List: & More Unexploded Cows: & More Unexploded Cows

-Bonfire on Ocean Beach in San Francisco - in the city, even beach fires are surrounded by several dozen other beach fires.

-My underwear are both 100% cotton & 100% algodon. 200%!

-I saw this band, the Oakland-founded Fishtank Ensemble, perform at the Ashkenaz last Wednesday. They are gypsy-ish, with amazing fiddle & accordion playing, but they also boast a rockin' Japanese Saraimon player. Go to their MySpace & listen to their song "Saraimon".

-Cheapass Games is a company which makes games without the interchangeable parts (like, bring your own dice, poker pieces, monopoly money, &c.) Meaning that they're $7.50 instead of $29.99. We've been playing "Unexploded Cow" all week, which involves blowing up British Mad Cows in French fields. The game is chaotic, with a large deck of "cow" & "event" cards with crazy properties. Also, several blank cards - which led me to write the company requesting many more blank cards, to create many more cows. Possibly, a whole extra deck of cows & events on its way.

-It's March!

-The Latest from Jenny Ruth traveling in Bolivia:

Shit! As usual, I composed a long message and it got erased before I was able to send it.

I´m tired and the computer is slow, but the main point is that I start volunteering with monkeys here at the refuge in the rainforest tomorrow. There are some great pictures that Charlotte took today. It´s all exciting and a great opportunity and extremely wet but the sad part (for me) is that the monkeys that I´ll be working with I will feed and do a lot of cleaning for but I´m not allowed any contact at all with them because they are being prepared to be re-released into the wild (!). It´s awesome to be a part of that aspect of it and I´ll still get to walk through the areas where I can play with these fun ones. There are all kinds of animals in the park but you don´t get to choose what your job is and you cannot visit other areas of the park during your stay. The other opportunity that I may have been given was working with an oscilot. I have no idea how to spell that.

More later, I miss and love you all,

Jenny

Joke:

How do you titillate an Ocelot?

Answer to the Joke:

You oscillate its tit a lot.

I'm a Broadway Baby on the Electric Ukulele

I bought a light-blue Bolo Tie a few days ago, & have worn nothing but smart blue suits ever since. This is Stephen Sondheim's classic song, "Broadway Baby", from his 1970 show Follies. There are several other homemade versions of this on YouTube, one of which comments, "Who do I have to #$@%# to get a break in this town?!" This song - intended to be sung by an elder chanteuse remembering her days as an aspiring starlet - takes on an interesting dimension when sung by young men far from Broadway, on democratic YouTube.

James Quills of the World

A few weeks ago, "Gabe" of Speak, Peppery posted "Great Moments in Social Networking", where he reported: "From my Facebook Feed: Sam Amidon is now friends with Sam Amadon".

Mr Quill & I just did a search for other James Quills on Facebook, & found a host of copacetically named doppelgängers.

-James Eliot Quill

-James Quill (San Francisco, CA)

-James Quill (Ireland)

-James Quiller (London)

-James Quiller (Texas)

-Dustin James Quilling (Wisconsin)

-James Quilliam (Pennsylvania)

-James Quilligan (London)

I wonder if the last mentioned lives on Walkin' Street.
There's chatter in the living room of starting a facebook group - "James Quill & Beyond".
I've always been fascinated by the various James Welsches out there, battling me in google searches. I'm grateful that one of them is a respected composer, which is perhaps useful if old friends or elders Google me & are glad that I have been so successful.

In related news, the Encyclopedia of Life is live & finally physical. Over one million species so far, & infinite to go, one of the more daunting projects on this series of tubes. http://www.eol.org/

Naked Male Semi-Epic Prologue

This mini-epic poem will be written daily thru March, & e-mailed (in pdf form) to Mr Golden at work, who will illuminate it. A subsidiary of the "important assignments" project, it's an attempt to create something daily - a stanza & an illumination. Hence the strict format: in Five Parts (for five weeks) of Five Stanzas (for five working days.) The three-stanza prologue was the test run, this week. The illuminations may not appear on this website for several months, but I'll keep the blogosphere posted on the progress of the poem. (You can see this picture larger if you click on it. - Note: this is not what the official pdfs look like, standard garamond & bulgarian garamond.)

Prologue.

i.

The naked male was twenty-eight when he died.

The first three years he didn't remember well.

He shocked the blogosphere with a deep-fried suicide,

And fiery demons dragged him thru to hell.

Sing, March & February goddesses!

There's truth & nudity cow-tongues can tell!

There's magic music vibrating from your dresses!

ii.

The Naked Male's father had come down from Illinois,

To see how ordinary folk in Arkansas loved.

Nearing the borders of Blakemore, he saw a boy

About twelve winters worn, with face already rough,

Copulating jovially with a rabbit from the brier.

Further on, he saw an elder reposing, flagellating himself:

When quizzed, the old man sighed, no longer quick to catch a hare.

iii.
There on the threshold of Blakemore, he was raised,

The purest sprouted from the unlikeliest soil,

His rotten father decomposing, fertilizing the chaste.

Hundreds of forgotten siblings lost at the Coney Island Revival,

The pathetic & the awesome, evincing strange pity,

To let our bottoms bare in a heavy cell,

Begin the story, a lesson, his tragedy.

Ae Fond Kiss on Youtube

Here is a youtube video I was able to record before Jenny Ruth took her digital camera to Bolivia. This Robert Burns ballad I've sung for five years, but have stopped singing in public because it tends to bore people. My excellent Geddes & Grosset edition of The Complete Poems & Songs of Robert Burns has two hilarious footnotes for this song:

*Written on his parting from Clarinda. The verses are beautiful, but the idea of either party being 'broken-hearted' is purely fanciful.

It's a poem! & one written to a fictional "Nancy" at that. Even for Romantic criticism, accusing the poet of not actually being "broken-hearted" is a pretty harsh standard.

*These four lines [verse 4, "Had we never..."], Sir Walter Scott said, 'contain the essence of a thousand love tales'.

Thank you Sir Walter.

Illuminations: George W. Bush Prayer

I've received so many e-mails begging for the final illumination in our little home-made fresh-fruit-squeezed poetry book, Seven Prayers, now I finally post the ultimate installment, & the note on the back cover. I'll also repost the last image - the now-famous underpants illustration - to accompany the George W. Bush Prayer. Click on the picture to view it larger. Links to the frontispiece & the Prayers I-VI Illuminations are below.


Links:
To the original text post of the George W. Bush Prayer.
To the Frontispiece & Extant Prayer Illumination.
To the Jesus Prayer Illumation.
To the Exegesis Prayer Illumination.
To the Genius Prayer Illumination.
To the Ex-Girlfriend Prayer Illumination.
To the Whirling Gee-Whiz Prayer Illumination.
To the "Illumations" Tag Label sorting thingy option.

Thank you for taking this magical blogosphere illuminated poetry journey with us. Come back early & often for a new collaboration with the residents of Harold Avenue: The Naked Male Semi-Epic in Five Parts with a Prologue.

Correspondences: On the Road to Naked Male Semi-Epics; &, also, safe arrival in La Paz

Date:	Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:37:46 -0800 (PST)
From:	"James Henry Welsch" <_@itwaslost.org>
Subject:	Naked Male Semi-Epic Page 02
To:	"Liam Joseph Olaf Worland Mary Golden" <_____@yahoo.com>

Some ideas -

Don't draw below a certain point, so we can make the book square.
-Print on beautiful paper
-Don't wrinkle the originals, & make sure it's all printed on the same kind of paper.
-Make everything extremely beautiful
We'll do the title page last (page 01)
Which will probable say:

Naked Male Semi-Epic in Five Parts with a Prologue

Unless you disagree.
This new daily assignment project is not to conflict with the other assignments, which will not conflict with this Five Part Semi-Mini-Epic.
Important numbers in the Semi-Epic:
5x5 = 25
4x7 = 28 = 25+3

Semi-Iambic Semi-Pentameter, rhyme scheme:

A
B
A
B
C
B
C

Page 02 Attached.
Unless you disagree.
I love you. This is a new literary movement. Daily, no exceptions, no delays, no procrastinating, no wanna kinda maybes, no blocked-up shitholes, no self-flagellation, no lemon jello or orange jello or Lemonjello or Orangello. Total Lunar Eclipse Tonight.

_____________________________________________________________

Date:	Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:51:20 -0800 (PST)
From:	"Jenny Ruth Crawford" <__________@yahoo.com>
Subject:	Re: Califoooornia
To:	"James Henry Welsch" <_@itwaslost.org>

hola liego,

i´ve arrived safely and slept most of the day. wish you were here to go have a beer with me, i´m finally ready for that. thanks for the update and the news, tell me everything but no attachments because these connections are difficult. this keyboard is fucked up too and i´m having a little trouble with it.
enjoy the eclipse.
xo

James Henry Welsch <_@itwaslost.org> wrote:

Hello, my sweet traveling friend,

I'm just sending you a quick note to let you know I'm safe & healthy here in California. And I miss you & tonight's the total lunar eclipse.

Obama won Wisconsin by 18% margin & Hawai'i by a 53% margin.

Love,
Your sweet domestic friend.

Ortonville 68b - (Sacred Harp Tonight on the Guitar)

How sweet the Name of Jesus sounds

In a believer’s ear!
It soothes his sorrows, heals his wounds,
And drives away his fear.

It makes the wounded spirit whole,
And calms the troubled breast;
’Tis manna to the hungry soul,
And to the weary, rest.

Dear Name, the Rock on which I build,
My Shield and Hiding Place,
My never failing treasury, filled
With boundless stores of grace!

-John Newton, 1779.
(Music by Thomas Hastings, 1837)

The Relationship between the Distant Future & the Present

Date:	Sat, 16 Feb 2008 14:19:04 -0800 (PST)
From:	"Liam Joseph Olaf Worland Golden" <_____@yahoo.com>
Subject:	Re: Writing Assignment #2
To:	"James Eliot Quill" <__________@gmail.com>, "James Henry Welsch" <_@itwaslost.org>

Hello.

James, I am ready for the next assignment. I am ready.

ljowg.


James Eliot Quill <____________@gmail.com> wrote:

Due: 1/31/08
250 words or more

James: The relationship between the distant past & the present
Liam: The relationship between the distant future & the present

---

The Relationship between the Distant Future and the Present:

An Exposé of Tumult

The following Conversations were chosen at Random for the purpose of News.*

2/16/2008

- Hey.

- Hey, what's going on?

- Come on, don't give me that shit.

- What shit!?

- Nevermind.

- Sooooo, what are you up to?

- I can't even talk to you anymore.

8/05/1802

- Did you remember that thing I was trying to accomplish?

- Well, no. Not Yet. I can't always do what you were trying to do.

- I am trying.

- Not when I try. You'll be just like me some day. You'll see.

- And now? I guess I just have to wait. (asshead)

-What did you say?

- Nothing.

- No. What did you just say?

- You did.

- What?

- Just say something. Who are you anyhow - you, or me?

- Don't start with that shit again.

- Whatever, too late.

10/16/1583

- Hey, what do you pay for this service?

- I get a pretty good deal. I know someone.

- Could you hook me up?

- What do you care? I mean, who is capable of tracking you down?

- I don't know, but I get a bill. And if they are able to establish a connection between the two of us, they can probably track me down.

- Hmm. Say you don't pay, and they catch you, what would they do to you, what could they do?

- I'm not sure, but the thought is paralyzing.

- Then they've already won.

- Who? I don't follow.

- Nevermind.

5/05/1975

- Whew! What a week!

- Tell me about it!

- What the fuck do you know about it!?

- More than you'll ever know.

- I just wanted to talk about it with someone, that's all. Can't you just forget about yourself for a moment and lend an ear?

- Sure, But I am not sure what to say.

- You always say that.

*These conversations between Present and the Distant Future are brought to you by TimeCOMM, bringing you communication solutions, brought you communication solutions, will bring you communication solutions. Time communicates with itself in a form and manner incomprehensible to humans of your generation. For the sake of understanding and readability, their conversation has been set on "15 year-old American At School During Recess."

From the Archive: Blake-Thumping: The Four Zoas

Now that our former college roommate is a world-famous dangerville chanteuse, it may be of interest to the incorrigible masses to drag out of the vaults some early collaborations. Over October break, 2003, at Mr Amidon's Vermont retreat, we recorded a "field recording" project in two days on one of those crappy little tape recorders, performing mostly on Sam's parents' many instruments.

"The Four Zoas" - sort of the hit single from "Music from the Sun Porch", the rest of which will temporarily remain in the vaults - was our whipped-up response to the need for more William Blake gospel tunes. Free-jazz prophet Robin Williamson had set some of Blake's epic, more mythological texts, to stentorian harp harmonies; but this is our imagining of what might have sounded if our brothers in the American hills had preached Blake's continued bible. It was written & performed only ever this once. The text is from William Blake's awesome Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (dated 1804, but I think printed later), Chapter III, Plate 59, page 208 in your Erdman complete edition.

Thus in process of time it became the beautiful Mundane Shell,
The Habitation of the Spectres of the Dead & the Place
Of Redemption & of awaking again into Eternity

For Four Universes round the Mundane Egg remain Chaotic
One to the North; Urthona: One to the South; Urizen:
One to the East: Luvah: One to the West, Tharmas;
They are the Four Zoas that stood around the Throne Divine

Sam's on banjo, & I'm playing his mother's Appalachian Dulcimer, which, again, I have only ever played this once. Here goes:



You can download it if you go to that divshare link. Spread the gospel!

tipping the bad gay book

So I just finished reading a book that some of you may have heard of- It's called Tipping the Velvet, and it is a historical lesbo-novel written by Sarah Waters. There aren't too many gay books available (relative to not-gay books), and because, being a Sarah Lawrence graduate, I'm into that kind of thing, I've been excited about reading this one for a while. And I finally did. And it should never have been published. It gives gay books (all 5 of them) a bad name.
It irritates me enormously that the New York Times Book Review apparently wrote of Tipping the velvet: "erotic and absorbing...written with startling power", and my hometown newspaper of record, The Boston Globe, praised it as "glorious...an exceptional debut".
I can only assume that by "erotic" they are referring to the horrible plethora of words such as "quim" and "spendings", or maybe referring to a certain fisting in a trundle-bed (excerpt: "do you care for it- inside?")next to the hearth the grate of which the protagonist has recently "blackleaded", whatever the hell that means.
And by "written with startling power", perhaps they are referring to the clever and oh so subtle choice of the protagonist's early vocation slicing the beards from raw oysters in her father's oyster house until her hands come to smell like fish for the rest of her life. Or if not that, maybe the unexpected plot twists of her early return from a trip to whitstable to find her first GF shagging a dude, or her shocking turn as a drag-boy backalley BJ ho, which makes no sense to me, I'm sure,because the complexity of the plot structure and the deep fissures of the character's inner conflict are quite beyond my meager intellect.
the last option for the "startling power" is inarguably the use of three adjectival modifiers on practically every page of the 472 page book: "rather", "quite", and "hardly". If it were not for these three words, dear readers, we may lose that sense of almost hallucinatory immersion in the lesbian milieu of the late 19th century in England. God forbid.

I don't care that I probably just ruined this book for you, because you shouldn't read it anyway.
What SHOULD happen, is we should all take it upon ourselves to write more gay books that don't suck. Consider that a challenge.

Hillary for You & also for Me

Hello. The tiny Grâce-roots Barack Obama campaign on itwaslost.org usually doesn't go negative, only posting optimistic thingamabobs about the primary season. However, this attempt at turning the youtube tides towards Sen. Clinton had me guffawing & chortling in unkind derision. And since Grainne posted some of the successful Obama efforts, & of course my campaign songs, it's relevant to study the competition. About "Hillary 4U&Me", the Economist blog wrote, "Unfortunately, no one with any musical talent appears to have been involved in the effort. I must warn you, the following video is very creepy and probably shouldn't be watched if there are kids in the room."




I wanted to post this comment, but they have been disabled:

"nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for changing the station"

Update: I found some more "smooth jazz" written by the guy who wrote that song, Gene Wang. Pretty appropriate for the Clinton campaign.

This website has listenable songs: http://cdbaby.com/cd/genewang

And, it lets you click on more than one play button simultaneously, if you want awesome smooth jazz cacophony.

Important Update! The song "M-V-P is H-O-T" (click on the link above) is the SAME SONG as "Hillary 4U&Me"! He just re-wrote the lyrics! It's a fucking jingle!
Download.

Compare lyrics from the earlier jingle & the political re-write:

Your cell-phone's out of range,
And you know it's time for a change.

-Gene Wang, "MVP is H-O-T"

Our goals are out of range,
So we know it's time for a change.

-Gene Wang, "Hillary 4U&Me"

So, by the transitive property of Huckabee, a vote for Mrs Clinton is a vote for better cell-phone reception.

Friday Update: Gene Wang defends his own video: here.

I don't quite know what to think about this...

www.buydemocracy.com

das Kapital

These are some of the Images gracing things on my new non-obama cafepress...
it is www.cafepress.com/grizzleshop
...there's lots more there, too...including an infant bodysuit with Hannah Arendt's face on it. It's never too early to learn about the banality of evil.

Name-dropped in the New Yorker

Our Sarah Lawrence College roommate, co-founder of the electronic Rock Group Radiohead, & single-string guitarist for A. Forke's Monday Night House Face, Sam Amidon, now downtown folk emo legend, was NAME-DROPPED in the February 11th The New Yorker. The article, "Eerily Composer" by Rebecca Mead, was about lovely composer Nico Muhly, & unfortunately is not transcribed online (Quick! Go buy a copy! Gobias some coffee!) I was jealous earlier that Muhly was name-dropped in Alex Ross's new book (Muhly is my age & has similar influences, including sacred music & the English Renaissance...) & now this:

"The Only Tune," also on "Mothertongue," is another Muhly collage - a dismantled traditional English song about a violent sororicide, delivered with affecting flatness by an American folk singer named Sam Amidon, to the accompaniment, variously, of a sampled Farfisa organ similar to the used by Philip Glass in "Music in Twelve Parts," a pair of butcher's knives scraping against each other, a recording of whistling Icelandic wind, & the sound of raw whale flesh slopping around in a bowl.

-Rebecca Mead, "Eerily Composed", The New Yorker, February 11th & 18th, pg. 75-76

I suppose if you are going to make a New Yorker article, you want it to be in the same sentence as Philip Glass & the words "sororicide" & "raw whale flesh".

Links: Buy Sam Amidon's new All is Well, from Bedroom Community, from Amazon. "Saro" on youtube.
& Nico Muhly's Speaks Volumes. Mothertongue will be out in May. Audio samples for the New Yorker article.

_________________________________________________________

Date:	Sat, 9 Feb 2008 12:46:34 -0500
From:	"Samuel Tear Amidon" <______@gmail.com>
To:	"James Henry Welsch" <_@itwaslost.org>
Subject:	Re: Boom!

On Feb 9, 2008 12:44 PM, James Welsch <_@itwaslost.org> wrote:

Hey man,
I just turned the page, & BAM, there you were, name-dropped in The New Yorker.
Congrats,
James
P.S. Remember our sophomore year, we bet who could get mentioned in the New Yorker first...

did we really?

now I owe you a lifetime subscription to penthouse.

February Doggerelary

I used to stop to pick up dimes,
I used to write poetry that rhymes,
Those were the best of times:
These are the worst of times.

I used to read novels by Charles Dickens,
I used to set free chickens,
Then I had the best intentions:
Now I have the worst intentions.

I used to eat sandwiches with hummus & nutellow,
I used to cry out loud at Disney's Cinderellow,
Then I was an upright fellow:
Now I won't even stop to say hellow.

my mom got me in the paper, too!

see an account of me swinging my mom the Obama way in today's Boston Globe.

The Relationship between the Distant Past & the Present

Date:	Fri, 1 Feb 2008 17:06:00 -0800
From:	"James Eliot Quill" <________@gmail.com>
To:	"James Henry Welsch" <_@itwaslost.org>, "Liam Joseph Olaf Worland Golden" <_____@yahoo.com>
Subject:	Re: Writing Assignment #2

You guys are rapidly losing credit. It's kind of like the arcade Gauntlet: Legends. Better find some chicken or something.

On Jan 21, 2008 5:45 PM, James Eliot Quill <____@gmail.com> wrote:

due: 1/31/08
250 words or more

James: The relationship between the distant past & the present
Liam: The relationship between the distant future & the present

______________________________________________________

“The Relationship between the Present & the Distant Past”

by Jonny Greenwood, age 16, future guitarist of the rock & roll band, Radio Head.

Mark Twain famously wrote, “They told the youth to bring their new ideas to the vast, empty land out West. That gave the Easterners some breathing space to preform their old ideas, until such time as the youth's ideas grew hoary likewise.” Such a statement could have been written today, with the cartography mixed up a bit. There have always been young people & old people, the former dying young & the latter already dead.

Ever scholar – by which I mean, stoned student – imagines the prehistoric past differently. Often, one will re-create primitive man to affirm some personal or political agenda. For instance, if I am trying to vindicate vegetarianism, I will point to Jane Goodall's theory that early man probably had a similar diet to modern chimpanzees, our closest relative: eating only a mere 2% meat, only occasionally motivated off of our cuddly posteriors to hunt, otherwise surviving deliciously on the ample gatherables, fruit, salads, & insects. Eventually, Homo sapiens co-evolved with the crop vegetables & domesticated animals, changing slowly into the first agricultural communities. At that time, slaughter was rare & sacred, man worked far harder than chimpanzees, & Jesus Christ was still an intergalactic sperm. Nevertheless, none of these ancient scenarios supposes a lifestyle radically different from the modern urban or rural human. I will lie around most of the day with my harem, only motivated to go shopping about once a week, & favor gathering over the rigors of the hunt. Elsewhere, people are farming & running monstrous CAFOs, but I avoid thinking of that at all costs. Alternately, omnivores, blind to the sufferings of industrialized livestock, will re-imagine primitive man spending all day long clubbing mastodons.

What about war? Winston Churchill remarked that it is “a thundering evanescence, the intensity of which no Indian god can diminish.” Sure, there were wars in the distant past, but what can equal the horrors which Lincoln, Churchill, & Lyndon Johnson managed? Two percent of the 1861 population died in the American Civil War, the equivalent of which would be unthinkable today. Even the amount of people who have died in car accidents – highways & freeways being a sort of postmodern ("po-mo") civil war – in the past five years, barely scrapes the one percent bracket. The Civil War was an awesome combination of the old fashion field outing & a modern shoot-fest. The magnitude of Second Millennium horrors is unqualifiable. In conclusion, we have nothing in common with the distant past, except for the size of our imaginations.

Blind O'Reilly!

from the dictionary of slang and unconventional english:

' Blind O'Reilly!
a coll. expletive, mostly Army, ca. 20th C. Gerald Kersh, Bill Nelson, 1942. "the moment the place opens, in they dash. Blind O'Reilly! It's like a gold rush."
Ex. some legendary figure, some obscure piece of folklore.
"He was, they say, a liverpool docker trade-unionist ca. 1910"(Frank Shaw).

Mining for forgotten Jesus jokes

I was just sifting thru some of the local folklore archives on campus. There are file cabinets full of jokes. Here's two harmless Jesus ones:

Three wise men were crossing a field on their way to Jerusalem. One of them stepped on a rake in the field, which swings up & hits him in the face. The injured wise man, yells 'Jesus Christ!' Another one retorts quickly, 'Great name for the kid!'

-Andy H_ (Age 21, Kansas City, MO) told to Prof. Pete S_, 14 December, 1965

Another variant recorded was “That beats the hell out of Irving!” (San Francisco, 1969). However, the archivist weirdly feels the need to explain that, because the wise man couldn't have known the expletive “Jesus Christ” before Jesus was born, that “Irving” must have been an early Jewish curse. Not sure I agree with that scholarship.

Jesus & Moses sit together & are talking about the good old days. They decide after long debate, that they should do some of their old stuff again. So they go down to the water, & Moses flings open his arms to the sea. Sure enough, it parts right open. Jesus walks out on the water, but starts sinking slowly, & finally he has to swim back to the shore. He goes out, & says 'What happened? Why can't I do that anymore?' & Moses says, 'The last time you tried that you didn't have those holes in your feet.'

-Told by Laurie M____ (Student, Berkeley, CA) to D.G., 17 October, 1974

new shirt- write to super-delegates!

there are some new shirts on my cafepress store site....
the graphic remains, but the back is all about writing to super-delegates.
just so ya'all know!

www.cafepress.com/glasshorse

Beer Review: Red Stripe Jamaican Lager

"Obama's campaign has been extraordinary and titillating for me and my family."

-- Jimmy Carter, feeling titillated, but still refusing to endorse.

(1/29/2008)

If you spend money on CafePress.com, you should definitely buy Ms Marlier's shirt, above. But I just noticed that people have uploaded more than 12,100 designs for Barack Obama on CafePress, all available for purchase. They're stylish, inspiring - "Anthropologists for Obama" is necessary apparel. A recent surge of 1970s-feel Obama imagery - including the slightly distorted photo of him on the front page of the New York Times a few days ago - is giving this thing a legendary sheen.

http://www.cafepress.com/buy/barack+obama

Sorry if fans of this blog are weary already of our small itwaslost.org Obama campaign. We'll return to rhyming poetry & reviewing fine literature in short order.

Shaheen, the world's nicest bartender at the Starry Plough Public House on Shattuck, tells me there's nothing wrong with craving lagers in the wintertime - even if conventional wisdom is that ales are typical for colder weather. It occurred to me in the bathtub just now, that for the first time since drinking age, a non-Californian beer has risen to the top of my favorite-beers-of-the-moment. This rainy February in Berkeley, nothing tastes better than a red stripe. That sweet aftertaste.... a Boont doesn't taste right just now.

another brilliant grassroots effort

I noticed yesterday when walking around in the subway and on the street with Obama signs, we got a huge response from people too young to vote- especially black kids, ranging from 5 year olds through 17 year olds. I thought it would be great to put together a flyer- basically saying

'do you think Barack Obama should be our next president? even if you can't vote, you can help...
write to your representatives and tell them that you support Obama and they should support him at the democratic national convention in August
their votes as super-delegates at the convention count for a lot, and if you tell them that you support Obama, they will too!

put at the bottom of the flyer names and addresses of the reps in whatever state you're canvassing in, and then
pass the flyers out to kids in subway stations and on the street at 2-5pm when they are getting out of school.

when I was in the train station at atlantic-pacific yesterday at 3 or so there were TONS of kids who were all screaming like crazy when they saw our Obama signs....I don't think it would take much to get them interested in helping out.

I think Charlie Rangel might be affected by tons of his constituents below voting age writing to tell him to support Obama, don't you?

I think this idea could also be put into effect anywhere else in the country...slightly differently from place to place, I'm sure, and also expanded to get older people, not just kids to put pressure on our reps (all democratic reps are super-delegates), and democratic mayors, where applicable (they're super-delegates, too), also former democratic speakers-of-the house, former democratic presidents and V.Ps, etcetera. to support Obama at the Convention. The selection may come down to these people's votes, and constituent pressure is the best way to make them choose Obama.

to find out who your senators and representatives are, contact them by e-mail, or EVEN BETTER, write them a real letter, look up their contact info, mailing addresses etcetera, at www.congress.org

Correspondences: Epistle to S. Amidong, February 2008 Edition

Date:	Wed, 6 Feb 2008 12:51:13 -0800 (PST)
From:	"James Henry Welschg" <_@itwaslost.org>
Subject:	[Sensitive Material]
To:	"Samuel Tear Amidong" <_____@gmail.com>

Hi Sam,

I ordered your new album on Amazon, but stupidly put it in the same box as the darjeeling limited pre-order, so I won't get them till March Tenth. Can a man wait a month for these things?


Gossip? I'm single, James is going to Bulgaria with the peace-corps, Liam quit his recycled paper office-job & is planning on going to Fez, Virtue's going to take a month to regroup in New Mexico, I applied to u.c. berkeley. I know you don't like to ever tell me any details about your private life, so I just make stuff up & tell that to other people.

Music? I'm a bigger youtube star than you, with the exception of saro, which doesn't count because of your "fan base", which is mostly homeless sheep-[shaggers].

Politics? Whoo! Obama should do well in Louisiana, Washington, & the Chesapeake Bay region, right? I committed voter fraud by accident yesterday by voting on a "Non-Party Democrat" ballot, even tho I'm registered Green. Grâce "Rat-Arse" Marlier & her fiancee stood for hours in Brooklyn with their hand-printed Obama posters. You can buy her shirts here: http://www.cafepress.com/glasshorse

Love? A beautiful dream.

Money? The stock market's down, which doesn't affect your fan base, including me.

Art? Abstraction is dead! Collage & montage are way-dead! Tell everyone!

Literature? Has been replaced by political blogs.

The Housing Crises? I still live in my classy apartment in Berkeley, you've moved to Hell's Kitchen. There's more flowers & cacti in Berkeley, & just as many crazy people.

That's the report, February 2008. Happy Burns Day / President's Day / Groundhog Day / Super Tsunami Tuesday / Hallowe'en,

James

"I'd rather vote for Mussolini"

My boyfriend Jeremy and I spent about 5 hours this evening (prime time- 4 to 9 pm) standing in the cold drizzle outside of a public school in southeast brooklyn, holding Obama signs that we made ourselves, which read "put wisdom back in the white house", "because he's not just talking about what your country can do for you, but also about what you can do for your country", etcetera, etcetera. It soon became clear that this polling spot (which was our coverage assignment from brooklyn for barack) is situated in the middle of a large orthodox and conservative Jewish neighborhood, and adjacent to a large african-american neighborhood, so that is pretty much who showed up to vote.
interesting surprises:
- there were many more orthodox Jews for Obama than I would have expected.
by far the best moment of the night for me, was when a very very old Orthodox man wearing wide-brim hat, side-curls, etcetera paused on his walker-assisted shuffle to the door of the polling place to read my sign. He read it, nodding, and then gave me a thumbs-up and a wink.

then there was the hasid who jogged away from the poll after voting pumping his fists in the air triumphantly, calling out "we love barack!we love barack!"

-Alternately, older black women were not having Obama at this particular polling station. They were very adamant about voting for Hillary. which was made even more outstandingly stubborn by the fact that the grandchildren accompanying them to the polls were invariably yelling "Barack Obama! yeah! go Obama!" until their grandmothers had to plug their ears in agitation.

wierdest comment of the night: man who glanced at Jeremy's sign and then said in a bluster:

"I'd rather vote for Mussolini"



hmmmmmm.

The Litterman Endorseth

At 8:30, I was the forty-eighth person to vote at the Harriet Tubman Terrace Multi-Use Room, around the corner from me, across from the Berkeley Bowl Market in South Berkeley. I am registered Green, but they let me vote as a "Non-Party Democrat" - sweet!

After I left, a fifty-year-old Mexican guy picking up litter with a grabber thingy stopped me & said: "Let me tell you what happened: In 1990 or around then, in New York City, we elected Mayor Dinkens. And you know what happened? There was trash all over the streets, the city was an absolute mess! So if you vote for Obama instead of McCain, the whole country will fall apart." I told him it was too late, & that the president is not in charge of public works.

Does this qualify as a quasi-Racist statement? Whatever he meant, I would say he was a single-issue voter.

Thanks to Ben Smith at Politico.com for linking to this blog, with other anecdotes from the day - here.

this little kid is also challenging James and I for the Obama advocacy prize- kick ass!

the black eyed peas beat James because they got Scarlett Johansson and he didn't

FYI I think the best-streaming version of this is not the youtube, but the original (I think), which is at www.dipdive.com

I wasn't afraid to stand for something...
to stand for "change"...
I wasn't afraid of "fear"...
it was pure inspiration...

so I called my friends...
and they called their friends...
in a matter of 2 days...
We made the song and video...

Usually this process would take months...
a bunch of record company people figuring out strategies and release dates...
interviews...
all that stuff...
but this time i took it in my own hands...
so i called my friends Sarah Pantera, Mike Jurkovac, Fred Goldring, and Jesse Dylan to help make it happen...
and they called their friends..
and we did it together in 48 hours...
and instead of putting it in the hands of profit we put it in the hands of inspiration...

then we put it on the net for the world to feel...

When you are truly inspired..
magic happens...
incredible things happen...
love happens..

-Will.i.am, "Why I recorded Yes We Can", from the Huffington Post.

Ted Kennedy & Barbara Lee in Oakland, February 1st, 2008

We went to see Senator Ted Kennedy speak at the Bebee Memorial Church yesterday. I was curious to see how various news outlets or blogs would differ in their report from my personal experience. A New York Times blog really spun it, highlighting it as an old Kennedy focusing on nostalgia for the 60's - here - This really wasn't what we heard, & I commented my palinode:

Comment 1: I was there yesterday, & I find it interesting you left out several important things:

-It was not just a "largely African-American crowd" - it was an energetic, extremely diverse crowd - & by diverse, I mean, "Latinos for Obama", crazy outfits, dancing, singing, I saw Muslims & old Chinese women. All come out to see a senior Senator? Kennedy's comments weren't just calculated, they were responding to something amazing that he was looking at.

-Barbara Lee, our awesome Congresswoman, spoke first, & she pointed out that she & Kennedy were some of the few who voted against the war, an elite club which strengthens their endorsement of Obama in contrast to the Clintons.

Comment 2: Furthermore, I can't agree that the 60's were the dominant theme of the event. You're right that he invoked history a couple of times in his short speech - how could he not - but the mood felt different, like the future, something positive & optimistic, not nostalgic - with Chavez, King, & the Kennedy Brothers not their as ghosts, but as credence & affirmation!

Anyway, isn't it weird that they would report that it was just a black crowd, that Kennedy preached the 60's, & omit Barbara Lee as if she doesn't exist? And I forgot to mention, the line waiting to get in, the cars driving be were honking & shouting, & two city buses long-honked with their entire passenger load leaning out of windows & cheering.

Mr "Brian Aha" was at the simultaneous John Kerry rally in San Francisco - I'd be curious to see his thoughts. He texted me: "These rallies seriously need some new cheers. Perhaps new task for you? Will send you pics later." I heard a lot of "Fired up - ready to go", "Yes, we can", "Obama - Oh-eight!" & "Teddy!"