....LMB: "Happy 2nd Birthday, LMB!"....

April 14, 2004

Yes, LMB turns two years old today (coincidently, as does fellow blog The Rittenhouse Review). You can click here and see how it all began, in its generic Blogger glory.

In a way, my blog's anniversary is a bigger deal to me than my birthday. I didn’t exactly have to contribute much to my own birth, and staving off death all these years has only been occasionally difficult. In contrast, starting the blog was a conscious choice, and keeping it "alive" has meant giving up a lot of time, doing a lot of research, and making my fingers move more than they would if I were, say, sleeping.

As for the LMB radio show, I’ve lost all track of those milestones. I think I passed the three-year mark sometime in late January.

[Fun fact: before it was called LMB, the show was called "Truth and Fire", after a line in a zapatista communique. And before that, the show was called "Relentless", after a Bill Hicks album.]

I could easily write up some of the history and significance of this blog, but I did that in last year’s anniversary post. Read that if you want el gran historia.

It’s been a rough year for me personally, as some of you know. My mother lost a long fight against cancer back in December. I spent about half the year trying to help her and the rest of my family as best as I could. I'm not okay. My family is not okay. But we've moved a few steps from terrible, and that's something.

I'm slowly making some changes to my lifestyle as well. For a long time now, I have felt like I've just been treading water. There's a lot of stuff I'm just not doing right in my life, but I've been getting by, and figured that's all i needed to do. But I've recently realized that "treading water" was not the right analogy to use. A more accurate one would be "walking on a sprained ankle." When you hurt your ankle like that, you can still walk around just fine, as long as you keep your feet and legs at certain angles and walk a certain way. But walking in this new way a) doesn't fix your ankle, and b) starts to hurt other parts of your body that aren't used to walking in this manner. It does you damage. And sometimes if you wait for the damage to become noticeable, it might be too late to fix it. The analogy kind of falls apart after that, so let's just say that I'm working on fixing that ankle before my hobbling fucks up too much of my future.

Maybe everyone could use a little self-analysis along those lines. Who's treading and who's hobbling?

Anyhow.

I'm happy with all the continued support and readership. I am also happy to see that in the links sectionsof their own personal webpages, people seem to put LMB in their "humor" section as often as their "politics" section, which means I must be doing something right.

Before I started blogging, a writer I truly respect told me that I had "discovered my voice" as a writer. He was wrong. The writing I was doing then was pretty straight forward quasi-journalism. It wasn't till I let all my humor and anger and hurt and confusion and sarcasm and quirk flow into the texts that my writing voice became true. And for some reason, I felt that I had completely hit my stride with this portion of this post:

"Not content to destroy the world in their own respective fields, Wal-Mart and Fox News have formed a partnership in which Wal-Mart will play Fox News segments on the TVs in their stores. In other news, Sauron and Cobra Commander are throwing a barbecue this weekend, and you're invited."

I find that paragraph so comfy I should be sitting on its front porch in rocking chair with a mug of hot chocolate.

Also this year, several people urged me to write a book. I think I will. I'm just not entirely sure what people would want to read from me. I might need y'all to give me a few pointers.

As an unintended coincidence, we also now have LMB buttons for sale just in time for the Two Year Anniversary. If you want yours to be a Special Two Year Anniverary Commemorative Edition, let me know, and I'll draw a "2" on the back with a pencil. Write me for details.

And since this is like a birthday and all, I'll drag out my Amazon.com Wishlist. C'mon, buy me things! (They're mainly political books and CDs, so it's not like you wouldn't get some second-hand benefit out of it) Okay, so no one's gonna buy me the iPod, but a fella can dream, can't he?

If no one wants to buy me the stuff above, maybe they can buy me one of those magic hypno-ties that Bush was wearing during his speech tonight. What the fuck was that about?

Special thanks to Mark McLaughlin and Quang Tang for all their work converting the drab old LMB to the new spunky one. Did I say "spunky"? I meant "groin-grabbingly spunky".

Also thanks to John, Kittie, Candice, Jeremy, Kat, Nomi, Louie, Tom, Serj, Michele, John K, David D, Steven V, Kill Radio (except that one guy. You know who I'm talking about), Aurora, Indira, Michelle, Ronny, Dad, Adam, 104.7, Dack, Alan, Chris, Cecily, Destroy All, Claudette, Schu, North Coast Hospice, Matt, Garrick, Jim, Leslie, Heidi, Lafe, Jeff, Wayne, Carsten, Matt B, Matt H, Elizabeth, Brad, Jaime, Scott, Emma, Dr. Frakes, Lili, my Mom, and a dozen others I'm surely forgetting right now.

And thanks to all of you regular readers and listeners. It is my pleasure to educate, entertain, and rock you. Without your participation, these tasks'd be a lot more depressing.

So let's all take a breather, and come back fully refreshed, ready to collectively spit in the face of power.

Cheers,

Jake.

Posted by Jake at 01:13 AM | TrackBack (0)
Comments

and it's been a year and a half since I found LMB--happy birthday.

Posted by: Buddy at April 14, 2004 07:51 AM

i didn't realize that you cared so much about me! that makes me run around in circles of joy!

but really --you're trying to get people to buy you stuff? i s'pose you think you're a celebrity of sorts now eh? entitled to free shit? if you were really as smart as you _seem_ you'd bill your rockstar employers for the books and even the ipod as "research expenses".

something to think about.

bark.

lili.

Posted by: lili at April 26, 2004 10:08 PM

I like walking

Posted by: walkng at September 14, 2004 02:38 AM
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Lying Media Bastards is both a radio show and website. The show airs Mondays 2-4pm PST on KillRadio.org, and couples excellent music with angry news commentary. And the website, well, you're looking at it.

Both projects focus on our media-marinated world, political lies, corporate tyranny, and the folks fighting the good fight against these monsters.

All brought to you by Jake Sexton, The Most Beloved Man in America ®.


contact: jake+at+lyingmediabastards.com

Media News

November 16, 2004

Tales of Media Woe

Senate May Ram Copyright Bill- one of the most depressing stories of the day that didn't involve death or bombs. It's the music and movie industries' wet dream. It criminalizes peer-to-peer software makers, allows the government to file civil lawsuits on behalf of these media industries, and eliminates fair use. Fair use is the idea that I can use a snippet of a copyrighted work for educational, political, or satirical purposes, without getting permission from the copyright-holder first.

And most tellingly, the bill legalizes technology that would automatically skip over "obejctionable content" (i.e. sex and violence) in a DVD, but bans devices that would automatically skip over commericals. This is a blatant, blatant, blatant gift to the movie industry. Fuck the movie industry, fuck the music industry, fuck the Senate.

Music industry aims to send in radio cops- the recording industry says that you're not allowed to record songs off the radio, be it real radio or internet radio. And now they're working on preventing you from recording songs off internet radio through a mixture of law and technological repression (although I imagine their techno-fixes will get hacked pretty quickly).

The shocking truth about the FCC: Censorship by the tyranny of the few- blogger Jeff Jarvis discovers that the recent $1.2 million FCC fine against a sex scene in Fox's "Married By America" TV show was not levied because hundreds of people wrote the FCC and complained. It was not because 159 people wrote in and complained (which is the FCC's current rationale). No, thanks to Jarvis' FOIA request, we find that only 23 people (of the show's several million viewers) wrote in and complained. On top of that, he finds that 21 of those letters were just copy-and-paste email jobs that some people attached their names to. Jarvis then spins this a bit by saying that "only 3" people actually wrote letters to the FCC, which is misleading but technically true. So somewhere between 3 and 23 angry people can determine what you can't see on television. Good to know.

Reuters Union Considers Striking Over Layoffs- will a strike by such a major newswire service impact the rest of the world's media?

Pentagon Starts Work On War Internet- the US military is talking about the creation of a global, wireless, satellite-aided computer network for use in battle. I think I saw a movie about this once...

Conservative host returns to the air after week suspension for using racial slur- Houston radio talk show host (and somtime Rush Limbaugh substitute) Mark Belling referred to Mexican-Americans as "wetbacks" on his show. He was suspended for a couple of weeks, and then submitted a written apology for the racial slur to a local newspaper. But he seems to be using the slur and its surrounding controversy to boost his conservative cred with his listeners.

Stay Tuned for Nudes- Cleveland TV news anchor Sharon Reed aired a story about artist Spencer Tunick, who uses large numbers of naked volunteers in his installations and photographs. The news report will be unique in that it will not blur or black-out the usual naughty bits. The story will air late at night, when it's allegedly okay with the FCC if you broadcast "indecent" material. The author of this article doesn't seem to notice that Reed first claims that this report is a publicity stunt, but then claims it's a protest against FCC repression. I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm not that much of a sucker.

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Mission: Mongolia

Jake's first attempt at homemade Mongolican barbecue:

Failure.

What went right: correctly guessing several key seasonings- lemon, ginger, soy, garlic, chili.

What went wrong: still missing some ingredients, and possibly had one wrong, rice vinegar. Way too much lemon and chili.

Result: not entirely edible.

Plan for future: try to get people at Great Khan's restaurant to tell me what's in the damn sauce.

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