SELF-PROMOTION: CounterPunch has published another one of my playlists. This week's picks range from June Tabor to the Staple Singers, with a special focus on Jerry Lee Lewis' country and soul output of the late '60s and early '70s.

posted by Jesse 8:28 PM

. . .

WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS ON EVOLUTION:

A wise old dinosaur addresses a convocation of his tribe: "Fellow reptiles, I do not hesitate to tell you that we face grave problems. And I do not hesitate to tell you that we have the answer. Size is the answer! Increased size! There are those who say that size is not the answer. There are those who even propose that we pollute our pure reptilian strains with mammalian amalgamations and cross-breeding. And I say to you that if the only way I could survive was by mating with egg-eating rats, then I would choose not to survive. But we will survive. We will increase both in size and in numbers, and we will continue to dominate this planet as we have done for 300 million years. Bigger is better, and biggest is best!"

Armored models thump their tails in earthshaking applause. Herbivorous dines waddle and splash in swamp mud. Carnivores bare their huge fangs, dripping streamers of saliva in approval. But a wise old dine turns sadly from the TV and addresses his offspring: "Son, it's the end of the line. We are ugly idiot babbling beasts. Some of us are 60 feet long with a brain the size of a walnut. Where can this end? In a natural history museum, our bones gawked at by pimply adolescents. 'Say, I wonder how big his prick was?' Their turn will come."

(From "Dinosaurs," on the Dial-a-Poem Poets album Better An Old Demon Than a New God, downloadable for free on UbuWeb. Listen to the recording -- like everything Burroughs wrote, it sounds best read aloud in his raspy midwestern growl.)

posted by Jesse 8:02 PM

. . .

SELF-PROMOTION: My new Reason column is about the informal system of parking rights that emerges after an urban snowstorm.

posted by Jesse 1:01 PM

. . .

DEADEYE DICK: I wonder what the people who spent the '90s yapping that "character counts" think about Cheney's poor grasp of gun safety and his team's early efforts to blame the accident on the victim?

That's a rhetorical question.

It's nice to see the "this is a matter between Bill Clinton and his wife" argument dredged up and refurbished as "this is a matter between Dick Cheney and the man he shot in the face." If Whittington died, I suppose it would become "this is a matter between Cheney and Harry Whittington's clan, should they choose to seek vengeance." As a libertarian, I can only applaud this new respect for privatization -- I just didn't know there were so many closet anarchists out there.

posted by Jesse 9:25 AM

. . .

COWBOYS EATING PUDDING: Willie Nelson has jumped on the brokeback bandwagon by recording Ned Sublette's immortal "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond of Each Other." If you're not familiar with the song, which opens with the line "There's many a strange impulse out on the plains of West Texas," here's a sample verse:

Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other
That's why they wear leather, and Levi's and belts buckled tight
There's many a cowboy who don't understand the way that he feels towards his brother
There's many a cowboy who's more like a lady at night

When I hosted my college radio station's country music show, the best set I ever put together featured Sublette's song back to back with a honky-tonk tune by the lesbian trio Two Nice Girls ("I spent my last ten dollars on birth control and beer/my life was so much simpler when I was sober and queer"). I only wish I'd had a copy handy of "I Love My Fruit," recorded by the Prairie Ramblers under the pseudonym the Sweet Violet Boys. The next time you hear someone credit Ang Lee with introducing the gay cowboy to pop culture, you don't need to dredge up the subtexts of Red River or Bend of the River to make your retort. Just point out that a bunch of guys who liked to wear western getups sang these lyrics way back in 1939:

I am wild about all kinds of berries
Black and blue and rasp and straw and red
But most of all I like to guzzle cherries
And I eat them every night in bed...

I can sing the praises of pistachios
And I almost eat them til I bust
And I also love pecans and cashews
Yes indeedy I sure love my nuts...

I am always hungry for bananas
That it almost seems to be a sin
They're so good that when I'm all through eating
I still love to nibble on the skin

It was Merle Haggard, incidentally, who sang, "There ain't no riding bareback anymore/Ain't no taking chances like before/If you don't agree with me you're out the door/There ain't no riding bareback anymore." Think of it as a public service announcement.

[Via 4 Pundits.]

Update: A reader named Bob points out that you can download "I Love My Fruit" for free at the Internet Archive.

(cross-posted at Hit & Run)

posted by Jesse 1:17 PM

. . .

MORE MUSH FROM THE CHIMP: Few things are more dull and mendacious than a State of the Union address, one of those purportedly important events that are almost impossible to care about. Nonetheless, I managed to crank out a column on the speech for Reason Online, focusing on the extent to which Bush has moved away from the conservative rhetoric that used to be obligatory for Republican presidents. Did I manage to make the topic actually interesting? You be the judge.

posted by Jesse 3:52 PM

. . .