ColbyCosh.com

Sorry I haven't been tending to the site very carefully, friends. I started having headaches right around the beginning of the month and the process ended with a trip to the emergency room and a few days of confinement and monitoring at the U of Alberta Hospital. I'm now home, well, and having my blood pressure managed; there aren't believed to be any lasting ill effects from my emergency. Aside from the lycanthropy, of course.

I wasn't surprised when they elected a black president, but I didn't think they would turn right around and elect a black Madonna so soon. Simultaneously releasing one album by yourself and another by your alter ego is such a Madonna-esque move that Madge is probably kicking herself for not thinking of it, although I suppose it is part of the point of Madonna that she is still Madonna no matter what kind of blasphemo-sodomite tomfoolery she gets up to.

I just like everything about this video. The double-dutch backbeat and the chainsaw synth sample appeal to the five-year-old in me. The 15-year-old approves of Beyoncé's R. Crumb/Modigliani look. The 25-year-old graduate student approves of the fluid, rhythmically complex vocal performance and is aware of the classic American allusions in the choreography; also, he, like the 15-year-old, wants 30 seconds with that ass so bad his palms itch. This is Girl Power exercised on a terrifying, Galactus-like scale; Britney and Christina and Gwen Stefani, for all their gifts at manipulating certain archetypes, must feel like rented pleasure skiffs watching a nuclear sub pull into the harbour.

Thoughts on the auto-industry crisis, which I could have sworn was some kind of problem with the mortgage market just a few weeks ago (anybody remember this?) but now occupies absolutely all of our attention thanks to the positively witchy PR powers of the auto workers (two words I cannot now hear back-to-back without being possessed by sheer murderousness, and I can't possibly be the only one).

Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?
And what has he been after that they groan and shake their fists?
And wherefore is he wearing such a conscience-stricken air?
Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair.

'Tis a shame to human nature, such a head of hair as his;
In the good old time 'twas hanging for the colour that it is;
Though hanging isn't bad enough and flaying would be fair
For the nameless and abominable colour of his hair.

Oh a deal of pains he's taken and a pretty price he's paid
To hide his poll or dye it of a mentionable shade;
But they've pulled the beggar's hat off for the world to see and stare,
And they're haling him to justice for the colour of his hair.

Now 'tis oakum for his fingers and the treadmill for his feet,
And the quarry-gang on Portland in the cold and in the heat,
And between his spells of labour in the time he has to spare
He can curse the God that made him for the colour of his hair.

-A.E. Housman, 1895

U.S. politicians' campaign promises to end dependence on foreign oil finally seemed to jump the shark with the latest presidential election; for some reason, the media finally felt free to take notice that every major-party candidate for the presidency makes a big deal of this every single time, yet nothing ever gets done about it. I heard some talk about how Carter and Nixon had made major campaign planks out of such concerns—but who was truly the first to emphasize it? Perhaps it was this scrappy little bantam?

Most people, even if they were old enough to remember the '68 campaign, would not be able to tell you that the Wallace campaign gave roughly equal time to school busing, inner-city violence, and foreign oil.

[þ: Cynical-C]

Why President Jimmy Carter is no longer welcome in a country he's substantially responsible for creating.

...to the Royal Bison craft fair today when I saw this in the parking lot of a gas station:

I'm afraid I couldn't take any other folk art too seriously after this beauty. You lose, everybody else.