perfidy

When Margarete Barthel walked into the museum at the Ravensbruck concentration camp in 1999, she told the docent who she was. She was the first guard ever to admit to returning to the place as a visitor.

A Washington Post story about a German woman who was once a guard at Ravensbruck, the only concentration camp solely dedicated to the penning and slaughter of women, is full of jarring dissonances between beauty and horror, idyllic youth and authoritarian coercion. As with most such stories, the notion of free will is complicated by the workings of the system and the strong instinct of people for self-preservation. It is even more complicated in retrospect, as an old woman searches for an absolution she must surely know she does not deserve. Not a pleasant read, but a most fascinating one.

h/t Gary Farber.

The entire contents of this post will appear below the break, because I am ashamed.
Dan Savage sez: "Confidential to everybody: 'Pearl necklace' is out. 'Cheney' is in. Pass it on."

And then Ace gives us "Brokeback Quail Hunt," a film script which really is worth a thorough read.

excerpt:

SCENE: After parting ways for some time, Dick and Henry depart from their wives to meet again in a quail marsh.

The friends shake hands, happy to see each other again. Then they hug, manfully, but passionately.

Then Dick takes out a shotgun and shoots Henry in the hip.

Dick and Henry both collapse into the marsh grass. Dick, because he's spent from the overpowering emotion; Henry, because his hip is badly wounded and he's lost 90% of the blood-flow to his right leg.

HENRY: Dick... do you think it's possible that one day we'll come out here, be "special friends" together, with no cares and no worries... and you won't shoot me with your shotgun?

DICK: Maybe. One day. When the world is ready to understand this thing of ours.

HENRY: When do you think that will be, Dick?

DICK: Ever see Blade Runner?

HENRY: Yeah.

DICK: Sometime after that.

HENRY: I can't wait.

Henry passes out from shock. Dick cradles his head.

One of our sitting Senators' names is now synonymous with a gross admixture of bodily fluids deriving from anal intercourse, and our Vice President's name is on its way to becoming associated with, erm... shooting... someone in the face. Dan Savage is a bad, bad, bad, bad man.

Not that this is a new thing, really. But today, my brain is especially aimless and distractable mush. There are too many thinks competing for lebensraum in my noggin; the result is confusion, befuddlement and anomie. My mind feels like the mud over which a demolition derby has been run. Once my brain was a stainless steel, jagged tooth bear trap quivering with barely restrained force; now it is a half century old rusty mouse trap with a broken spring.

From Slate:

No president since Warren Harding has finished with fewer than 21 vetoes. The last president with no vetoes was James Garfield, who was shot in his first year. In fact, three of the last four presidents who never vetoed a bill had a good excuse: Like Harding, they died in office: Garfield, Zachary Taylor, and William Henry Harrison. (The fourth was Taylor's successor Millard Fillmore.)

Bush, of course, has yet to veto a single bill, a feat only achieved heretofore by dead men.

I guess in one sense, it makes one a practicing conservative if one does not ever act, but in another, more accurate sense, it makes one a sap.

Those of you who are married... what would happen to you if you came home from a long day in the word-mines, hung your nice grey fedora on the peg by the door and said, "Woman.... Fix me a plate!" And what would happen if, after an evening of Ed Sullivan and a desultory game of bridge with the neighbors, you said to your wife, "Woman, it is time to service me! You will get in the bedroom and strip, now!"

Would you even do that? Even in jest? And what would you expect to happen afterwards? In the experience of every married couple I am friends with, joking about this would be like juggling with live grenades, and saying something like this in seriousness would be... well... unhealthy.

Well, how about writing your authority to do so in your pre-nup? Meet Travis Frey, an Iowa man currently up on charges for kidnapping his own wife and for child pornography. The Smoking Gun has a copy of his insane pre-nup draft, unsigned, that his wife submitted as evidence of his crazy-man insanitude, after the break.

Excerpts after the cut:

Hygiene & Self Care: You will shave every third day which includes underarms, chest, legs and pubic area (navel to anus), all areas are to be completely clean shaven. Above your vagina you may have a patch of pubic hair in any shape, that must be centered above your vaginal slit. It will measure no greater than 2.0” x 1.0’ and will maintain a length of less than 1/3”.

Sleepware: I will select all your sleepware for you, and you will find it under your pillow if there is none then you are to be naked. You are to have your sleepware on within 20 minutes of the kids being in bed.

Clothes & Other Apparel: You will wear only thigh highs & garters and only thong panties. The only exception will be during your menstrual cycle at which time you could wear either or both. Half of your shoe purchases will be high heels, 2’ or more. You will wear these high heels more often.

You will give me all non-thong panties and all panty hose, all tights, all knee-high and/ or ankle high nylons. You be able to keep 5 pairs of non-thong panties of your choice for use during your menstrual cycle.

My Time: When we are at home and alone as a family from when you are to be naked until 12:00am or for three hours, whichever is later, will be MY TIME. This time will be time you will devote solely to me, whereas you will be in my service to do Anything and Everything I want, which may or may not be sexual in manner.

Good Behavior: Since there will be no trading, negotiations, or concilations of any kind you are given chances to earn Good Behavior Days (GBDs). TO receive GBD's you are to be totally compliant with everything requested or expected of you, and perform everything with complete and total enthusiasm. In addition GBD's will be given when you do things from the descriptions below when not expected. If you try to perform something not expected and I tell you no you will recieve half GBD's. Specfic GBD info is listed at the bottom right of each description.

I'm not even going to get into the detailed parts about "noncompliance" and "misbehavior" or the lists of do's and don'ts (No complaining to or about me; No whining, crying, sobbing our pouting; Do be loving and devoted at all times). It is very important to read all four pages of this incredible document.

[wik]According to the commentors at Demure Thoughts, Frey sprung this contract on his wife well after they were married, which makes this into a pathetic airing of petty grievances. Somehow that's even sadder, like Hitler in his bunker giving orders to phantom armies as the Russians burn Berlin.

This is good:

One of the most useful aspects of the cartoon controversy is the clarity it has given to liberal ideals. It's become abundantly clear since the beginning of the month that separation of church and state, free expression, and making demands on the government are not disparate concepts randomly yoked together in the first amendment of the United States constitution. They are mutual dependent and essential rights.

Nor are these rights simply offshoots or happy byproducts of a functioning democracy. They are prior to a functioning democracy. That is a hard teaching, and as Secretary of State Rice demonstrated with her idiotic expression of surprise at the results of the recent Palestinian election, even many high-flying Americans don't fully grasp it.

This from Tim Cavanaugh at Reason. Although the whole thing is a bit of a word salad, there is a lot of insight in there.

Boy, do I hate it when people put up a post basically saying "me too!" Now I need to go kick my own ass.

Hank Williams III wants you to know he doesn't give a damn what you think. It's a sort of coping mechanism. When you are the country-singing grandson of the greatest country singer of all time, and the son of a man who himself has had dozens of top-ten country hits and remained until this year the face of NFL football, I imagine it's important to stake out your own territory as a man.

Whatever you could say about children of famous people goes triple for Hank III, whose gaunt visage and nasal voice more than a little take after the founder of his noble line. It was his family who gave us hard living songs like "I'll Never Get Out Of this World Alive" and "Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound," not to mention two of the more memorable substance-abuse biographies in a country music history full of great contenders.

To try to live up to this would be a hard burden to carry for even the steadiest person, and Hank Williams III is definitely not steady. He didn't even really want to do country music until child-support payments forced his hand. And ever since he made his first recordings - a disc of Natalie Cole-style "duets" with his father and grandfather that he quickly disavowed - he has been fighting with the past and dealing with the pressure others put on him, by jettisoning mannered country stylisms in favor of a juiced-up country/punk hybrid.

Hank Williams III's live shows are reportedly something else; a night that starts with a set of hard-bitten country ballads gradually revs up to a thrashing punk finale. And while plenty of groups have tried to marry punk and country to varying degrees of success (see: Mojo Nixon; The Reverend Horton Heat; Social Distortion's Mike Ness), Williams' balls-out I'm-an-asshole nature takes him over the top and into brand-new territory. His music sounds for the most part like it could have been recorded in 1963, but in its execution it is rougher and rowdier than country ever has been- if Johnny Cash's Tennessee Three was a long sip of Jim Beam, Hank III is a slug of Rebel Yell straight from the bottle.

His new album, Straight To Hell, is the first I've ever heard that straddles the hallowed ground between Bill Monroe and Mötörhead, between "Blue Moon of Kentucky" and "Ace of Spades."
At some point on your first run through Straight To Hell, it will hit you that you haven't once heard a distorted guitar. The album is so punk-rock in attitude and execution, and the tempos are so headlong, that you are sure that at some point somebody plugged a Gibson into a cheap fuzz pedal. But that never actually happened. Instead, Williams' band chases his rough whine of a voice with keening country fiddle, a driving tick-tack beat, plenty of tasty Martin and Telecaster guitars, and a nice helping of steel guitar and Dobro just like all those old country albums I grew up on. The playing is raucous but clean - as fiery and precise as anything I've heard that raise a storm without needing overdriven amplifiers.

Straight To Hell, starts off with about thirty seconds of a scratchy, plaintive country-gospel ballad called "Satan Is Real," which quickly degenerates into basso-profundo laughter (presumably from the dark lord himself) as the band kick into the real album opener, a honky-tonk barnburner called "Straight to Hell." That's not just a name - it really is the theme of the album. Like Hank Williams Sr., Jerry Lee Lewis, and Little Richard before him, Hank III is one of those artists who sing about a life of pills, whiskey and madness but constantly lament that all this fun means they will burn forever in hell. This tension between gleeful dissipation and crushing depression is what gives Straight To Hell its kick. On the title songs, Williams tears into lines about "looking for trouble" with the same fury as he sings the chorus, "I'm going straight to hell, ain't nothing slowing me down / I'm going straight to hell, so you just better get me one more round." Meanwhile the band kick up an electrifying honky-tonk mess.

Since this is an old-school country record, and since Hank Williams III is maybe a tad too eager to take after his forebears, better than half of the songs on the album hoe this same row. "Pills I Took" is a wide-eyed story of destruction and mayhem, and it's not perfectly clear whether Williams' narrator (Williams?) is more proud or ashamed about the blood on the carpet and the broken mirrors. "Thrown Out of the Bar" gives a shout-out to country maverick David Alan Coe and is the first of about half a dozen songs on the album that take predictable but well deserved swipes at the neutered shiny 'stars' who pass for country music royalty today. But more than that, "Thrown Out of the Bar" is just another of ten or so excellent songs the joys and perils of excess. Whether the joys or the perils are the point, well, I guess that's your call.

Williams seems to instinctively understand that this dance with the dark side it what gives a lot of the best country music its power. On the bleak "Country Heroes," he takes the standard country song story about drinking with your elders to a creepy level, singing "sometimes I feel like I'm out of control... and I'm here getting wasted, just like my country heroes." Considering that is grandfather drank himself into his grave at age 29 and George Jones, prominently namechecked in the song, has consumed tragic-heroic amounts of booze in his time, it's a little unsettling that Hank III is so intent on getting plowed. Similarly, "Crazed Country Rebel" is about an interstate drink and drugs spree that doesn't sound so much fun as frantic, as if he's not doing whiskey, pot, 'shrooms, and coke for fun, but because they just might finally kill him.

The thing that really sets Hank III apart from the pack is his anger. The same anger that gets him "thrown out of the bar" and high on "them pills I took," or that he numbs down while "drinking with all my country heroes" also shows up as a fierce defense of traditional country against well-scrubbed newcomers and Yankees. He dedicates "Dick In Dixie" to the high purpose of putting

The dick in Dixie, and the cunt back in country
'Cause the kind of country I hear nowaways is a bunch of fuckin' shit to me.
They say I'm ill mannered, they say I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin,' you know that pop country really sucks."

We are then invited to kiss his ass. As he states again and again, Williams can't stand the new breed of country musicians "kissing ass on Music Row" who have replaced the "outlaws that had to stand their ground" and he can't listen to country music in the same room as "some faggot looking over at me."

There is even a takedown of Kid Rock (of all people) on "Not Everybody Likes Us." Williams is deeply proud of his Southern heritage and his family and can't stand it that a Yankee like Kid Rock is dabbling (poorly) in country and claiming a redneck background. I can grant him the fact that Kid Rock's country experiments aren't too great, but goddamnit, I'm a Yankee too, a country-raised briarhopper from Ohio, and my heritage is George and Johnny and Willie and Chet and Waylon. And if you don't like that, well brother, you can kiss my ass too.

In a great book called High Lonesome: The American Culture Of Country Music Cecelia Tichi writes about how country music became popular in part because it served to re-invent a shared (if largely fictional) down-home shared heritage for an increasingly displaced rural population in the middle of the 20th century. Tichi argues that during the Great Migration of the 1930s, when it seemed like half the population of the grain belt washed up in California, songs like "The Old Folks Back Home" became a lingua franca that brought together migrants from Oklahoma and Alabama alike in a new culture that they could share, built from shared impressions of an ideal America they had left behind and that they still held out hope of returning to.

That is to say, a major job of country music has always been to tie listeners back to a more perfect, even idyllic past that they can share even if they have never even been to, say, Texas or Tennessee. Examples of this sub-genre might be the Carter Family's "Clinch Mountain Home," Dolly Parton's "Tennessee Mountain Home," Loretta Lynn's "Coal Miner's Daughter," the standards "The Yellow Rose of Texas" and "Home on the Range," and even newer songs like Alan Jackson's "Chattahoochee." In a way, Hank Williams III is the just end point of a long trend in outlaw country away from idyllic stories about church and simple folks in favor stories about toughness, hard living, and defiant integrity. Home is the bar and church is, well, where you go to meditate about the hell waiting for you.

Hank Williams III has a stronger claim than most to the actual roots of country music, and Straight To Hell amounts to a 13-song defense of a reconstructed outlaw country past. To make this claim eerily explicit, the album comes with a second disc that contains a 42-minute bonus track, a druggy medley that includes train sounds, pig snorts, other found sounds, and bits of performances including a recording by his grandfather's. It is definitely self-indulgent, but that goes just as well for the whole album.

The sound of Hank Williams III wallowing in inherited misery makes for great listening. In fact, his self-indulgent tendencies give his new album a focus and power that any other set of new-old songs about drinking, drugging, and women would probably lack. Whether Hank Williams III's preoccupation with his own legacy manifest as a rant against Yankee 'faggots' crowding up Music Row or a creeping (and slightly creepy) obsession with walking in the footsteps of his idols, it makes for seriously compelling music.

Straight To Hell is a fascinating and feckless record, raw and rambling and full of piss and whiskey. I've heard punk rockers go country before, but I've never heard real country, old school country music get punked up from within. Hank Williams III is country's ragged edge, and it sounds like he's trying to find a way to live there for good. Straight To Hell is not an easy album, and it's not a perfect one, but it'll do just fine.

There have been four partially successful attempts to relocate Yellowstone National Park.

Last night, at an undisclosed location... Wait, people knew about it. Last night, at a disclosed location... Nevermind. Last night, in the light of a full moon under an ancient and sacred oak, the members of the Washington Area Musicians Association made offering to their pagan gods to determine, in the entrails of their sacrifices, who would be named king...

Last night, at the State Theatre in scenic Falls Church, Virginia WAMA held its twentieth annual Wammie award dinner and show. As attentive readers will be aware, my wife's band was nominated for six awards. It turns out, they won three. And they were the good ones.

In the general awards category, Dead Men's Hollow won the award for Best Debut Album. (Scroll down a bit to get to it.)

In the Bluegrass Category, DMH won Best Bluegrass Duo or Group, and Best Recording.

You can tell that ever since they got together, its been all downhill. Basement. Bars. Strathmore. State Theatre. TV. Satellite Radio. Armed Services Benefit. Kennedy Center. Music Awards. Next step, world domination. Wait, that's the Ministry's plan. For DMH, world tours and grammy nominations by the end of the decade. That's my prediction.

...should you swallow anything evil, of course.

Hi.

I've been gone awhile, concentrating on working. And earning. You know, get the money, dolla dolla bill y'all. I just haven't been able to contribute anything here, mainly because of the job(s) schedule(s) but also because the precious few non-working moments were spent talking myself out of taking the ol' .38 taste test.

But I have been watching. And lurking. Mostly watching though, with a little lurking. Watching and/or lurking, light on the lurk.

I figure it's been about two months since I posted anything. Much longer than that since I posted anything good. I've had lyrics on my mind alot though, if you couldn't tell, and here's what I've come up with after 2 months of careful consideration:

Proposed lyrics for the A-Team theme:

Ahem.

"We're the A-Team,

the A-Team,

We're the A-Team,

the A-a-a-ay Team..."

I don't have a second verse yet, but that's where I'm at so far.