Back in the early 1970s, Young Man With Candy registered to vote for the first time. Being a silly Young Man, he registered as a Democrat, which was our family tradition, and besides, Nixon. It didn’t penetrate my consciousness that Vietnam was my first example of the principle that any policy which is bipartisan is presumably bad. After the election, I dropped my party registration and I have been an independent ever since. Until I moved to New York, where there is active disenfranchisement for independent and third party voters. Even the clown car Libertarian Party is excluded. So it was slightly jarring when the local Republican committee chairman wanted to see me about signing a ballot access petition (which I was glad to do), and referred to me as a registered Republican. Which I am, out of gratitude to him for helping get my voter registration pushed through. You see, New York State is far more onerous and demanding of documentation than any southern state you can think of, and it was going to take months for me to gather it all together. So since as a practical matter I had to pick one or the other, I went Team Red. As did Web Dom, with her reasoning being, “I don’t really align with the Republicans, but I really really don’t align with the Democrats!” Still, hearing me called this for the first time was a bit of a shock to my deeply libertarian system. And it satisfies my cynicism that the whole “ID for voters is a Republican plot to disenfranchise colored people” is a very knowing lie.

Speaking of shocks, there are birthday surprises, including a guy with whom I share a porn name; a scientist who strongly disbelieved in atoms; a guy who was clearly not a cocaine user; a guy who made margaritas possible; a guy with a sustained influence on guitarists; the architect of the Vietnam War, may he be frying in Hell’s napalm; a true oddity, a Jewish comedian; a guy who spent a lot of time diddling his organ; an actor who will be perfectly cast as Shakes The Clown; and a guy who is definitely not German. 

Let’s pretend we’re actually here for the Links.

 

“Our problem is that we’re not communicating the obvious wisdom of our policies to the dumb rubes. We have to use shorter words.”

 

No thought given to the actual alternatives, as usual.

 

Are they sure it wasn’t just more lawyers?

 

“I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part! We’re just the guys to do it.”

 

Boring but amusing in a schadenfreude sort of way.

 

Now do COVID.

 

And since it’s Jon Lord’s birthday… well… Old Guy Music has to be my favorite Deep Purple tune. Lord has a long keyboard intro, then fast and wonderful electric blues rock happens.