new track: rockin' the pop charts

recently i was invited to contribute to a compilation for a new record label out of france called handicap records. the comp, which will be the label's first release, will be 12" featuring tracks by six artists, including the wood crew, killjoy, and doormouse. the record is scheduled to come out in the fall, around the same time as my wedding show (featuring doormouse), which i thought was appropriate. (we'll see if it actually comes out by then; having put out a record myself, i know how easily the schedule can slip.)

so here's my new track, soon to be released on vinyl. it's titled "rockin' the pop charts". if you liked my last EP, mash smarter not harder, then you'll love this track, because it continues on in the direction i embarked on with that that EP. (if you're not familiar with mash smarter not harder, what the hell, man? it's been available for free download since may!)

with the mash smarter material, i let the tracks move organically, at a natural pace, to really explore some of the ideas without rushing anything. as a result, some of those tracks were pretty long—the epic closer "the future sound of retro" clocks in at almost 9 minutes. but since this track is for a vinyl record with five other tracks on it, i didn't have time for such nonsense. in other words, this track is like mash smarter but moves twice as briskly. if that sounds like your cup of tea, then hurry up and get to clicking. ¶

condensed matt tully

i was considering doing a "shorter" version of today's tully column, but after reading it, i've concluded that the only way i can really communicate the stupidity, laziness, and utter thoughtlessness of this piece of writing is by quoting it. so join me for this condensed version of today's tully.

here's the setup: tully has "never understood the controversy" around the lease of the indiana toll road. so, rather than, you know, sit down and review the arguments pro and con, as you might expect a political columnist to do, he simply decides to drive down the toll road one day and tell us about it. cue tully:

This column probably would be more interesting if I'd found anything to complain about: A traffic jam. A pothole to rival those that marked Indy's streets this spring. An obvious sign of mismanagement.

Anything.

really, he found nothing to complain about while driving the toll road? well, maybe that is...

Mile Marker 121: [...] One valid complaint: Gas prices are roughly 20 cents higher per gallon than what I saw at gas stations off the Toll Road that morning.

but... i thought you said...

Mile Marker 56: [...] Greenwood [a fellow traveler] asks why the state didn't fix up the road itself and use maximized profits to fund other road projects. Indiana Democrats have asked the same question for years.

that is a good question. if only there were a political columnist, perhaps working at a large newspaper, who could maybe write a column about it.

the trek goes on. at the same mile marker, another traveler tells tully that further west, the roads "are a little beaten up".

Exit 23: I have to wait about 30 seconds to pay my 50 cents. Construction crews are rebuilding the exit ramp area. Road construction can be a hassle, but as a rule I never complain about roads under repair.

it's not worth complaining about because you have a rule that you won't complain about it?

Mile Marker 21: [...] the biker from Chicago, was right. The roads are bumpier. For the next 15 miles, construction and traffic are heavy, and my car endures a few shakes, rattles and rolls.

then, after a mere 15 miles of "heavy" construction, he reaches his destination and the column is over.

let's review. he whines that he "doesn't understand" the toll road controversy, but rather than demonstrate why critics of the deal are wrong or analyze their complaints, he decides to drive down the toll road and tell us about his trip. this is like responding to complaints of unethical business practices at mcdonald's by ordering a big mac and reporting that it was hot, delicious, and covered with secret sauce.

he declares that he didn't find anything to complain about, then in the course of the column lists 3–4 things to complain about! and then he concludes by saying he doesn't understand the complaints!

some of you may recall a post i wrote back in april titled "tully needs to read tully, where i pointed out a blatant contradiction between tully's then-current column and one he'd written a few months before. but now he has truly topped himself by thoroughly contradicting himself within six paragraphs.

don't they have editors at the star who are supposed to read these things? ¶

opera relocating to old greek church

i know they've been working on getting this deal together for awhile. it's great for the opera, and good for the neighborhood, which was understandably concerned about finding a worthy new tenant:

When Indianapolis Opera relocates next spring to a Greek Orthodox church building on Pennsylvania Street, the move will put the company less than half a mile from its current headquarters.

But the relocation could revolutionize the opera's performances, adding edgier shows to the standards it will continue to perform at Clowes Hall.

"We would be in a better position to take risks in a smaller space, because we wouldn't have to depend on filling a 2,000-seat hall," Jim Caraher, the opera's artistic director, said after Friday's news conference announcing the move from a brick house at 250 E. 38th St. to property formerly owned by Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, 4011 N. Pennsylvania St.

Because the Holy Trinity sanctuary will be converted into a roughly 400-seat theater, Indianapolis Opera will no longer be faced with performing only favorites such as "Carmen" or "La Boheme" that fill Clowes and help balance the budget.

i grew up right around the corner from holy trinity—people would park in front of our house to attend the annual greek festival. so it's sad to think that the church is relocating to the suburbs, presumably taking the festival with it (greek fest 2008 will still be at the old location). but mini-opera house... that's pretty cool, too. ¶

trafalgar councillor on kiddie porn: "it wasn't a turn-on or anything"

shocking news out of trafalgar, a smaller indy exurb in johnson county: the head of the town council has been arrested on child porn charges.

allegedly he took his computer into the repair shop, and his local geek squad or what-have-you discovered his kiddie porn stash: 74 files, allegedly including images of kids "as young as 2 years old." pretty sick, perverted stuff.

but perhaps the oddest part of the story is his (alleged) half-assed confession:

Knapp told police he did not derive pleasure from the images and did not know why he had downloaded the files, the affidavit said, aside from simple curiosity.

"I might download four or five and never watch them," Knapp told a detective, according to the affidavit. "Why I did it, I don't know. It wasn't a turn-on or anything."

Knapp said he began downloading the files "a year ago or so" from the "LimeWire" Web site, which police described as a free file-sharing site on which users download music, videos, images and other files.

"I'm not a pedophile and I don't mess with kids or anything," Knapp reportedly told the detective, further admitting that his actions were "stupid."

maybe next he'll say, "yeah, i watched the videos, but i didn't touch myself or anything." ¶

shorter indiana blogs (tag cloud edition)

for the old-schoolers who don't know a tag cloud from a methane cloud: in a tag cloud, words that appear more frequently are shown in a larger text size. (stop words, or common words like "the" or "and", are removed from the data.)

so let's take a look at some blogs and see what they're talking about. tag clouds courtesy of wordle. you can click 'em to view 'em larger (and to create your own), but you'll need to have java installed.

shorter advance indiana:


in contrast, here's shorter blue indiana:


obama is the top subject at both blogs. but republican blog AI hasn't been talking nearly as much about mccain as has liberal blog BI. note also that words like "state" and "Indiana" are used frequently at BI but don't appear at all at AI.

shorter masson's blog:


shorter hoosier political report:


shorter stAllio!'s way:


i've been talking way too much about abdul lately, but that'll pass soon, as he's generally not worth paying attention to.

shorter commonplace book:


it's funny that "tags" is the #1 word here. that probably should've been treated as a stop word.

anyway, i could keep this up all day, but i need to get some work done. feel free to create your own and link to 'em in the comments. ¶

leadership, not finger-pointing and yard signs

a year ago, marion county republicans couldn't stop talking about crime. they counted off every murder with delight, imagining that then-mayor peterson was somehow at fault. the foundation of then-candidate ballard's campaign was that he would put IMPD under his control, and together they would put an end to crime in the region.

this year, things are different. mayor ballard is the head of IMPD. the murder rate hasn't gone down—we've been averaging a murder a day for the past couple weeks. and the rate of crime committed by cops has seemingly gone up infinity percent.

now that their guy is in charge and things haven't gotten any better, you'd think republicans would be singing a different tune. in a sense they are, but really their song is exactly the same: six months into mayor ballard's administration, and they're still blaming everything on bart peterson and sheriff anderson.

yesterday, marion county democrats issued a press release demanding that the mayor do something about, you know, his signature issue, and complaining that he has been "oddly quiet about the mounting problems" facing IMPD.

cue abdul, official mayoral apologist, proponent of "police beatings", and the one person who was complaining the loudest about crime last year (though he did so anonymously under the name "joe friday"). today abdul responded to the dem press release, in his usual vapid style: he blames all IMPD's problems on the former administration, and provides three links as proof that the mayor has "spoken out" about IMPD's problems.

let's take a look at abdul's links, shall we?

link 1: IMPD works to solve several murders:

The murders have gotten the attention of Mayor Greg Ballard.

"I had a good-sized meeting this morning with [Public Safety Director Scott Newman] and senior officers and we talked about what's happening," Ballard said.

oh, they had a meeting and talked about it! i feel so much better now. but wait! there are more ballard quotes near the bottom:

"We want the neighbors to help out the police. We want these people off the street," Ballard said.

[...]

The nine murders in an eight-day stretch has the mayor putting renewed importance on the "Peace in the Streets" campaign.

"I'm hoping that [the Peace in the Streets initiative] becomes part of the community, that people understand that. I'm hoping to get yard signs and signs all over the city and the message itself so that people understand we don't want to go there. I'm hoping - we'll never know obviously - somebody may be thinking of doing something wrong in a domestic situation or whatever - and they say - no, we have peace in the streets," Ballard said.

see, the mayor does have a plan to address crime! he wants to put up a whole bunch of yard signs—i mean lots and lots of them, not just a few—and those signs are going to make people stop committing crimes somehow! brilliant!

link 2: Mayor Urges Safety Heading Into Holiday Weekend

"The weather promises to be hot and there's a lot of things the people with free time and hot temperatures can do that are harmful", said Ballard, " and I would be remiss if I didn't express my concern."

this seems to be an extension of the yard sign program. all the criminals are going to think about mayor ballard expressing his concern, and that will inspire them to stop their law-breaking ways. but wait, there's more:

Ballard, along with Public Safety Director Scott Newman, IMPD Chief Michael Spears, members of the Concerned Clergy and representatives of Peace In The Streets, discussed the recent rash of violent crime in the city and the arrest of several police officers.

Ballard, Newman and Spears all pointed to the fact that the arrest of those officers were the result of IMPD investigations and new policies will be announced soon on how the department plans to deal with it in the future.

it might be comforting to think that all the cops who've been arrested recently were busted by fellow IMPD officers, but it's not accurate. some were, but half of them were nabbed by the FBI... as is made clear by...

link 3: 3 Indianapolis Officers Arrested On Drug Charges

"I'm very much disgusted and outraged at the conduct of a small number of officers who chose to disrespect the trust that the public has in them," said Indianapolis Metro Police Chief Michael Spears.

"Nobody likes for this thing to happen, but it's important that it's rooted out," said Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard.

only one ballard quote this time around, and it's one sentence long. maybe in abdul's world, a one-sentence quote in a news article counts as leadership.

maybe someone could sit abdul down and teach him how to use a dictionary. because "oddly quiet" doesn't mean "completely silent". the mayor may have spoken once or twice about IMPD in the past month, but his statements have been rambling and, more importantly, devoid of substance. if anything, abdul's links prove how worthless the mayor has been on this issue. this was his signature issue, and yet nothing has been improved, and on those rare occasions someone with a camera asks him about them, he simply expresses his "concern" or talks about yard signs, or tries to blame it on the prior administrations. how pathetic.

bonus abdul: abdul claims to be "somewhat surprised" that there hasn't been a "bigger public outcry" about the recent rash of murders, and speculates that the reason is because the victims have all been po' folks. of course, he's being disingenuous here. he doesn't mention that last year, in the guise of "joe friday", he was complaining louder than anyone. so tell us, adbul: why aren't you complaining about crime this year? could it be because you you only used the issue for political reasons to attack a democratic mayor, and now that there's a republican in charge, you don't care about crime or murders anymore? ¶

understanding satire

i touched on this ever so briefly in the previous post, but wanted to come back to it again.

abdul hakim shabazz has been getting heat from fellow republicans for his blog post suggesting that "what this town needs are a couple good police beatings."

today, in his defense, abdul writes:

The way I figure it, if someone doesn't have enough synaptic activity to understand sarcasm and satire when they read it, then what would be the point of trying to explain it to them?

this is another one of those old soft-shoes that abdul knows by heart: i didn't mean that horrible thing i said; i was joking! the don imuses and ann coulters of the world regularly trot this out when they get criticized for tossing around racial or homophobic slurs, or fantasizing about their political opponents dying in a terrorist attack. but the only thing funny here is the thought of abdul trying to explain satire to someone else—because his post was not satire.

in situations like this, the coulters and abduls of the world compare themselves to jonathan swift. swift, their thinking goes, suggested cannibalism and infanticide in a modest proposal, which is considered a great work of satire. therefore, when i daydream of violence toward my political enemies, that's satire, too. but it doesn't work that way.

the core of satire is irony. the entire point of a modest proposal was to draw attention to the plight of the irish under english oppression. the english, swift wrote, "have already devoured most of the Parents", so they might as well eat irish babies, too. what swift truly wanted, though, was the opposite: for the english to treat the irish better.

abdul's post has no such irony. there is no sympathy for violent criminals. no, his post is not so much a satire as a revenge fantasy. he's sick of seeing violence against innocents, so he fantasizes about the aggressors getting beaten up, too. maybe he doesn't really mean it, and if there were a true upswing in police violence, he might be aghast. (then again, in the past when police brutality has been alleged, he's always been the first to write that he's seen the tapes and the police did nothing wrong, that guy was asking for it, etc.) but you can't help but sense that part of him would enjoy it.

we all want to see bad people get their comeuppance. we enjoy watching entertainment about people who punish evil, and root for those people, even if they're rule-breaking vigilantes like jack bauer or dirty harry, or cold-blooded murderers like dexter. one of my favorite shows is death note, and yes, part of me is rooting for the murderous kira. that's okay because it's just a story; if kira existed in the real world, i wouldn't be a fan.

if abdul's post is satire then tell me: what is he satirizing? is it the fact that we seem to have a lot of dirty cops in town? is he mocking the concept of biblical eye-for-an-eye justice? because i just don't see it. and abdul isn't known for being particularly deep. ¶

hindsight, consequences, and all that

do you think that maybe mayor ballard would've thought twice about his central campaign plank—taking control of IMPD—if he'd known that 2008 would be the year of dirty cops?

naturally, ballard apologists are spinning themselves dizzy in their attempts to portray all these arrested cops as proof that things are getting cleaned up under valiant greg ballard after the two-headed abomination that was bart peterson and sheriff frank anderson. but that theory doesn't hold much water when you consider that most of this month's arrests were made by the FBI, not IMPD. (to be fair, the alleged police-pimp who was arrested yesterday was nabbed by IMPD.)

politically speaking, if everything's going to fall apart, you want it to happen under the other guy's watch, not yours. if sheriff anderson were still in charge of IMPD, this would be the perfect opportunity to hoot & holler about how they hate him. if this had happened under the peterson/anderson watch, no doubt bart-haters would be dancing in the street. instead, they're stuck doing the it's-not-our-guy's-fault-it's-the-guy-before-him's-fault, which is such a familar old number by now that they must be getting as sick of it as the rest of us. or maybe, when they hear people laughing at them, they'll claim they were just being satirical.

also, while we're speaking politically, do you really believe that when IMPD detectives were going through the books of alleged johns, they just happened to choose the name of a former bart peterson official at random? ¶

shorter abdul hakim shabazz

shorter abdul hakim shabazz: what this city really needs is more police brutality. ¶

new backgrounds

it's a new month, so enjoy some new blog backgrounds (or don't enjoy them, as is your wont). originally i meant to put up new ones at the beginning of june, but the storms hit right around then, and we were without power for 37 hours, which put a damper on my computer time.

these new backgrounds come from my databending experiments, but they're not as loud as the ones from february, which were bent jpgs. these are actually raw data, reinterpreted as images and then meticulously cropped to form patterns. (pattern 3 was originally grayscale, and i altered it to make it purple, but the others have no edits except crops.)

if you hate these, then oh well. the current plan is to put up a new set at the beginning of september. ¶

shorter matt tully

shorter matt tully: how do i love mayor greg ballard? let me count the ways:

10. he's lousy at public speaking.
9. his panhandling plan won't work, but it's something.
8. he flip-flopped on the super bowl and arts funding, which is good because his old position was stupid.
7. he's been really lucky so far. i mean, really lucky.
6. he didn't do too good a job at fixing potholes.
5. i think his chinatown idea is great.
4. did i mention how lucky he's been?
3. he hasn't messed up! (other than #10, #9, #8, #6, #5, and #2.)
2. actually, he hasn't done much at all, except for...
1. he's in charge of the police department now. see, that's something!

love,
matt tully xoxoxoxoxo ¶

shorter gary welsh

shorter gary welsh: barack obama has only himself to blame for the fact that people like me keep printing outlandish smears against him. ¶

shorter mitch daniels

shorter mitch daniels: a vote for the incumbent is a vote for change! war is peace! ignorance is strength! freedom is slavery! ¶

city councillor arrested, right-wingers rejoice

last night, councilwoman doris minton-mcneill got arrested. if you piece together the news reports, here's what happened: she called the police about someone she didn't like in her home. by the time the police showed up, the man she'd called about had left. after talking to the cops for a minute, she tried to run into her house, apparently bumping into a cop and knocking her over.

that's why she was arrested: for bumping into a cop. surely not her best day, but hardly a high crime, either. of course, from the way republicans like tom john are reacting, you'd think she'd murdered someone.

i knew gary welsh would be all over this—a black democrat getting arrested is his bread and butter. sure enough, not only does he have a post about it, but he takes it to the next level, claiming that minton-mcneill pissed herself in the back on the squad car—exactly the kind of classy detail i expect from him. (when called out for his tactlessness, he responded with more tactless allegations. compare this to his reaction when news or eric dickerson's arrest got out: gary threw a fit that lasted two full months about how it the allegations were untrue and it was all a democrat dirty trick.)

so there you have it. a politician bumps into a cop accidentally, and within hours, people are online howling about how she pissed on herself. from now on, right-wingers will insist it's a fact that she pissed on herself, regardless that this "fact" has not appeared in any reputable media source, only as an uncredited claim in a smear merchant's blog.

update: the police report alleges that she willfully pushed the cop out of her way.

2nd update: an eyewitness claims that she didn't push the police officer, and that furthermore "the officers wouldn't listen to Minton-McNeill's requests for help [...] or look for the man" who minton-mcneill had called them about. ¶

RIP george carlin

george carlin, a comedy legend, has passed away of heart disease. he was 71.

carlin's "filthy words" routine was the subject of a landmark first amendment case, FCC v pacifica that i studied in college in my first amendment law class. ¶

google street view glitches disappear

last year, google introduced their street view feature, and i spent a few days virtually wandering the streets of san francisco, looking for bizarre glitches.

google street view is essentially a street-level view of the city, achieved by driving a customized van with funky cameras on its roof throughout the city streets. the cameras on those first san francisco vans were vulnerable to two types of glitches. there were solarization errors, where the images were corrupted by too-bright sunlight. and there were stitching errors, because the panoramic images were "stitched" together from multiple camera lenses, and things didn't always match up.

since then, a lot more cities have been indexed into street view (including indy), and the tech has improved. the new cameras are truly panoramic, so there are no stitching errors, and they're not as sensitive to bright light, so solarization glitches are minimized. the street view of indianapolis, for example, has occasional glitches, but most of the major ones are mapping errors, where the data from the camera doesn't match up to the maps quite right.

now, i see that google has apparently re-indexed san francisco with newer cameras. all the glitches that i'd so carefully collected are gone; only the screenshots on flickr remain. overall, this is good news, because street view becomes dated quickly. (remember when gas was only $3.25/gallon?) but it's a bit of a shame, because some of those glitches were fantastically surreal—and suitably psychedelic, considering the location. ¶

tail between legs, elrod slinks back to indiana house

i'd heard the rumors, ever since ipopa first floated them, but never thought it would be true. yet it is: jon elrod is dropping out of the congressional race for indiana's 7th district and retreating back to the seat in the indiana house that he had abandoned.

state law forbids candidates from simultaneously running for state and federal office, so elrod had chosen to give up his indiana seat for a shot at the big time. carolene mays and david orentlicher made the same gamble in the democratic primary and lost. but no other republican had chosen to run for indiana house 97, elrod's old/current seat, leaving a vacancy on the ballot for him to slip back into.

however, the voters of his district will surely remember his opportunism, come november. they'll think, "jon elrod doesn't care about representing our district. this is just a stepping stone to him. he's only here because he knew he couldn't defeat andré carson." and they'll be correct.

there's no undo button in politics. you can't just reload an old saved game if you make a poor decision. he might've had a good chance of reelection if he'd simply stayed put. now, i suspect his chances aren't as good.

this been a hell of a week for republican congressional candidates. first word gets out about eric dickerson's bankruptcy, and now this. and unlike the dickerson story, this one will be a lot harder for republicans to ignore.

now, locals republicans need to find another sucker to run against carson... and they don't have much time. ¶

AP wants bloggers to pay for block quotes

this is another one of those topics where i have nothing to add to the conversation; i can only point out to my readers that the conversation exists. from boingboing:

In the name of "defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt" the Associated Press is now selling "quotation licenses" that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words. The licensing system exhorts you to snitch on people who publish without paying the blood-money, offering up to $1 million in reward money (they also think that "fair use" -- the right to copy without permission -- means "Contact the owner of the work to be sure you are covered under fair use.").

It gets better! If you pay to quote the AP, but you offend the AP in so doing, the AP "reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time if Publisher or its agents finds Your use of the licensed Content to be offensive and/or damaging to Publisher's reputation."

a lot of bloggers are announcing a formal boycott of AP stories: they will no longer link to or quote from AP stories, and will instead find alternate news sources to promote. i'm on board with that, but i won't go quite so far.

as a general rule, i won't link to or quote from AP stories—unless the point of the quote is to criticize the AP or its coverage. in other words, i'll no longer be quoting the AP as a news source; i'll quote AP only as an object of derision, at least until they atone for this assault on fair use rights. ¶

all of this has happened before...

one of the things that's so sad about gary welsh's anti-obama schtick is that it's so unoriginal. roy edroso has his number:

If you missed the one on Michelle Obama, now might be a good time to have a look, as conservatives are complaining that the "Whitey" Tape story is being pinned on them unfairly. Of course Larry Johnson got that ball rolling, and the smarter conservatives refused to fall for it. So instead of telling us that the story was true, they told us it was believable, given the towering evil of Mrs. Obama. It's an old blogosphere trick, but not so well known that it doesn't bear pointing out.

that's pretty much the ultimate "shorter gary welsh", condensed to its essence. but roy wasn't writing about gary; i'd be surprised if he'd ever even heard of gary or his blog.

far from being an intrepid journalist as gary pretends, his "reporting" on obama is nothing more than an echo of something much larger. there are thousands just like him throughout the country, repeating the same smears and smug self-justifications, and they're largely interchangeable.

not only is gary's obama blogging credulous, over-the-top, sleazy, and slanderous, but it's boring. it's been done before, on a thousand other blogs. at least when gary writes about indiana politics, even when he's at his worst, there's a fair chance that i haven't heard it before. his obama blogging is just banal.

in the early days of this blog, i wrote far more about national politics. these days i generally don't, other than the occasional short post to note major events. i just feel redundant; there are so many blogs out there discussing national politics that i rarely feel i have anything new to add. i'm an artist and the blog is just one of my projects; i don't have time to compete at that level. most of my posts now are about indiana politics because it's easier to be relevant in the much-smaller pool of indiana blogs.

in contrast, gary's blog is called "advance indiana"! what do larry sinclair or michelle obama have to do with advancing indiana, or for that matter, "re-affirming our state's constitutional principles"? gary's obama rants aren't even on-topic! ¶

eric dickerson files bankruptcy

some marion county republicans were disappointed when eric dickerson, who had run against julia carson for congress in 2006, opted not to get into the race again this year. the IBJ reports on a possible reason: dickerson is bankrupt:

Former car dealer and congressional candidate Eric Dickerson has filed for personal bankruptcy after three failed businesses left him saddled with more than $1 million in debt. Dickerson says he is virtually broke save for a $101,000 inheritance he is set to receive from the estate of his late mother. He claims only a few assets, including $10 in cash, 7 cents in a Chase Bank checking account, 25 cents in a Fidelity Investments account, two late-model Chevy trucks worth about $3,000, and a horse, pony and four chickens worth $250. He lives with his girlfriend on a 5-acre spread in Sheridan.

Most of Dickerson’s debts are connected to businesses he formerly owned—a Buick dealership on North Keystone Avenue in Indianapolis, a collision-repair center in Westfield and a Maggie Moo's ice cream shop in Circle Centre mall.¶

re-rebranding

old-schoolers will remember roslyn bakery. the bakery chain, with its distinctive (and distinctively-shaped) signs, was an indianapolis institution. their buttermilk jumbles were perhaps my sister's favorite cookie growing up.

at the end of the '90s, the whole chain shut down suddenly after the main bakery downtown failed two health inspections in a row. (i'm fuzzy on the details, but i know it involved copious numbers of rats.) the brand was eventually relaunched and sold in local supermarkets, but the many roslyn stores remained shuttered, until they were bought or leased by new clients.

most of the new tenants didn't have cash to tear down those funny-shaped signs, at least not right away. so it was fascinating to watch as new upstart businesses simply slapped their names on the existing signs, appropriating the roslyn trademark shape in the name of 21st century beepers or panda express. for years i daydreamed about driving around town and photographing all the former roslyn signs that had been rebranded... but i waited too long. most have since been removed. (if anyone has any old photos of roslyn signs, either rebranded or in their original form, please send 'em my way.)

this sign, downtown, at the former panda express, is one of the few remaining roslyn signs i know of. the photo is by robin jerstad of the IBJ. as you can see, panda express is now gone, and now the location is becoming a dunkin donuts. you can still see the words "panda express" on the sign, but now a dunkin logo has been slapped on it, too. i suspect that sooner or later, dunkin will tear down this sign and put up a more rectangular one, so i'm glad i came across this photo while the sign's still up. ¶

shorter gary welsh

shorter gary welsh: i know barack obama is corrupt, because i'm from illinois and everyone from illinois is corrupt. and if you don't believe that obama had coked-up gay sex with an ex-felon in the back of a limousine, then you're probably a dope-smokin' hippie like ruth holladay (who i hate). ¶

ACLU sues city over mistreatment of panhandlers

here's an unsurprising development:

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana filed a lawsuit today against the city over what its attorneys see as a too-aggressive crackdown on the homeless in Downtown Indianapolis.

The suit, filed on behalf of four men, says Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers have hassled them even though they weren't breaking state panhandling laws. Two men who were holding cups but not speaking were told by officers they couldn't solicit contributions, the suit says.
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Two others who were not soliciting -- but appeared homeless -- have been forced multiple times to produce identification and wait while officers conducted records checks, the lawsuit says.

Such treatment violates the U.S. Constitution's protections of free speech and against unreasonable searches, argues the suit, filed this morning in U.S. District Court. It seeks class-action status and has four homeless men named as plaintiffs: Richard Dellantonio, Douglas Ayres, Ryan McClellan and Richard Byrd.

unsurprising because, as i've written before, it's clear from the mayor's own comments that the city crackdown on panhandlers is born not out of human compassion, but out of disgust and loathing. mayor ballard wants to get rid of those filthy panhandlers, and if that means strong-arming and hassling them, so be it. ¶

beyond satire

after melyssa/miss ann dropped by in the comments of my previous post (at least i think it was her); i decided to stop by her blog, the hoosiers for fair taxation blog. at least i think it's still her blog—she made a big deal earlier this year about her growing political disillusionment and stated that she was going to pass the blog on to a successor, but i don't think that's happened yet.

i stop by HFFT every once in a while for a chuckle, but i was utterly unprepared for what i found there today. this is the current top post at that blog, in its entirety, with links from the original:

FoxNews reports rumor that government will unleash weapons on convention protestors

Big thanks to Sean Shepard who alerted us to this disturbing news article on FoxNews. Obviously a serious rumor is circulating that the government intends to unleash a dibilitating sound frequency on activists and citizens exercising their first amendment rights during the democratic convention in Denver this summer. The sound causes people to involuntarily defecate.

Now contrast that with the Marines and their training exercises happening here in Marion county. The conservative Indiana Minority Report suggests that the government is preparing to install martial law and is practicing in Indiana. Could it be that they will impose martial law and use force to silence property tax protestors?

some bloggers are easy to parodize, but this... i couldn't write a parody of this if i tried. where would i even begin? ¶

does gary welsh kill puppies?

reliable sources tell me that blogger gary welsh, of advance indiana, loves killing puppies. in particular, my sources inform me that his favorite method of killing them is by drowning.

when gary was recently confronted about these rumors, he notably refused to deny the allegations and instead attacked the messenger, simply for trying to get to the bottom of this serious story about whether he is a puppy murderer.

the fact that he refuses to deny the charges pretty much proves that they're true. after all, what does he have to gain by leaving such shocking charges unanswered? if the charges were in fact false, i'm sure he would have no problem making an emphatic denial.

when will the mainstream media start reporting on this important story of a puppykiller in our midst? ¶

hoosier political report

a few months back, jennifer wagner, one of the state's most prominent and popular bloggers, quit blogging to go work for the jim schellinger campaign. we all know how that turned out: schellinger was defeated in the primary by jill long thompson.

now jen is back with a new blog, hoosier political report. the new site has been active for a couple weeks—thus other blogger announced its arrival long ago—so let's check in and see how things are going there.

hoosier political report essentially replaces the old taking down words blog, with a focus on statewide politics and the governor's race. as usual, jen's commentary and analysis are incisive and insightful. so fans of TDW will definitely find things to like here. but HPR has lots more than what TDW had, so let's look at the new features.

one feature is a daily news update, with a roundup of links to political stories from throughout the state. as someone who is too lazy to check all the major indiana papers—i often just check the indy star and move on—this is a great feature. you can also sign up to receive it as a daily email, which sounds awfully convenient.

another new feature of HPR is other bloggers: HPR is apparently a group blog, and in particular jen promises bipartisan commentary. i'm a bit skeptical there: it seems that the most popular and most successful blogs tend to have a common viewpoint, be it center-left, far-right, hipster, or what have you. i can't think of many quality blogs that successfully blend viewpoints from the right and left, the occasional guest post aside. then again, it could work, and the presence of the other side could help keep everyone more honest. i guess we'll see how that pans out.

a couple of the new posters have already joined up. chris faulkner is an admitted republican, but his two posts so far are pretty good, with nothing objectionable. likewise, i don't know scott downes's political affiliation (i suspect democrat), but his posts so far are perfectly fine.

on the other hand, i'm unimpressed, to put it lightly, by the introductory post by average white male obamican. the whole schtick for this persona is apparently that he can't decide between obama and mccain. seems like an obvious choice to me: a vote for mccain is a vote to continue the horrific policies of george bush (including... no, especially the occupation of iraq), and a vote for obama is a vote to stop the madness. i don't understand why i should care about the opinions of someone who claims he won't know who he's voting for "until I pull the lever", nor what value such musings are supposed to add to the conversation. (never mind the annoying pundit habit of imagining yourself and your beliefs to be "average" or "typical". you can't make yourself into everyman by editorial fiat, unless you legally change your name to "every man" as one of my friends did.)

those are just the bloggers who've posted already. looking at the category listing in the sidebar, i see one more name that troubles me: joshua claybourn. longtime readers may remember that my last attempt to engage claybourn didn't go so well. it all goes back to claybourn's involvement in a 2006 political scandal that came to be known as the "facebook scandal".

as you may recall, claybourn was a supporter of then-rep john hostettler, who was in a contentious race against brad ellsworth. a commenter at in the agora—a group blog shared by claybourn and a few others—noted that ellsworth's daughter, then a 19-year-old IU student, had photos on her facebook page that suggested she engaged in underage drinking. claybourn, on acquiring this dirt on ellsworth, promptly passed it on to the evansville courier & press, and then feighned surprise when the story turned up in the newspaper.

that's where i came in. i posted some uncomfortable questions in the comments at ITA, and not only were my comments deleted, but i was banned from commenting altogether. (eventually my commenting rights were reinstated, but the whole thing left enough of a bad taste in my mouth that i haven't much interest in reading or commenting at that site since.) i don't think he ever did give a satisfactory answer to my question. and on top of that, he repeatedly and substantially edited his post without a disclaimer noting that it had been edited, and at the time the site had a "no caching" policy that made tracking down the original content difficult. (though i believe i was eventually able to piece it together.)

now, in the end it all turned out okay: i got a link from atrios, claybourn won the coveted "wanker of the day" award, and ellsworth got elected despite such republican dirty tricks. but still... jen wagner herself wrote more than once about claybourn's role in the facebook scandal, so i'm a bit puzzled why she would want him on her new blog.

then again, that was two years ago, so i thought i should check in on ITA and see if josh has changed. what did i find? sexist attacks on hillary clinton. the repeated suggestion that there's no difference between gay marriage and incest or polygamy. a huffy post about those crazy artists these days, in which he fell for a hoax and then denied that it was a hoax after this was pointed out to him. and that's just since april. here's hoping his contributions to HPR will be minimal.

overall, i must recommend HPR, both for its daily link update and for quality analysis of indiana politics. but i'm concerned about the attempt at bipartisanship, if it means giving a larger platform to the likes of josh claybourn. time will tell how this strategy works. ¶

obama ftw

last night, barack obama won enough delegates to effectively wrap up the democratic nomination. now we go about healing the rifts of the primary.

clinton supporters are understandably upset. their candidate was treated like trash by the misogynist media, which has had it out for all things clinton since the '90s. despite all that, hillary ran a hard-fought campaign and almost pulled it off. like atrios, i'm inclined to believe that if hillary hadn't voted for the iraq war, she would've been a shoo-in. same goes for kerry: he probably could've won if not for that iraq authorization vote...

as for obama's chances in november, i'm pretty sure he has it on lock. but i understand why some clinton supporters are concerned. let's face it, after the atrocities of the bush administration, the democrats should be able to run ficus and get a landslide victory. so the fact that mccain is even polling in the double digits is hard for some to understand. but remember that all those polls were taken while the democratic primary was ongoing. while emotions are still high now, and some clinton supporters claim they won't or can't vote for obama, i'm confident that most of them will come around eventually. they just need time to heal.

wedding show advance tickets now available!

also, just added: Sir. Vixx!

advance tickets now available for $10 each! go to http://animalswithinanimals.com/wedding/ to get your tickets, or just paypal $10 per ticket to stallio@animalswithinanimals.com.

(don't forget to include your name and mailing address)¶

powerless

while in columbus i caught a bit of a local weather forecast; the local spin was that columbus was going to miss the impending storms, but i could see the storms would hit indiana.

little did i know that the coming storms would leave us without power. the power cut off shortly after 11 pm last night. i'm writing this from a nearby wifi network. no telling when power will be returned—it could be days or it could already be back on—so i'll be away from computer.

tickets to the wedding show were supposed to go on sale tomorrow (june 1). if i'm still without power, obviously that will have to be delayed.

update: power is finally back, after 37 hours without. also, the unexpected shutdown seems to have fried my tower (i'm writing this from the laptop), so now i have to work on getting that fixed. it's looking like i might have to reinstall windows.

at any rate, i should be ready to start selling advance tickets for the wedding show tomorrow (june 2).¶

exile on high street

yesterday, we drove to columbus, OH so virago could attend a work-related conference. we got back a couple hours ago.

i had forgotten how much i hate driving in ohio. it's funny because indiana and ohio are virtually indistinguishable in so many ways, yet driving there is far more frustrating, from the awkward 25mph freeway exits to the poor signage to the puzzled, clumsy drivers who meander through its poorly-thought-out roads. but this time we had an experience that took it to the next level.

we were tooling down I-70, on schedule to arrive more than an hour before the conference began. things were going smoothly until we got to dayton, and in between semis i caught a glimpse of an electronic sign. I-70 CLOSED it said. just as quickly, it disappeared from view.

"there's no way I-70 is closed," i said to virago, looking around for more signs. but i was mistaken. sure enough, I-70 was completely closed off, with no detour signs and no warning at all except that one electronic sign that i didn't have time to read. we were shunted off onto I-75N inside a flood of 18-wheelers.

traffic slowed to a crawl as we tried to determine how to get to columbus now that we were heading in the wrong direction. there were no signs to advise us, we who the ohio department of transportation had forced to drive on this road against our will. fortunately, being an old-school midwesterner, i knew that US-40 runs parallel to I-70, so getting onto US-40 would eventually get us back onto I-70. unfortunately, to get to US-40, we had to drive on surface roads in suburban dayton for about a mile. only then did we reach US-40: a stretch of highway fraught with sharp curves and abundant stoplights. it was easy enough to know which way to go: just follow the gridlock. all in all, this added ninety minutes to our commute, so instead of arriving early and getting some lunch before the conference, virago arrived to her workshop 15 minutes late, with an empty stomach.

there were other annoyances as well. the new debt card i had just activated the previous day, which i had been plannning to use for all my purchases while in town, turned out not to be activated after all. our hotel not only lacked an internet connection, but other basic conveniences like an alarm clock or a do-not-disturb sign. (i was forced to buy shampoo from the vending machine for $2 for a travel-size bottle; and when i inserted my $2, the little spiral spun around but my shampoo failed to fall. i tried to insert another $2 only to discover that the machine wouldn't let me put in two $1 bills; i had to go to the office and get change. and of course, though i spent $4, i only got one bottle of shampoo.) i tried to visit two record stores thursday night, but both were closed by the time i found them.

still, all that pales in comparison to the frustration of the state of ohio closing the interstate in the middle of the day, with only one electronic sign at the side of the road informing drivers of the detour. that was unprecedented in all my years of driving. i've seen a lot of road construction and been in a lot of traffic jams, but never have i witnessed such a poor judgment call made by a department of transportation. it figures that it happened in ohio.

the trip wasn't all bad. walking around the OSU campus was pleasant enough. we had a tasty late-night pizza from a local place called gumby's—it even used the gumby character for a mascot (i doubt premavision gave permission). today we had a delicious lunch at an ethiopian restaurant named blue nile. and i did eventually get to spend some time (if not as much as i wanted) browsing the vinyl at lost weekend records. plus, since the conference was work-related, we'll get reimbursed for mileage, so even with $4 gas, most if not all our expenses will be covered.

still, i can't help but think the whole trip would've gone better if we'd arrived on schedule, rather than being rudely forced off course into a 90-minute traffic jam.¶

indy steps in it

the indy star is reporting that, thanks to our sprawling geography and prodigious use of coal, indianapolis has the second-largest carbon footprint in the country, per capita!

we're number two!

what's more, all the rest of the top 5 are within a 2-3 hour drive from here: lexington, ky; cincinnati; toledo; louisville. this is one dirty, hard-drivin', coal-burnin' region. ¶

shorter ruth holladay

shorter ruth holladay: if hillary has a penis—and i think she does—then that makes her and bill both fags! ha ha, bill and hillary are fags! ain't i hilarious?¶

fact handling

if you were expecting the indy star to follow up on its lousy reporting about panhandlers with some fact-checking, then you haven't been reading the star for very long.

on the contrary, they double down: not only does today's follow-up repeat mayor ballard's lie that "most panhandlers are not homeless", but today's editorial takes it even further:

Many advocates working with people on the streets argue that most panhandlers aren't truly homeless. Instead, their "job'' is to stake out a street corner and shake a cup, collecting money from passers-by.

the editorial doesn't mention who these advocates are, or how this misinformation got to the ed board. did the homeless advocates speak directly to the ed board? did they talk to reporter brendan o'shaughnessy, and the ed board took the lie from his article? or did someone on mayor ballard's staff say, "you know, many advocates say that most panhandlers are just scan artists" and it was accepted uncritically?

as i pointed out yesterday, every study i've been able to turn up has found that most panhandlers are indeed homeless. if anyone has any real evidence that this isn't the case, rather than scurrilous lies and anti-panhandler slurs, i would love to see it.

as it stands, it appears that either the indy star was duped—in which case, don't hold your breath for a correction—or, even worse, our city's homeless advocates have been duped and are out there spreading malicious lies about the people they think they're trying to help. the former seems a lot more likely, but perhaps only because the latter is more unsettling.

naturally, we can't count on political columnist matt tully to set the story straight. instead, he delivers yet another column of butterfly kisses for his man-crush, mitch daniels. you could program a bot to write tully'c columns by this point. no, if this lie is ever going to be corrected in the pages of the star, the only place it might happen is in a dan carpenter column. ¶

brother, can you spare some facts?

i've written before about mayor ballard's anti-panhandling initiative, a plan inspired not by compassion for his fellow man but by revulsion toward them. the mayor doesn't want to help the homeless or panhandlers; he simply doesn't want to have to look at them. this attitude was nicely summarized in the comments by abdul, who wrote, "The panhandlers are a pain! Someone whould get a giant broom and sweep them all away!" in other words, panhandlers are inhuman filth, fit only for the trashheap.

today, the mayor announced the latest piece of his plan, downtown donation boxes for the homeless, so people can "give at the box" rather than give money directly to panhandlers. the idea is that if everyone gives at the box, panhandling will become ineffective and people will stop doing it. this might work, but i think the key question is whether the folks who really need the money will actually get it. if people stop panhandling because they no longer need the income, that's great. but if they still need the money but no longer have a legal way to get it, that only makes things worse.

but my reason for posting was this quote from the indy star article:

Ballard and homeless advocates said most panhandlers are not homeless. Instead, they are scam artists betraying people's trust and good intentions, he said.

wow, most panhandlers aren't homeless? that struck me as a bold claim. it would've been nice if the star had thought to fact-check this assertion, but since no fact-checking was done, i decided to take it upon myself. and what did i find?

in this study of winnipeg panhandlers, 60% were homeless. this study found that the typical pandhandler "is a homeless, white male who is likely disabled". this toronto study found that "the majority of panhandlers in Toronto are homeless and living in extreme poverty". a more recent toronto study found that "three in four beggars are homeless".

contrary to what mayor ballard claims, the majority of panhandlers are homeless. of the ones who aren't, the vast majority are still poor and struggling to get by. the myth of the huckster who panhandles all day then goes home to a middle-class house is just that: a myth, propagated by those who want to justify their disgust toward and dehumanization of the poor, specifically the homeless.

i understand why some "homeless advocates" might want to support a donation-box program like this one, and to curb panhandling. but if i were CHIP or one of the other unnamed homeless advocates who were in attendance, i would be grossly offended by the lies told in my name by the mayor, and then attributed to me in the newspaper. (i'm giving CHIP the benefit of the doubt and assuming they were not the source of this false information; if they were then shame on them for not knowing what they're talking about.)

there's supposed to be more coverage in the star tomorrow; we'll see if that includes fact-checking this time. ¶

indana someplace: indy gets the super bowl

the super bowl's coming to indy in 2012!

WRTV's norm cox writes:

The universal reaction to Indianapolis getting the Super Bowl has been one of pure ecstasy.

apparently cox hasn't been reading the right-wing blogs, where the reaction has ranged from insisting it's not that great to minimizing the contributions of former mayor bart peterson. but cox is an old tv newshound, and at least he's trying to be a good blogger, so perhaps he can be forgiven for, you know... not reading blogs.

the essence of norm's post is that only fatcats get to attend the super bowl in person, so who cares? to wit:

Yes, the Super Bowl will bring lots of money to the city. And the hotels, restaurants, and bars who will gather most of it in should be ecstatic. So should their employees who will enjoy a tip bonanza. But for you and me, I ask again, why exactly should we be celebrating?

what norm neglects to mention in his lament is that some of the major recipients of that money will be media and television companies, such as the one that employs him—though to be sure, more of that money will go to the local NBC affiliate than to WRTV 6. and, as a minor local celebrity who works for one of those media outlets, norm has far better chances of scoring tickets (and being invited to VIP parties) than those of us who aren't on television regularly.

but let's take his question at face value. why should the average hoosier, who won't get to attend the big game in person and doesn't sling drinks or fluff pillows downtown, care about indy getting the super bowl?

perhaps some people are pleased about the hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue the game will bring, even if they won't see any of it personally. maybe others are psyched about the plans for a huge new facility at tech high school that will benefit tens of thousands of kids over the years.

or maybe we're just pleased that the hometown many of us grew up calling "indiana noplace" has come so far. sure, getting around downtown will be a pain for a couple weeks in january/february 2012. but some of us remember a time when there was no reason to go downtown, unless you worked at a tv station or a law firm—it was a ghost town, a cultural dead zone. now, downtown is one of the most vibrant, exciting neighborhoods in the metro area, and i'd want to live there if there were better supermarkets. (someday...)

when i was young, we used to joke that indianapolis was nothing but a racetrack in the middle of a cornfield—not because we felt that way, but to mock out of towners who had no conception that indianapolis was a real city. indianapolis had the size and population, but what it didn't have back then was a real cultural identity... it was just a nondescript, sleepy little burg in the bible belt. things have changed vastly since those days, and getting the super bowl is symbolic of that. so yay, go us.¶

obama-bayh 2008?

indiana senate bayh was an early supporter of hillary clinton; conventional was that he was angling for the VP nomination, and that the ascendancy of obama has doomed the chance of that. but now bayh's name is being bandied about as a possible running mate for obama precisely because he's a clinton surrogate. here's yesterday's washington post:

In addition to the fledgling attempts to merge the fundraising operations of Obama and Clinton, there is growing talk that the best -- and perhaps only -- way to truly mend the rift is for Obama to pick a top Clinton surrogate as his vice presidential nominee.

"There's gale-force pressure for Obama to choose a Clinton loyalist as a running mate to heal the party but avoid putting her and her formidable baggage on the ticket," said one Obama ally in Washington. "You hear the names [Ohio Gov. Ted] Strickland, [Indiana Sen. Evan] Bayh, and [retired general] Wes Clark almost constantly, and it's no secret that Jim Johnson and Tom Daschle are purveyors of that wisdom."

i understand the logic here, but don't see much benefit in obama choosing another midwesterner like bayh. obama is from illinois; he doesn't need a running mate from an adjacent state.

on another note, if bayh were to be elected VP, who would get to choose his successor? the governor—in other words, mitch daniels. (even if jill long-thompson wins the governorship, i believe daniels would still get to make the appointment, though i'm happy to be corrected on that.)

fun fact: we had a special election in the 7th this year. the last time we had a special election in indiana was 20 years ago. indiana senator dan quayle had just been elected VP, and governor orr appointed then-4th-CD representative dan coats to fill quayle's spot in the senate. a special election was held to fill coats's vacancy in the house. who won that special election? a woman named jill long, who later married some dude named thompson.

so, if bayh were to become the VP candidate, there would be some very interesting parallels between the elections of 1988 and 2008. then again, i really don't want mitch daniels picking our next senator. ¶

speed racer review

the new speed racer movie didn't do as well as expected on opening weekend. in today's movie market, movies that don't have a massive open don't stay in the theaters for long, so i knew if i wanted to see it on the big screen, i had to do it soon. virago was a good enough sport to tag along.

i wanted to follow designer john gaeta's recommendation to see it in a theater with digital projection, so we went to the new AMC at castleton, which is only the second all-digital theater in the metropolitan area (the other's in plainfield). the theater is nice, with stadium seating and all the other frills that come standard on multiplexes these days.

on to speed racer: the visuals were spectacular. you could pause the film at almost any frame and have something worthy of being your desktop wallpaper, if not an actual poster on your wall. that alone made it worth seeing in the theater: this movie will still look wonderful at home on HDTV, but not as fantastic as it looked on a full digital movie screen.

so, on the level of something beautiful to trip out to, speed racer excels. this is definitely one to get on blu-ray and play on mute during parties. but what if you haven't been tossing back brews or bong hits all night? is it a good movie?

in terms of plot, storytelling, character development, and the usual metrics for critiquing film, speed racer does okay but not great. the plot is predictable. (care to guess who wins the big race at the end?) many of the characters come off as one-dimensional and (surprise) cartoonish, and the dramatic scenes have a tendency to drag.

then, there's spritle and chim-chim, speed's little brother and the family's pet chimp. as i feared, there is too much spritle and chim-chim in the movie. i understand that they were important characters in the show and thus needed to be included, but their screen time could have been cut significantly. that said, there were a few very nice scenes with these two, like the scene early on when they're watching kung-fu cartoons and visualize themselves as part of the action.

the movie had lots of cute scenes like that, from the opening scene of young speed at school fantasizing about racing to the heart-shaped flashbulbs during the big kiss at the finish line as the movie ends. but in between all the cute scenes and the whiz-bang graphics, there was stuff that wasn't as good—it moved slowly, was poorly acted, or was just silly.

so overall, a bit of a mixed bag. much better than i feared, but not as good as it could've been with a stronger script. virago called it "pretty but dumb", which sums it up nicely. the original cartoon was much the same—awesome yet absurdly campy and contrived—and the movie is very faithful to that spirit.

the kids who were sitting behind us loved it, and if i were 10, it would be the coolest movie ever. as an adult, i still had a lot of fun, but would've preferred more character development and less spritle. A+ for special effects; B- for storytelling. ¶

california love

the california supreme court has struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage:

"There can be no doubt that extending the designation of marriage to same-sex couples, rather than denying it to all couples, is the equal protection remedy that is most consistent with our state's general legislative policy and preference," said the 120-page ruling.

It said that the state law's language "limiting the designation of marriage to a 'union between a man and a woman' is unconstitutional, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples."

With the ruling, California becomes the second state to allow same-sex couples to legally wed. Massachusetts adopted the practice in 2004, and couples don't need to be state residents to wed there.¶

what can brown do to you?

the new-and-improved BMV website offers more online services than ever before. it now provides every BMV service except the one you actually want:

But the one online service drivers say they want most -- license renewal -- is still not available over the Internet.

In fact, online license renewal is banned by Indiana law.

banned? that's odd. BMV commissioner rod stiver says he's working on getting the ban overturned. a previous attempt to do so failed. and why did it fail?

Bill sponsor Sen. Earline Rogers, D-Gary, said House members were debating a contentious immigration proposal at the time, and some worried that illegal immigrants would see online license renewals as an easy way to get identification.

that's right: fear of brown people is why hoosiers can't renew their driver's licenses online. i fail to see how a tool for renewing identification for license-holders will allow people who don't have licenses to get them, but then i'm not pathologically afraid of immigrants, either.

i shouldn't be surprised, especially considering what's going on in missouri. in a not-quite-related story, missouri right-wingers are trying to pass a new voter ID law similar to indiana's but with an extra twist: voters would not only need to show ID but proof of citizenship. this is a double-whammy that merges paranoia regarding voter fraud and fear of brown people for devastating effect: the secretary of state has calculated that 240,000 missourians could be impacted by the law if it passes. (missouri already passed a strict voter ID law in 2006 that was struck down by the state supreme court, so now they're trying to change the state constitution in order to pass the new restrictions.) ¶

belated post-election post

tully has a column today that, were i to summarize in "shorter" form, i would condense thusly: "jill long thompson won and jim schellinger lost, therefore long thompson's campaign was great and schellinger's campaign was teh suck." but i don't want to do that, because frankly this is the first tully column that's even been worth reading in at least a month, as recently he's been phoning it in while chasing the national spotlight.

the column has some good insights into the schellinger campaign's missteps, and i recommend it for those who're interested in that topic. what bugged me about it was the implication (both in the column and elsewhere) that JLT campaign hadn't made the kind of missteps schellinger had—of course, tully already showed his colors last month in that regard. the fact is that both candidates ran lousy campaigns. both candidates wasted 2007. both struggled to be seen and to articulate a vision. and yes, the race was completely overshadowed by the presidential race, but only because both candidates failed to make themselves known months ago, back when everyone assumed indiana's primary would be meaningless as usual. (JLT had built-in name recognition from her past service in congress, which helped her greatly.)

in the end, i went with schellinger, as did most liberal bloggers. it's weird; i can't think of a single liberal blogger who was on record as a JLT supporter, aside from a couple pseudonymous commenters on blue indiana. schellinger wasn't just the candidate of choice for party insiders; he had the support of the blogs as well.

why is that? there are a few reasons—resentment about JLT's negative campaigning was a big one—but perhaps the most important was blogger outreach. the JLT campaign did none that i'm aware of. her online presence is weak overall and her campaign's attitude toward bloggers has ranged from indifference to hostility. in contrast, schellinger struggled with this for awhile, but eventually turned it all around when he hired jen wagner. by the end, his blogger outreach was excellent, but it wasn't enough to put him over the top.

so jill long thompson is now the nominee for governor. i'll be happy to vote for her come november, but she's really going to have to step up her game if she wants to beat mitch daniels. mitch's unpopularity makes him vulnerable, but he's still a strong campaigner sitting on a lot of money, and is going to be a lot more difficult to beat than schellinger was.

in election other news, how about that andré carson? it might have been a very different race if it had been between two or three candidates, but instead there were a nonillion of them all attacking each other, dividing the hater vote. pity the poor haters: they thought they had a shot this year.

and for president, hillary squeaked out ahead, but not by enough to really matter. it's been apparent for awhile that obama will be the nominee. in fact, that was apparent before indiana's primary, but the media politley pretended that indiana's primary was actually going to matter for the first time in 40 years. you never know... come 2048, maybe indiana will be the tie-breaker between robama and hillbot. ¶

nuns disenfranchised

the number of people disenfranchised by indiana's voter ID law is small, but these people do exist:

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."

these nuns live in convents where they are taken care of by their sister nuns. they have no use for government-issued identification, and acquiring valid ID is a major hassle for them. also:

One newly married woman said she was told she couldn't vote because her driver's license name didn't match the one on her voter registration record, said Myrna Perez of the Brennan Center Justice at New York University's law school, coordinator of the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hot line. Another woman said she was turned away from casting her first-ever ballot because she had only a college-issued ID card and an out-of-state driver's license, Perez said.¶

middletown

you know we're living in interesting times when the washington post writes a whole article about muncie, indiana and it ends up on atrios. it's a good piece about how hard muncie has been hit by the worsening economy, and a much better read than that awful new york times article on kokomo a couple weeks back.

i don't need to mention that today is the indiana primary, currently being marketed as the primary to end all primaries. i voted around 10:30 this morning (usually i don't vote until late afternoon after work) and already more ballots had been cast in my precinct than in the last couple elections. this one should be interesting. ¶

mashup accomplished!

in just two days of release, more people have downloaded my post-mashup EP mash smarter not harder than my previous release, wack cylinders. if you're not one of those people, you can be! download mash smarter not harder now, before all your friends get it first. this is probably my most accessible (and dance-friendly) work ever, and perfect for those who found previous stAllio! or AWIA releases too abrasive. you can even go all out and download mash smarter desktop wallpapers (more coming soon).

i'm in the process of converting this material into a more improvisation-friendly format for live shows, so that i can basically remix the stuff live rather than just press play like some plunderphonic acts... the live debut of the new style will be friday, may 23, in niles, michigan. and of course, i'll be playing this stuff and (hopefully) some new stuff at my wedding show in october... if you can wait that long.

i've also updated the stAllio! discography, both to include the latest releases and to match the new design (though entries for older releases still have the old look). the entry for wack cylinders even lists all known samples in the album. as for mash smarter not harder, i haven't released a sample list yet... i've been toying with having a trainspotter contest to see who can be first to name all the samples, but i don't know what i'd give away for a prize. ¶

who dares question the great and powerful doctor myers?

i hadn't intended to post today. i'd planned to leave my post about mash smarter not harder on top to draw more attention there. but i can't go with commenting on this.

david orentlicher unveiled the season's first negative ad in the 7th, attacking both andré carson (the incumbent) and woody myers (whom all the polls have in second place). not too surprising, since i'm pretty sure the orentlicher campaign was already doing push polling. what was surprising was what happened next.

the myers campaign hit back, insisting the ad was inaccurate. but here's where it gets crazy: they threatened to sue the orentlicher campaign if the ad wasn't pulled immediately.

naturally, the orentlicher campaign told him to shove it. so now woody's stuck: either he doesn't file suit and loses face, or he does and gets laughed out of court—because even if the ad is inaccurate, there's no way he'll be able to prove malicious intent, which is required to win a libel case.

and that's just the start of it. not only did woody threaten to sue david o, but he started threatening bloggers who'd written critically of him. he threatened suit against bil browning, and not even for anything bil had written, but for something written on bil's blog by tyrion (who had posted the same content at two other blogs that somehow escapted threat of legal action).

when bil asked what in particular the campaign objected to, the lawyers refused to tell him, which isn't just odd but obstinate. they also threatened to sue sheila suess kennedy, but at least in her case the campaign was nice enough to say what the problem was:

A few days ago, I posted testimony given by Dr. Woody Meyers in the late 1990s, which had been sent to me (and presumably others)anonymously. (I assume it was sent to me because I write for the Indianapolis Star.) I checked the source cited for the testimony, saw it was accurate, and posted it. Subsequently, a commenter from Dr. Meyers' campaign posted a response, to the effect that the testimony was indeed correct, but that it had been offered in response to a different amendment to ERISA than the later amendment familiarly known as the Patients' Bill of Rights.

i imagine the issue with tyrion's post and david o's ad is similar... though i'm only guessing because they refuse to say. i can see why the campaign would upset at this misattribution of his comments, but can't fathom how anyone thought this was worthy of litigation. you hit back, you post comments about how it's inaccurate, but why threaten to file a lawsuit you can't possibly win? orentlicher is a lawyer for crying out loud; you won't scare him that way. this is foolish, unproductive blundering. it only serves to draw more attention to the orentlicher attack ad, and it damages woody's appeal, because it makes him look like a spoiled, petulant child.

it was already clear that the myers campaign doesn't grok the internet. that was clear from the fact that they let their official blogger joh padgett run around making unprofessional comments at blue indiana and other blogs. but a congressional candidate threatening to sue bloggers for negative coverage? is that a first? it has to be, for indiana at least.

i wasn't planning to vote myers anyway, but if i had, this would make me seriously reconsider. ¶

stAllio! - mash smarter not harder out now!

mash smarter not harder isn't just an EP. it's an audio manifesto, a roadmap to a mashed-up future. the goal of this EP isn't just to generate downloads or make you shake your ass—though it promises to do both—but to spawn a new golden age of mashups.

with this EP, stAllio! introduces a brand-new style that takes the mashup aesthetic to the next level. samples shuffle in and out, then back in again before you even notice them. the music flips, skips, and hops between your favorite hits so effortlessly you could be forgiven for thinking it was all meant to be this way. this new style—whatever you call it: post-mashup, dance collage, new-school bootleg—mixes the energy and danceability of Girl Talk with the subversive wit of Negativland and Cassetteboy.

if you love mashups, if you used to love mashups but nowadays find them a bit boring, or if you're just interested in remixing, sampling, audio manipulation, and the like, you need to download mash smarter not harder immediately. get it now and get on the bandwagon while there's still room.

is this EP as good as we say it is? is it even possible for a record to live up to this much hype? the only way to find out is to download it right now! you've got nothing to lose, because the download is FREE!¶