stAllio!'s way

belated post-election post

2008-05-11T10:22:00.003-04:00

tully has a column today that, were i to summarize in "shorter" form, i would condense thusly: "jill long thompson won and jim schellinger lost, therefore long thompson's campaign was great and schellinger's campaign was teh suck." but i don't want to do that, because frankly this is the first tully column that's even been worth reading in at least a month, as recently he's been phoning it in while chasing the national spotlight.

the column has some good insights into the schellinger campaign's missteps, and i recommend it for those who're interested in that topic. what bugged me about it was the implication (both in the column and elsewhere) that JLT campaign hadn't made the kind of missteps schellinger had—of course, tully already showed his colors last month in that regard. the fact is that both candidates ran lousy campaigns. both candidates wasted 2007. both struggled to be seen and to articulate a vision. and yes, the race was completely overshadowed by the presidential race, but only because both candidates failed to make themselves known months ago, back when everyone assumed indiana's primary would be meaningless as usual. (JLT had built-in name recognition from her past service in congress, which helped her greatly.)

in the end, i went with schellinger, as did most liberal bloggers. it's weird; i can't think of a single liberal blogger who was on record as a JLT supporter, aside from a couple pseudonymous commenters on blue indiana. schellinger wasn't just the candidate of choice for party insiders; he had the support of the blogs as well.

why is that? there are a few reasons—resentment about JLT's negative campaigning was a big one—but perhaps the most important was blogger outreach. the JLT campaign did none that i'm aware of. her online presence is weak overall and her campaign's attitude toward bloggers has ranged from indifference to hostility. in contrast, schellinger struggled with this for awhile, but eventually turned it all around when he hired jen wagner. by the end, his blogger outreach was excellent, but it wasn't enough to put him over the top.

so jill long thompson is now the nominee for governor. i'll be happy to vote for her come november, but she's really going to have to step up her game if she wants to beat mitch daniels. mitch's unpopularity makes him vulnerable, but he's still a strong campaigner sitting on a lot of money, and is going to be a lot more difficult to beat than schellinger was.

in election other news, how about that andré carson? it might have been a very different race if it had been between two or three candidates, but instead there were a nonillion of them all attacking each other, dividing the hater vote. pity the poor haters: they thought they had a shot this year.

and for president, hillary squeaked out ahead, but not by enough to really matter. it's been apparent for awhile that obama will be the nominee. in fact, that was apparent before indiana's primary, but the media politley pretended that indiana's primary was actually going to matter for the first time in 40 years. you never know... come 2048, maybe indiana will be the tie-breaker between robama and hillbot. ¶

nuns disenfranchised

2008-05-06T16:37:00.002-04:00

the number of people disenfranchised by indiana's voter ID law is small, but these people do exist:

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn't get one but came to the precinct anyway.

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, 'I don't want to go do that,'" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

They weren't given provisional ballots because it would be impossible to get them to a motor vehicle branch and back in the 10-day time frame allotted by the law, Sister McGuire said. "You have to remember that some of these ladies don't walk well. They're in wheelchairs or on walkers or electric carts."

these nuns live in convents where they are taken care of by their sister nuns. they have no use for government-issued identification, and acquiring valid ID is a major hassle for them. also:

One newly married woman said she was told she couldn't vote because her driver's license name didn't match the one on her voter registration record, said Myrna Perez of the Brennan Center Justice at New York University's law school, coordinator of the 1-866-OUR-VOTE hot line. Another woman said she was turned away from casting her first-ever ballot because she had only a college-issued ID card and an out-of-state driver's license, Perez said.¶

middletown

2008-05-06T11:17:00.002-04:00

you know we're living in interesting times when the washington post writes a whole article about muncie, indiana and it ends up on atrios. it's a good piece about how hard muncie has been hit by the worsening economy, and a much better read than that awful new york times article on kokomo a couple weeks back.

i don't need to mention that today is the indiana primary, currently being marketed as the primary to end all primaries. i voted around 10:30 this morning (usually i don't vote until late afternoon after work) and already more ballots had been cast in my precinct than in the last couple elections. this one should be interesting. ¶

mashup accomplished!

2008-05-03T19:41:00.003-04:00

in just two days of release, more people have downloaded my post-mashup EP mash smarter not harder than my previous release, wack cylinders. if you're not one of those people, you can be! download mash smarter not harder now, before all your friends get it first. this is probably my most accessible (and dance-friendly) work ever, and perfect for those who found previous stAllio! or AWIA releases too abrasive. you can even go all out and download mash smarter desktop wallpapers (more coming soon).

i'm in the process of converting this material into a more improvisation-friendly format for live shows, so that i can basically remix the stuff live rather than just press play like some plunderphonic acts... the live debut of the new style will be friday, may 23, in niles, michigan. and of course, i'll be playing this stuff and (hopefully) some new stuff at my wedding show in october... if you can wait that long.

i've also updated the stAllio! discography, both to include the latest releases and to match the new design (though entries for older releases still have the old look). the entry for wack cylinders even lists all known samples in the album. as for mash smarter not harder, i haven't released a sample list yet... i've been toying with having a trainspotter contest to see who can be first to name all the samples, but i don't know what i'd give away for a prize. ¶

who dares question the great and powerful doctor myers?

2008-05-02T17:58:00.002-04:00

i hadn't intended to post today. i'd planned to leave my post about mash smarter not harder on top to draw more attention there. but i can't go with commenting on this.

david orentlicher unveiled the season's first negative ad in the 7th, attacking both andré carson (the incumbent) and woody myers (whom all the polls have in second place). not too surprising, since i'm pretty sure the orentlicher campaign was already doing push polling. what was surprising was what happened next.

the myers campaign hit back, insisting the ad was inaccurate. but here's where it gets crazy: they threatened to sue the orentlicher campaign if the ad wasn't pulled immediately.

naturally, the orentlicher campaign told him to shove it. so now woody's stuck: either he doesn't file suit and loses face, or he does and gets laughed out of court—because even if the ad is inaccurate, there's no way he'll be able to prove malicious intent, which is required to win a libel case.

and that's just the start of it. not only did woody threaten to sue david o, but he started threatening bloggers who'd written critically of him. he threatened suit against bil browning, and not even for anything bil had written, but for something written on bil's blog by tyrion (who had posted the same content at two other blogs that somehow escapted threat of legal action).

when bil asked what in particular the campaign objected to, the lawyers refused to tell him, which isn't just odd but obstinate. they also threatened to sue sheila suess kennedy, but at least in her case the campaign was nice enough to say what the problem was:

A few days ago, I posted testimony given by Dr. Woody Meyers in the late 1990s, which had been sent to me (and presumably others)anonymously. (I assume it was sent to me because I write for the Indianapolis Star.) I checked the source cited for the testimony, saw it was accurate, and posted it. Subsequently, a commenter from Dr. Meyers' campaign posted a response, to the effect that the testimony was indeed correct, but that it had been offered in response to a different amendment to ERISA than the later amendment familiarly known as the Patients' Bill of Rights.

i imagine the issue with tyrion's post and david o's ad is similar... though i'm only guessing because they refuse to say. i can see why the campaign would upset at this misattribution of his comments, but can't fathom how anyone thought this was worthy of litigation. you hit back, you post comments about how it's inaccurate, but why threaten to file a lawsuit you can't possibly win? orentlicher is a lawyer for crying out loud; you won't scare him that way. this is foolish, unproductive blundering. it only serves to draw more attention to the orentlicher attack ad, and it damages woody's appeal, because it makes him look like a spoiled, petulant child.

it was already clear that the myers campaign doesn't grok the internet. that was clear from the fact that they let their official blogger joh padgett run around making unprofessional comments at blue indiana and other blogs. but a congressional candidate threatening to sue bloggers for negative coverage? is that a first? it has to be, for indiana at least.

i wasn't planning to vote myers anyway, but if i had, this would make me seriously reconsider. ¶

stAllio! - mash smarter not harder out now!

2008-05-01T00:08:00.001-04:00

mash smarter not harder isn't just an EP. it's an audio manifesto, a roadmap to a mashed-up future. the goal of this EP isn't just to generate downloads or make you shake your ass—though it promises to do both—but to spawn a new golden age of mashups.

with this EP, stAllio! introduces a brand-new style that takes the mashup aesthetic to the next level. samples shuffle in and out, then back in again before you even notice them. the music flips, skips, and hops between your favorite hits so effortlessly you could be forgiven for thinking it was all meant to be this way. this new style—whatever you call it: post-mashup, dance collage, new-school bootleg—mixes the energy and danceability of Girl Talk with the subversive wit of Negativland and Cassetteboy.

if you love mashups, if you used to love mashups but nowadays find them a bit boring, or if you're just interested in remixing, sampling, audio manipulation, and the like, you need to download mash smarter not harder immediately. get it now and get on the bandwagon while there's still room.

is this EP as good as we say it is? is it even possible for a record to live up to this much hype? the only way to find out is to download it right now! you've got nothing to lose, because the download is FREE!¶

good old caller ID...

2008-04-30T01:02:00.002-04:00

so the caller who push-polled me last night didn't block his number from my caller ID, which is how i knew that the call came from miami. i went ahead and searched for the whole number, which led me to a company called sun surveys. this is definitely the company that called me; their contact number is the one that showed up on my caller ID.

i haven't had any luck so far tracking down this nebulous "AP research" company that called my parents (and others). the name is just too hard to filter: i'm getting lots of hits about the associated press and advanced placement exams, and not much of use. it might be a lot easier with a telephone number, but my parents don't have caller ID.

if you caught my previous update, my currest theory is that two different campaigns are doing push polling: carolene mays is behind the AP research calls and orentlicher is behind the sun surveys calls. (in other words, of the four frontrunners, the two that are behind are now doing push-polling.) i could be wrong, and they could all be coming from the same place, but i doubt it. ¶

push polling in the 7th

2008-04-28T23:34:00.001-04:00

i got called for two telephone polls today on my cell phone.

the first call was a local number and the caller identified herself as being with the orentlicher campaign. she asked how likely i was to vote and whom i planned to vote for. when she heard that my answer wasn't david o, she asked if i was still listening to other candidates and suggested i check orentlicherforcongress.com.

about an hour later i got a call from the 305 area code (i later looked it up: miami). the caller had a foreign accent that i took to be latin (though perhaps i came up with this later when i saw it was miami) and identified himself as being with an opinion survey. first he asked whether i had a positive or negative opinion on various democratic figures (7th district front-runners mays, myers, carson, & orentlicher). then my choice for president and whether i was fully committed to that candidate or just leaning. then my choice for 7th district and level of commitment.

then he read me some messages (paraphrased):

david orentlicher will stand up to special interests and won't take their money.
andré carson takes special interest money.
woody myers is self-financing his campaign.

there was no message about carolene mays, whom i'd already said i had a negative opinion of. he asked how likely these were to change my vote (they weren't), and just to be sure he again asked whom i'd vote for in the 7th, then finally asked my age and race, and reminded me this was just an "opinion survey".

the second call seemed like a textbook push poll. and perhaps i'm just cynical, but my first thought was that maybe my answers to the first call prompted the second.

then i went out for a bit, before i could blog about the calls, and when i got back i had an upset email from my mother claiming that she'd also received a push poll this evening. this pollster identified herself as being from "AP research for Indiana" and tried to pass on a negative message about woody myers failing to get health care passed in washington. this caller was also heavily accented, though they guessed her to be from somewhere like india.

the details are different enough that i can't be positive the two push polls were related. then again, the fact that they all came tonight is awfully suspicious. at any rate, at least one campaign is doing push-polling, and the obvious culprit would seem to be the orentlicher campaign.

update: apparently vox populi got a push poll from AP research back in march. at that time, AP research fed him negative messages about orentlicher and carson. it seems unlikely that there would be two AP researches or that the group would switch sides, which suggests that the carolene mays campaign is behind the AP research calls.

that doesn't explain why the call i received would feed me positive messages about david o. i can't see the mays campaign doing that. the logical conclusion would seem to be that both mays and orentlicher are now doing push polling. ¶

voter ID appeal rejected

2008-04-28T13:35:00.003-04:00

the supreme court has rejected the ACLU's appeal of indiana's voter ID law. the court ruled 6-3 against the ACLU, but there was no true majority opinion—three justices loved the law, three thought it sucked, and the other three didn't feel the ACLU had presented enough evidence of actual disenfranchisement to justify overturning it.

the end result is that the law will remain in effect during this year's elections, but because there was no majority opinion, it's still vulnerable to appeal... provided the plaintiffs come up with better evidence next time.

for analysis see doug and scotusblog. ¶

oballer

2008-04-26T21:21:00.000-04:00

big sale on coke powder

2008-04-26T20:57:00.001-04:00

so that's where people get it from...

but seriously, considering i took this photo at the same place as this one, i suspect this was the work of culture-jamming vandals rather than chance or an honest mistake.

the time for robots is now

2008-04-26T19:23:00.003-04:00

virago's father & grandmother drove into town yesterday,* and grandma decided she wanted to check out that building with the dinosaurs bursting out of it, which she remembered from her last visit: the children's museum. mind you, there were no children among us, but i hadn't been there in more than 10 years and the rest of the group had never been before, so off we went.

we didn't make it further than the second floor, but there were some great exhibits, the coolest of which was definitely the robots + us exhibit. unfortunately, we didn't discover the exhibit until right before it was due to end: tomorrow is the last day. on the bright side, two new cool-looking exhibits open up: one called comic book heroes and another about animation.

* they drove in from springfield, IL and arrived an hour and a half late. why? because they didn't know that indiana is now on a different time zone than illinois in the summer. going to DST was supposed to permanently answer the question of "what time is it in indiana?" but only made it more difficult. then again, what do i know? i'm just a redneck.

i knew there had to be cake!

2008-04-26T01:46:00.002-04:00

candidate tony zirkle attending a bday party for hitler is the gift that keeps on giving. it's all over the national blogs now; i just spotted a post on atrios, which led me to think progress, which led to the news-dispatch from michigan city... ah, the tangled interwebs:

At the event, Hitler's birthday was observed with a cake with a photo of Hitler and the words "Seig Heil."

to think that people doubted there would be cake. it can't be a birthday party without cake, and that goes for hitler as much as anyone else. i knew all along, but couldn't have hoped for a more adorable image than a sheet cake with a photo of hitler and the words "seig heil" lovingly applied in frosting. that is so precious! ¶

shorter matt tully

2008-04-25T09:15:00.001-04:00

shorter matt tully: my hero mitch daniels got in trouble because of something some stupid blogger wrote (dumb bloggers), so i'm going to pretend what the blogger wrote was inaccurate, even though it wasn't. ¶

shorter new york times

2008-04-24T09:52:00.004-04:00

shorter new york times: hoosiers are a bunch of hillbillies, rednecks, rubes, hicks, yokels, and hayseeds.

(via)

update: oops, i left off "ignorant, corn-fed, xenophobic, small-town luddites" and probably a couple other things. i guess that's why it's called "shorter".¶

a quick teaser

2008-04-22T13:43:00.001-04:00

here's a taste of the cover art for mash smarter not harder. (it's either going to be this or one of these two color variations; probably whichever goes best with the rest of the artwork.)

there will be no advance singles or preview mp3s. to find out what it sounds like, you'll have to wait until the EP comes out and download it (for free) like everyone else. however, you shouldn't have to wait much longer: target date is may 1st.

zirkle: nazis less evil than porn

2008-04-22T11:06:00.005-04:00

the south bend tribune follows up on the story of tony zirkle attending hitler's birthday party. thomas quotes the funniest part of the article, where zirkle tries to explain that the reason he hates jews is because they're to blame for the existence of pornography, not because he's racist or anything. so instead, i'll focus on the bottom of the article:

Riley, the Republican chairman, [...] said, "To see him standing in front of that flag and in front of that monster (Hitler) kindled deep emotions within me."

He said the Republican Party does not accept Zirkle as a member. He said he plans to take steps to make sure Zirkle is not admitted to Republican events or otherwise allowed to associate with the party.

"Nazism, socialism and fascism are polar opposites of what the Republican Party stands for," Riley said.

i don't know about that last sentence, but good for riley and the republicans for condemning zirkle in the strongest language possible.

The party has been consistent in condemning Zirkle's philosophy of racial intolerance, he added.

Zirkle worried that his message will be misunderstood and people will attack him. The point he was making, he said, is that pornography is evil

as are jews...

and is undermining society in many ways,

...again, like jews...

from health care to social relations to family life.

To punctuate his message, he shredded an original copy Monday of Penthouse magazine from September 1969.

i'm tickled by the image of him "punctuating his message" by shredding vintage porn. i'm having visions of him at a debate with a stack o' nudie mags, tossing another magazine on the shredder for emphasis whenever he makes a salient point. it could be a hell of a rhetorical device. sadly, they generally don't allow props at congressional debates. ¶

guess who went to hitler's birthday party?

2008-04-21T16:57:00.005-04:00

you might not have known that yesterday, april 20, was hitler's birthday. but tony zirkle, republican candidate for indiana's 2nd district, knew. he even attended a birthday party for hitler yesterday, held by a neo-nazi group in chicago. hoosier access has the scoop, along with photos of zirkle at the gathering, standing betwixt two swastikas and in front of a portrait of the fuhrer. (my favorite part is the adorable "happy 119th birthday" banner on the table. i bet they had cake and punch, too.)

zirkle attracted attention last month for suggesting that segregation might be a good idea, and before that for shredding a vintage issue of playboy, advocating the return of the guillotine, and more. but while he's always been entertainingly out-there, the fact that he would openly speak to—and let himself be photographed with—neo-nazis takes his candidacy to an entirely new level. after this, i'll be surprised if the indiana GOP doesn't force him to drop out of the race. ¶

mindwar and message-force multipliers

2008-04-20T10:07:00.002-04:00

yet another story from the "this ought to be shocking, but under the bush administration, it's not even surprising" file: remember all those "independent" military analysts that used to be all over the tv (back when the media was still regularly covering the war)? it turns out the pentagon had a lot of them in the tank. this is a long story, but here's a taste:

In interviews, participants described a powerfully seductive environment — the uniformed escorts to Mr. Rumsfeld’s private conference room, the best government china laid out, the embossed name cards, the blizzard of PowerPoints, the solicitations of advice and counsel, the appeals to duty and country, the warm thank you notes from the secretary himself.

"Oh, you have no idea," Mr. Allard said, describing the effect. "You're back. They listen to you. They listen to what you say on TV." It was, he said, "psyops on steroids" — a nuanced exercise in influence through flattery and proximity. "It's not like it's, 'We'll pay you $500 to get our story out,'" he said. "It's more subtle."

The access came with a condition. Participants were instructed not to quote their briefers directly or otherwise describe their contacts with the Pentagon.

...

"I saw immediately in 2003 that things were going south," General Vallely, one of the Fox analysts on the trip, recalled in an interview with The Times.

The Pentagon, though, need not have worried.

"You can't believe the progress," General Vallely told Alan Colmes of Fox News upon his return. He predicted the insurgency would be "down to a few numbers" within months.

...

Mr. Bevelacqua, then a Fox analyst, was among those invited to a briefing in early 2003 about Iraq's purported stockpiles of illicit weapons. He recalled asking the briefer whether the United States had "smoking gun" proof.

"'We don't have any hard evidence,'" Mr. Bevelacqua recalled the briefer replying. He said he and other analysts were alarmed by this concession. "We are looking at ourselves saying, 'What are we doing?'"

Another analyst, Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who works in the Pentagon for a military contractor, attended the same briefing and recalled feeling "very disappointed" after being shown satellite photographs purporting to show bunkers associated with a hidden weapons program. Mr. Maginnis said he concluded that the analysts were being "manipulated" to convey a false sense of certainty about the evidence of the weapons. Yet he and Mr. Bevelacqua and the other analysts who attended the briefing did not share any misgivings with the American public.¶

i hope you paid your gas bill on time...

2008-04-19T01:03:00.002-04:00

because if not, you may be in trouble:

A computer server containing Social Security numbers and other personal information of 700,000 people was stolen last month from a Southside debt-collection bureau in what appears to be the largest computer security breach in Indiana history.

The information includes customer-billing records for about 100 Indiana businesses, including Citizens Gas & Coke, St. Vincent Health system and Methodist Medical Group.
Advertisement

The exposed data was limited to past-due billing information that had been turned over for debt collection to the Central Collection Bureau, the agency announced today. Other customers, whose accounts were in good standing, were not affected.

it's bad enough if your bill has been sent to collections, without having to worry about your identity being stolen. of course, the irony is that if your name is on that server, then you probably don't have much credit for any identity thieves to steal. ¶

speed racer

2008-04-18T11:13:00.002-04:00

i'm a bit torn on this one.

everything i've seen suggests that the speed racer movie will be total eye candy—a real visual feast. and that's no surprise, considering it's the new film by the wachowski brothers, who gave us the matrix.

for example, see this io9 post about the stunning design work: there are some amazing screenshots. and the latest full-length trailer makes the movie look pretty exciting.

on the other hand, the original speed racer series was at times one of the cheesiest, campiest things ever shown on television. and the tv commercials for the movie make clear that it includes some of this cheese: the characters spritle and chim-chim feature prominently in some of the ads (fortunately, chim-chim doesn't appear at all in the latest trailer, so hopefully their role is small).

so what am i to do? i still haven't seen last year's transformers movie because i knew in advance that while the special effects would be mind-blowing, the movie itself would simply blow. after all, i've been burned before—i saw what dreams may come in the theatre.

so there's a possibility that speed racer will totally suck. furthermore, the design work and effects look so awesome that it might be worth seeing in the theatre even if it does. then again, it might not. in fact, if done properly, it could be great.

so i'm torn. i'm thinking i probably will see it in the theatres, though if it gets a lot of bad reviews that might dissuade me. but i don't know who i'll go see it with, since virago hasn't shown much interest. hell, if it comes to the theatre nearest me, maybe i'll go alone and walk there. it might be a movie about race car drivers, but there's no need to waste gas going to see it when we have near-record gas prices. ¶

as if i didn't have enough trouble sleeping...

2008-04-18T08:54:00.003-04:00

wednesday night, an f-16 pilot flying over kokomo screwed up and caused a sonic boom. or at least, that's the official explanation for the loud explosive sound residents heard, along with the weird flashes of light that had dozens calling in reports of a UFO.

perhaps coincidentally, the next day i posted an image of a UFO.

then this morning, we were awakened by a loud noise:

A 5.2 magnitude earthquake that appeared to rival the strongest recorded in the region rocked people up to 450 miles away from the southern Illinois epicenter early today, surprising residents unaccustomed to such a powerful Midwest temblor.

The quake traveled the length of Indiana, but there were no reports of injuries or damage.

the quake hit at 5:37 a.m. indiana time. i've felt worse—maybe not a bigger earthquake, but one that was closer, so it shook me harder—but i don't think i've ever been awoken by seismic activity before. it wasn't a lot of fun—usually i don't get rudely awakened until at least 6:30.

update: i think i just felt a small aftershock, at 11:15 a.m.¶

bad taste springs eternal

2008-04-17T11:01:00.001-04:00

spring 2008 is an exciting time for bad taste music exchange!

march saw the release of wack cylinders. then april 1 brought new, freely downloadable releases by baconhanger and unszene. and then yesterday was the official release of hexadecimate, the new cd by dr. butcher m.d. (which you can stream from the site).

that's four new releases in less than six weeks. could it be possible that we might still have more coming? yes! in fact, early may will bring another new free download from stAllio! this new stAllio! EP is the one you've been waiting for. you could say my entire musical career has been building up to this one. i'm not quite ready to say much more, but it's called mash smarter not harder.

image note: i actually created this graphic a couple weeks ago and left it sitting on my hard drive, but now that the title of the x-files movie has been announced, i figured i should post it. ¶

shorter ipopa

2008-04-17T09:51:00.002-04:00

i normally like the ipopa blog, but jesus...

shorter ipopa: the problem with kids these days is we don't beat 'em enough.

bonus silliness:

Every generation gives the crotchety old man speech about 'these kids today,' but it's actually true now.

no, the main difference is that now you're the crotchety old man.

and super extra bonus points for making me feel ancient by using an EPMD lyric for the title of his crotchety old man post. just think... in 20 years, the condescending "kids these days" posts will be named after lyrics by lil wayne and flo rida. ¶

a miracle discovery

2008-04-16T00:18:00.000-04:00

this onion video hit a bit close to home for me.¶