and worry about their rent guilty of some original sin, and it's the up to the rich to administer punishment? Of course not! Can any of you come up with one rational reason, based on ethical principles, why things should be the way they are? Just because he HAS it doesn't mean he's EARNED it. I mean, jeez, the money didn't just materialize out of the ether. It came from somewhere; there are all kinds of perfectly legal ways to screw people over and wring them dry of resources. But that doesn't mean they're right. I have recently noticed a very old trend by people in privileged positions towards self-congratulation, and especially among white males. How did you get that massive fortune? With elbow grease! I pulled myself up by my bootstraps! It's not good enough for us to be fortunate; people who have more than others have to be cut of a better cloth, too. I find it revolting that these guys not only accumlate so much, but manage to so effectively perpetuate this myth through capitalism that they are "worth it". I have yet to meet any human being who was worth, in any way, 1000 times more than any other human being. As the saying goes, we are all just human. The flip side of the semi-conscious attitude that rich people are hard working, upstanding, and deserving is that poor people are stupid, slothful, and morally questionable. How many of us have travelled through a run-down section of town and actively thought about the location of our tire iron (or kryptonite lock, in my case), should we need it in the case that we were mugged or assaulted or something? I am afraid to say that I have to raise my hand here. This seems to be the way of things in a society that asks questions like: "What were you wearing the night he raped you? Did you tease or incite him?" Our Calvinism runs deep, and it tells us that the victims are deserving of their fate. There was a wonderful email making the rounds a couple years ago, erroneously attributed to Kurt Vonnegut. It had an absolutely wonderful line in it that I will remember for a long time: "Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's." You and the world together are going to, between you, determine what happens to you, and the world's got a lot more clout than you do. If a rich person got to be that way completely from blood and sweat and sacrifice, I agree that it would not sit well with me to deny him what he had earned. I think, though, that even in the best of circumstances what gets someone a 20 million per annum salary is mostly luck. In the more shady instances it involves robbery from society on a massive scale, including subsidized grazing land (often ruining it, destroying fish habitat), late 19th century prices for mineral rights on federal land (gold mines, in particular, being notorious for leaving behind pools of concentrated cyanide), exploitation of the workforce (the fed actively attempts to keep the unemployment rate up to give companies a buyers' market for labor, allowing companies to foster environments in which forced, unpaid overtime and paranoia over job security are rampant), and other acts of questionable benefit to more than a small subset of people. As the paragraph above implied, the government has a pretty big hand in all of this. It's a given that the government has been monopolized by wealthy white men for as long as this country has existed. Is it a coincidence that it's policies benefit rich white men? Similarly with academia; who came up with those economic theories that describe these imbalanced conditions as "normal"? And, how can I say that I have "earned" (and thus have an inalienable right to) everything that I have when my environment is so heavily skewed in my favor? When I look at this, it seems to me that being in a position of privilege means that there is no such thing as a "neutral" interaction. If I'm not actively helping, I'm screwing someone over. >Well, technically yes. The problem is that some sources are biased to the >point of inaccuracy. I'm a bit suspicious of this because, well, Eddie >has quoted some less-than-accurate sources here before. Mainstream news >might not tell you everything, but what they do tell you generally is >true. They sell based on their reputation for accuracy. Some alternative >media (and I've never heard of Counterpunch, so I can't comment on it >directly) report a lot of things, some of which are false, very badly >slanted or poorly researched. I've seen alt. papers which sell >themselves on the basis of their political leanings. I'm sure there are >some good, reliable alt. media out there, but thus far, I haven't been too >impressed by what I've seen. This strikes me as incredibly naive. Mainstream news is in the business of perpetuating itself. That's as far as I'll trust them. Anyway, for those who made it this far, thanks for your patience. I hope that my spewing has provoked thought, and not merely provoked. Thanks again, - -Michael Wolfe ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 16:08:15 -0500 From: LORDK@library.phila.gov Subject: burnin cocks nd lovin dicks so many threads. the only Objectivist I ever met was also the most un-objective human being Ive ever interacted with(Im with Winny Churchill on the preposition thing. ) A narrcistic pig, who when I told him I didnt have time for his "talks" anymore(which were all me, me, me , and by the way, what do you think of me?) said ,with complete seriousness, that I should be reported to Amnesty Int for cruelty. Ah--patron calls, -later UTM K ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 16:59:44 -0500 From: LORDK@library.phila.gov Subject: burnin cocks nd lovin dicks Yes--Phil Dick definiatly goes on the list , I would say for Scanners Live in Vain, and the one about the repair guy on Mars who can see peoples innards. Maybe also Flow my tears, the Policeman Said. But defianatly Scanners, which is one of my all time favorite novels. Dick does pathos better than anyone since Dickens--the end of Scanners is like a druggies version of the death of Little Nell. Someone else who does heart-rending melincholy(besides Robyn and Dick) is Cordwainer smith, who wrote wonderfully stange short stories. He had people who were crossed with animals -especially cats--which is appropriate for a Hitchcock reading list. For Lewis, how about Till We Have Faces to add to the rest. And speaking of melencholy, how about one of the most scattered, unintensionally surreal books Ive ever tried to read( and was reduced to just dipping in here and there) Robert(oh dear , or is it Richard) Burtons(not the 19th century one--the 16th /17th century one)Anatomy of Melancholy. Barbara Comyns is one of Robyns favorites, for the Skin Chairs, but Id also like to add the Vets Daughter.She does melencholy and the surrealistic sense it can engender beautifully. For poetry(old) Christopher Smarts In Praise of the Lamb, for contemporary, maybe some Christopher Hill? And , of course Lovecraft--thou Ill let quail, when he has the time, have the pleasure of mentioning specific works. And Ackroyd perhaps... Oh yes, as for Mr Cockburn--I believe his Dad was in the pay of stalinist russia , and I cant help but see agitprop in what Ive read by his son. His writing stikes me as not caring about truth, just about advancing an aganda. He will unfairly ridicule an opponant, while glossing over any failings of the side he beleives to be in the right. He can (like Gore Vidal, whom he slightly resembels) be very witty in his ridicule, and yet-- the wit often does not translate into insight or intelligence(unlike Vidal, who is capable of insight, thou not as often as one wishes.) Forgive me, Im reading a fascinating bio of Beatrice Webb at the moment, and seeing her so willingly believe the lie of Stalin reinforces my problem with people who are dedicated to a political(and Im afraid, any political)agenda, it seems to blind them to actaual reality. UTM K(who lived thru the radicalism of the late 60s only to be disallussed by... ...74) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 17:08:55 -0500 From: Stephen Buckalew Subject: Re: death of the record companies Capuchin wrote: > And last week Stephen Buckalew wrote: > >Maybe artist who put their music on the web can sell advertising based on > >the number of "hits" they get, and make money that way...kinda like > >one-band radio stations. Or to keep the fans interested, collectives of > >like-minded musicians/artists can start up art/lit/music pages based on > >common aesthetics and sell advertising space on the site. ;-) > Maybe... But that sounds awfully idealistic. Even if musicians have the time > and energy to hire (or become) their own advertising-sales force, > accountants, bill collectors, and designers in addition to making music, the > competition in web-based advertising is overwhelming and getting worse - and > I can't believe the money you'd make from it would come anywhere close to > the amount you can make from even modest record sales, even if there's less > initial risk involved. >BAH! I can't believe you guys think an artist would stop making and >distributing his music just because there's no money in it. Whoa there! I would have thought my little "wink" would have indicated my less-than-enthusiasm towards this possible practice...or rather...I guess I don't particularly care if someone goes out and solicits advertisements to sell their music. The music itself is what counts, and the better access I have to the type of music I like then the happier I am. I happen to be a performing musician with a tech-writer day job who makes very little money at music...I play my music for people in coffeeshops because I enjoy it, and if the coffeeshop want's to pay me a little money for doing it then great. But I play plenty of free gigs...and am happy to do so. I might have been mistaken about the context of the discussion, but plenty of artist are out there doing music as their "day job" and they want to get paid for it...I wasn't making any statement about whether people should be paid to make music or would or would not make music if they were paid. Plenty of great (or at least now famous) writers, musicians, artists, have had other jobs and produced significant "product" without getting monetary reimbursement. I'm more interested in access to and information about different artists...and the Internet has been "very very good to me" in that respect (obviously). If the current corporate music-money machine breaks down...will I care? Not if I have a way to learn about and access music. Do I care if people pay to hear me play? No! I get a bigger kick out of someone saying "I really enjoyed that" or "I connected with this particular song in such and such a way" than someone handing me a wad of bills. I'm sure this is the case with most artists. On the other hand, web-sites, recording equipment, and computers are not free. So not all "art hobbyists" may have the altruistic ability to maintain such sites, or to pay for gas and room and board to tour extensively. Should we have ultra-rich music industry execs and rawk stars...maybe not. But money to maintain the individual distribution of one's art, both on-the-road or on the 'net doesn't seem too much to ask (if someone is willing to pay). Would it be nice, yes. Is is necessary for artists to continue to produce art? Of course not. Obligatory Robyn content.....wonder what kind of "day job" RH would have if his music was for free? S.B. *** Minitab Inc *** ............Making data analysis easier Stephen E. Buckalew Marketing Communications Specialist 3081 Enterprise Drive State College, PA 16801 Tel: 800-488-3555 ext. 247 Fax: 814-238-4383 E-mail: SBuckalew@minitab.com Tech Support: Tel 814-231-2682 URL: http://www.minitab.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 14:15:54 -0800 (PST) From: "E. Pluribus Uber" Subject: Re: R.E.M. & "Party of Five" On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Griffith Davies wrote: > I was thoroughly disappointed when I read that R.E.M. were rumoured to > be making an appearance on the Fox program "Party of Five". *I* was thoroughly disappointed when I heard that REM were making an appearance on the Rosie O'Donnell show. I didn't see the show, but it would have been a great bit of irony had they performed "It's The End Of The World As We Know It" -- I certainly took it as some sort of Apocalyptic prophecy fulfilled. Didn't Nostradamus write about this? "A triumvirate from a southern land shares the stage with a jesteress whose voice brings pain to many The visage of the three is projected as they chant in unison -- their song brings disgrace to the legacy they had forged." Cheers! - -Glen- )+()+()+()+()+( Glen Uber uberg@sonic.net )+()+()+()+()+( ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 14:52:06 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: Atlas Sneezed Atlas Shrugged was a terrible book. But I rather enjoyed The Fountainhead. Forgive a bit of a personal rant. On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Michael Wolfe wrote: > I have recently noticed a very old trend by people in privileged > positions towards self-congratulation, and especially among white males. > How did you get that massive fortune? With elbow grease! I pulled myself > up by my bootstraps! It's not good enough for us to be fortunate; people > who have more than others have to be cut of a better cloth, too. I find > it revolting that these guys not only accumlate so much, but manage to so > effectively perpetuate this myth through capitalism that they are "worth > it". I have yet to meet any human being who was worth, in any way, 1000 > times more than any other human being. As the saying goes, we are all > just human. Michael. You're a rich white kid. You may talk about how much money you make now or what sacrifices you have to make because of your salary or whatever... but you're a rich kid. You probably say your folks are middle class... not where I come from. You and I are not the same. I look at what you have and get SO frustrated at how it was all handed to you. And then I look at myself and think about what I DO have and how hard I worked to get it and, yeah, it makes me feel pretty good. I can't very chalk up my standing in life to good fortune. I mean, I'm a pretty bright person and that's luck, but there are heaps of failing, miserable bright people in this country. I'm of a particular hue and gender and that's not my fault, either. But I am not about to say that those things brought my from my origin to where I am. I'm no different from my siblings in those respects. I'm no different from my neighbors, even. But I'm better off. And it's because I work hard at it every day. And I deserve a better life. Does my brother deserve more money because he has three children and a wife? Absolutely not. He doesn't contribute (unless fucking his girlfriend without protection is considered a contribution). He doesn't care. He doesn't help. I'm not a rich person. I don't have any more power or greater wealth than anything like a majority of the people (OK, I think I'm above the median income, but not for my region). But if I ever do have those things, I will definitely say "With elbow grease!" and "I pulled myself up by my bootstraps!" because that's what it feels like every day. And when the day comes when I don't feel like I have to push hard against yesterday in order to keep tomorrow like today, then I'm going sit down and smile and pat myself on the back. Self-congratulation at its best. So, I politely say "Fuck you". But don't take it personally. > The flip side of the semi-conscious attitude that rich people > are hard working, upstanding, and deserving is that poor people are > stupid, slothful, and morally questionable. How many of us have > travelled through a run-down section of town and actively thought about > the location of our tire iron (or kryptonite lock, in my case), should > we need it in the case that we were mugged or assaulted or something? I > am afraid to say that I have to raise my hand here. This seems to be the > way of things in a society that asks questions like: "What were you > wearing the night he raped you? Did you tease or incite him?" Our > Calvinism runs deep, and it tells us that the victims are deserving of > their fate. Woah woah woah. First, nobody is saying that all rich people are all of those things. We say that some people are and we say that some people are robber barons and we say that some people are lucky heirs, etc. I don't think it's inherent in our society at all. For every example from popular culture, I can point to a counter-example. Second, the "flip side" you address is probably LESS commonly held. I would point to the strong American Myth of the hard-working, upstanding man who does what he can to provide for his family, but never quite gets his two ends to meet. I think the fear of mugging in a run down neighborhood (as opposed to an upper-class one) is utterly unrelated and completely understandable. There's less money in the neighborhood for police (this is a constant political debate and rightly so... there is better police response in rich neighborhoods, so if you're mugged in a poor one, you'd best defend yourself). The sort of criminal one might encounter in a wealthy neighborhood probably won't nail a kid on a bike for the twelve bucks in his pocket when he can pop into the next house over (or grab the breadwinner leaving his two car garage) and get ten times as much. Whereas, in a poor neighborhood, the gettin' isn't so good for thieves, so a random mugging is just as lucrative (and better since there're no cops) as and easy as breaking into an empty home or grabbing a fellow close to home. And what does any of that have to do with a victim deserving his fate? I feel like those last two paragraphs are just tacked onto your argument. I'm sort of at a loss. Certainly you're not saying that you aren't a better mugging candidate than the average person in a poor neighborhood? Because you are. > If a rich person got to be that way completely from blood and > sweat and sacrifice, I agree that it would not sit well with me to deny > him what he had earned. I think, though, that even in the best of > circumstances what gets someone a 20 million per annum salary is mostly > luck. Absolutely. The CEO of my company isn't less intelligent or savvy or courageous than the CEO of Glaxo, but he makes a whole lot less. The difference is chance. The only people that would disagree are the CEO of Glaxo and his ilk... that's a very small minority. But I don't deserve the money either one makes. There isn't that kind of demand for my skills. > In the more shady instances it involves robbery from society on a > massive scale, including subsidized grazing land (often ruining it, > destroying fish habitat), late 19th century prices for mineral rights on > federal land (gold mines, in particular, being notorious for leaving > behind pools of concentrated cyanide), exploitation of the workforce (the > fed actively attempts to keep the unemployment rate up to give companies > a buyers' market for labor, allowing companies to foster environments in > which forced, unpaid overtime and paranoia over job security are rampant), > and other acts of questionable benefit to more than a small subset of > people. If your average person was willing to pay out to every person that benefits him, we might be able to rearrange things so that people who benefit many can make more money than people who benefit few. However, those who benefit the poor or the selfish could never make a penny. > As the paragraph above implied, the government has a pretty big > hand in all of this. It's a given that the government has been monopolized > by wealthy white men for as long as this country has existed. Is it a > coincidence that it's policies benefit rich white men? Similarly with > academia; who came up with those economic theories that describe these > imbalanced conditions as "normal"? And, how can I say that I have "earned" > (and thus have an inalienable right to) everything that I have when my > environment is so heavily skewed in my favor? And who came up with the standard that says you should get a good education and send your kid to college? Rich white people. It's a mess. We know that. We can't just knock it down tomorrow and start over. And even if we could, we wouldn't. Too much mess. The best way to fight racism is to not be racist. The best way to fight sexism is to not be sexist. Live it and teach by example. There are things you can help and things you can't. You can't feel guilty about those things you can't help. I was watching a rerun of Dennis Miller Live last night. He had ten ways you can make a better America. Only maybe three of them were kidding. But the very best was, I think, number one. If you want to make things better, don't count on any politician or legislation to fix it. Get up off your Snackwells ass and DO something. I'm not saying you're all bitch and no bite, not at all. I'm just tossing out a general sentiment. Fix the things you can and mind you own business. That will make the world a better place for sure. Is it a really, really, really bad sign when you find yourself nodding along to the political rant of a comedian? > When I look at this, it > seems to me that being in a position of privilege means that there is no > such thing as a "neutral" interaction. If I'm not actively helping, I'm > screwing someone over. That's called White Man's Guilt. I think you have to grow up with a certain standard of living in order to feel it. Not sure, though. > This strikes me as incredibly naive. Mainstream news is in the > business of perpetuating itself. That's as far as I'll trust them. And the alternative press is in the business of being outre. That's as far as I'll trust them. It's all the same fucked up nonsense. > Anyway, for those who made it this far, thanks for your patience. > I hope that my spewing has provoked thought, and not merely provoked. > Thanks again, Eh... nothing I haven't heard before, I'm afraid... but not MERELY provoked, no. J. ________________________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 15:00:03 -0800 (PST) From: Capuchin Subject: Re: R.E.M. & "Party of Five" On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, E. Pluribus Uber wrote: > On Tue, 9 Feb 1999, Griffith Davies wrote: > > I was thoroughly disappointed when I read that R.E.M. were rumoured to > > be making an appearance on the Fox program "Party of Five". > *I* was thoroughly disappointed when I heard that REM were making an > appearance on the Rosie O'Donnell show. I didn't see the show, but it > would have been a great bit of irony had they performed "It's The End Of > The World As We Know It" -- I certainly took it as some sort of > Apocalyptic prophecy fulfilled. So I wasn't the only whose ass was lost in a laughing fit over REM on MTV saying "we've come a long way without selling out" a few years ago? Oh man. If REM did everything unanimously, when Bill Berry said "I don't want to make another album" they shouldn't have made another album. Period. J. ________________________________________________________ J A Brelin Capuchin ________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 9 Feb 1999 18:00:24 -0500 (EST) From: Thomas Rodebaugh Subject: soft boys on npr? a friend of mine just told me that there was a bit on the soft boys on npr, at 4pm today (2/9/99). anybody hear it? tom FREE music: http://www.mp3.com/tlr3 ************************************************************************ *data collection now at one half!!! data collection now at one half!!!* ************************************************************************ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 15:25:56 PST From: "carole reichstein" Subject: Elliott Smith's Satyricon show (hope this works--I'm posting from my Hotmail account for the first time since October) Portland Fegs! You can buy tickets for the 2/26 Satyricon Elliott Smith show at Ozone Records. Get yours while they last...$13, cash only. I have to publicly thank my sister for buying my ticket for me. ;) Carole ps--Karen & I met Martin Amis last night at Powell's. He saw Karen & I standing together and drolly asked if we were related. Yes, we said. "How many years apart?" said Mr. Amis. Er, "two minutes." we replied. Sometimes it's a good thing to be a twin--you always have something to say to authors while they're signing your cheap paperback book. ..while Martin Amis is a genius, I think Neil Gaiman was much more personable. Mr. Amis looked rather uptight...though his new dental implants looked nice. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 09 Feb 1999 15:25:56 PST From: "carole reichstein" Subject: Elliott Smith's Satyricon show (hope this works--I'm posting from my Hotmail account for the first time since October) Portland Fegs! You can buy tickets for the 2/26 Satyricon Elliott Smith show at Ozone Records. Get yours while they last...$13, cash only. I have to publicly thank my sister for buying my ticket for me. ;) Carole ps--Karen & I met Martin Amis last night at Powell's. He saw Karen & I standing together and drolly asked if we were related. Yes, we said. "How many years apart?" said Mr. Amis. Er, "two minutes." we replied. Sometimes it's a good thing to be a twin--you always have something to say to authors while they're signing your cheap paperback book. ..while Martin Amis is a genius, I think Neil Gaiman was much more personable. Mr. Amis looked rather uptight...though his new dental implants looked nice. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V8 #45 ******************************