This is sweet, Nezua!

You should read out all of your posts like this.

thanks man! now my setup is finally in place, studio/gearwise as wellas Odeo acct ( think there's a podcast at the site, too, i should have linked it—i will be doing things like this more. in fact, you'll soon see me moving more into art/music/poetry. i will keep this blog for important issues on latino/immigration/mexicano/latin america/indigenist stuff that works best with prose. but by end of year, i will be putting more energy into these forms of expression ratehr than prose on a new blog, tho probably many of the very same subjects. mostly, quizas.. so i guess we're approaching the border that divides these approaches. soon, we hop it. :)

I was already at the stage of perceiving the Presidential Nakedness by the time Reagan was elected. It is very upsetting to think of the disaster that Presidentiality has become. I hope that you are right when you suggest that Bush is as low as we can go. I am worried even now about what the elections of 2008 will bring us. So much of US domestic and foreign policy is such a complete charade that occupying the White House now leads only to being the meat puppet that has its strings pulled by all the economic and false morality forces and there remains little room after that to inject the president's humanity into the equation.
I will certainly miss the level of involvement you have at this site. I don't download or watch video or audio {dial-up takes too long, and TV is better, but I won't watch that either} but I have enjoyed your text and graphics here tremendously. Very few sites on the web are at the level you have accomplished.
More importantly, I appreciate the MESSAGE. Having been around when McLuhan had his say, I think the message must transcend the medium, thus, I disagree with him.
I can completely understand why you would move to more video and audio in order to widen the audience. I will continue to read you here and perhaps will eventually break down and get DSL. That is probably a long way off. I happen to like the information feed at the least adorned level. Text and graphics is just right for me, the next level of bells and whistles starts to involve my extremely developed level of subjectivity filtering, something that gets activated much more when there are complex production values like sound and motion. Then I am back in University, mentally, looking at all the technique and not imbibing the essence.
I wish you great success in the wider world of video and sound and will be continuing to keep up with the message here at the same old stripped down location. A very fancy location nevertheless. Andale!

Hecho, hombre! Muchisimas gracias por su verdad!

Thank you Nez.

You bring up one of those dirty little secrets that's been hiding in the dark recesses of my brain...the liberation from "the myth" that Bushco has brought to me. That thought immediately clashes with all the disgust and shame for what he's done in our country and the world, but its still there. If it were not for the complete stripping to nakeness, I might not have ever seen it. I feel that now I'm on a jounrney that will lead me to some truth, but at what cost? I don't have the words for my grief. I'm just sorry and promise to carry on.

well i dont know that i think bush is the lowest we can go as a nation. i hear you on the next "elections." just that he has, so far, divested me of any feeling that there was anything special at all about a man who becomes president, which bled over to my feelings about the office and the govt that would have him as well as us, who have raised him up as our rep.

I can completely understand why you would move to more video and audio in order to widen the audience.

it's nice to be understood...but you are wrong about my reasons. i'm a man of many mediums. i must use them. its in my blood. i am a music sound guy and a paint guy too. not a html guy, and not solely a writer. its not about my audience, in fact its not about them at all. in fact, i'm sure to lose some. the change is simply about what this blog has always been about. following my own heart.

thank you RC. it's always been good to have you along, and will continue to be, when i do write. and i will write at the new place, too. i sure dont want to stick you in university again. jeje. maybe i'll stick you...in paris. or perhaps in a big yellow van. i haven't decided yet.

NL...you know what they say about the truth. it will set you free. nobody said it wouldn't hurt like hell.

tgrdug, gracias mil, 'mano!

Here's to the Renaissance within, Nez. NYU was a good experience without any question, I want to affirm that. Having learned to see through the decoration and know what the real writing on the wall is came from my years there and afterward slicing and dicing footage. Y siges caminando la vereda del corazon. Buena Suerte!

gracias, bro. i agree. i never thought id end up there, but it helped me train skills and aptitudes i had been using for years. and nothing feels more satisfying to me than being able to use my talents, and to hone them, too.

OK. I gotta make it over here more often from Google reader. Amazing--both of the readings over there on Odeo. I had no idea. Glad you honed your talents.

But, am I the only reader here old enough to remember a president named Dick?

thank, my friend.

yes but see i was born in 69. he was prez, but i didnt "live" through it. and i guess thats why i put in the disclaimers. its not as if i was a dyed in the wool patriot before bush. after all, i was raised by hippies! sort of like being raised by wolves, but happy, and against the government and the rigid conservatives of their parents' generation. and vegetarian. and less fur. well, some of them.

anyway, come on. nixon got caught doing small potatoes next to what we KNOW bush has done. and really, my point was more along the lines of how artless and stupid bush is. he has disgraced the office not so much with his crimes, which i do think they all do...crime as such is necessitated by running a ship like this in the way it has run historically. no, i mean to say bush has ruined the mystique and aura of the presidential seal with his transparency and lack of brains and poise and charisma and well...any skills at all.

Cool stuff -- really liked that.

And it wasn't just the words, but also your voice (which the only other time I've heard it was in your song, think it was called "Freedom.") Also really dig that cavernous echoey style you employed. (Even my little kid paused when she passed the office offering up a sort of "OK you got my attention and what ARE you listening to?")

I daydream: I'm sitting in my cubicle/cell and all of a sudden that track plays over the office loudspeaker, everyone looks around a little confused -- do others hear it?, a little amused at the subversion, maybe some a little angry, maybe some smiling. Or maybe its me riding in my car and flipping the stations and coming across an angry rightwinger, but then, suddenly some guerilla DJ cuts in, and that new, sneakin'-up-on-ya, voice--in-your-head speech interrupts the broadcast.

One of my favorite things about your shared thoughts are how you recognize the complexity of it all. I think it is great for us to recognize Bush's emptiness, and negative effect on how the world sees us (how could one not, after all?) But where I see you taking it further than some other anti-Bushies is your demanding that we admit our societal/cultural responsibility for having allowed this man to lead us. Here's one of my favorite lines...

Surely we must think little of ourselves to choose this ass as our public face, this gargoylish pretend man as our global hand, this stupid, spoiled child as our universal mind.

I'm staying tuned -- looking forward to all the things you cook up.

Glen, I remember Dick all too well, and Checkers too. In fact, the seminal 1950s political events that have led us down this horrible path of Potemkin Media Fakery were the Checkers Speech, which allowed Nixon's self-saved ass to face off against Kennedy and to much later win the Presidency instead of being thrown under the bus, and the brilliant Eisenhower Military Industrial Complex speech, which was ignored in 1960 and seems to be ignored and unappreciated to this very day. Nixon was a sharp guy, at least in the way he figured out the media game. He knew he could play the populace with the Checkers Speech, he knew that he couldn't easily beat Kennedy because he {Dick Nixon} was the opposite of photogenic and the Nixon- Kennedy race and the debates were the template we have followed ever since that first video Presidential contest. It's only recently that the John Kennedy hair style has fallen out of favor in Congress! That "do" had a forty year run! I guess Dick was happy as hell when the Don Johnson 5 O'Clock Shadow look became popular. He was finally vindicated in the arena of facial fashion.

And let's go back a bit more. How about the America that wasn't ready for a leader such as Adlai Stevenson in 1952 or 195 -- "too intellectual" they said. "We like Ike," they said.

oops --1956

I have been asking where the protest music is these days. You know, the music of Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Marvin Gaye? Now I see, you are going to revive this music. Lord knows, we need it so desperately. We need music to comfort us and unite us in the work ahead.

Nez, I am just saying, not arguing--they both have their unique ways of evil. I was in high school when the dick did his only worthwhile act as president--he resigned! (Yeah, I did the math, I knew how old you are.)

I guess one of the move evil things about Bush is that he is doing it all sober. (At least one recent Nixon biographer noted that he was drunk often and Henry Kissinger may have been in charge more often that we'd like to think.)

Great to hear your voice in the audible sense. Keep up the good work.

Viva la reverb!

Thanks RC. Now I don't feel so old.

yes, carmen!!! that's it! i have to admit this is my feeling, my dream. to give us some music to add to our fight. or to express my feelings in that way. they are too big for words i feel, too often. to contain them in words only....it is unsatisfying to me. these dreams, feelings, they become different when put into words. when you can channel it all into various layers of music, instruments, all that fury and hope and fire has flesh.

i could only hope to follow these greats. but you do name some of my idols, music i grew up hearing. that is my desire. to join in that ever ringing song. it calls to me, to sound completely pretentious. yet, it does.

i have a few written already. i'm getting ready to record. bit by bit building to it. building songs, studio, ...the time is just about right soon. i feel it will be music different than most stuff ive recorded in the last 19 years. yet probably smiliar in some ways to a few songs i have tried earlier. the seeds were laid down a long time ago. i feel, like a sprout, myself reaching the right moment.

nobody's arguing that glen. this is just my view. we all have ours to give. i think ours can stand side by side without cancelling out. or if not, here's mine anyway! :)

again. not evil i am talking about. artlessness. nixon was not a stupid man. not a bumbling fool when he presented, as i see it.

do you really think bush is sober? i think he is on pills myself.

not just reverb. headphones will bring out some of the finer points of the mix. and i use the effects discriminately, to underscore certain themes/narrative agendas...

Thanks Mimi. Stevenson Syndrome is still around, but I did hear it mentioned plenty that Mr. Bill was plenty smart. If only smart and intellectual were the new black. I see that there are some very sharp people in the race this time. I have some hopes. Unfortunately, a great percentage of the electorate thinks that an intelligent person reminds them of all the people that have looked down on them all of their confused lives and will avoid voting for anyone who projects intelligence. Remember that half of the population has a below average IQ. That will never change, the statistic is a given. So the pols have to project folksiness. I wish the non-intellectual virtue they chose were something more inspiring like leadership or vision. Again, the runners this time are moving in that direction a little bit, so maybe there is some hope.
What I think we have to take a serious look at now is that we are already neck deep in the Great Oil Wars which will go on for decades in some way, and the Resource Wars {water, copper, uranium, platinum} have been going on for some time too. This doesn't get addressed in the Presidential races or in the discussion of how to run a country that is running out of resources and running out of Empire.
It almost certainly is a daily topic in the real circles of power in Washington and until the electorate in the US wakes up to the dismal realities we are facing, the power to effect any change in policy, foreign or domestic, will elude them.
Indeed, the electorate's understanding of the political and power structure seems very naive and until that changes {I think it is changing slowly and Bloglandia has a lot to do with that} which egotist is President matters little.
There is a very big and very difficult to steer International Ship of States heading for the shoals right now. Possibly there is a chance to correct course before the shipwreck. But I just don't feel all that confident looking at where the elected leaders of the world governments are headed, and of course with GWB in charge {nominally} of the "Free World" {that's archaic now, isn't it?} I am wearing my wetsuit all the time.

I would maintain that Nixon disgraced the office more. Bush has destroyed an entire society. Maybe two. A fairly awesome display of arrogance, racism and brutality. Nixon sold out for a handful of change. He didn't even appreciate the value of his office enough to ask for a decent bribe. Now that is shameful.

i think it would sound better if you made a poem out of it.

If there is some kind of poll going on, bad as Nixon was, the GWB years have put the man's talents in perspective. Clearly there is a difference between shameful {Nixon-Kissinger} and shameless {Cheney-Bush-Halliburton}. Yes, we are now in the era of Sin Verguenzas, de verdad.

Half-man half-chimp (but which half is which, no one knows) and all stupid!

Personally, I think it's chimpface.

Well stated Nez.

Very well spoken.

It seems strange to the utmost that the ruling classes act as if those observing them were actually blind -- perhaps as blind as they are. To have power but without the dignity that should cloak power (not that dignity per se means anything like morality) is to announce "all of you are either impotent or blind!"

President Bush? Oh, yeah. Rhymes with "spithead."

The hideous SCOWL on his face in the picture speaks volumes!