i know this might sound crazy, but i'm going on vacation(which is what
we in the americas call 'holiday').
and, to compound the crazy, i'm not bringing my laptop.
so this will be my last blog(i still hate that word)entry for a while.
i think i'll be back around september 4th or 5th, so i'll talk to you then.
have a nice 10 or so days!
-moby
hi,
i just got back from the moveon/acorn event at crobar.
it was good.
the roots and i performed. julia stiles and rosie perez read from 'it takes a nation'.
money was raised.
all in all it was good.
i know it sounds simple, but i really love being able to play music.
making music is my job, but it's also my favorite thing about being alive.
that's all.
i know it's simple, but it's true.
thanks to everyone who came out tonight.
hopefully you all enjoyed yourselves while supporting a good cause and organization.
thanks
moby
when asked about the war in iraq many pro-war republicans will say, 'but we removed saddam hussein from power. would you rather iraq be run by a man who tortures and kills his own people?'
many things to be said about this:
1-in the run-up to the war removing saddam from power was never mentioned by the bush administration as a reason to invade iraq. bush, cheney, wolfowitz, rumsfeld, etc, only justified the war by saying that iraq had wmd's and were flouting u.n resolutions.
we now know that:
a-iraq had no wmd's(even bush and co. have admitted this. president bush even joked about this by looking for wmd's under his desk).
b-the administration knew beforehand that iraq didn't have wmd's. all un-tampered pre-war intelligence said that iraq had no wmd's.
2-there are many countries currently suffering under the yoke of repressive dictators, but yet we would never wage war on a sovereign nation because we didn't like the way a dictator was running his country. war is waged when a sovereign nation violates the sovereignity of another sovereign state.
3-the u.s has in the past actively supported dictators(including saddam hussein, don't forget that in the mid 80's when saddam was gassing the kurds donald rumsfeld said, 'saddam's a guy we can do business with in the middle east'. just google 'donald rumsfeld shaking hands with saddam hussein' and you'll get great video of rumsfeld enthusiastically greeting saddam. this was roughly the same time that saddam was gassing the kurds)who've killed and brutalized their own people. panama, chile, el salvador, iran, nicaragua, sub-saharan africa, the list goes on and on. it's worth remembering that most of our 'enemies'(sadddam, the taliban, noriega, etc)were former allies who we helped to install in power. fun fact: the training base where al qaeda trained in afghanistan was originally set up and funded by the cia during the cold war.
4-saddam was awful. but the sad truth is that iraq was a more stable and civilized place under his leadership than it is now. and far fewer civilians were killed by saddam's brutal regime than have been killed during the iraq war.
so please don't try to justify the war in iraq by saying 'we got rid of saddam'.
to recap:
getting rid of saddam was not the reason the war was begun, saddam used to be our friend + ally, it's illegal to wage war because you don't like a dictator, when saddam was at his most brutal he was being supported and funded by the u.s, and iraq post-saddam is a disaster that will eventually become an all out civil war that will only be resolved by partition into kurdish, sunni, and shi'ite states.
saying 'the war in iraq was justified cos we got rid of saddam' is ignorance and foolishness of the highest order, showing a complete ignorance of international law, u.s history, and the stated objectives of the bush administration before the war.
the wisest and most noble thing that could be done at this point would be to enforce a partition(which, believe me, would be incredibly difficult) and bring our troops home.
-moby
i recently learned from my friends at the humane society of the united states (hsus) that ben & jerry's is misleading the public about its opposition to factory farms. despite the company's claims about social responsibility, it buys millions of eggs each year from birds confined in battery cages. these animals can barely move for their entire lives; it truly is unimagineable how much suffering they endure.
ben & jerry's takes out ads claiming it opposes factory farms, yet it supports one of the most notorious factory farming practices. please call ben & jerry's and ask that it stop using battery cage eggs in its ice cream: 802-846-1500.
for more info: http://www.hsus.org/farm/news/ournews/ben_jerrys_scoop_of_lies.html
thanks,
moby
today there was a press conference where president bush was asked questions about the middle east.
in a moment of candor the president was asked by a reporter what Iraq had to do with 9/11.
Bush replied, "Nothing".
i'm just putting this out there for our republican friends who occasionally read my blog.
just a reminder:
7,000 u.s troops killed or seriously wounded.
$1,000,000,000.00 a week to keep the military in iraq.
a cost of almost a trillion dollars so far.
no end in sight.
sectarian violence increasing, civil war on the horizon.
the middle east is less stable than it's ever been.
our allies are all against us on iraq.
no wmd's were ever found.
70% of americans now think that the war was a terrible idea.
dear republicans, it's time to put aside your partisan loyalty and admit
that the war in iraq is an unmitigated disaster.
most thoughtful republicans(george will, thomas friedman, william buckley, etc)have
come out and said that the war is a disaster, that it never should have been started, and that it
needs to be ended asap.
thanks
moby
some of you, like me, are vegetarians or vegans.
so some of you have had the experience of eating vegetarian or vegan food that is needlessly bad.
like on an airplane.
or at a charity event.
or a restaurant that doesn't really understand vegetarian/vegan.
but the truth is that you almost have to go out of your way to make egregiously bad vegan food.
why not rice and beans?
simple, right?
ingredients: rice. beans. salsa.
everyone loves that.
maybe even throw in some tortilla chips to make it fancy.
spaghetti.
ingredients: spaghetti. tomato sauce.
it's so easy.
so why can't airlines and catering places just err on the side of vegan simplicity?
or microwaved vegan burritos for airplanes?
have you had those amy's vegan burritos?
they're fantastic.
and simple. a developmentally disabled monkey could make a microwaved burrito.
let's establish some rules for institutional food preparation, ok?
1-most steamed vegetables are disgusting. exceptions being: lightly steamed broccoli and kale, and maybe carrots. that's it. and vegetables should never be steamed for more than 120 seconds. otherwise they end up soggy. and soggy steamed vegetables are the universe's way of crying inconsolably.
2-keep it simple. spaghetti and tomato sauce. microwaved burritos. rice and beans. salad.
3-cookies. vegan cookies are great. you can't go wrong with a vegan cookie. even a bad vegan cookie's pretty good.
i guess that's it. now when/if you're confronted with a crappy meal of:
undercooked white rice
oversteamed vegetables
deep fried toilet paper
etc
you can say to the food server/preparer/etc 'perhaps you didn't read the rules for institutional vegan food preparation?'
you can say that. they'll appreciate it. well, they won't. but you can still say it.
ok, time to go back in the studio and end this procrastiblogging.
-moby
for some reason it didn't get a lot of publicity, but after hurricane katrina moveon.org
launched a program called 'hurrican housing'. it was amazingly successful, and within a few weeks they were able to provide housing for over 30,000 families.
now moveon are putting out a book that's documented this program, and they're
having a party next thursday at crobar in nyc to commemorate it.
i'll be playing a few songs along with the roots, and julia stiles will be hosting the event.
here's the info:
-moby
What: MoveOn.org Civic Action & ColorOfChange.org present: We Will Not Forget Katrina: A Special Event to Commemorate Hurricane Katrina
When: Thursday, August 24th. 7pm to 9pm. Doors open at 6:30pm.
Where: Crobar, 530 W. 28th St. New York, NY 10001, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues.
ALL TICKETS INCLUDE OPEN BAR FROM 7PM - 10PM
Click here to order tickets:
https://civic.moveon.org/donatec4/crobar.html?id=-890056-awrmQeVnJW3T7F8...
republican senator allen, from virginia, was recently caught on tape calling the cameraman, who is of indian descent, 'macaca', and saying 'welcome to america'.
senator allen, who is up for re-election in november, was in a rural part of virginia where 'macaca' means 'monkey'.
ew, gross.
what the hell is wrong with these people?
did he not think that there was tape in the camera?
he was addressing 100 or so white, rural farmers and he refers to the only person of color
there as a monkey?
was he so caught up in his campaign speech that he forgot to not be a racist?
here's the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G7gq7GQ71c
-moby
washington d.c is only 2 1/2 hours from nyc on the train.
that's close, especially now that we measure distance in travel time.
no one ever says, 'oh, that's _____ miles from here', instead they say, 'oh, that's
2 hours from here'.
and so on.
and it's qualitative/quantitative distance/travel-time.
2 1/2 hours on the train is nice. 2 1/2 hours stuck in traffic on i-95 is awful.
although the drive to d.c from nyc is about 5 hours.
which blows.
i was in d.c for the animal rights 2006 conference. i was given an award.
which is nice.
but i'm just a diletante(even if i can't spell 'diletante'. the double consonants always screw me up), and the awards really should go to the people who work on animal rights day in and day out.
one thing i've learned from my time in the animal rights community...animal rights activists
like to stay up late.
i'm tired today.
i like d.c.
it's a swamp, and once the ice-caps melt it'll be under 10 feet of water, but it's an interesting place.
although i have to say that i've pretty consistently had some really bad food in d.c.
like, really, really bad food.
almost as if people have gone out of their way to make bad food.
but who wants to listen to me complain.
and d.c does have great vegan baked goods.
just not so great in the regular vegan food department.
i'm very sleepy, did i mention that?
did i mention that one of my guilty pleasures is to buy 200 magazines before i get on the train and skim them all in the 2 1/2 hours it takes to get to d.c?
no, i didn't mention that.
so i just did.
mention that.
nice, simple magazines with pretty pictures. they're very soothing. they somehow
make it seem as if all is right with the world, especially if they feature pictures of nice
houses and rooms.
i know, i'm a simpleton.
oh, 9pm, time for bed.
-moby
from this weeks new yorker:
A couple of weeks ago, the Senat Appropriations Committee did somethin unusual: it actually said no to the Defens Department, trimming next year’s requeste defense budget by a small amount. In practice the cuts will likely be quashed by Congress; a Representative Christopher Shays said, nearly year into the war on terror, “We’re at war, an I’m saying I’m not going to look militar personnel in the eye and say I voted agains their budget.” That’s understandable, but i helps explain why we have a defense budge that is over half a trillion dollars, forty per cen higher than it was in 2001. More than half th federal government’s discretionary spendin goes to the military, and, while a sizable chun goes toward the fight against terrorism and th Iraq war, too much has nothing to do with th demands of a post-9/11 world
Over the past five years, we’ve heard a lot about the rise of what Donald Rumsfeld likes to call “asymmetric warfare,” and about the need to equip our military to fight “nontraditional” enemies. But a look at the defense budget shows that we’re building a new military while still paying for the old one. Money is going into Special Operations and intelligence, but far more is being spent on high-tech weapons systems designed to fight enemies (like the Soviet Union) that no longer exist—eighty billion dollars on attack submarines, three billion apiece on new destroyers, and hundreds of billions on two different new models of jet fighter. Advocates insist that we need to be able to contest any “near peer” rival. But the U.S. has no near-peers—or, indeed, any distant peers, as we now spend more on defense than the rest of the world put together.
Not only are we buying stuff we don’t need; we’re buying it badly. Astonishing budget overruns are routine. The Future Combat System, for instance—designed to remake the battlefield with robot vehicles and networked communications systems—began as a ninety-billion-dollar project, then became a hundred-and-sixty-billion-dollar project, and, a recent Pentagon estimate suggests, will eventually cost three hundred billion dollars. Such inefficiency is seldom punished—the Pentagon often hands out bonuses even when companies fail to meet their targets—and is tolerated by regulators. Although government agencies have been required to produce an annual audit of their operations since the late nineties, the Defense Department’s operations are so confused that it has never been able to produce a successful audit. A few years ago, the Pentagon’s own Inspector General found that more than a trillion dollars in spending simply couldn’t be explained.
Of course, people have been decrying Pentagon waste and inefficiency for decades. But things have got significantly worse over the past five years, because Congress and the Bush Administration have thrown so much money at the Defense Department so fast. Studies of corporate behavior show that when companies are flush with cash they are more likely to make acquisitions that reduce their over-all value. The defense industry today, in fact, is much like Silicon Valley in the late nineties—when you give lots of money to an industry with no audits and no supervision, people lose discipline. They spend on bad ideas, gild every surface, and cheat. Is it really a surprise that billions of dollars meant for private contractors in Iraq seems to have been stolen?
The Defense Department is only asking for what it thinks it needs. But what it thinks it needs is determined in part by what it thinks it can get. A useful, if homely, analogy might be found in an experiment a group of social scientists did in an apartment building. One day, they left out a bowl of M&M’s for people to take, with a small scoop beside it. When, the next day, they left a much larger scoop, people took two-thirds more M&M’s. People could have taken just as many M&M’s on the first day; they just would have had to take more scoops. They took more the second day because the larger scoop sent a message that that was what they were supposed to do. Congress and the President have, in effect, handed the Pentagon the mother of all scoops.
The fiscal consequences of this are obviously dismal, but, even worse, there’s a strong possibility that giving the military a blank check is actually making us less safe. To begin with, although the defense budget is immense, it’s not infinite. And often in recent times expensive weapons projects have been given priority over mundane improvements that would help the military here and now. Earlier this year, for instance, the Senate cut funding for night-vision goggles for soldiers, while adding money to buy three new V-22 Ospreys, a plane that Dick Cheney himself tried to get rid of when he was Secretary of Defense. Similarly, we might have been able to afford appropriate body armor for the troops, and plates for the Hummers in Baghdad, if we were building only one new model of multi-billion-dollar jet fighter, instead of two.
Even more strikingly, while we pour money into all these new projects we’re underfunding crucial homeland-security programs. In the past few months, Congress has eliminated six hundred and fifty million dollars for port security. Funding for New York City’s security projects was cut forty per cent. And we cut nearly a hundred million from the requested budget for preventing the use of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Those cuts were considered necessary for budgetary reasons, yet the price of all of them together was less than a third of what it will cost to build a single destroyer. That ship will offer us not a whit of protection in the war on terror. But we can be sure it will keep the seas safe from the Soviet Navy.
— James Surowiecki
ok,
i'm not sure what YOU'RE doing for YOUR weekend, but i'm:
a-going to "act" in a video that my friend reverend jen is making. i get to play
reverend jen jr's love interest. note: rev jen jr is a chihuaha.
b-then tomorrow i'm going down to alexandria, va to an animal rights conference.
one of the great things about animal rights conferences is that you can eat. cos everything's vegan. which is good. cos i like to eat.
also i get to take the train to d.c, which is nice cos i can just sit and look out the window and read crappy books.
speaking of transportation, could air travel become any less pleasant?
my theory is that eventually air travel will involve naked people, heavily sedated, kept in quasi-cryogenic storage as they get shuttled from one unpleasant place to another.
i guess i'm also a bit disturbed that the nsa, etc are just now figuring out that terrorists would try to use liquid explosives.
i did an interview A FEW YEARS AGO wherein i said, 'huh, seems like all a terrorist would have to do is sneak liquid explosives onto the plane in a water bottle. that's probably more attractive to them than attacking passengers with a butter knife.'
maybe the nsa should hire me as a consultant...
and why do they ban things from airplanes AFTER terrorists try to use them?
the terrorists are evil but they're not stupid.
wouldn't it make sense to try and figure out what they might do, as opposed to banning things they've already done or tried?
as an aside, there's a great economics article in this weeks new yorker. written by james surowiecki, it's about the military-industrial complex, and how the bush administration are cutting the anti-terrorism budget but spending more and more money on questionable things like new attack fighters and battleships.
for example: the bush administration cut $650 million from the program to inspect cargo containers coming into the u.s. that $650 million is 1/3rd the cost of 1 battleship that is currently in production.
i'm not so sure how effective battleships are at preventing terrorism...
ok, on a happier note, i'm off to go have my scene with a chihuaha dressed in disco clothes.
-moby
today, during a press conference, gw bush(our president...boy, it still hurts to write that), said:
"Would the United States and other free nations be more safe, or less safe, with (Osama) bin Laden in control of Iraq?"
oh boy...
do you think that gw has kind of lost his mind?
does he know that bin laden has never even been to iraq?
does he know that iraq and al qaeda had no involvement before 9-11?
does he know that bin laden is a family member of his old friends, the bin laden's of saudi arabia?
what's gw going to say tomorrow:
"would the united states be safer with santa claus in control of the north pole?"
"would the world be safer if i stopped listening to the leprechauns who live under my desk? they tell me to do bad things but i try not to listen, really, i do, i swear. please don't hurt me, little leprechauns."
they are just nuts. dangerous and nuts. crazy dangerous and nuts. crazy dangerous nuts and gone wild.
that would be a good video: 'republicans gone wild'.
shots of condi at spring break.
wolfowitz playing air guitar to limp bizkit.
gw in a zz top hat doing tequila shots...
oh.
oh, wait, that already exists.
i hope that someday gw gets the rest that he so sorely needs.
a quiet place, with nice nurses and proper medication.
and maybe a view of some trees.
-moby
geraldo rivera criticizing the daily show?
wow. what a douchebag. the daily show is the finest thing on television.
did you know that geraldo rivera used to be 'jerry rivers', but that he changed
his name in the 70's to sound more ethnic?
it's true.
who in their right mind would criticize the daily show?
everybody loves the daily show.
if i were dictator i would make it mandatory viewing for all americans.
in other news, joe lieberman lost the senate primary race in connecticut to ned lamont.
awesome.
i hope that the democrats are finally waking up and realizing that the majority of americans are deeply pissed off at the republican track record, especially the war in iraq.
a new poll reports that 70% of americans now believe that invading iraq was a bad idea.
ok, what else...
i dunno.
i'm just working on a new song for the 'moby best of' record that's supposed to come out in the autumn.
but:
a-i feel kind of dirty writing 'moby best of'. it seems egregiously immodest. but that's what the record's called. you see my dilemma.
b-i can't tell you any details about the new song. but it's fun. at least in my opinion. maybe you'll hate it. i have no idea.
and
c-there is no 'c'.
i need to go bathe now cos summer makes me stinky.
moby
some random things:
1-how do you think the nascar fans in the red states are responding to 'talladega nights'?
specifically the long man-on-man gay kisses? some friends of mine said that a few audience members walked out of the theater they were in when will farrel made out with sascha baron-coen. ha ha ha. it's awesome. 'talladega nights' isn't anywhere near as good as 'anchorman', but it's still pretty good, and it's made better by the fact that nascar fans in the red states are going to be forced to watch men make out with each other. again: ha ha ha. that's funny.
2-other bad news for the gop(aka-the republicans), bush's approval rating has, according to a bloomberg/l.a-times poll, gone just below 20% with young voters.
to put it in laymans terms, this is a DISASTER for the gop. it's not surprising, as young voters are better educated and more aware of the fact the war in iraq is a fucking disaster that costs a billion dollars a week.
3-in your opinion, what's the best science fiction book of all time? we've debated this before. my vote would either be for 'dune' or 'enders game'.
ok, to be a real nerd...the dune sequels are crummy, but the brian herbert pre-quels are actually quite good. and all of the ender sequels(even the ones with bean)are quite good, too. yes. i'm a nerd.
4-i guess that's it. i'm heading out now to a video shoot for one of my songs. said video shoot will involve a chihuaha posessed of loose morals dressed in disco clothes.
-moby
caveat, this is sort of a political blog entry.
one of the biggest foreign policy mistakes that westerners have made in the 20th and 21st centuries has been to assume that troubled regions are comprised of viable and long-standing nation states.
the united states and canada and italy and sweden and japan, etc, are all viable and long-standing nation states.
so when western leaders look at the rest of the world they assume that they're looking at countries similar to their own.
but most of the worlds troubled regions are filled with non-viable countries whose borders were relatively arbitrarily drawn pre and post colonialism.
the truth is that there never really was an 'iraq' or a 'yugoslavia' or a 'sudan', at least not in the way that there's a canada or an italy.
the only solution that will work in iraq is to have 3 states, kurdish, sunni, and shi'ite, just as the only solution to sectarian violence in india in the 20th century was to establish pakistan and bangladesh, and the only solution to sectarian violence in yugoslavia was to allow countries to establish their own independence, largely along cultural and religious lines.
countries like iraq and yugoslavia were cobbled together by colonialists and imperialists, and then when colonialism and overt imperialism came to an end these countries were held together by authoritarian rule. the great mistake that the west(and especially the bush administration, a senior official said on friday that up until 2 months before the iraqi war bush didn't know that there were sunni's and shi'ites in iraq...)has made was to assume that in the absence of authoritarian rule the populace of these 'nations' would make nice and embrace democracy.
instead, without authoritarian rule, these nations have gone back to hating and killing each other as they did centuries ago.
iraq is in the midst of a civil war. it's not degenerating into civil war, it's in civil war.
the solutions are:
a-leave the country and let the civil war burn itself out in 10 years or so(this is obviously not so desirable...)
b-re-establish an authoritarian, demagogic state(might be hard to sell on the world stage...)
c-break iraq into 3 countries(arduous and painful and bloody, but the only viable option).
in the future it might be in the west's interest to actually study and understand the countries that they're ostensibly trying to 'help', and to possibly understand that boundaries drawn on a map don't necessarily exist on the ground.
-moby
here's an idea for some aspiring software developer/entreppreneur(and no, i don't know how to spell 'entrepprenneur', thank you very much)...
software: 'are you sure?'
smart software for computers and phones and pda's that somehow detects
hostility, drunkenness, aggression, etc, in an email or text message. it holds
on to the email or text message for 10 or 20 or 30 minutes(or longer if it figures
out that you're drunk at 2 a.m and emailing your ex girlf/boy-friend)and then
re-sends it to you with 'are you sure you want to send this?' written at the top.
if you click 'yes' then it sends it, if you click 'hold' it holds for 12 hours, if you click
'no' it deletes it.
it could detect drunkenness and aggression, etc through the presence of certain words('asshole', 'fuck you',
etc), lots of punctuation('fuck you!!!!!!'), sloppy syntax('i just didn't thinking you were
going to sleeping with my brother'), and bad spelling('i kno it's 3 a.m bot whst are you doingg now?').
this could prevent lots of hasty and regrettable angry/depressed/drunk/etc emails and text messages.
i'm not a software developer so i'll never do anything with this idea.
but lots of you are smart and tech-savvy, and you'd be doing humanity a service if you developed this for computers/phones/pda's.
if you make a billion dollars from this idea just buy me a little sailboat or a pony.
-moby
yes, it's very hot here in nyc.
the heat index yesterday was 113, today's supposed to be up around 115.
you walk outside and you do literally feel as if you're stepping into a sauna
or a steamroom.
which led me to think of the irony regarding peoples responses to heat.
when people go on holiday/vacation they tend to go to places that are
either extremely hot(the tropics), or extremely cold(the mountains).
but yet when the weather in nyc(or any big city)becomes extremely hot
or extremely cold people are, by their own admission, kind of miserable.
it's ironic, right?
people will pay thousands of dollars to experience foreign heat, but when
the heat visits them at home it makes them unhappy.
ok, i do understand that there's context involved(i.e-the tropical heat usually involves
palm trees and sand and urban heat usually involves bus exhaust
and subway platforms), but it's still kind of ironic.
kind of like the irony of crowds and lines.
if you stopped a relatively successful person and said, 'i'll give you $10 if you stand
in this crowd or wait on this line for an hour' they'd say 'no'.
but if you say to them: 'there's an overcrowded bar/nightclub/airport/etc, and you have
to spend a lot of money to stand on line and in crowds' they'll throw money at you and wait in terrible crowds and annoying lines voluntarily.
the next time you're in a crowded, loud, hot, annoying place just think, 'how much would i or any of these people demand to be paid to agree to stand in a crowded, loud, hot, annoying environment for work?'
the moral of the story: people will do their best to avoid heat and crowds and lines and extreme cold that cost nothing, but there's no limit to what people will spend to subject themselves to heat and crowds and lines and extreme cold.
i'm going to go outside now and pretend that i've paid money to stand in the heat. that way i'll enjoy it more.
moby