The Chicks

Not ready to make nice.

Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting

I’m through with doubt
There’s nothing left for me to figure out
I’ve paid a price
And I’ll keep paying

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

I know you said
Can’t you just get over it
It turned my whole world around
And I kind of like it

I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don’t mind sayin’
It’s a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
And how in the world can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they’d write me a letter
Sayin’ that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

I’m not ready to make nice
I’m not ready to back down
I’m still mad as hell and
I don’t have time to go round and round and round
It’s too late to make it right
I probably wouldn’t if I could
‘Cause I’m mad as hell
Can’t bring myself to do what it is you think I should

Forgive, sounds good
Forget, I’m not sure I could
They say time heals everything
But I’m still waiting

You go, chicks.

The Chicks

Dear Mr. President

Pink with the Indigo Girls.

Just listen.

Dear Mr. President

At War With the Mystics

I had to post some lyrics from the Flaming Lips' new album. When you read them, you'll know why.

The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch
Would you do it?
If you could make everybody poor just so you could be rich
Would you do it?
If you could watch everybody work while you just lay on your back
Would you do it?
If you could take all the love without giving any back
Would you do it?
And so we cannot know ourselves or what we'd really do...

With all your power
With all your power
With all your power
What would you do?

Haven't Got a Clue
You haven't got a clue
And you don't know what to do
You used your money and your friends
To try and trick me...But you won't trick me

As far as I can tell
You've created your own hell
And now you walk around this place expecting pity

Every time you throw a fit I can't decide
If you're full of it
Every time you state your case
The more I want to punch your face
I go BBVVVDDTTT! BBVVVDDTTT!! BBVVVDDTTT!!!

Any guess who the mystics are? Any guess who the chief mystic is?

Thank you Flaming Lips for keeping me sane in a country gone mad.

At War With the Mystics

Cubs Win!

Ugly day for the pitchers and Adam Dunn, but I'll take it. Pierre, Walker, and Murton with 3 hits a piece. So much for the hand-wringing about Pierre's slow spring.

Let's keep that offense going on Wednesday and put it together with some decent pitching.

Cubs Win!

Why I Love Baseball

Couldn't have said it any better myself.

What I really miss is the feeling of having accomplished something after every afternoon spent with the kids, watching them throw, then practice their swings, and learn to watch the pitchers back foot for the pickoff move. Primary leads and secondary leads and hitting the cut-off man. Calling for the ball and, most importantly, putting it away with two hands. I miss warm afternoons and what a kids baseball field sounds like at dusk when everyone has been picked up and the bases have been stored and the equipment has been bagged and you can sit for a moment and listen and it doesn't sound like work or home and you just want to stay awhile and breathe it in.

And the quote from Giamatti's book "brings it home."

If you did not watch or play baseball, you could read about it. Newspapers grew with the sport, sports papers came into existence; sports writing flowered as baseball enriched the language and the language developed a vast subcontinent of circumlocutions, euphemisms, and new coinages for baseball. Vivid, opinionated, salty, redolent journalism matched the game. The reader found the boxscore; the boxscore provided the diamond in the mind, and more importantly gave statistics, data, arithmetic permutation, lore masquerading as quantifiable reality, history that the mind could encompass and retain. Baseball as scripture was born and developed. Then, as now, intellectuals could moralize about baseball; writers and poets could rhapsodize and mythologize; journalists could cover a story with a beginning, middle, and end, and a world full of colorful characters, nicknames only matched by mobsters, and communal significance. No one who wanted to be in was left out. As America opened her arms to the foreign born and healed the wounds of war, baseball embraced all classes, conditions, regions.

Why I Love Baseball

Play Ball!

5-4-3-2-Juan Pierre!

Play Ball!

Sunday Papers

I've been busy, not without angst, just busy. Maybe filled with additional angst because of my lack of posting.

And it's going to get busier, but thought I'd point out a few things I read today:

1. Great article by Kevin Phillips about how the GOP has turned into America's first religious party, while keeping the oil interests and Wall Street happy. Prepare to be depressed. He also has a book out I want to find time to read.

We have had small-scale theocracies in North America before -- in Puritan New England and later in Mormon Utah. Today, a leading power such as the United States approaches theocracy when it meets the conditions currently on display: an elected leader who believes himself to speak for the Almighty, a ruling political party that represents religious true believers, the certainty of many Republican voters that government should be guided by religion and, on top of it all, a White House that adopts agendas seemingly animated by biblical worldviews.

[...]

The potential interaction between the end-times electorate, inept pursuit of Persian Gulf oil, Washington's multiple deceptions and the financial crisis that could follow a substantial liquidation by foreign holders of U.S. bonds is the stuff of nightmares. To watch U.S. voters enable such policies -- the GOP coalition is unlikely to turn back -- is depressing to someone who spent many years researching, watching and cheering those grass roots.

2. The Moz has a new album out this week. So do the Lollapalooza-headlining Flaming Lips. To say I'm anxiously anticipating these releases would be an understatement, especially looking forward to the political undertones/commentary of the Lips' new release.

3. Lastly, an article about The Raconteurs, which makes me even more anxious for their new album. Absolutely love that first single.

That's it for now. Hopefully more later, as time permits.

An afterthought: Less than 12 hours to opening day for the Cubs. I have no idea what to expect from them this year, but I know can't wait to see Juan Pierre batting lead off and playing center field

Sunday Papers