By Ross “Typical College Student” Barkan

Oh my God, oh my God, Barack Obama is on the TV! There he is, yo, get your Obama t-shirts and pins and hats and other assorted Obama shit ready, we gotta cheer really loud! Yeah! Go Obama, Go Obama! Tell those retards in the other suite to shut the hell up, Obama’s gonna speak.

We got some beer, some chips, and a lot of self-righteousness. Nice. Yo Brad, throw me an Obama towel. I need it to wipe the Obama anticipation sweat from my Obama boxers.

Yes, douche, I saw him speak live. Like ten times. Maybe six. Three. One. Whatever I go to his website all the time. Stick it to the old white men, Obama we love you!

Wait, what? Rich, you’re telling me you’re not voting for Obama? The fuck are you talking about? Didn’t you see everyone’s “Yes We Can” sweatshirts? Jesus, did you even see the dude on Oprah? I mean, Barack Obama is one of us, man. I saw him play basketball on Sportscenter. Huh? Nader? No, fag, I’m not wasting my vote on some other douche who can’t even repeat awesome shit really loudly.

Obama said something! I sorta heard it! Yeeeaaahhhhhhh!

Shaniqua!?

No, what Rich? I don’t wanna hear from you anymore. You’re a racist. It’s the 21st century man, we’ve moved beyond all this stuff about white people being president. We’re ready for change, man, change. Do you even know what that means, you stupid racist? Go back to the South with your slaves and let us enjoy the most awesome president ever. Obaaammmaaaaaaahhhh!!

Yo, this is so cool. Obama knows me, man, he’s gonna do stuff! Like…things. Super fucking awesome things. Like I heard, on the web I think, that health care might be free sorta kinda. Sorta kinda free! Woooooooohh! My buddy Rob said Obama used to say stuff even awesomer but now’s gotta back down to win over all those douchebags in the Midwest. Who gives a fuck about Idohoma or whatever anyway. I mean—he just said “Yes we can” again on television. Yeeeaahhhh!!!!!!

Let’s go Obama, let’s go, c’mon everybody clap, except faggot Rich the racist. I mean, if you like Obama, you’re automatically not a racist. Saw it on some real political blogs and things. I read on Wikipedia that Obama used to organize shit in the community, so Brad and I decided that this summer we might actually drive into a black neighborhood and maybe roll down the windows. Maybe. O-BAM-A ’08 bitches!

Ok, now he’s talking again about other stuff. Kinda boring. Yo Brad, wanna go get some burgers? I think the Giants are on later. Eli Manning is the shit, man. Like the Obama of football. Then we can drink beer out of little red cups and post the photos on Facebook and make sure the cameras caught our cool Obama hoodies. Definitely.

Hold on, Brad, I checked your Facebook yesterday and it doesn’t even say you’ve added the Obama fan page to your profile. Damn, do you even care about politics like I do? I have eight separate Obama applications. Holy fuck you don’t know anything. Read a fucking newspaper’s front page for five seconds and claim to know some shit about black people problems, c’mon.

Rock the vote ’08, yeah, everybody vote for Obama! Obama! Obama! Dude can I put a really big Obama sticker on your car? No? Racist! VOTE FOR BARACK OBAMA HE’S REALLY COOL C’MON!

Uh, Brad, some black dudes are sitting at the table next to us. Maybe we should move.

By Ross “Middle Class Voter” Barkan

I’m sitting down with a bag of Cheetos, big bag I tell ya, extra cheese, and I calls to the wife. I say, “Hey wife you know what I heard on the tube?” And she says, “What, you already told me about them pills that make your diddly hoo hoo better.”  And I says, “No, sweet baby Jesus, I heard our future Vice President Sarah Palin is a hockey mom!”

The missus ignores me, but I continue. “She likes some good old hockey and she’s a mom.  My word, sweet super Jesus, that’s a woman I want in the office!”

Ok, so I’m watching these debaters debate things. The older fella, Joe Biden, is borin’ me with his talkity talk. Saying stuff about “taxes” and such. Load of horseshit if you ask me, going up there and not even mentioning stuff that’s important to me. I mean, he says nothin’ bout fixing my damn flat tire or gettin’ that fat cat-fucking sack of doughy horseshit Mildred Cummings to keep her cats and her damn hose offa my lawn. Offa I say! But then this Palin, who’s almost as nice on the eyes as the ladies in my magazines, starts talkin’ about the real issues. And I mean hockey!

I love me some hockey. When I was a boy, we would take a skate on the ol’ pond every morning. Choose up sides and play till it got dark. We would take breaks for some lunch and some beatin’ of brown-colored folks, but then it was back to the rink. I been a fan of the Red Wings since my pa was passed out drunk at my 5th birthday in a Gordie Howe jersey. I says to pa, “If ya like Gordie, so will I!” and then he burped up some green-lookin’ stuff.

Sarah Palin, Todd Palin, and their children Bippity, Boppity, Boo, and Wilbur (the youngest). Not pictured: Pythagoras, her newborn.

God damn ya Mildred keep your fucking ugly shit-licking cats off my lawn or I’m gonna come out there with the wrath of black Jesus and shoot them all to hell!

So as I says, I find out in the debates this Palin loves her some hockey too. Sweet Jesus an’ Moses, what a wonderful thing it is. She almost ruined it when she mentioned soccer moms though. The missus and I don’t like soccer and we forbade our boy Billy from playin’ such a sinful European sport that celebrates homosexuals. I seen me some soccer. Nothin’ but two-timing Spaniards sliding on grass with their boyfriends. Ain’t for me or any good American.

As I finish my Cheetos I hear her talkin’ some more. She mentions stuff about oil and health care and I don’t really listen. My pop didn’t need no government to clean the beer offa his pants after he throwed-up at my seventh, eighth, and twelfth birthdays. Or wipe off the sticky from his trousers after he canoodled with the arithmetic teacher at my high school graduation. Naw, good Americans just need some gas and some chewin’ tobacco. And them magazines wit’ the boobies, I fuckin’ love those.

The missus likes Palin ‘cause she’s a mom and has a kid who don’t think good. Billy is kinda slow too. Slow ‘cause he’s fat porker who eats even more goddamn Hot Pockets than I do.

Jesus Mary Fuck An Octopus Mildred, get your damn cats away from my John Deere I will bust Whisker’s ass so hard he won’t know what year it is if cats could know such things.

So this Palin doesn’t know everything, so what? She knows ‘bout hockey and momming. And she’s right up those commie Russians’ tails bein’ from Alaska and all. Of course, she loves Jesus as much as the missus and I pretend to. I been to church every Sunday this year. Ok, other Sunday. Three weeks ago. A month. Since the football season started. Go get ‘em Romo my boy the Cowboys will rise agin!

So the missus and I was on the fence ‘bout McCain who’s got a liberal streak and don’t seem to hate the gays enough. But Palin sealed it for us, I tell ya, she hates them gays and them blacks and hopefully will keep the towelheads away from McDonalds down on Pine Street.  She knows what it’s like to be from a small town and not do good in school or know about fancy terms like “geopolitics” and ‘bout all them confusin’ naming countries in the Middle East. Pakiran or whatever, it don’t matter, as long as we blow them to hell so Ol’ Glory can fly forever. Yup, Sarah Palin is the right vice presidential candidate for our country.

Also she’s got a fine ass.

By Anthony Murisco

Tuesday, September 23, 2008, is a day when many dreams were shattered. In a cover story for People magazine, American Idol Season 2 runner-up Clay Aiken announced that he was a homosexual.

After years of insults by Kathy Griffin, rumors, tabloid exposes (including an online sex scandal with a former US Marine) Clay finally felt that now, with the birth of his baby son with his best friend, music producer Jaymes Foster, it was time to break the silence.

Born in North Carolina and raised Southern Baptist, Clay always shied away from  speculation on his sexuality. As per the Baptist beliefs, homosexuals are condemned; in the People issue Clay goes on to say in his hometown when you realized you were gay “you either hid it or couldn’t hide it..”

And I came out of the closet...

Since 2003, the year of his Idol debut, with his strong and powerful voice and uplifting tunes, he became a spokesman for Christianity. He even appeared in Christian Music Planet as the “American Idol Christian”. Fans, usually women, gravitated to his “aw-shucks”, old-fashioned boy personality, and adopted the nickname “Claymates”. These fans were always the first to defend Aiken when he came under attack.

Having never spoken publicly about this, the message boards over at Claymaniacs.com were divided. To some, Clay is still the same old Clay; user GWENN, a woman with an avatar of her and her ideal man had this to say, “Gay – So what? The man is drop dead gorgeous.”

Others debate how he could claim to be a Christian and a homosexual. User Diane on AikenForums.com puts it, “sorry, the Bible says homosexuality is wrong, and as a Christian I believe that. We can’t just follow the parts of the Bible that we want or that are convenient to us, or we are not Christians. And he says he’s a Christian. Too bad, I was supporting him since 2003.”

Some have gone as far as decoding his previous antics, such as user HavinaClayAffair who began to question men who have been in and out of Clay’s life throughout his career, “Where did his best bud and high school friend take off to. We heard an explanation of some sort. I remember reading it… he just sort of worked for Clay- then disappeared…”

What effect will this have on the mold created by Clay? As one fan, user WilsonClaymate on the Claymaniacs forum puts it, “I love Clay Aiken unconditionally and I’m here for the long hall.”

By Ross Barkan

Holy shit, I’m old and angry. You have no fucking idea. What? Cooney what? Shut the fuck up, Jeremy, I don’t want any ice cream. Fuck.  Lemme tell you young shitdicks something. If I ever catch you goddamn ice wagon-asses on my fucking lawn I swear to God I will get the fuck off my Hoveraround and smack the shit out of you with my ox cane. I fucking will, don’t press me. What, Jeremy, Islands? Yeah there should be a place to put the blacks. Stealing my damn medicine.

Oh, Coney Island! Thanks, limpdick, next time, don’t whisper like a shit-eating little girl.  Get a paper cone and yell that garbage. Yeah, I got memories. Fuck, I lost my virginity on the Cyclone back in ’19. Some hot fucking broad she was, I think I was twelve at the time, and I Jack Dempsey-ed her ass into the ground. Those were the days. Back then, there weren’t any sissy politically correct fuckhead hippies with all their “rules.” A man could get a good under-aged fuck on the Cyclone. If his bowels were loose, like mine are every goddamn hour, he could dump his truck of shit in the nearest outhouse. Good times. Lemme tell you, and if you couldn’t shit, Coney Island had this great enema booth for a nickel. A nickel! That was just after the Great War when the people were friendly and you could get a tube shoved up your ass with a smile.  Jeremy, by the way, I’m gonna need another enema in an hour, so quit playing with your dick and come take off my pants.

Good times.

In my day, Coney Island was a man’s park. Not this rinky-dinky, namby-pampy, sissy-wissy, lollipop-fucking amusement shithole they closed down a few weeks ago. No! There were wooden horses and real cotton candy. You young assrabbits ever ate fucking cotton with sugar? Grab a piece of cotton from your night shirt and just chew? Hell no, too busy with your Ebays and your musicmaphones and whatever the fuck else that assclown Herbert Hoover shits down your pants. Alfred Smith will be the next president of the United States if my name ain’t…fuck I can’t remember.

Back in the 20’s people swam in fucking real bathing suits. If rubber one pieces didn’t get the ladies wet, nothing would. I fucked Marilyn Monroe’s grandmother underneath the boardwalk. I nearly soiled my diapers just now thinking ‘bout that.  I remember the time Yankee center fielder Earle Combs came down to Coney Island. He was my favorite because he really hated the blacks. Those were the days. They had Coney Island for the whites and Black Coney Island for them jangling, corncob good-for-nothin’…fuck I forgot where I was going with this again. Jeremy, I need a fucking towel. No, shit-for-tits, the yellow goddamn towel with the thick lining I sprung another leak. Goddamn that Hoover.

Yes, them were the days when women and the minorities weren’t sassing about this and that. Just good angry white motherfuckers like me and enema booths, enema booths as far as the eye could see! They had the moving pictures at Coney Island too. For a damn nickel you could see Chaplin and a kangaroo give Orson Wells a reach around. Moving pictures today are for shit, I tell you. Last week Jeremy, my good-for-nothing-except-for-maybe-sweeping-my-skin flakes grandson took me to see a moving picture. It was all colors and flying shit and shapes and other random horeseball malarkey that I couldn’t follow if I was Kaiser Wilhelm shitting rainbow colored goats. Which reminds me, there were a few smelly Krauts in the front row and I told Jeremy to fetch me my liberty cabbage gun so I could blow those goat fuckers back to hell. Jeremy, who a woman wouldn’t fuck with a fishing pole, ignored me.

Someday when they kick those whitish Cubans out of the Major Leagues and the horseless carriage breaks the impossible 30 mile per hour barrier, I hope to get the hell back to Coney Island. There were some good times there. Beating up darkies, fucking broads, beating up darkies, moving pictures, darkies again, enemas…ah it makes an old man want to cry.  If only they didn’t surgically remove my eyes last Christmas. Those were the days.

Now get the fuck over to my Hoveraround Jeremy it’s a god damn shitstorm in my trousers.

By Nick Eaton

Now, seven years after the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration continues to salt the wounds of affected Americans.  Morbid opportunism marks the occasion.  Many liberal blogs spit fire regarding the disaster profiteering this administration has pursued, but few outline the events in a clear and concise way that enables people with less time (and quite frankly, less interest) to understand…

1993-
A Muslim terrorist cell attempts to destroy the World Trade Center by detonating explosives in the towers’ basements. Several die, but the buildings do not suffer too much damage.

1996-
Osama bin Laden issues a fatwa demanding American troops leave Saudi Arabia.  A fatwa is basically bin Laden’s perspective on Islamic law.  Bin Laden used Islamic texts to justify violence against America until demands are met.

1998-
Osama bin Laden issues another fatwa, condemning America’s foreign policy in regards to Israel and restating his demand that American troops leave Saudi Arabia.

2001-
April:
Dick Cheney commissions a report from the Baker Institute for Public Policy, which states:
“The United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the US should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/ diplomatic assessments.”

September 11:
Nineteen al-Qaeda operatives hijack airplanes and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.  Fifteen of the hijackers are from Saudi Arabia, one is from Egypt, one is from Lebanon and two are from the United Arab Emirates.

September 20:
George W. Bush demands that Afghanistan cooperate with the United States by closing down terrorist training camps, handing terrorists over and allowing the U.S access to said camps.

September 22:
The United Arab Emirates withdraws recognition of the Taliban as the ruling government in Afghanistan.

September 23:
Saudi Arabia follows suit, leaving Pakistan as the Taliban’s only ally.

October 7:
The war in Afghanistan begins.  The purpose of the war is to drive out the Taliban regime (a known ally to al-Qaeda), subdue terrorists in the region and capture Osama bin Laden.

December 14:
“We’re going to get [Bin Laden] Dead or alive, it doesn’t matter to me.”-Bush

2002-
February:
The CIA sends Joseph Wilson to investigate Iraq’s supposed attempts to purchase yellow cake uranium from Niger.  Wilson concludes that such claims are “unequivocally wrong.”  The Bush administration disregards this intelligence and continues to perpetuate the concept that Iraq is seeking to purchase uranium.

March 13:
“…Terror is bigger than one person… So I don’t know where [Bin Laden] is… You know, I just don’t spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. …I’ll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him.”-Bush

July 23:
British government and military officials meet and discuss America’s foreign policy.  Citing classified information regarding America’s policies, a memo (the Downing Street Memo) is drafted which states that:
“Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

September:
The administration points to Iraq’s purchasing of high strength aluminum tubes as signs of attempts to enrich uranium.  The Department of Energy and the Institute for Natural Resources rejected such claims stating that it was unlikely that such tubes were suited to enrich uranium.  Colin Powell’s address to the UN Security Council continues, unaltered even after this information is released.  Later Powell admits that much of the information was “deliberately misleading.”

2003-
March 7:
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reports that documents that Bush cited as proof of Iraq’s attempts to purchase uranium from Niger are “obvious forgeries.”

March 20:
The war in Iraq begins.

June:
Wilson writes an op-ed for the New York Times highlighting his investigation and reasserting the lack of evidence for Iraq’s attempt to purchase uranium.

July 14:
Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson’s wife, is outed as a CIA Operations Officer in a news column by Robert Novak.  Lewis “Scooter” Libby was found guilty of two counts of perjury one count of obstruction of justice and one count of making false statements to federal investigators.  Richard Armitage was irrefutably linked to the leak but never charged and Libby alluded to the order to leak Plame’s name coming from Vice President Cheney.

2004-
October:
“I just don’t think I ever said I’m not worried about Osama bin Laden. It’s kind of one of those exaggerations.”-Bush
“The headlines all say, ‘No weapons of mass destruction stockpiled in Baghdad.’ We already knew that.”-Cheney

2007-
August 28:
“Iran’s active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust… Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere, and the United States is rallying friends and allies to isolate Iran’s regime, to impose economic sanctions. We will confront this danger before it is too late.”-Bush

I don’t think I need to go any further. On this anniversary of the attacks of September 11 think not only of the victims but how their deaths have been shamelessly manipulated to fuel perpetual war for perpetual profit.

By Vincent Michael Festa

At the end of every season I make a mixtape on cassette consisting of my favorite songs at the time. It’s an audio diary of sorts: I take 120 minutes of music and chronicle three months of my life. These songs that I put on tape help me remember stand-out people, places, events, habits, and experiences in my life. I’ve been doing this since middle school and haven’t stopped since. It’s the soundtrack of my life recorded in about 65 volumes at 120 minutes each equaling about 130 hours, with songs taken from many years of collecting and making hundreds of cassette tapes and CD-R’s.

I do this because it keeps me alive. They also keep my mind swirling, not dead -sounding like a constant, continuous pitch like an old test of the emergency broadcast system. After the fact, it’s a mental exercise where not only are my memories in constant check, but it also keeps my imagination going. I always have been the center of attention. I’ve met and associated with all sorts of people in my life, and for me to still have a good conversation with someone, these cassettes help me remember instances and reference points that keep that constant going.

Me and my cassettes have been through a lot together. We’ve gone through make-ups, break-ups, and five different schools. They have kept me company while walking through the neighborhood to and from Brentwood High. We went on car rides, ferry rides, and bus trips to Rochester, Staten Island, Atlantic City, rival schools and sports games together. We’ve taken car rides and ferries to Staten Island and Atlantic City. Sometimes my cassettes needed fixing, so I had to unscrew the casing and reset the tape back onto the wheel when it wedged itself. I even had to splice them and tape them back together again because I was worried of losing what I had on the tape. I knew that once radio airtime went, that was it.

The stylistics of cassettes are unmatched. The quiet, clandestine nature of tape-trades to friends and seeing their hand-written track-listings made things exciting as sometimes you never knew what you could discover. Once upon a time before MP3’s and file-sharing, friends went to each other for mixes from their favorite artists. Even my friends looked up to me because I was the one who went record-shopping on a very heavy basis and bought the music (remember that?), fixing them up with rare, hard-to-find songs and b-sides of their favorite artists. That was how friendships were forged.

Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, cassette-tape culture was surging and it was the backbone for old-school hip-hop and the first industrial and noise recordings. Artists like the Cold Crush Brothers had their live shows recorded, copied, and circulated for that true-school feel, and even inside some street-corner breakdance boom-boxes in the 80’s. The Club Moral Stock List has documented some of the early days of noise and experimental music. Through the 90’s, underground labels such as DHR released their “Midiwar” tapes full of electronic, techno, and drum ‘n’ bass warfare and artists such as Prurient still release cassette works to this day.

Overnight tapings of WUSB’s diverse programming included and was not limited to techno, rockabilly, industrial, reggae, indie-rock, experimental, and its late-night talk shows. Z100, Hot 97, Q-104 in its alternative days, the “new” KTU in the 90’s, Kiss FM when they were hardcore hip-hop, 107.5 WBLS when they were hip-hop. I can’t begin to tell you how much I recorded some of that that good ol’ radio history I have in possession, some of which were used to make these mix-tapes.

Now, they’re really history.

I just gotten an e-mail from a close colleague of mine containing a story of how cassettes are on the decline. According to an article written by Andrew Adam Newman, only 480,000 tape players were sold in 2007 and 1/5th of that is expected to be sold in 2012. Only 400,000 music cassettes were sold, consisting of only %0.1 of all physical and digital sales combined. Ten years ago, it was 173,000,000.

For a long time, cassettes ran against the CD and were losing steam. They were less accessible (rewinding instead of pushing a button), more fragile, and had lesser sound quality of its shiny counterpart. With vinyl records’ resurgence in cool and the digital MP3’s dominance in simplicity and quality, the cassette tape could finally die down within the next five to ten years commercially. That sucks, really.

There will be no more art in pressing play. The fresh, sugary smell of the cardboard insert upon opening the cellophane when playing the tape for the first time will fade. The density of holding the cassette tape in your hands and the thickness of the reels will no longer be an issue. The sound of fast-forwarding skidding inside the tape deck will actually be considered a real nuisance now. Writing track-listings with red ink and red hearts saying “I love you!” will be thrown in the desk drawer, shoe box, or attic and forgotten about. Hard-shell walkmans with wiry headphone and orange sponge ear set-ups, the image of Grandmaster Flash boom-boxes, and the excitement of tenth-generation Metallica tapes recorded from yr best friend’s garage…gone. All gone.

Lately, I’ve been neglecting my tape player. For some reason I haven’t been recording like I used to. Maybe because I’m busy buying vinyl and spending time with my record player since the crate-digger in me needs original hip-hop samples in order for me to survive. But over the summer I was stuck at home with no car while transitioning jobs and had nothing to do except to go back and listen to my “blanks”. Listening to cassettes I haven’t listened to in years plus discovering a wealth of oddities I never knew I had were a blast. It’s the stuff the 365 Days of Music Project were made of.

So far so good. For as long as I have these tapes, a working deck, and an urge to keep the nostalgic spirit alive, tapeheads like myself will still have a reason to listen to cassettes. Screw CD’s and MP3’s: they’re a disposable parody of consumerism and mass-production. Cassettes are more hip than anything right now.