Still keeping it slow around these parts while the Repatriation Roadtrip is underway (today- Indianapolis to some stretch of I-40 between Memphis and Little Rock), but I figure I ought to make a quick announcement.

Starting Tuesday, on TROUBL.ORG, I’ll be writing Down and Distance, a weekly column on America’s two current favorite contemporary sports- NFL football and Presidential politics. It should be the only football column where you can read about the failures of Friedmanite economics and enjoy references to both Nick Cave and Lupe Fiasco.

Check out the site in the meantime- I’m proud to be a part of it.

I never really gave a fuck about Metallica, even when I was fifteen and they were supposed to be my favorite band. I liked Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson instead. And if Metallica doesn’t do it for you at fifteen, they probably aren’t gonna rock your world at twenty-eight. Still, Rick Rubin produced their new one, and he’s pretty much the most interesting man in rock and roll. Anybody who can walk into a studio with Neil Diamond, Jay-Z, the Dixie Chicks, and Johnny Cash and get them all to turn in transformative performances that redefine their legend is worth listening to, and what he does with Metallica has to be either strange and compelling or maybe just laughably bad. Let’s find out!

1:24. Is that James Hetfield? Huh, I guess this is what his singing voice sounds like. Is he using a vocoder? Maybe it’s some kid from an emo band doing a guest spot.

1:55. Oh, hey, it is James Hetfield. This is a decent hook, I guess, but Metallica’s never really been hard up for those. It’s kinda funny, especially if kids in Metallica t-shirts who thought they were tough gave you shit when you were a teenager, but their main appeal, even to people who would fervently deny it, is as a pop band. They’re good at writing pop hooks, which is why they’re a $100 million dollar a year business enterprise and Dave Mustaine works at a Taco Bell in Riverside, California, when he’s not on tour.

2:29. Aw, the sunshine never comes. Note to James Hetfield: even if you’re singing about how you live in a dark world with no light or joy, when you invoke the word “sunshine”, you’re now singing a song about sunshine, which makes you more John Denver than Diamondhead.

3:04. Seriously, I’m willing to bet this is a vocoder. A quick Google of “The Day That Never Comes” and “vocoder” offers no relevant results, but is it possible that a human being’s singing voice actually sounds like that?

4:09. Well, at least it’s changing up now. And we’re only halfway through? I’ll admit it, I’m intrigued. Maybe not compelled, but it’s better than St Anger. Of course, the Kali’s Teeth Bracelet I saw at the Wellcome Center last week is better than St Anger.

4:21. “Love is a four-letter word / here in this prison”. Yow. I guess James Hetfield is still writing his own lyrics. Did you know that Rick Rubin still makes Anthony Keidis re-write his lyrics when he produces the Red Hot Chili Peppers? I guess he’s known those dudes since they were kids and has no qualms about telling him that he sounds like a jackass when he brings something stupid into the studio. Apparently he doesn’t feel the same way about James Hetfield.

5:41. Two guitar solos and counting!

6:28. Three! Go, Kirk, go! Also, how is it that I have never owned a Metallica record in my whole life and yet I know the name of every member, including Cliff Burton who died when I was like eight? Where does information like this come from?

7:45. Big messy finish. Huh. It’s really not a bad song, which is weird. I’m kind of disappointed, actually. Metallica are pretty much the most satisfying band in the world to hate. It’s fun to hate on U2, too, because, like, Bono. Oh, Bono, you big douche, go off and try to save the world again, why don’t you? But at least he’s, you know, trying to save the world. Metallica rise up and fight battles that benefit exactly nobody but Metallica- whether it’s the Napster thing or suing journalists for writing about an album they were invited to listen to, they’re remarkably skilled at making you hope that they fail in everything they attempt. And for the last few albums, you got it. Oh, did you. But now, with Rick Rubin? They don’t really suck. I don’t know what to call this feeling.

Well, there’s probably dumber, but this is definitely the most embarrassing thing I’ve read all week. Here’s noted retard Glenn Beck trying to explain why taxing rich people is bad, using a straw-man “liberal whiner” and attempting to refute it with an NFL metaphor:

‘I’m just talking about leveling the playing field, to give everyone an equal chance’…

So am I. In fact, next, we’ll take on the NFL. How many Super Bowls have the New England Patriots won? Too many, that’s for sure. They don’t NEED all of those Super Bowl championships. We need to level the playing field. The NFL needs to take Patriot QB, Tom Brady, and give him to the Houston, Texans, who’ve NEVER been to a Super Bowl. We’ll also take Randy Moss, Laurence Mulroney and Ted Bruschi from the Patriots, and put them on the Texans, too. And because all the Patriots games are sold out, we’ll take 52% of their gate revenue, and just keep it at NFL headquarters to help build League parity in years to come.

Why’s this the dumbest thing ever?

Because the NFL does do that. That’s what the salary cap is about- it’s a way to redistribute talent throughout the league in order to level the playing field. The teams do share profits, in order to keep a team in Buffalo or Green Bay competitive with a team funded by someone like Dan Snyder. If you look at the NFL’s structure with profit-redistribution and salary-capping (meant to keep any team from having too many megastars at a time and ensure parity), you’ll find that it’s actually rooted in the exact principles that Glenn Beck is making fun of here. Which is extra funny, given that it’s the most successful and popular professional sports organization in America. It takes in a billion dollars more a year than Major League Baseball, which is famously free-market in its approach.

Or was he being sincere? He pretty much described how the league works, with the salary cap functioning to do the exact thing he talks about. And his 52% figure is actually low- the league takes 80% of each team’s revenue (including merchandising and TV, not just what they get at the gate) for redistribution. It’s a remarkably successful business model that’s seen the league continue to grow at an unprecedented rate. The NFL’s “Marxist principles” have done wonders for the league as a $7 billion a year industry.

So what the hell is his point? All I’m getting from it is that, if we look at the NFL model, revenue-sharing and wealth redistribution is a fantastic idea to bring in massive growth! Viva Che Beck!

So Rahm Emmanuel and Lindsay Graham have worked out the details with the CPD on the Presidential Debates. The news isn’t particularly surprising- same format as ‘04 and ‘00, for the most part, with three debates between McCain and Obama and one between the VPs, which sounds like a silly undercard but which is where the better drama tends to come from (remember Dick Cheney’s Liston vs. Patterson performance in 2004, where poor John Edwards was so staggered that he couldn’t even come up with the line, ‘yeah, we totally did’ when Cheney said, ‘I’ve never even met you before’ in response to a question about Edwards’ Senate attendance)…

Anyway, getting lost on tangents. The other rule for the debates is that the only third-party candidates who are eligible are those who meet the following criteria:

1. Presidential eligibility. Must be a natural-born citizen, 35 years of age, etc.

2. Must be on the ballot in enough states to actually win the Presidency with 270 electoral votes.

3. Must be polling at 15% nationally by five polls selected by the CPD at an arbitrary date.

Well, it’s hard to argue with 1 and 2, but man, doesn’t the third point seem like a deliberate fuck-you to any possibility of opening the debates to anyone besides a Republican or a Democrat? Which actually is important.

There’s a lot of gloating on the lefty blogs about this- probably not so much on the right, because most of those people secretly wish Bob Barr were the Republican nominee and anyway they don’t resent third parties the way that Democrats do. But it’s really disappointing to see, like, main-pagers on Kos snark about “looks like you’ll be watching from home!” to Nader and McKinney. Not because I want people to necessarily vote for Ralph Nader or Cynthia McKinney. I’m not going to, and if the contest were a straight-up head-to-head between an evenly-polling Nader and Obama, I’d still be casting my vote with the Democrat in this one, for several reasons. And it’s not even about, like, “breaking the two-party monopoly!” that the Ron Paul and Ralph Nader professional dissatisfieds get all hot about. The American system of government wouldn’t work with multiple parties because of the nature of our legislature (and, if it did happen, you can be damn sure that you’d see a jesus wants women to shut up and make babies part or a get rid of the darkies party long before you saw a progressive party gain any significant influence), and a better, more progressive Democratic party is certainly a more realistic goal than a new brand capturing the hearts and minds of the American voting public.

All that said, having a strong progressive voice in the debate means that Obama can’t run to the center quite so quickly or easily. As frustrating as it was to see Clinton hang around in the primary when Obama had all but mathematically eliminated her from consideration, the fact that we had a Democratic primary that ran from January into the summer is a big part of what kept him honest. A challenger from the left keeps Obama honest (just as, presumably, Barr’s presence would keep McCain from trying to pander to moderates). Do you think he’d have really voted for FISA during the primary?

I understand the need to keep, like, Lyndon LaRouche and the Prohibition Party guy out of the debates, in the name of seriousness. You don’t want completely out-of-touch weirdos up there on stage insisting on free pancakes for every American, or replacing our army with laser-eyed robo-soldiers, or promising to pay for Social Security by auctioning off sponsorship rights to paint the White House like a race car or something. But really, isn’t the ballot-access requirement enough? If a candidate has enough of an organization and enough support behind him or her to get on the ballot in 23-28 populous states, then clearly they’re not actually on the fringe, unless you define the fringe in terms that limit the debate to just how much illegal wiretapping the candidates are cool with, or the exact amount of offshore drilling we want to open up to oil companies (that are going to sell it in China and India anyway)… And that’s not a cause that the Kos-types, or the rest of the people on my side who hate Ralph Nader so much that anything that fucks with him is seen as a victory, should be down with. Arbitrarily setting the bar to ghettoize people with views outside the relatively narrow spectrum that Obama and McCain occupy on a number of issues as “outside the mainstream” means that the things that you wish Obama were more progressive about get categorized as fringe, too.

Why would you gloat about that?

With today being my last day in England, I have to admit that my greatest disappointment with my time over here is the fact that Queen Elizabeth didn’t die while I was living in the country.

Not because I wish the lady ill, or the grief upon her family. She’s actually pretty admirable, as far as royalty goes- how many other 82 year old female former auto mechanics are currently serving as head of state? I’m not asking for her to, like, get shot or chased down by paparazzi in a tunnel or whatever, and I wasn’t hoping it’d happen to Prince Charles or one of the young’uns. I wasn’t rooting for- was it William or Harry who went to Afghanistan?- at any rate, I didn’t want a tragic death. But it’d have been kinda neat to see how the country reacted to the (peaceful, natural) death of the queen. But alas, that’s one dream that dies so that she may live.

I hope it’s worth it, lady.

Because we all love Lost, but can struggle to find the 22 hours required to re-watch an entire season after we know where all of the plot twists are going to come in, clearly we’ve all been seeking the ideal medium for enjoying an entire season’s events in roughly an hour. But which medium is appropriate? Which medium?

Well, obviously, it’s indie rock. Because the Flaming Lips may sing about robots and wizards and Superman, but even they aren’t quite nerdy enough to pen songs with titles like “Be My Constant” or “The Ballad of Sayid Jarrah”. Brooklyn’s Previously On Lost has taken up the slack, complete with nasally vocals and a coke-fueled rhythm track. If you’re a Lost fan who’s secretly lamented the fact that you couldn’t dance to “There’s No Place Like Home, Part I”, I hope that this provides you with what you never even knew you were missing.

Also, maybe y’all have seen it before, but the (severely missed) Mike Wieringo posted a series of Lost-themed sketches on his DeviantArt page in 2006 that I just found. They’re great, and now this post’s a two-fer.

(cross-posted to mightygodking.com)

Things’ll be a little slow around here for the next week or two, probably, as moving back to America becomes priority number one. Just to give you a head’s up.

Also, one from the “moving is complicated” file: When we moved here, we bought a big 26″ widescreen CRT television off of Gumtree, the UK equivalent to Craigslist (well, there’s Craigslist here, too, but you can watch the tumbleweeds blow around if you try to actually use it for much of anything- which means, incidentally, that I’ve gotten about 75% of the jobs I’ve applied for that were listed there, as there’s almost no competition- just a tip for expat job-hunters). Anyway, we paid £100 for the TV and expected that we’d maybe be able to get £70 for it by the time we left, but holy cow, has that thing depreciated. I’ve been re-listing it on Gumtree every day, dropping the price £10 each time. It’s down to £40 right now and I’ve finally gotten a couple of nibbles. By tomorrow I’m just going to advertise that it’s free if you answer five Chicago Bears trivia questions.

But that’s all the drama, which isn’t so bad. Tomorrow is our last day in London, and we fly out of Heathrow for O’Hare at 10:30am on Saturday, in advance of a ten day road trip USA leading back to Texas. Like I said, things’ll probably be spotty in the meantime, but hang around anyway, will you?

I know that when a leasing company describes an apartment in Austin as a “flat”, they’re trying to conjure up an image of European sophistication, but boy howdy, does that word have a different connotation when you’ve spent a year holed up in tiny European boxes. A flat is an itty-bitty space you overpay for. That’s what the word means. Look it up.

So ads like this immediately remind me that 90% of real estate advertising is spin or lies. Any time you try to conjure up certain images for a renter or buyer, you’re doing it because the reality of the situation is probably crappy (it’s not helped by the fact that it refers to an airport that opened almost a decade ago as “new”, or that it tries to sell itself on location by reminding readers that it’s by the airport, which usually means that you’re out in the middle of nowhere).

Meanwhile, something like $575 / 2br - Cheap House in East Austin (12th St near Chestnut) is right to the point and makes me click on the ad immediately. I know exactly where it is, I know that the owner is aware that the price is cheap, and there’s little guesswork involved. It’ll be taken or left behind on its own merits. I won’t get there and have my bubble burst because I expected a cottage and found myself in a sprawling apartment complex. Now, granted, the 12th & Chicon area of Austin, which is just west of this house, is pretty much the only neighborhood in Austin I’d call bad, but hell- I haven’t been there in a year, and who knows what it’s like with the gentrification waves washing over the east side? But even so, they didn’t try to dress it up as “downtown” or “near east” or anything. It’s an address and a description.

And this is important because Craigslist, especially in Austin, is full of apartment locator and leasing company spam. If you clicked on every headline that sounded promising, you’d be online for hours and hours, looking at the same properties everyone has access to, and never finding what you want. That is no fun.

The thing is, your audience is smart enough to know that most of what they’re going to see is meant to deceive them. Ambiguity doesn’t entice us, it just reminds us that you’re probably lying.

“South Central” is a little bit useful as a descriptor, but people have different definitions of terms like that, and I’ve seen “central” used to describe any property in Austin that isn’t directly east or west, even if it’s nine miles from downtown. I’ll always click on an ad that lists an address, even if I don’t know the street names, because I can figure out where it really is that way, instead of having to guess that maybe the person who posted it was actually being honest.

Of course, when you list a property with the address, you should probably be sure that you’re not totally wrong about what that address is. Claiming that you have a duplex on 18th and Lavaca in Austin means that the other half is either a condo tower or a Mexican restaurant. Which probably means that the ad is bait-and-switch… “Oh, it was great, but it just rented. Let me show you what else we’ve got…”

Mostly you just have to be aware that your audience is reading dozens, if not hundreds, of ads while they’re looking for what they want, and so being ambiguous and non-specific makes it impossible to distinguish what you’ve got from what anyone else has. And even if it does entice people to give you a call, there’s no point to getting a bunch of responses from people who aren’t going to be interested once they actually see it. The more you give a person from the ad, the more likely they are to go in pretty sure that they already want your place.