Danny Doom’s Booze Cabinet

From the Michigan side.

With Catholics getting worked up about the President of the United States speaking at Notre Dame–and why wouldn’t they? He’s practically an abortionist–I have a feeling that this story may fan the flames just slightly. Or at least make the heathens giggle (like me).

“You have a marvelous virgin!” said Hillary Clinton to Mexicans gathered at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where she left flowers and stood around looking uncomfortable (just guessing). She was referring to a painting of the fabulous virgin Mary, who never had sex but somehow conceived miraculously. Marvelously.

(Sidenote: what a story this is. Genius! How can we come up with a way to invent a messiah and leave the fucking out of it? Brilliant.)

This would be the funniest part of the story if not for Clinton’s earlier question regarding the apparently famous painting. Who painted it, she wanted to know, presumably expecting an answer grounded in reality or at least in oil-based paints.

“God!”

Th-th-that’s all, folks!

I had a strange dream last night in which I was attending an Arcade Fire show. I remember being pissed because no one else was going that I knew, and a friend of mine had bought two tickets and decided he wasn’t going to go. So there I was and the place was no place I’d ever been to, but for some reason it was Schuba’s in my dream. I went to the bar and looked around and noticed that no one was drinking. What? No alcohol at this show, said the guy behind the bar. Well, this sucked.

Then I went right up to the front of the stage and there was no one there. I was amazed that I was going to have such a good spot for the show, and then I looked behind me and the place was clearing out. What the hell? They moved the show to another venue, someone said. Well, shit, this really sucked. I woke up never having seen Arcade Fire. The End.

I’m having a hard time believing this, but apparently some (on the right) are trying to make an issue of Obama and his use of the teleprompter. As in, when he doesn’t use it he says really stupid stuff. But he almost always uses it, so that’s why he speaks so well. Or something like that?

Now, we just got through with the most mangled, star-spangled, mumbo-jumbo-speakin’ president in the history of speakin’. This guy couldn’t make sense of shit. He spoke like a speaker at the Special Olympics–oops! I got off the prompter there! He spoke like he was the most dumb-ass speaking-challenged guy there ever was.

(Political correctness has long been an issue with these same nuts, but now, suddenly, great offense is being taken at Obama’s bowling joke. Caucasian, please.)

Anyway, I happened to catch Letterman last night and he came up with a new segment that I think puts this all into perspective. It’s called “Teleprompter Vs. No Teleprompter.”

I really don’t have the desire to get into Ayn Rand and all that–I long ago rejected her “philosophy” after reading The Fountainhead and loving it, and then reading Atlas Shrugged and realizing that I hated it about halfway through. This was 15 years ago or so. Now, people are talking about “going Galt” and I find as goofy now as I did then, but I have the added value now of being able to see that the people who are espousing these theories are right-wing goofballs. So it kind of reinforces why I hated it so much in the first place, before I actually knew or gave a shit about what right or left-wing even meant.

So I read this post by Matthew Yglesias this morning and thought it funny–in a sad way–and thought I would pass it on, and leave it at that. It’s a response to a really goofy column by Caroline Baum at Bloomberg.com in which she tries to go Galt with today’s headlines:

In Rand’s magnum opus, the “men of the mind,” as she calls the nation’s producers, quit. Literally. They walk away from the mines, factories and businesses they built as the government tries to deprive them of their wealth through increased regulation and taxation.

Can you just imagine all of these rich dudes sitting down and reading Atlas Shrugged and thinking “yeah, that’s what I’ll do!”? No, you can’t. Because they’re not. Sales of the book are up because not-so-rich dudes are buying it and thinking “yeah, that’s what I’ll do!” These are the same not-so-rich dudes who vote against their interests with the Republican party again and again. (I use “dudes” loosely, I’m sure there are women who share this same flawed way of thinking.)

I’ll sum up for you why “going Galt” is a fantasy philosophy inspired by a work of fiction that will never happen in real life:

The “men of the minds” who run everything and make all the money will never go Galt because they are too in love with the money they make to leave it. Let me know when the first man of wealth does it, I’ll eat my hat.

UPDATE:

By the way, this is for sure not the only reason Rand’s Galt is a fantasy. I could go on, but I’m gonna go all Galt and quit right now.

Milk at Midnight’s totally out-of-print debut album “A Fit to End All Time” is now available for digital download on iTunes! (Also at CD Baby and Amazon, soon).

This 12-song album contains the pop gem “Wait for No One,” hard rocker “Rx,” and epic “You Really Wrecked the Room.” Also, the instrument switching, drum machine-accompanied “Ugly But Still Winning” and twisted indie love song “Agatha’s Glamour Secrets.” This is Serious Business!

Milk at Midnight’s nearly out-of-print EP “Letter Bombs and Holidays” is now available on iTunes, Amazon, and CD Baby as a digital download. As the official review says: This 6-song EP contains a mix of Milk at Midnight’s unique style, including youthful pop (“The Boy That No One Knows”), classic indie rock (“Satellite”), and alt-country psychedelics (“Never Liked It Here Much Anyway”). Also, a cover of The Cure’s “10:15 Saturday Night,” and the rocking “Your Latest Greatest Mistake.” Buy it today–it’s cheap!

Oh, and have you joined MaM’s Facebook Group yet?

I am amazed that here we are, two months in (actually two months on Friday) and President Obama has not fixed everything! I mean, how much time does he need? 100 days?

I like to think of it like this: George Bush took a dump in toilets all over the country and didn’t flush, that dirty bastard! Naturally, the toilets not only need some flushin’ but also some scrubbin’. And the pipes aren’t exactly in tip-top shape either, but that’s not so easy to discover unless you really get in there and get your hands dirty. Is it a pvc pipe or metal? Did Laura put her hair in their too? Lots of questions. So it’s kind of a big messy job.

Or: I think that you’ve gotta step back and give it a little bit of time. This isn’t going to happen overnight.

This is like phoning it in, embedding vids every day, but hey, I’m a verrrrry busy guy! How much do I love Sarah Silverman? Lots:

It’s a St. Patrick’s Day theme going on around here. First Glen Hansard and now Lisa Hannigan, covering a great Kristin Hersh song, “Your Ghost.”

As promised, from Jimmy Fallon’s show, Glen Hansard does R.E.M.’s “Hairshirt.”

A blast from the past–Cancun, Mexico, the world’s most dangerous getaway spot!

So, wow, Stewart really laid into Cramer. I really expected Stewart to hold back and make jokes the whole time but no, he lit him up. It was pretty sweet, though I kinda felt bad for Cramer, as he seems like a guy who knows he’s full of shit. Seriously, Jon Stewart is not only defeating them with comedy, he also crushes them with good old-fashioned smarts. And Cramer, by the way, is no right-wingin’ nut. An Obama voter, he is a Democrat who has said he agrees with most of their philosophy. I haven’t seen the whole interview, unedited on the site, but what I saw was as uncomfortable as a Jimmy Fallon interview. No, it was more uncomfortable.

Speaking of which, when I got home last night I got a text from the old Nitzer telling me to switch to Fallon. I did and caught a most unexpected surprise: Glen Hansard of Once doing a cover of R.E.M.’s “Hairshirt.” I haven’t found it yet to embed, but I will as soon as I can find it. Wow, that was awesome.