Arcade Fire, "No Cars Go"

I Luv It

By Young Jeezy

Ride till I die
Lord knows I stay high
and I love it,
and I love it


We count hundreds on the table, twentys on the floor
Fresh outta work and on the way with some more
And I love it (yeah!), and I love it
I got gangstas in the crowd, bad bitches at my show
Yeah its parked outside, and its sittin on fo's
And I love it (yeah!), and I love it

Once again it's on, I'm back in the mu'fuckin booth
These niggas still lying, I'm the mu'fuckin truth
I don't believe em, I need to see mu'fuckin proof
I ain't want the four door, I copped the mu'fuckin coupe
They tryin be me, I'm just tryin be G
And everything comes to da light you'll see
These niggas in the dark baby I just shine
I do it from the heart homie they just rhyme
Check your watch, nigga it's my time
Mind made up I was on my grind
So pay attention yea you on my time
In that case time waits for no man
Do it again I done that before man
M.O.E., you ain't part of the program
Or maybe you niggaz ain't listening
Open your eyes I'm a blessing in disguise

We count hundreds on the table, twentys on the floor
Fresh outta work and on the way with some more
And I love it (yeah!), and I love it
I got gangstas in the crowd, bad bitches at my show
Yeah its parked outside, and its sittin on fo's
And I love it (yeah!), and I love it

Yea I blew up, but they ain't like that
They switched up on me, and I ain't like that
Sold my first brick, yea, I came right back
Fast forward the tape, nigga look at me now
And I never turn back, so motherfuck that
Nike's on the ground got my head to the sky
Smoked all day, Lord knows I stay high
Stay on top, Lord knows I'm gon' try
And live for the moment, Lord knows I'm gon' die
And when I get to hell, Lord knows I'm gon' fry
Woke up this morning so I'm still alive
36 O's I sold them all for five

We count hundreds on the table, twentys on the floor
Fresh outta work and on the way with some more
And I love it (yeah!), and I love it
I got gangstas in the crowd, bad bitches at my show
Yeah its parked outside, and its sittin on fo's
And I love it (yeah!), and I love it

Been around the world, it's the same ol' caine
Been around the world, it's the same ol' thang
All the real niggaz either dead or in jail
And if you're looking for me homie, I'm in the A-T-L
You gotta play it how it go, you can't cheat on life
Ya better drink a Red Bull, you can't sleep on life
I ain't tryna do you, I'm tryin' do me
Last album did two, I'm just tryin' do three
Fresh out the pot yea the work was hard
Ride with the top down so I'm closer to God
My P.O. telling me I need a 9 to 5
But I already got a job, and that's stayin alive

We count hundreds on the table, twentys on the floor
Fresh outta work and on the way with some more
And I love it (yeah!), and I love it
I got gangstas in the crowd, bad bitches at my show
Yeah its parked outside, and its sittin on fo's
And I love it (yeah!), and I love it

"Waiting for a Train"

All around the water tank, waiting for a train
A thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain
I walked up to a brakeman just to give him a line of talk
He said "If you got money, boy, I'll see that you don't walk
I haven't got a nickel, not a penny can I show
"Get off, get off, you railroad bum" and slammed the boxcar door

He put me off in Texas, a state I dearly love
The wide open spaces all around me, the moon and the stars up above
Nobody seems to want me, or lend me a helping hand
I'm on my way from Frisco, going back to Dixieland
My pocket book is empty and my heart is full of pain
I'm a thousand miles away from home just waiting for a train

Originally by Jimmie Rogers

Obama decries rash of divisive campaigning

Johanna Neuman, Los Angeles Times

Sunday, March 16, 2008

(03-16) 04:00 PDT Washington - --

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama on Saturday lamented the rhetorical skirmishes that have recently turned the Democratic presidential campaign into a contest over race and gender.

"The forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again," he said at a town hall meeting in a high school in Plainfield, Ind.

Obama did not mention by name his rival, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, or the recent string of barbs traded between the two campaigns. "I'm not here to cast blame or point fingers," he said.

In the last week alone, Obama distanced himself from his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, for saying Clinton, being a woman of privilege in a country run by whites, could never understand blacks. During the same week, Clinton accepted the resignation from her finance committee of former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro of New York after Ferraro said that she believed Obama would never had gotten this far in the presidential race if he had not been black.

"We've got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country," Obama said, noting "pent-up anger and mistrust and bitterness." But, he added, "I continue to believe that this country wants to move beyond these kinds of things."

Noting his own ethnic background - his mother was white and his father black - Obama said: "As somebody who was born into a diverse family, as somebody who has little pieces of America all in me, I will not allow us to lose this moment."

As the crowd came to its feet shouting, "Yes we can, yes we can," Obama said it is important to speak up against inflammatory words like those of his former pastor, but equally important to come together.

"It is within our power to join together, to truly make a United States of America," he said. "That's the only way that we're going to deliver on the big issues we're facing in this country. We cannot solve health care divided. We cannot create an economy that works for everybody divided. We cannot fight terrorism divided. We cannot care for our veterans divided. We have to come together."

Obama spoke in Indiana as he directed his political attention to states beyond the critical April 22 Pennsylvania primary. Indiana and North Carolina have primaries on May 6, two weeks after Pennsylvania's on April 22.

Dedicated to Brandon Biebel

Gross Domestic Product

GDP = consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)
or
GDP = C + I + G + (X-M)

Each of the variables C, I, G and XM (where GDP = C + I + G + (X-M) as above)

• C is private consumption in the economy. This includes most personal expenditures of households such as food, rent, medical expenses and so on but does not include new housing.
• I is defined as investments by business or households in capital. Examples of investment by a business include construction of a new mine, purchase of software, or purchase of machinery and equipment for a factory. Spending by households on new houses is also included in Investment. In contrast to its colloquial meaning, 'Investment' in GDP does not mean purchases of financial products. Buying financial products is classed as 'saving', as opposed to investment. The distinction is (in theory) clear: if money is converted into goods or services, it is investment; but, if you buy a bond or a share of stock, this transfer payment is excluded from the GDP sum. Although such purchases would be called investments in normal speech, from the total-economy point of view, this is simply swapping of deeds, and not part of real production or the GDP formula.
• G is the sum of government expenditures on final goods and services. It includes salaries of public servants, purchase of weapons for the military, and any investment expenditure by a government. It does not include any transfer payments, such as social security or unemployment benefits.
• X is gross exports. GDP captures the amount a country produces, including goods and services produced for other nations' consumption, therefore exports are added.
• M is gross imports. Imports are subtracted since imported goods will be included in the terms G, I, or C, and must be deducted to avoid counting foreign supply as domestic.

taken from Wikipedia.com

I wrote up an article for a local newspaper yesterday on a school's grand opening ceremony. Nancy Pelosi and Gavin Newsom among other political hotshots were in attendance. I'm quickly learning how hard it is to shoot photos and take notes at the same time. Check out a picture I took.

I saw Eric Drooker do a multimedia lecture last night. It was inspiring. Apparently he has been living in San Francisco for some time now. I never knew. Check out some of his work below.

"Fuck You (An Ode To No One)"

by Billy Corgan

I'm never coming back
I'm never giving in
I'll never be the shine in your spit

I disconnect the act
I disconnect the dots
I disconnect the me in me

And you're mistaken
It's you that's faking
Living and breathing and dying too

This message is for anyone who dares to hear a fool

You can't bring me back
you can't bring me back
Cause I give it all back to you

Thru sacred alleys, the living wrecks
Wreak their havoc upon this world
The disenchanted, the romantics
The body and face and soul of you is gone down that deep black hole

Destroy the mind
destroy the body
but you cannot destroy the heart

Destroy the mind
destroy the body
but you cannot destroy the heart

And you, you make me
so I need to disconnect
And you make it so real
I don't need your love to disconnect

To runaround kids in get-go cars
With vaseline afterbirths and neon coughs
Galaxies full of nobodies
Giving us the farewell runarounds
I took a virgin mary axe to his sweet baby jane
lost my innocence to a no good girl
scratch my face with anvil hands
and coil my tongue around a bumblebee mouth

And I give it all back to you
And I give it all back to you
And I give it all back to you
for you

No way, I don't need it
I don't need your love to disconnect
And you make it, so real
I don't need your love to disconnect

No way to disconnect
And you make it so real
I don't need your love to disconnect
No way to disconnect

I'm Dead

by Taylor Whitehouse

David Roy McClymonds, a student and freelance writer for local music and skateboard magazines, has died.

The adventuresome, punk rock enthusiast collided with a bus yesterday while skateboarding down a large hill. He was 24 years old.

He was a journalism major at San Francisco State, and did freelance work for Paying and Pain, Low Card and Maximum Rock and Roll. The last of which is well-known to Bay Area punk rockers and musicians.

McClymonds traveled through Europe, and played in punk bands in Spain and Switzerland.

He was once a member of an infamous local band, Dreadknox, which was banned from half of the venues in Sacramento.

He spent a lot of time at rock shows in San Francisco, and moved from Sacramento to the Mission District three years ago.

“I am attracted to the fact that it is a very international city,” McClymonds said in an interview shortly before his death.

When asked why he attended fewer punk rock shows, he spoke of how his interests had shifted with age.

“I don’t have enough angst for punk shows anymore,” he said with a smile. “I expanded and started listening to a lot of other music, and got into other things.”

He also enjoyed cooking, culture and the arts.

His parents, Roy McClymonds and Kimberly Williams, moved to Redlands, Calif. shortly after David’s birth. The family moved to Sacramento when David was three.

McClymonds was born at a hospital in the middle of a corn field in Central Ill. And his grandmother always told him that he was a vegetarian because of this.

"Needy Girl"

by Chromeo

Big Brother Gets Stonger

Denise Lavoie, Associated Press
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

As a foreign traveler, Punit Pawar is accustomed to the security when he flies into the United States, so he hardly took notice Tuesday when he was asked to put his 10 fingers on a digital scanner as part of an enhanced security system being rolled out at airports across the country.

"It didn't take much of my time, so it didn't bother me," said Pawar, a citizen of India and a student at Boston's Northeastern University. "I'm OK with it, if this is what they need to do for security."

Since 2004, nonresidents traveling internationally have been required to allow airport personnel to scan their two index fingers at airports as part of a program called United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT). But now, foreign travelers will be asked to scan all 10 fingers, an enhancement the U.S. Department of Homeland Security hopes will help officials more closely monitor watch lists of terrorist suspects, criminals and immigration law violators.

Boston's Logan International Airport, where two of the passenger planes involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks took off, became the third airport to use 10-finger scanners last week. Dulles International Airport, serving Washington, D.C., began using the devices in November; Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport began using the new system this month.

Seven other airports are scheduled to start using the new system by the end of February, including Chicago O'Hare, San Francisco, Houston, Miami, Detroit, Orlando and New York's Kennedy.

By the end of the year, the devices are expected to be running in all the nation's international airports, as well as seaports and border points.

Robert Mocny, director of the US-VISIT program, said the new device scans fingerprints from travelers and within a matter of seconds matches them against more than 3.2 million fingerprints of people in FBI and Department of Defense databases. Mocny said going from two fingerprints to 10 improves matching accuracy and reduces the number of false matches.

"By having this additional data, the machine will be able to say with more certainty that this is the person, this is a match," Mocny said after officials used the new scanners on international travelers arriving at Logan Tuesday.

"I Have a Dream"

August 28, 1963

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves, who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must ever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, "When will you be satisfied?" We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecutions and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends. And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right down in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith that I will go back to the South with. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. And this will be the day, this will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with new meaning, "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring!" And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so let freedom ring -- from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring -- from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring -- from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring -- from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring -- from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that.

Let freedom ring -- from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring -- from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring -- from every hill and molehill of Mississippi,
from every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,

"Free at last, free at last.

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."