A ONCE-A-WEEK (or so) LIST OF WHAT I GIVE A DAMN ABOUT. WITH 10 = MOST IMPORTANT; AND 1 = NOT SO MUCH
IT'S ALL A MATTER OF DEGREE
QQ : 1 DRY ICE
Sarah Palin is hot. She radiates the warm blood of a freshly-killed moose.
Michelle Bachmann is cold. Dry ice is the solid form of Carbon Dioxide. Her detractors claim that CO2 is warming the earth.
Michelle has celestially-inspired, contrary evidence.
Dry ice must be the answer to global warming when hell freezes over, or when she becomes president.
Which-ever event happens first.
QQ : 2. MARLBORO MAN
Bubba Clinton is hot. He blows the saxophone and got blown.
Jazz is either hot or cool. Jazz is not smooth. Bubba does not blow smooth.
Barry Obama does not play the saxophone. He blows Marlboro Lights.
That is not cool and he is not hot.
Barry is smooth and getting smoother as he slides away into the smoke and mirrors of a compromising wasteland of indecision and failed commitments. Smooth jazz is not jazz.
QQ : 3. DIG GRUNDIG
Recorded music was hot on an early sixties Grundig Stereo Console playing vinyl.
Analog tape-recording achieved a theoretical fidelity that was infinite with respect to human hearing capabilities.
When music was sampled and digitized, the sample rate has always been limited by cost and memory limitations.
The heat is lost. Digitized music is cold.
Not only is digitized music emotionally cold, it is economically cold.
Digitized music has lost its economic heat.
99 cents is too much to pay for cold noise.
QQ : 4. TECHNICOLOR
When Jazz was hot, Jackson Pollock painted Charles Mingus.
When Jazz was cool, Mark Rothko painted Thelonius Monk.
When Jazz got smooth, George W Bush painted Kenny G in monochrome.
QQ : 5. INFLUENZA WITHOUT FEVER
When Bob Dylan rocked, he a'changed the times. The streets were on fire.
When Curt Cobain burned, the boys were hot with anger and rage.
When Rihanna sings, we chill.
The New York Times describes Drake's new album in the context of form without content.
That's cold. 99 cents is too much to pay for the common cold.
QQ : 6 IT'S A GAS GAS GAS
When Jack Kerouac was "On The Road" there was no speed limit.
That was sizzling hot.
Jack was also the architect of cool.
When I tried to re-trace his steps during the gasoline crisis the speed limit was fifty-five miles per hour.
My electric-blue 1964, T-Bird convertible with hydraulic, retractable hard top was the ultimate in cool.
That said - when the Texas Highway Patrol issued my speeding ticket, that almost blew my cool
Jumping' Jack Flash, you were a gas.
QQ : 7. THE COOL OF TEPID
The new feudalism has established the separation of powers; those with heat and those without.
It seems that the Middle Class was a social construct that is no longer needed by the hot 1%.
The problem is that when the serfs start to freeze, they will find a way to keep warm at some cost to those who denied them the means to keep warm in the first place.
Even though the Middle Class may be an artificial, luke-warm construct, it forms the glue that maintains a balance that is civilizing.
Without it, we are tribal and primitive.
Perhaps ‘tepid’ is the necessary petrie dish for growth, culture and innovation.
QQ : 8 NINETY EIGHT DEGREES
Truth burns. Truth scalds. Truth cuts.
As mortal beings, we exist in denial.
Our current, universally-accepted state of denial is: that we as individuals do not share responsibility for our larger global dilemmas.
Blame?
Protest?
Occupy?
Teachers‘ unions are not responsible for the breakdown of the family.
Wall Street is not responsible for the lack of legislative regulation.
It is not Europe's fault that Greek oligarchs refuse to pay taxes.
Hitler did not come to power without the assistance of Ford, DuPont, GM and GE.
And then there are the Koch brothers.
A vote for Mitt, Newt, The late great Herm or the two Dicks is a vote for the Koch.
The SCOTUS tells us that the Koch are people.
I'm not so sure. I would like to take their temperature to see if they are alive. Rectally.
QQ : 9 ABSOLUTE ZERO
They say that hell is a hot place. Global warming?
QQ : 10. KELVIN
The internal combustion engine is conceptually unchanged since its original invention 100 years ago. It depends on fire. That fire is destructive.
Nuclear reactors depend on a controlled explosion of unstable uranium.
The waste material is eternally destructive.
With what we perceive to be unprecedented access to technological innovation and infinite computing power, our dependence on ancient sources of heat is majorly uncool.
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