Spew

In today's issue of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: The Congressman For All Alaska is spouting away, again, though in all honesty folks should be grateful he does frequently gaping stupidity - the craftier ones are at least smart enough to know when to shut the hell up. One can almost sympathize with the politician's trademark loathing of the media, which, lucky for us, forever enshrines their quips of compassionate conservatism for posterity's sake, if not our cynical amusement.

While the rest of the world obsessively fixated on The Quitter's utterly insane pronouncement that environmentalists are at fault for the Gulf spill, or the BP CEO's continual "I want my life back" display of foot-in-mouth (someone should seriously think about using an insertion tube there); in the meantime we have a sitting Congressman actively engaged in promoting teh batshit crazy while on the job and supposedly representing Alaska. And unfortunately, he does. A slim majority. Still. Maybe.

The first version of this panel just had Young + the verbage, but there was a missing link tying it specifically to the Gulf spill: recent images of the oil-drenched pelicans have been stuck in my mind, flopping around the periphery of awareness (see images by AP Photographer Charlie Riedel). My guess is Don Young wouldn't bat an eye at such pictures: the only practical and aesthetic use he has for wildlife is for something to shoot at and stuff. I also learned a new term: "charasmatic megafauna," which refers to the flagship species used as poster-childs for environmental causes (ex: polar bears, pandas etc.), and that nugget gave me an idea for a future series featuring the alternative non-charasmatic ones that nobody particularly gives a shit about, like those adorable crabs and cute little baby turtles.

Trivia: that portion of the panel penned to a recently acquired mix that's been in heavy rotation as of late - Bruce Cockburn's 2005 "Speechless" instrumental release: specifically the song "The End of All Rivers" which puts me in the right melancholic place. I had a chance to see him play this tune live not that long ago, and it's power to transfix and transcend is incredible. A healthy counterweight to all the sick shit lapping away inside whenever wading into politics.

"Barren lands that once filled a need
Are worthless now, dead without a deed.
Slipping away from an iron gripNature’s scales are forced to tip.”
– Megadeth "Foreclosure of a Dream"