Dr. Sour Puss

This has been absolutely rocking my world lately. The music for the compilation Cambodia Rocks came to the American market via a tourist backpacking in Cambodia who bought some cassettes off the street in Phnom Penh. On these, he found an amazing collection of psychedelic garage music recorded by Cambodian artists in the late 60s and early 70s. These were eventually released on CD by the label Parallel World, but because the original source was an unlabeled cassette tape there was no identifying information about the artists. Some of the music was recorded by people who were big stars in Cambodia prior to the Khmer Rouge and eventually the artists and songs have been identified, and as such are labeled in the that first WFMU link above. All links on the WFMU blog are downloadable MP3s. At first I thought this was just a curiosity, a story of a quirky subculture of lost music brought back from obscurity. But as I have listened more and explored other music from the genre ( Pen Ron , S...

Unmistakable sign that love may yet win out over hate. I think the cover photo says it all. And I don't really give a shit if this is a Sneaky Republican Trick. It's a human rights issue and it pisses me off that 27 states have banned gay marriage because certain rednecks think it threatens the strength of their marriage. It doesn't even make any sense -- at least when white people try to keep minorities down, there is a certain kind of logic to preserving their hold on power. But all this is about is allowing two people the freedom to love each other. And what could possibly be more important than love, especially these days?

Crossing the finish line was one of the most emotional moments of my life. To get there, I had to call upon something I didn't even know existed inside me. Around mile 22, it felt like my body was not physically able to carry me any further. The only thing that propelled me after that point was heart. After training through several continuous weeks of rain and snow, we had woken up to a bright sunny day in Vancouver. Shireesha and Peregrin flew through the half marathon. Ben got struck with a gastrointestinal flu 3 days before the race which wiped him out so he wisely switched from the full to the half marathon which he ran in less than 2 hours. For the full marathon, Matt and I managed to stay together for almost the entire first half, and though it was really nice to have a partner, he and I both knew he'd finish a half hour before me. You can read Matt's account here . What we didn't count on though was that it took each of us 30 minutes more than we'd planned. I...

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union is closing all west coast ports today to protest the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I see a lot of these guys in my practice since we're sandwiched between the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma. Not your typical radical socialists, actually most of them have seen a lot of hard living. For the most part, these guys come from the kind stock that are being fed to the U.S. military meat grinder and *a lot* of them are vets. It's dangerous for those in power to allow these guys the luxury of a political voice. High school educated blue collar workers are usually spend most of their time struggling to stay ahead of debt and health care bills. But give them stability and good benefits and suddenly they have a lot to say about what it takes to create a just society. It's an historical quirk that Longshoremen still have powerful union protection and I wonder how much longer it will last. But more power to them.