Ana Marie Cox

My Day, By the Numbers: Running in Place Edition

16 calls to different Congressional offices 

1 resulting quote 

3 phone numbers of Republicans in Louisiana who voted for McCain but think Obama is doing the best he can regarding the oil spill

3.5 miles

Playlist:

"Hit The Heartbrakes," Black Kids 

"Your Famous Friends," The Henry Clay People  

"Turn It Off,"  Phantogram (This mix is totally excellent in general.)

"Down Low," Dexateens 

"Coney Island," Good Old War (This other excellent mix is also the source for three songs below.)

"Jackie Wants A Black Eye," Dr. Dog

"Heaven And Earth," Blitzen Trapper

"My Body's A Zombie For You," Dead Man's Bones  

"Excuses," The Morning Benders 

"Dog Days Are Over," Florence + The Machine

"Sink/Let It Sway," Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin

The Inside Story: Now with 100 Percent More Demon Sheep (UPDATED)

UPDATE: So, uhm, yeah, I figured out how to post the audio to MY OWN BLOG and will thus stop directing traffic to box.net and CAP, though they are both fantastic organizations that I could not do the podcast without.

The Inside Story:

The Inside Story, with guests Christina Bellantoni and Rick Klein

DEMONSHEEP:

Demon Sheep: A Real-Time Narration

What with the snow day and all, you have time on your hands, yes? Time on your hands and, OBVIOUSLY, an internet connection, a combination that lends itself quite well to the listening of podcasts. So I have made one -- actually two -- for you.

The first is the inaugural edition of the newly independent Inside Story. You may recognize it from such networks as Air America... or, er, you may not. You may listen to it here. Guests this week (and yes, that does imply a "next week!" Fingers crossed!) are Christina Bellantoni, senior reporter for Talking Points Memo, and Rick Klein, senior reporter for ABC News. We discuss the Daily Kos poll of Republicans (the answers in the "not sure" category are the truly, truly terrifying data points), the Senate Hearings on Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and wonder if Republicans really know what it means to "steal" an election. (They have had enough practice...)

The second 'cast is a little different. Christina and Rick stay in the studio, but rather than discuss politics, we attempt to recreate, in audio form, the experience of watching THE DEMON SHEEP AD. I am not sure if we were successful, but it was very, very fun to make the effort. You can listen the experiment here . And if you haven't seen THE DEMON SHEEP AD, well, you must. You absolutely must. Here it is now.

UPDATE: Oh this is awesome: THERE WILL BE MORE DEMON SHEEP.

Welcome, Forbes Readers!

You're probably shocked by the lack of content here, seeing as how I'm described as a "blogger." Well, here's the thing: 2009 was kind of my Year of No Blogging. Most of my originalish content migrated to Twitter (Are you down with the Twitter machine? Some explanatory verbiage here.), which makes total sense because that way, no one was paying me. Wait...

In any case, I had intended 2010 to be a whole GANGBUST THE TUBES BLOGPOLOOZA, with lots of content and maybe even things that other people paid me to write! That content probably wouldn't be HERE, on THIS blog, but I could point you to it, maybe? 

At the moment, however, I have nothing to point you to. Air America is no more and apparently there's some kind of economic crisis? All I know is that I haven't had to put on pants in DAYS... tho' I may be pulling the pajamas back on. Blogging for free and what not.

A step in that flanneled direction will come this afternoon. I will be getting together with ABC's Rick Klein and TPM's Christina Bellantoni to revive The Inside Story, the political chat show I started at Air America and will now live on as a podcast. Link, and content, to come.

"Wow, those employment figures look so LIFELIKE now..."

Alternate joke: Axelrod thought it was a frivolous use of the Patriot Act, but it was really the only way to get ahold of those deleted Na'vi sex scenes.

Tech Bleg

So, I am in the possesion of a Dell 10v Mini running Ubuntu. I plan on Hackentoshing it once I figure out how to downgrade the BIOS. For now, it's a great little netbook, good for filing quick posts and the like. EXCEPT I cannot get it to play nice with my AT&T Sierra Wireless USB broadband modem.

I found a set of directions that indicate the modem has Linux support but they were all terminal commands and thus SCARY. Me like graphical interfaces. Me need baby step instructions, like the Gizmodo ones that I will someday use to Hackentosh the thing. Until then: help? Can has easy instructions for how to make broadband modem work with Ubuntu 8.04?

Air America Will Not Hurt You Anymore

I am pleased to announce Air America's re-designed website, now guaranteed not to hurt your eyes. It's very slick and much more content-rich, including the spiffy way they've updated my show's home page.

If you were not aware that I am on the Twitter machine you may, there, discover the absolute lastest information on what I am doing at this very minute. There will be equally exciting sorts of exclusive information and features -- including the return of Annie's "10 Moments from the Past 24 Hours of 'News'" wrap-up -- coming soon. Name that bumper music contests! Liveblogging press briefings! Original dramatic works! Also, more Tweets.

You can, of course, also download the show (which is still free, tho you'll need to log in); you can also subscribe via iTunes. The latest show is has an interview with Paul Rieckhoff -- 37th most powerful person in Washington -- about the sorry state of government care for female veterans and soldiers.

We're also ramping up TIS' infamous "Web Extras," which in the past have included dramatic readings of Peggy Noonan's course syllabus and of the Acorn Tapes. In the coming weeks, you'll see more of The Inside Story Radio Theater as well as a new regular podcast, "Token Opinion," which asks dueling political consultants to Friday-afternoon-quarterback the missteps and victories of the other side. (Tracy Sefl and Kevin Madden have already recorded a few sample tracks here and here.)

The show also exists on the actual radio -- Saturdays at 9am, Sundays at noon. This week will feature an interview with Scott Westerfeld about his novel of young adult fiction about WWI, Leviathan -- an indicator, you'll see, of the many different ways TIS approaches politics: While interviews with elected officials (including friend-of-show Claire McCaskill) and political professionals and journalists make up most of the show's guests, we've also brought on Sasha Frere-Jones to talk about the musical journey of Michael Jackson and Time's James Poniewozik to ponder the spectacle of Glenn Beck.

The show's come a long way since we started and I'm more and more proud of it. I have a big problem with the "unspoken rules" of political journalism (particularly broadcast journalism) -- from the Brady Bunch boxes of cable news to the prohibition on having fun on air -- and I like to think that at TIS, we're breaking a lot of them. But we're not done yet.

TRMS aka MSAMC

You may have heard, I appeared on the Rachel Maddow program last week, to the surprise and delight of, well, dozens. You can watch the full podcast of the show here.

Some of the highlights, according to the Maddow webteam (and they should know) include:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Hungry for more? Faithful intern Annie went back and culled some of the hits from my past year (it has been a whole year!) on the show. Watch the haircuts evolve! 2008 and 2009, divided just so.

Finally, a Use for Cocktail Weenies: Support RAINN

It has been fashionable for some time to decry "Washington cocktail weenies," and more generally the culture that produces bipartisan schmooze-fests where people hobnob and make deals.

But I am here to tell you that those cocktail parties can be put to good use. Very good use. Next week, a guestlist equal parts "famous for DC" (Sen. Arlen Specter! Barney Frank!) and "famous-famous" (Christina Ricci!) will host a benefit for RAINN, the Rape Abuse, and Incest National Network.

ABOUT RAINN: Founded by Tori Amos, it is the organization that supports the ONLY national hotline for victims of sexual assault (1-800-656-HOPE). About 10,000 victims call every month -- a number that's double from last year. They've recently started an "online hotline" to reach out to people who may feel more comfortable with texting or messaging than calling. They rely donations, which are tax-deductible.

ABOUT THE EVENT: Cocktail party at 6pm on Wednesday, September 9. Not much more to say. There will be drinks, as well as food that is slightly smaller in size than food you receive at regular meals. RAINN will be premiering a new PSA (starring Gabrielle Union, Dylan McDermott, and Kevin Bacon). MANY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS will be there. BARNEY FRANK, folks. THE FRANK.

If you're in DC, you should come: tickets start at $200 and go up to a Platinum Sponsorship for $5000.

If you aren't in DC, you can still come! Only you'll not actually be there, which means you don't have to dress up. But you can experience the event virtually: I'll be live-Tweeting the event via @RAINNLive. For $100 donation, you'll get access to the protected feed and all that comes with it: vicarious VIP access, party pix -- every detail, including the opportunity to submit questions for my private chat with Ricci.  The feed will run from 6pm to 8:30pm ET on Wednesday, September 9. Donate here, and use the code "TWEET" when you give you $100 -- or more!

If you can't give $100, try to give something. It's the only hotline of its kind that serves the whole country; I wish we didn't need it, but we do.

Sotoshow Day One

Okay, WTF.

Where the Quote Comes From

If you're corresponded with me, you've probably noticed my sig file is a kind of opaque reference: "a wink eventually becomes a twitch, a twitch the sign of some inner disturbance." I've been asked enough about it that it seemed the time to finally commit to the internets the passage it comes from, which had, until now, somehow escaped the Google machine. Ladies and gents, from the oft-forgotten masterpiece, A Fan's Notes, by Fred Exley:

In the Glacial Falls teacher's manual, a booklet I had been assured was Biblical in its authority (chiseled in stone), I one day came across a high-toned and vague clause (very much like a paragraph in any education textbook) calling on teachers to pass with the grade C any student who was "working to capacity" -- a capacity one could, I guessed immediately, determine from the IQ records in the guidance office. With a number of seasoned teachers in the system I tried to discuss this clause, but they seemed reluctant to talk about it -- more than reluctant, tired, very tired, as though the clause had been discussed all too many times. There were some obvious questions needing answers. What about the superior student who doesn't make any effort at all but still manages to get a B? Reversing the principle, do I give him a C, and if I do, does that C, in the eyes of the administration, represent the same as the C of the student capable of doing only 40, 30, 20 percent of the work?


"What the clause means," one young and spirited teacher said finally, winking outrageously, is that everybody, but everybody, daddy, passes."

That outrageous wink answered everything. Through some impossible-to-administer policy, the faculty had been rendered moral monsters. Asked to keep one eye open, cool and detached, in appraising half the students, we were to keep the other eye winking as the rest of the students were passed from grade to grade and eventually into a world that would be all to happy to teach them, as they drifted churlishly from disappointment to disaster, what the school should have been teaching them all along: that even in America, failure is a part of life. (At Glacial Falls the F had been eliminated altogether on the genteel assumption that the D, the -- in Newspeak -- "unpassing" grade, somehow represented a less equivocal failure.) In the end, of course, the policy didn't hurt the student nearly as much as the teacher: a wink eventually becomes a twitch, a twitch the sign of some inner disturbance.

It was either that or "The best place to make lesson plans is at your desk." Shockingly, the book is not really about teaching English at a prep school. It's more about the failure part.