Posted inMusic

Erykah Badu: New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh

Erykah Badu is an island – thankfully. The longtime R&B artist seems completely isolated from trends, fads and unnecessary technologies on her latest record, New Amerykah Part Two.

Erykah Badu
New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh
Universal Motown Records

Erykah Badu is an island – thankfully. The longtime R&B artist seems completely isolated from trends, fads and unnecessary technologies on her latest record, New Amerykah Part Two. For an album that's peaking on top 10 lists worldwide, it's free of flimsy auto-tune and simple-minded, poppy love songs. Unlike the first New Amerykah, an album stocked with social commentary, songs about poverty and violence, this record is an offering to her heart.

Posted inCulture

wRite: A self and nation divided

Hatred keeps on increasing to a point where both you and I burn ourselves in mutual hatred, and to the Buddha, the only way to solve it is that one party must stop…

– Ananda W. P. Guruge
Awakenings: Asian Wisdom for Every Day

April 2001, I was on a solo road trip researching Nevada light, indigo mountains and small-town casinos for my novel Going Through Ghosts. I had stopped in a convenience store for coffee and yakked with the clerk. She told me there was a warm spring in a nearby cottonwood grove. “Don't tell anybody where it is. It's for locals only. We take care of it.”

Posted inCulture

Our Picks for 4/28 – 5/6: Last Band Standing, AM Interstate, Blues Amuse & Brews 2010, Head for the Hills and more

What to do in Central Oregon this week.

Last Band Standing
thursday 29
Some 500 people showed up at the first edition of Last Band Standing to lend their vote to their favorite local band and expect that trend to continue this week with performances by Rough String Band, Absofreakinlutely, High Desert Hooligans, Electric Moccasin Party and Boxcar String Band. $3/advance at BIGS, $5/door. Boondocks Bar & Grill, 70 NW Newport Ave.
Anybody Killa
friday 30
Have you heard about these rappers who paint their faces all black-and-white spooky before going onstage. Well, there's a lot of them out there now and Anybody Killa is one of those – it's like Halloween every day… and with louder bass. Tragedy, Knothead, Twisted Insane open. $10. 8pm. Domino Room, 51 NW Greenwood Ave.

Posted inNews

Election Endorsements: Wells Ashby for Judge

It seems that too often in modern political and civil life voters are faced with the prospect of choosing between the lesser of two evils at the ballot box.

It seems that too often in modern political and civil life voters are faced with the prospect of choosing between the lesser of two evils at the ballot box. In the case of the race for the open seat in the local district county court, voters have just the opposite quandary. Two extremely well-qualified and well-suited candidates have emerged to fill an open judgeship. Tom Hill, an ex-prosecutor and veteran civil and defense attorney, and Wells Ashby, a respected local prosecutor and school board member, are both campaigning to fill the seat opened on the bench by the recent retirement of Judge Ed Perkins.

Posted inOpinion

What's Wrong With Arizona? Financial deform, alien invasions, lung fungus and much more!

The author has been sent on the road to discover a lost country formerly known as America.

The author has been sent on the road to discover a lost country formerly known as America. He is reporting from a holding pen in the Arizona desert, wearing an orange jumpsuit and learning Spanish, regretting that tanning session and tequila, on assignment for Or-Bust.com and The Source Weekly.
Et Tu Obama?
President Obama, speaking at the Cooper Union in NYC (where Abraham Lincoln's speech 150 years ago made him president – then totally tore our country apart as well) made his case for finance reform by saying, “I'm here because I believe this is not only in the best interests of the country, but the best interests of the financial industry.” Feeling a bit like Caesar, Obama was surrounded by those who created our economic meltdown and then rewarded with billions in bailouts, including Goldman Sachs chief Beelzebub, er, Lloyd Blankfein – hot off an SEC civil suit for fraud, rumors of insider trading, new quarterly profits of $3.3 billion, and a subpoena for special “Goldman Sachs Hearings” on Capitol Hill – and other donors to Obama's presidential campaign who now feel betrayed, much like day laborers in Arizona (see below).

Posted inOpinion

Questioning the War on Drugs

What is the purpose of the War on Drugs?
Is it to reduce competition with Big Pharma and the tobacco and alcohol industries?
Perhaps it is so banksters can enrich themselves laundering drug money to decrease their dependency on taxpayer bailouts?
Or maybe it is an opportunity to provide jobs in the ever expanding police state, the military/mercenary industries and Homeland Security?
Could it be a creative way to intensify class war by creating a criminal class of the underfed and unwashed dependent on the drug trade for survival?

Posted inOpinion

Buses Should Run On Sunday

Many times I have compared my advocating enhancements of Bend's public transportation to that of eating soup with a fork.
BAT's fixed routes started out with unworkable schedules. It was not until nine months after my lone voice pointed out that fact before workable schedules were adopted. Not nine days. Not nine weeks. But nine months, three quarters of a year.
2010 has been proclaimed THE YEAR OF THE VOLUNTEER. But so far, my lone voice of advocating has not resulted in Sunday being recognized as important enough for fixed-route public transit.

Posted inOpinion

Liberal and Proud of It

Conservative doctrine has gotten this place, Earth, into one vat of trouble after another. Some believe humans are a crisis species. That's bullshit. Conservative policies are consistently to blame. Old-school religious, sociological, economic and political agendas advocate elitism, racial bigotry, sexual bias, a lack of education, the blatant disregard of science and the advancement of violence. There is a growing difference between the rich and the poor. Religion has taught not tolerance but open hostility between rival factions. Food, water and medicine shortages are the norm on this planet. The depletion of the ozone layer, a global warming spell, biodiversity losses, deforestation, habitat fragmentation, desertification – conservatives have led us into an ecological nightmare. Liberals have been put aside for too long.

Posted inOpinion

Obama's Dirty Money

[I] Read your diatribe about Goldman Sachs. In it, you failed to mention that G.S. contributed almost one million dollars to B.O.'s presidential election campaign and about $4.5 million to the Democrats. The only way I can figure that this slipped by you is that you choose to be very imbalanced in your reporting. Oh, B.O. has refused to return the money, as have the Dems.

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