Emotionally Potent Oversimplification (or: Friday Video Blogging)

October 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment

The week: Work. Shooting. Work.

It kind of makes you start thinking differently.

Music is the solution. Watch below. Pump it up. And bring it on.

If you need me, I’ll be over at the bucket soaking my mind in the brine of discontent. And then rinsing it like a filthy washcloth.

Life is a process: Work, shoot, work.

Rinse. Repeat.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog

The Shooting Party

October 29, 2009 | 5 Comments

Yep, we’re setting our sights today. Our rifle sights, that is. Look out Walden, here we come. And be warned: I haven’t fired my Browning 308 pump action rifle in about three years.

It’s a shooting party, for sure. The gang from Walden invited me to partake again this year – just like old times.

I hope we don’t encounter the killer bunny…

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog

Everything You Need to Know (almost)

October 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment

I opened a notebook with the intention of telling you what you needed to know. But then I planted garlic. And covered the septic hole. And stood with horses, pretending I was the conductor. It’s just what happens sometimes.

I’m not going to explain. I’d rather listen to music.

Story of my life.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog

Peter Shumlin Thinks Vermonters Are Stupid

October 28, 2009 | 2 Comments

Vermont’s State Senate President, Peter Shumlin, is about to announce that he’s running for governor. And, coincidentally (wink, wink), he’s also just launched an effort to bring Vermont’s troops “home for the holidays.”

Shumlin thinks you’re cynical if you think this is about his political future. And Vermont’s media rolls over like the mother of kittens at feeding time to propagate his story.

But wait. Let’s be clear: Shumlin is literally talking about “the holidays,” that mere week of time between X-mas and New Year’s that our culture has deemed “the holidays.” In other words, once Shumlin is done with them – oh wait, is that cynical? — by bringing them “home for the holidays,” he will sit silently as they are shipped back out for 18-plus months of duty in the ill-defined, wrong-headed and morally-bankrupt War in Afghanistan.

But Shumlin certainly hopes they enjoyed their holidays (and will mail in those absentee ballots!!).

Wouldn’t it be better if we made everyday a holiday for the troops? As in: Bring them all home now. For good. For all our good.

But Shumlin won’t talk about that. He called it “a distraction” from his cause to bring them home “for the holidays.”

And then next year we will be told by the liberal mafia that we better vote for Shumlin-like Democrats because…because…because…

Cue laugh track. Or cry. It’s your choice, America.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog

What a Surprise: The CIA & Opium

October 28, 2009 | 1 Comment

Wow. Never thought this was possible, huh?

Oh wait, I’m having flashbacks…and I’m seeing Oliver North…and cocaine…and the CIA…and occupied countries…

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog

Monday Stuff

October 26, 2009 | 2 Comments

Someone sicked Monday upon us. And it has arrived.
Mean, apparently, from a six-day absence.

–

Can’t seem to string too many thoughts together at the moment, so taste some excerpts and links:

Good New York Times Read (No. 1): Nicholas Kristof: “More Troops Are A Bad Bet.”

Kristof takes aim at the push to send more troops to Afghanistan, reminding us of our past with this fine introduction:

The United States was born of our ancestors’ nationalistic resentment of a foreign power whose troops we saw as occupiers, not protectors. The British never fathomed our basic grievance — this was our land, not theirs! — so the more they cracked down, the more they empowered the American insurgency.

Given that history, you’d think we might be more sensitive to nationalism abroad. Yet the most systematic foreign-policy mistake we Americans have made in the post-World War II period has been to underestimate its potency, from Vietnam to Latin America.

Oh my, we are an ignorant lot.

–

But who’s got time for heady political matters when the saga of the so-called Bubble Boy has got your attention? Which brings me to Good New York Times Read (No. 2): Frank Rich on the Bubble Boy.

Read it. All of it. No cheating.

I followed next to none of the Bubble Boy story when it was in real time (really, truly). But I did hear radio news reports, and found myself chuckling when the Bubble Boy’s dad was being castigated for orchestrating a “publicity stunt” in the hopes that he would “make money.”

And I thought: In a nation of people orchestrating publicity stunts to make money, how do we determine which ones get our riches and which ones get our scorn?

–

Special shout-out to my Yankee-loving friends: Fuck you.

–

“You know it’s called bad luck.” – Lou Reed, “Street Hassle.”

It’s today’s best song ever (again).

Join me in listening pleasure. Here’s a truncated version:

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog

Boy Wandering: My Small Town Day

October 22, 2009 | 5 Comments

My mom’s in town. Fresh from Iowa, where she can live through a tamer version of Vermont’s weather three days before Vermonters do. It’s a little game we play.

So we went wandering today. First time I’ve been wandering in the downtown streets of Montpelier in quite some time. And since I was the odd-person out in the threesome of me, my mom and my daughter, I got to wander alone. Cool.

Hello, Montpelier.

I spread tiny amounts of money throughout the town, on coffee, beer, books, pens, notebooks and a barn door handle. Nothing was odd in Montpelier today. It was just as it usually is, reminding me of walking down a high school hallway – so much familiar and yet so much avoided.

Actually, it was odd that the man from Somers Hardware (R.I.P.) was behind the counter at his former nemesis and – ultimately – conqueror, Aubuchon Hardware. Frankly, it startled me a bit, feeling too much like an hallucinatory flashback. Or, for a more modern explanation, try this: My mind went all “WTF.”

But I wasn’t alone. Others made a note of the fact that the man who worked in the family-run hardware store next door for generations was now behind the counter working for the chain-store giant that had (finally!) run him out of business so as to expand (read: monopolize).

He put his best smile on it, just like any small town like Montpelier would require him to. That’s how you survive. And the people who commented on his presence in his former predator’s workspace seemed happy about it all, too.

“This is good,” one elderly woman said, summing up the position that was inevitable from the small town’s residents. Because that’s how you survive.

Smile. Say it is good. And carry on.

Hello, Montpelier.

I saw my old friend and colleague, Mason Singer, while wandering today. He was worrying about the overly eager “parking-meter ladies” when I stumbled upon him. Mason was the creative director at Food & Water for years. He was the design genius who made the Food & Water Journal look the way it did. We conversed as if years did not separate our last conversation, just like a good re-encounter should go.

I saw my daughter’s principal in the bookstore. He was acting just like I’d like my daughter’s principal to be acting: He was engaging anyone and everyone around him in his attempts to remember the name of the book he wanted. And anyone and everyone he engaged didn’t have the foggiest notion of what he was talking about but met his inquiry with just the right amount of proper small-town cheerfulness. And we all expressed joy when he came down the stairs later to proclaim that he had, indeed, figured out the title and author. Expressing joy, that’s how you survive.

I picked up a book by Christopher Hitchens, apparently to counter all the joy in the room. I turned directly to this passage from his book, For the Sake of Argument:

“The real test of a radical or a revolutionary is not the willingness to confront the orthodoxy and arrogance of the rulers but the readiness to contest illusions and falsehoods among close friends and allies.”

Good stuff. It’s just too bad Hitchens is an ass. And I can say that because he doesn’t live in my small town.

I found the new collection of short stories by Lydia Davis, not so cleverly titled “The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis.” Luckily, the title was the least clever thing about the book. Davis is brilliant. Here’s the first story I turned to (Mildred and the Oboe):

Last night Mildred, my neighbor on the floor below, masturbated with an oboe. The oboe wheezed and squealed in her vagina. Mildred groaned. Later, when I thought she was finished, she started screaming. I lay in bed with a book about India. I could feel her pleasure pass up through the floorboards into my room. Of course there might have been another explanation for what I heard. Perhaps it was not the oboe but the player of the oboe who was penetrating Mildred. Or perhaps Mildred was striking her small nervous dog with something slim and musical, like an oboe.

Mildred who screams lives below me. Three young women from Connecticut live above me. Then there is a lady pianist with two daughters on the parlor floor and some lesbians in the basement. I am a sober person, a mother, and I like to go to bed early – but how can I lead a regular life in this building? It is a circus of vaginas leaping and prancing: thirteen vaginas and only one penis, my little son.

Needless to say, I bought the book – happily, just like my small town insists.

That’s how you survive.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog, essays & columns

Acts of Civil Disobedience

October 20, 2009 | 1 Comment

Two videos for you while I go on contemplating big announcements and all. Activist videos, I should say. The first one features my sometimes-partner-in-crime, Will Allen, who was arrested last week with a group of farmers trying to plant hemp seed on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s lawn. Good stuff. Congrats to Will.

The second video is simply superb performance art. There are great lines sprinkled everywhere, as in: “Terrorists are bad. You are bad. Go shopping. Stay scared.” Or, “When you die you will regret that you didn’t work more.”

Enjoy.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog

Rolling in Republican Love (and other lessons from Montpelier)

October 16, 2009 | 3 Comments

Rolling in Republican Love

I guess it was that August photo of Governor Douglas and me. Yeah, you remember that little bit of fun, don’t you? And about that announcement…

Because the Vermont Republican Party is sending Broadsides some link-love this week. In his email newsletter to the mouth-breathing core of the Vermont Republicans, Chairman Rob Roper opined a bit about the Montpelier money snafu and then all but invited himself onto my lap with these words:

The scandal prompted liberal blogger Michael Colby to write, “But the reality here is that Mayor Mary Hooper must go…. Because this mistake, its non-disclosure, and the awkward, unconvincing and - frankly - insulting manner in which Hooper has tried to spin it, is a huge mistake that will have a tremendous economic impact to Montpelierites. It’s sadly ironic that the “good liberals” in Montpelier have been deafly silent on what is already being called Hooper’s Watergate. That’s what happens when party loyalty usurps better judgment: you start to ignore gross neglect when “among friends.”"

It’s a good line — ignoring gross neglect among friends.

And if I were a good Republican, I would have charged him for using MY good line. But, being the good Republican that HE is, he didn’t offer a penny. Or something like that.

But really, what’s this “liberal blogger” shit? Watch it, Robbie, I’ve got a reputation to maintain – and it’s not as a liberal.

Which brings me back to my primary interest in covering this story: The hypocrisy of the starry-eyed party followers.

In this version of the never-ending story that blinders built, it happens to be that the Democrats are the “devils” and the Republicans are the “angels.” Thus, the Democratic faithful are ignoring it and their Republican counterparts are seizing on it as if the Holy Grail of political moments has been found (Read: We are superior because the other is stained.),

But-oh-how-quickly they could all be changing their tunes. Imagine, for example, if the Montpelier government was controlled by Republicans. Trust me, the little Dem yap-dogs over at places like Green Mountain Daily would be beside themselves. Conversely, the Repubs would be making excuses (They tried! They’re hurt!) or ignoring it.

Repeat as necessary. And welcome to political dysfunction, Small Town America Style.

If you want to know how far from reality the Dem faithful will go in their current roles as the great ignorers of scandals (because they are the deeds of our friends), consider this obfuscating line of the moment being spewed by the Dem apologists: The Montpelier government HAD to keep the matter quiet because they didn’t want to jeopardize the secret re-payment plan (yes, the secret plan they made with the man who robbed them).

But wait. For that excuse to really work, the secret re-payment plan would have had to work. And it didn’t. Swing – and miss.

So, to recap, the Montpelier Democrats want you to back off because the plan was to protect the plan that did not work. Because if the plan was not protected, it would fail.

But it did.

And, worse, what was being “protected” was the silence. Let me remind you: Montpelier’s elected officials acted to hide essential information about a serious error from the citizens of the town.

It shouldn’t matter which party you voted for in the last election to know that the actions by Montpelier’s elected officials are unacceptable. Because there should be no secrets when it comes to our governing bodies – local, state or federal. And we must not allow petty party partisanship to cross-pollinate the stark differences between right and wrong.

But, for now, I’ll take the praise where I can get it. So thank you to my new Republican friends. The disgust with liberals can, indeed, make strange bedfellows.

Posted by M. Colby | Filed Under blog, vt politics