A radical departure from all that came before

That's a Joshua Tree. I've never really respected U2, though I found myself walking around the other day humming "But I still haven't found what I'm looking for." I laughed. Out loud. I have thirty-five year old women using LOL in emails, which make me puke. Silently.




Radical departures are illusory, though radical breaks may not be. Rousseau was wrong when he postulated the perfectibility of mankind. I am weaning myself off of cigarettes (not true . . . but I will stick to my story) and the fairly large amount of tension and short-temperedness that accompanies cigaretteless me has been experimentally interesting, if not experientally. So there's a strike against perfectibility.

Kids are vicious. They sell each other out. They lie. They complain about how you don't have Kleenex and how cheap that is, and then when you get Kleenex - blue, soft, non-irritating Kleenex - they stuff dirty Kleenex in the crack that has crept in between the two cabinets that hold all those books prior teachers ordered. Another strike against perfectibility.

Grammar is either over- or underrated, I haven't decided.

Is it possible that the first thing people of the future will ask you, after revivifying your cryogenically frozen brain and installing it into a gene-derived clone placeholder body, will be something to the effect of, "How did you all not band together and overthrow that Bush guy?"
Is it really that bad? It feels that bad. Shouldn't great art be coming out? Isn't that kind of the American power struggle, shitty political eras beget incisive, groundbreaking art?

But remember how I cautioned against the very idea of a radical departure. Don't forget that.

Toure's new book of essays - I'm not sure what to say. I set aside a good hour in a Barnes & Noble to peruse, and I might buy.

Do you know of any other good writing on hiphop (and please don't say Bomb the Suburbs)?