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Friend Zach recently forwarded to me an e-mail (Subject: WAKE UP AMERICA…!!!) from a “Southern Baptist” relation that featured this image.
To the person who created this Photoshop composite, I would like to say two things. First:
Second, you do a disservice to your nation. The Equal-Time Rule allows all candidates access to the media-consuming public, and you have only represented one.
Out of a sense of civic responsibility, I have therefore prepared similar composites for those as yet unrepresented.
I did my best to respect the essence of the original (even the fear mongering rhymes,) but that font had to go.
As Zach’s good Christian kin well know (because it’s written in Matthew 7:12,) “do to others what you would have them do to you.”
Golden Rules or yorkrules, it’s all found right here.
This photo illustration commemorates the 4000 American service personnel killed in Iraq since the war began just over five years ago.
The photos are remixed by permission of their Creative Commons licenses.
This photo, by Spc. Luke Thornberry, is entitled iraq. It is remixed by permission of the U.S. Army’s Soldiers Media Center. Its Flickr caption reads:
A U.S. Army Soldier from the 3rd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment conceals himself with smoke Oct. 18, 2007, after one of his regiment’s vehicles was hit by an improvised explosive device in Baghdad, Iraq.
The vibrantly coloured image of this U.S. Soldier charging into a literal fog of war (the alternate title of 4000 is The Purple Haze of War,) reflects the professionalism, determination, life and vitality of our Armed Forces. (The U.S. Army is featured because it has suffered the most deaths of all the services: 2319 of 4004, as of this posting.)
In the collage, the viewer’s eye is first directed to the Soldier’s face in the upper left corner of the frame. It then flows down the barrel of his weapon, across the 4 vertical slats, and continues along the inverted arc of the dog tag chain until it concludes on the grieving face of the U.S. Marine in the grayscale image at the left of the frame. (The U.S. Marine Corps has suffered the second most deaths of all the services: 847 of 4004, as of this posting.)
I converted the original colour image to grayscale to act as an achromatic counterbalance to the saturated intensity of the image on the left. It also resounds of the tragic lexicon of modern combat photography first captured by artists such as Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke-White.
This photo is entitled Iraq: Memorial. It is remixed by permission of the U.S. Marines. Its Flickr caption reads:
Lance Cpl. Charles S. Hayes, a 19-year-old from Iva, S.C., takes a moment of reflection at of [sic] the memorials to four fallen Marines from A Company, 2nd Tank Battalion, Regimental Combat Team 5. 2nd Lt. Michael L. LiCalzi, Cpl. Steve Vahaviolos, Lance Cpl. David J. Gramessanchez and Lance Cpl. Jason K. Burnett were memorialized at Camp Fallujah’s Chapel of Hope May 24. They were killed in a non-battle incident May 11 [2006].
Lance Cpl. Hayes is holding the dog tags hanging from a fallen comrade’s inverted rifle display, which is explained on Yahoo! Answers:
In the Army and other branches of the U.S. military, most units prepare a visible reminder of the deceased soldier with a display of a pair of combat boots and an inverted rifle with the soldier’s helmet and dog tags hanging on it.
Army lore indicates the helmet and identification tags signify the fallen soldier. The inverted rifle with bayonet signals a time for prayer and a break in the action to pay tribute to the dead. The combat boots represent the final march of the last battle.
Service members kneel before an inverted rifle display and hold the hanging dog tags as Lance Cpl. Hayes does in a gesture of remembrance. A warrior grasps a lost comrade’s dog tags as the final corporeal connection to a buddy lost on the battlefield. It is a moment that I imagine can only be fully understood and appreciated by those whom have held those tags in hand (a small cadre that has grown sadly greater these last five years.)
It is this moment that I sought to capture with 4000, as my own expression of appreciation and respect for all those whom have given their lives in the service of our Country.
My art reveals who I am, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. There are innumerable aspects of me, and only a few fight to the fore with need of expression. Rainbows, monkeys, and tragedy all have iconic significance in my life experience, but as yet only one has been the subject of … (read more)
[Written March 13, 2008]
I got one of those phone calls this morning, from a friend who doesn’t call that often. Her father died yesterday in a skydiving accident. The eldest son was there. Julie My Love was heartsick.
Today is Haiku the Little One’s second birthday. Having found her as a kitten, shivering beneath a car parked in the street, we didn’t know her actual birthday. We chose today because it was the day my mother died the year before.
Sydney, the Fernalds’ dog for all his seventeen years, passed away last week. Mr. Fernald buried him down beyond the pool where we swam so many summers together.
I read in the Times about a local man infected with Balamuthia mandrillaris, a “rare brain-eating amoeba that usually lives in soil.” The amoeba’s particularly prevalent here in California, where nine of the parasite’s eleven known victims died, the local man among them.
Julie My Love looked online to see if excessive empathy might be a diagnosable disorder. She felt the pain of all these people and cried and thought that it couldn’t be healthy to hurt like this. I tell her she’s okay; today was just another day in the life of death.
Artist: Steel Train
Track: I Feel Weird
This track is available on 
[Interview with Steel Train's lead vocalist and songwriter, Jack Antonoff.]
Who are Steel Train?
Steel Train is a band in every sense the we think a band should be. We are best friends. We started this band to make music with each other. It felt great so we decided to make it our lives. Whenever people ask us who we are I always want to ask them what they think we are. I know thats incredibly cheesy, but its true. Our band is defined by the people who listen to us and projest their feelings on our music and us. Its always been more important to me to find out what a song means to me personally, not what its really about to the artist. I hope people who listen find that in our music more than thinking about what we thought of it or why it was written. Those are the bands that mean the most to me, and thats WHO we hope we are.
Why do you create?
Its just what i do. Its just as important to me as anything. Id really have no life if i didnt. The music i make completely defines me and I put everything into it. Ive never been able to be one of those song writters who only put certain things out there and has a whole personal life unkown to listerners. When im working on music its the only place in my life where i feel completely at home. Its the only time when i dont feel a little uncomftorble for some reason. I think everyone wakes up with a strange sick feeling inside them that they cant define. You get out of bed and try to shake it off by doing things you love. Its amazing to me how i feel when im making music. That feeling has never been present anywhere else. Even the greatest joys. The world is a very uncomftorble place and everyone needs a different place that they create to live in a little bit everyday. Otherwise you go crazy and hate everything. I do it cause i have to, like everyone else.
I Feel Weird alludes to 9/11 in its opening lines: “When i was eighteen everything was alive / Then the planes hit the towers / Then she died and he died.” How has life in the Age of Terrorism influenced you as an artist?
9/11 changed everything for me. There is a lot of talk about it in the record, and that has more to do with life after 9/11 then the event itself. For me, 9/11 was a major moment when everything changed in my life. Before then I had things pretty easy, nothing major had happened to me, I was in love ETC… I was in school in NYC on 9/11 and Scott and I watched the towers burn and fall the that day. I remember feeling bizzarre, like nothing would be the same. A few months later my sister died, and right after that my cousin was killed in Iraq, and on the midst of that I fell out of a long term relationship. My life now feels like its all aftermath. For me 9/11 was the begining of everything falling apart. To this day I have to work very hard to not feel terror, I believe Many people do. Although I link 9/11 to all those other things that happened to me, I think many people do see it the way I do. As the end of one time period and the begining of th next. Its a time period we have to be very strong to work through.
In an online interview with Absolute Punk, you summed up the previous phase of your life with this:
The concept of depression is so enraging. You spend all this time feeling awful, and then you spend even more time dwelling on the fact that you feel awful, and then you beat yourself up about it more and more to the point were you don’t even know if you are even depressed anymore. And when it’s all over and you look it in the face… You have nothing to show for it.
Can you give a similarly specific summary of the phase of life you’re currently in?
I’m in a much better place now than I was when writting the record. A major part of the lyrics are that frustration about having depression and becoming so angry that you are “someone who is depressed”. Kinda of like when your reality becomes something you once though was out of the question and you hate yourself for becoming ok with it. I think writting the record was the absolute low point. When I finished was the time that I really started to get things back together. I think its because the songs were the only things that came out of all the darkeness that had any value. After the record was done I was able to look at it and see that all those times amounted to something. That was the moment I let myself free. In still there now,, I feel very proud of the music and thankfull to be in a place where I can understand all of it.
Your cousin was killed in the Iraq War. What do you hope America’s foreign policy will be over the next 5 years?
I don’t know. I wish I knew. I wish I had an amazing Idea that I could talk about. But the truth is, when he was killed all the politics fell away for me. When I think about the war, I think about mark. That may sound selfish, but that’s just what its become for me. I pray that someone more understanding of it all will come along and prevent this from ever happening again. In too emotional about it to have an opinion of value. I’m the guy who lost a family member, which basically makes me the guys who thinks bush should be tortured to death. That argument doesnt bring people together always.
If you would like to share your creativity, or you’d like to suggest someone for Required Listening, please send an e-mail to share@yorkrules.com.
John McCain says that the Democratic presidential candidates want to “raise the white flag of surrender” in Iraq by withdrawing our forces before the nation that Bush (almost) built is completed (and as a concrete foundation of Iraqi political progress has yet to set, we’re a long way from polishing the knob on the front door of our New Iraq.)
Unless Barack Obama turns out to be Client 10, he will likely be the Dem’s nominee, and so we can expect to hear a great deal more about him and white flags as November approaches.
To counteract such claims of cowardice, I suggest an addition to the candidate’s iconic exclamation of public empowerment: “Yes we can (win in Iraq.)”
We are the richest country in the world with the best-trained, best-equipped, and most dominating military in the history of man. If we stay in Iraq, if we continue to invest our nation’s financial and human wealth into that desert country on the other side of the globe, if we continue to demonstrate that never-surrender, give-it-all-you-got Donner Party sticktoitiveness that makes America great, then yes we can win in Iraq.
But Barack Obama should go beyond such simple soundbites, and explain what it’s going to cost us to ‘win’ this war (because it ain’t free, even if it still feels that way.)
The answer to that question may be found on the cover of a recently-released book by Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph Stiglitz: The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict
Just as McCain reframes the issue of withdrawal as “surrender,” it is not uncommon for opposition to the war to be spun as a quasi-traitorous failure to support our troops. I have yet to meet anyone who proudly enthuses, “I don’t support our troops!” But soon enough, we can be sure that no American citizen can honestly say such a thing, as we will all be supporting them, as a doubly indebted nation, for decades to come.
The 1991 Persian Gulf War lasted only a month, but the federal government pays out $4.3 billion a year in disability compensation to Gulf War veterans. If the Iraq war follows the same pattern, we can expect that the next generation of Americans will eventually spend $600 billion to look after the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
Oil is at an all-time high these days (yes, even adjusted for inflation: screw you 1980!), currently topping off above $110 a barrel. The price was $25 the month we invaded Iraq, in March of 2003.
In our book, we attribute just $5 to $10 of the increase in the cost of a barrel of oil directly to Iraq. But even this modest price increase accounts for a transfer of $300 billion to $800 billion from the pocketbooks of U.S. consumers to oil-producing countries.
Our politics seem more like sporting events: The Republican Elephants against the Democratic Donkeys, with churlish fans hurling invective and lite beer across the stands. But this is no longer about which team is tougher, or who’s willing to throw in the towel (or raise the flag, if I were to stick with the introductory metaphor.) Regardless of your position on the matter, you will be paying for Iraq War for a long time coming.
We’re already committed to a tremendous amount of spending in the decades ahead to pay for this war. There’s little or nothing we can do to avoid those costs. All we can do at this point to keep them from rising further is to withdraw our troops from Iraq as soon as is reasonably possible.
Yes we can win in Iraq. But how much, and how many, are we willing to spend to do it?
I amuse myself. When an artist catches my eye online, I’ll send him or her an e-mail asking for an interview. With my as-yet-undiagnosed short-term memory disease, I’ve often forgotten about the discovery when I receive an affirmative response. So it always entertains me to … (read more)
We’ve photographed all sorts of food & drink here at yorkrules (Why? Your guess is almost as good as mine.) If you’ve never joined us for a Supper Club (The Breakfast Club meets thirtysomething meets dinner with friends,) which are regularly interrupted for content-acquiring photo shoots, here’s a brief look behind-the-scenes.
Our living room is the photo studio, and the lighting is whatever’s available. (In this case, it’s the afternoon sun modified with a silk and a reflector.)
Julie My Love is the cook (and bartender, when appropriate,) as well as the food stylist. Here she positions the cupcake to best represent its artfully-applied vanilla frosting and rainbow sprinkles. Once the subject’s set, it’s not uncommon for her to work as my unpaid camera assistant.
I shoot my fine art work, such as L.A. Rock Fan and The Anthony Project, with a Canon EOS-1Ds digital SLR camera, but for projects like this, I use a Canon PowerShot G9. Of the 10 or so frames I shot of the cupcake, here is the image I chose to use.
Back on my computer (a circa-2003 homebuilt PC running on an AMD Athlon XP 2200+ Thoroughbred,) I open the raw image file in Photoshop for a little digital refinement. A tweak here, a crop there and —voila!— more new yorkrules content, fresh-baked for you!
Julie My Love made cupcakes for tonight’s party. There are twenty-four of them here on the cooling racks. She’s asked me to share a test confection with her to confirm that it’s worthy of the “homemade by Julie” appellation.
With fine little fingers she splits the tiny treat in two, and we eat our halves over the open lid of the trash can to avoid crumbs dropping on the floor.
“What do you think?” she asks as the sprinkles crunch between my teeth and flow into memory on a vanilla crest.
“I’ve never been blown away by a cupcake, but then I can’t recall ever being disappointed either.”
I don’t like cake (Julie makes pies for my birthdays, typically involving some combination of pecans and maple syrup.) But I do like cupcakes. A cup is a single serving, and so of course a cupcake is a single serving of cake: a beautiful balance of cake and cream in a bite-sized bundle that’s just enough to leave you wanting more (usually until the middle of your third cupcake.)
Cupcakes also keep you young (except for your circulatory system, which they age more quickly.) They’re small and fluffy and creamy and covered in vibrant sparkles, and they smear their frosting on our tender souls as soon as we’re old enough to understand what every good birthday party has in store.
I’m past my thirty-third birthday now, and tonight’s just an evening to spend with friends, but Julie’s made cupcakes, and soon we’ll all be as giddy as kids once again.
PC users: right-click on the appropriate full-resolution image and select Set As Desktop Background.
Mac users: Command-click on the appropriate full-resolution image and Save Image to Desktop then select it under System Preferences > Desktop & Screen Saver.
Chas, thank you for recommending Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem to me. Not only did I find a great quote for I Hate L.A., as you suggested I might, but I discovered a writer so talented that I am seriously considering abandoning the craft altogether (for I can’t imagine ever excelling at it as magnificently as her.)
Didion’s success is ascribable only in part to her abilities as a wordsmith. More significantly, her talent in transmuting thoughts into sentences is superb. Or, to paraphrase with less alliteration, “She says what we’re all thinking.” Any Southern Californian will appreciate that when reading the introduction to Los Angeles Notebook, one of the essays that is included in this collection.
There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow, a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio Passes, blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66, drying the hills and the nerves to the flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke back in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the telephone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behavior. [p. 217]
Slouching Towards Bethlehem’s eponymous essay documents life in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in 1967. Another of Didion’s apparent gifts is being in the right place at the right time, and her exploration of the Haight in ‘67 proves that true on both counts.
When I finally find Otto he says “I got something at my place that’ll blow your mind,” and when we get there I see a child on the living-room floor, wearing a reefer coat, reading a comic book. She keeps licking her lips in concentration and the only off thing about her is that she’s wearing white lipstick.
“Five years old,” Otto says. “On acid.”
The five-year-old’s name is Susan, and she tells me she is in High Kindergarten. She lives with her mother and some other people, just got over the measles, wants a bicycle for Christmas, and particularly likes Coca-Cola, ice cream, Marty in the Jefferson Airplane, Bob in the Grateful Dead, and the beach. She remembers going to the beach once a long time ago, and wishes she had taken a bucket. For a year now her mother has given her both acid and peyote. Susan describes it as getting stoned.
I start to ask if any of the other children in High Kindergarten get stoned, but I falter at the key words.
“She means do the other kids in your class turn on, get stoned,” says the friend of her mother’s who brought her to Otto’s.
“Only Sally and Anne,” Susan says.
“What about Lia?” her mother’s friend prompts.
“Lia,” Susan says, “is not in High Kindergarten.” [pp. 127-128]
I have admitted to an inherited misogyny before, so it may be of no surprise that of the nine books ready for reading next to my desk, none are written by women. Now a proudly-professed Didion disciple, am I perhaps less close-minded than I claim, or is her mind more masculine than feminine? If the following paragraph from On Self-Respect were surreptitiously slipped into an essay by Sam Shepard
People with self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things. If they choose to commit adultery, they do not then go running, in an access of bad conscience, to receive absolution from the wronged parties; nor do they complain unduly of the unfairness, the undeserved embarrassment, of being named co-respondent. In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character, a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to other, more instantly negotiable virtues. The measure of its slipping prestige is that one tends to think of it only in connection with homely children and United States senators who have been defeated, preferably in the primary, for reelection. Nonetheless, character — the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life — is the source from which self-respect springs. [p. 145]
If you enjoyed these select passages, you can purchase Slouching Towards Bethlehem on Amazon.
Artist: The Hot Toddies
Track: Photosynthesis
This track is available on
Who is Erin Skidmore? Who are The Hot Toddies?
Erin Skidmore (that’s me!) is one of the two singers and guitar players of The Hot Toddies. Heidi and I were in Mexico on a week long vacation in 2004 and we were having fun playing guitar and singing with some musician friends that we were hanging out with. After a few beers someone made the suggestion that we should start a band. I guess we took it to heart ’cause the same day we sat down and wrote “Ocean” and later that week we wrote “Sugar Daddy” - the first and last song on our record. At the time it was just two of us and an acoustic guitar, but we loved singing together so much that we wanted to find a drummer and make it a “real band”. The idea of having an all-girl crew sounded like fun and we convinced our friends Sylvia and Jessica to learn drums and keyboard, respectively. That was when The Hot Toddies popped out of the musical womb of Oakland, CA.
Why do you create?
We like to write songs while we’re really happy, which usually involves sunshine, booze, and an acoustic guitar. Heidi and I had both played in more traditionally serious bands prior to The Hot Toddies and knew from the beginning that this band was going to be FUN more than anything else. We write songs that make us laugh and make people dance and giggle and that’s exactly how we want it. I guess that when it comes down to it, we create because we have a really good time doing it. It’s definitely not for the fame and fortune! Another reason that I love The Hot Toddies, is that I love traveling and meeting new people. Being in a band is an awesome way to do that because you bring something to the situation, something to share with your new acquaintances. And since I’m on the road with my best friends, we always have great time. I would go all over the world with these girls, and maybe one day I will! Getting to travel is a side effect of the creative process I suppose, but it still keeps me wanting to go on.
Your band’s name is doubly apt. A Hot Toddy is an alcoholic cocktail (you girls like to drink,) and you’re hot, or as your MySpace commentors would say, “both WHOAH and AWWWWW”, ” dammmmm!”, and, “giggity giggity FOR SURE!” When you mix a rock group of four vivacious pretty girls with booze, what happens?
Okay, the short answer to this question is FUN. We have a lot of good times together. Compared to the sea of jaded cynicism and emo music that currently abounds, the four of us may seem silly and innocent — if so, I promise that it’s not for lack of depth, but actually concious enjoyment of the present. I’ve noticed alcohol often helps achieve that state of mind. Have you ever noticed that happy drunk people are like kids again? We are pretty goofy on the road and we make each other laugh a lot.
Looking forward, how will you define success? Failure?
I think that success is defined by the impact that a person, a band, or a company has in the world. Money is a nice sideline which you hope is a result of that impact, but it certainly shouldn’t be the end goal in any creative endeavor. In the case of the music business, in the past I think it’s been easier to measure success in relation to money because a band’s impact and $$ were at a fairly equal ratio. However, now we’re at an interesting juncture because of digital sharing methods… for example, I just discovered Bit Torrent downloads — I don’t know if I even used that term correctly, but basically the new free music sharing device. And it’s interesting because tons of people have downloaded our debut album “Smell the Mitten”! I think that it’s great that people are enjoying it, because the album’s impact on people is what really proves its worth. It’s nice to feel like something you worked on is being appreciated. Of course, people have to realize that by not supporting indie bands financially, it makes it hard for us to do things like tour just because we can’t afford it. But if our music affects someone in a good way, I’m happy, I think that is a fundamental success for The Hot Toddies.
What issue is most important to you today, and how should it be addressed?
I recently watched the film “An Inconvenient Truth” for the first time and I really hope that everyone who has not already will rent this film! Irregardless of political party lines, we need to start paying attention to how we take care of the Earth. I think that watching that film could really help to educate people about the issue of global warming. If it was up to me, it would be required viewing in schools and the US government would immediately pass legislation imposing some heavy restrictions, fines, and taxes on people who are heavy contributors to this problem. For example, why can’t we just make Hummers illegal? How are they even remotely justifiable as a vehicle? The Hot Toddies give 8 thumbs down to people who drive Hummers.
If you would like to share your creativity, or you’d like to suggest someone for Required Listening, please send an e-mail to share@yorkrules.com.
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