How much do you tip?

It costs about $5k to get from Baghdad airport to city center. This includes four well armed Western ex-military bodyguards and two cars. The passenger travels at an average of 100 mph with a “gun car” nearby to deal with hostiles. If you’re caught then Islamist militant groups will pay up to $300k for you.

Inspiring radical change

I saw a trailer for The Take before P.S.. It’s Naomi Klein so I expected a movie with a radical new take on globalization and megacorps. This seems like the latest escalation in leftist documentaries.

I’ve never seen a trailer beseech action of the audience in such strong terms. Phrases like “Stop Asking”, “Take on the System”, “Take Over the Machines”, “Take Out the Boss” and “Take Back Your Country” filled the screen. The next to last shot is a scene of the Argentinian police shooting into a crowd of protestors.

Worked up so sexual

Just got back from seeing TV on the Radio (TV’s blog) open up for The Faint. TV was solid, but not great. I hope the Young Liars EP doesn’t end up being their peak. On their opener they were channeling Mogwai with this distorted guitar that slowly built over the course of a few minutes. I was really surprised when they sampled themselves playing and started looping it. I’ve never heard anyone else use that technique for their kind of music.

Home on the range

This is a house in eastern Montana on a dirt road on the way between Pompey’s Pillar and the Little Bighorn battleground. One of the reasons that I travel is because I want to find a place that is home. I take lots of pictures of empty homes when I’m traveling. I’d never really thought about why. I think I take those pictures because I wonder if this home might be the one.

Change the rules, file a FOIA

Just who is worried about indecency on television, and what has brought on the FCC’s latest chilling effect on TV programming? A FOIA request about Fox’s $1.2 million fine uncovered three righteously indignant people with a Xerox.

State of the gnumatt

It took me about a week to get my bearings once I landed in Dallas. The near constant excitement of the previous month had settled in and given me a different way of being. I felt really lost and confused during my first week in Dallas.

Oddly, I finally felt normal again when I jumped in the car and took off for Austin to see 20x2 v4.5. Amanda was a great traveling companion down and back up.

"That's my mom's crack money."

Dallas has joined civilization. We now have a 24 hour Krystal. No news on the first five folks who won a year’s supply of the stuff.

Bush administration is pro-abortion

Abortions up under Bush after a decade of decline.

Eggheads vs. Rednecks

I’m dubious about the authenticity but it’s one more way to slice up the electorate. A list of state IQ / electoral vote correlation.

Post Mortem

I wrapped up the big trip on Halloween and then raced the next day, November 1st, to get to Dallas. When I think about my bus adventure I don’t really know what happened. I don’t have some road to Damascus revelation to share. Perhaps I could look at the trip in terms of the people I talked to. I met some nice people, one in particular that has me excited. Maybe if I catalog all the things I saw I’d begin to get my ahead around what happened.