It happened again. For the second time this week, US troops fired on a crowd of Iraqi protesters, this time killing "only" two. They were protesting the killing of 14 protesters on monday night, who were in turn protesting -- interestingly enough -- the quartering of US Solders at a local school, shades of the third amendment and the Boston massacre.

Again our troops make the claim that they were fired on, and the locals dispute that claim, though they were throwing rocks.

Maj. Michael Marti, an intelligence officer for the division's 2nd Brigade, said soldiers in a passing convoy fired on the crowd after rocks were thrown at them and a vehicle window was broken by what was believed to be automatic weapons fire.

I don't quite know what to say about this except we've got to stop. We've got to do something different than we've been doing because this is going to get cyclical real quick. Right now the mayor of Fallujah has asked troops to stay away from sensative areas. They are "considering" the proposal. If these two incidents are anything other than serious strategic screwups that are being dealt with swiftly and from the highest level, we are deep in the stinky stuff. That this war was the brainchild of the Likudnik wing of the Pentagon makes me even more nervous. The last thing we want is our own Gaza the size of California.

Long winding conversation with Sasha last night, in spite of me being not quite comfortable in my skin. The turnover has prompted the long-comiing love page update. Go forth and burrow in the sortid details of my pretty little life, you beautiful gossip monkeys you. I'm also writing a revealing little story to tell tonight at axiom about my 23rd b-day and Watkins.

Right now I positively feel like I'm living the dream: sitting in my backyard with the wireless internet connection running strong, exercising my right as an adult to have a gin and tonic after lunch. It's good to be alive.

Music is a main weapon in the struggle against apathy and sloth and disinvestment. Poetry is another, but it's still pretty fringe. If poetry ever becomes mainstream again, maybe through hip-hop -- still currently a bit overdominated by ego and sex, like the early rock'n'roll scene -- that will be a good sign. In any event, the rhythm and imagination common to both of these forms of expression make them powerful media for putting new memes on the market, and when they're put to use in the service of Truth, good things tend to result.

Right now we've got a lot of musicians making alt.politix songs. Thank goodness for that, but they're not getting a lot of airplay thanks to the Patriotic Consensus which keeps the highly risk-averse music conglomorates in check, to say nothing of openly conservative elements like Clear Channel. However, artists are continuing to pump up the volume. The latest entry into the fray is former Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha with his well-tuned DJ Shadow collaboration, March of Death. I used to spend some early-teen years grooving to the leftist mind-control sounds of Rage (fuck you I won't do what you tell me...), and so for me this is a welcome addition to the field.

On a slightly less serious, but maybe more personally satisfying note, some dance DJ has lifted quotes from Howard Dean's speech at the California Democratic Caucus and made a remix. As you may have gathered from the little banner on your left, I'm endorsing Dean at this time out of the Gang of 9 Democratic hopefuls. I plan on putting together a page explaining this and adding my polemic to the mix, but that's hasn't happened yet. Feel free to ask me questions though.

Finally, for more music (anti-war and otherwise) you won't hear on stations that are controlled by Bush donors, check out the listings at protest-recorts.com. There's also a lot of stuff coming out of international outlets. It seems that paradoxically (or not so), we radical Americans must look overseas for our inspiration, internal media crackdowns and chilling effects creating a real -- and I must admit at times exciting -- samizdat atmosphere. What's samizdat, you ask?

On the wonk end of things, I've been reading excerpts from The Unconquerable World in Harper's Magazine. Dense and academic, but really really good and real in a way that nothing I've read in a long time has been. This, the bus ride down from Boston, everything is giving me shivers of possibility.

I'm off to Boston on the Fung Wah. It's a bit of an East Coast Monkey Rally, and I'm bringing up Sasha to show off. Blogging will be minimal to nonexistant until Monday, but I love you all.