January 31, 2017

Lounge *ALERT*!1 - a musical blockbuster, PROUST thing-THING-*THING*!1 - Supertramp

Will not TEASE. It's about a song,

So in this place, this couple go there and are high rollers, spenders, and she's 6' and he's 5'9" and they're self-employed - whatEVER!1
The point is they are like the stars of the bar floozy hierarchy. Anyway, she plays like 50 juke box songs, 70s/80s/90s whatever, who knows because *I* certainly don't!1

I never paid attention, but about a month ago this SONG penetrated my skull like a crossbow. As I've said, I like MELODY not LYRICS, and TUNEFUL things, like POP, and TCHAIKOVSKY. *SO* this song was an immediate whaddaya callit a buzz thing you can't get rid of. And when that happens I usually run to the jukebox to see what it is, and I did, and thought I had noted it into the phone list, but I didn't, and for the next two days it was buzzing (what is the word?) but then it disappeared.

So then for the past three weeks I've been nuts trying to find that song, by playing '70s/'80s music and NOTHING.

So tonight the couple were in there and she played her usual HUNDRED songs, and after an hour THIS SONG played, and it was *IT*!1

It's got MELODY, REPETITIVE hook - and *COUNTERPOINT*!1 I love COUNTERPOINT!1 - this is FANTASTIC!1:

Supertramp Mark II. L-R: Roger Hodgson, Frank Farrell, Rick Davies, Kevin Currie, and Dave Winthrop


Rick DAVIES


[font size=5]Goodbye Stranger (1979)[/font]
by Rick DAVIES/Supertramp

It was an early morning yesterday
I was up before the dawn
And I really have enjoyed my stay
But I must be moving on

->Like a king without a castle
->Like a queen without a throne
->I'm an early morning lover
->And I must be moving on

Now I believe in what you say
Is the undisputed truth
But I have to have things my own way
To keep me in my youth

->Like a ship without an anchor
->Like a slave without a chain
->Just the thought of those sweet ladies
->Sends a shiver through my veins

->And I will go on shining
->Shining like brand new
->I'll never look behind me
->My troubles will be few

CHORUS: (1/once; 2/two & one half times)
1 Goodbye stranger it's been nice
Hope you find your paradise
Tried to see your point of view
Hope your dreams will all come true

2 Goodbye Mary, goodbye Jane
Will we ever meet again
feel no sorrow, feel no shame
Come tomorrow, feel no pain

Now some they do and some they don't
And some you just can't tell
And some they will and some they won't
With some it's just as well

->You can laugh at my behavior
->That'll never bother me
->Say the devil is my savior
->But I don't pay no heed

->And I will go on shining
->Shining like brand new
->I'll never look behind me
->My troubles will be few

CHORUS: (1/once; 2/three & one half times)
Goodbye stranger it's been nice etc...

January 5, 2017

DRUMPF exposed "a pre-existing rot" - brilliant essay by Rob GOODMAN (long read)

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ROB GOODMAN has worked as the speechwriter for House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Senator Chris Dodd. His work has appeared on the floors of both houses of Congress, national television and radio, and the op-ed pages of The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Rome's Last Citizen.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/what-trump-taught-us-about-american-democracy-214596
[font size=5]What the King of Hawaii Can Teach Us About Trump[/font]

A political fable from 1819.

By Rob Goodman

.... I can’t be the only one who has lost count of the democratic [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]norms—the unwritten, informal, but hugely important rules that help us govern ourselves—that now seem to be gone with as little consequence[/FONT] as the taboos in the story. If you’re running for president, you don’t even raise the possibility that the election won’t count if you don’t win. You don’t threaten to throw your opponent in jail if you do win. If you change your mind about throwing your opponent in jail, you don’t explain it as an act of mercy, because that’s not how the rule of law works. If you’re running for president, and especially if you get elected, you release your tax returns, so voters can know that you’re not financially compromised by foreign governments, or by corporations seeking to do business with the United States. You put your assets in a blind trust, so you never confuse your self-interest with the public interest. You don’t accuse millions of Americans of voter fraud without evidence. You don’t compromise civilian control of the armed forces. You don’t let your team threaten to lock up journalists who investigate you.

[FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]You don’t do those things, until, one day, you do.[/FONT] The only thing holding you back in most cases is the force of custom, and there are times and places—Hawaii in 1819, or America in 2016—[FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]when custom is so weak that it’s no force at all.[/FONT]

Of course, Donald Trump didn’t need to be a political genius to realize that norms like these were historically weak. He only needed to watch the news. In just the last eight years, [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]we’ve watched the unthinkable become the debatable and then the unexceptionable.[/FONT] We’ve seen President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee denied even a hearing for nearly a year, and we’ve seen his other nominees blockaded at an historic rate. We’ve seen real, live U.S. senators promise that no justice nominated by a Democratic president would ever be confirmed. We’ve seen credible threats to default on the national debt. We’ve seen the president’s budget director denied even the right to propose a budget to Congress. We’ve seen the president expand executive power in response to all of this, in a way that’s troubling even to some liberals. We’ve seen the Senate filibuster go from rare to routine—and watched Senate Democrats retaliate by partially nuking the filibuster. It was laughable when a member of Congress interrupted the State of the Union to call the president a liar—until a movement calling the president a liar about his birthplace launched his successor to power. ....

Instead, we have to come to terms with living in a time of [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]post-norm politics[/FONT]—by which I don’t mean that all of our political norms are suddenly defunct, but rather that [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]the continued rolling back of norms we’ve taken for granted has to stop surprising us[/FONT]. Rather than thinking [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]reactively[/FONT], and [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]feeding the Trump outrage cycle[/FONT], we ought to understand him as exposing a [FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: yellow"]pre-existing rot[/FONT]. We need to think about why norms fail in general, and how to act when we can’t rely on them. Only then will we stop underestimating the sheer difficulty of one day rebuilding them. ....

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