The Overthrow of Everything

I'm currently engrossed in a book written by Howard Dean's 2004 campaign manager, Joe Trippi. I remembered Dean as being the first candidate for any office that I was really excited about, and it's one of the things that led me to follow politics as closely as I used to follow insignificant shit like the NFL off-season. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything is a chronicle of Trippi's career, technology in politics, and everything that went right and wrong on the failed Dean for America campaign. Someone recommended this book to me in a message board thread for Barack Obama volunteers, and the words they used to do that keep echoing in my head as I work through it each day on the train: Howard Dean's campaign pioneered the use of the internet to organize and fundraise for a presidential campaign, but we are witnessing the perfection of those methods in Obama's run.

Indeed, the parallels between the campaigns are incredible. I feel like I'm experiencing a second edition of Trippi's book being written in realtime by Senator Obama. In the book, for example, Trippi discusses the use of the website Meetup.com that allowed supporters of Governor Dean to organize rallies for the candidate by themselves, and how those in attendance at those rallies grew exponentially throughout spring and summer 2003. As I'm reading this, I keep refreshing the Facebook event I launched to notify WCU students about the episode of MSNBC's Hardball being aired live here with Senator Obama next week - and that number is growing just as quickly in front of my own eyes now. Although it's not a truly supporter-organized event open to the public, 500 people had jumped on this shit in the first 24 hours after it was posted. People continue to subscribe for updates even though it's open to current WCU students only.

It's long been my firm belief that the Internet will change the way our democracy works, but witnessing little stuff like this firsthand makes Joe Trippi some kind of Internet prophet to me. His articulation of these ideas are now four years old and are just starting to manifest themselves in the public sphere. The same concepts that propelled Dean to front-runner status in 2004 now allow me to help recruit hundreds of new volunteers and raise thousands of dollars for my candidate in 2008 as effortlessly as if I were just updating my list of favorite music on Facebook.

My recommendation: read Trippi's book, and set your TiVo to record Hardball live at West Chester University on Wednesday, April 2nd to see just one of the tangible results of his Open-Source Politics concept that will change the way government works for us.

Dumbest tip ever + music post

I brought 2 dead fourth-generation iPods back to life this week using this method, and taught another person to do the same with theirs. I feel like a genius for getting them to work, and at the same time I feel like quite the dope for letting these things sit on a shelf for months without trying anything. Three iPods that were as good as trash yesterday are now working just fine.

APPARENTLY, if you have an iPod with a clicking hard drive that gives you the sad face icon, the best course of action is to slam the shit out of it on a flat surface until it either breaks completely or it magically starts working again. If you kill it the rest of the way - oh well, it was garbage anyway, right? BUT, if you are successful, it will actually un-stick some of the moving parts in the hard disk and get it to stop clicking. No update yet on how effective this is in the long-term, but my plans are to repeat the fix as many times as necessary until I either kill it for good or help it achieve immorality.

A few other items that can be filed under the "music" category: my station, Y-Rock on XPN, is having their annual Modern Rock Madness (March Madness rip-off) this week. This one they've been doing since they were Y-100, and I remember it fondly - the only difference now is that bands like Weezer and Nirvana are killing other bands like Bloc Party and Rilo Kiley instead of Linkin Park and Creed. It's a lot of fun, and if you correctly fill in the blanks on one of our brackets, you have a chance to win a Wii. Wiis are fun - Wiis are part of the reason I only post in this blog once a month now. So you should listen and play along, I think. You can also vote, which makes it interactive. Round 2 matchups later today include: Nine Inch Nails vs. David Bowie, Flaming Lips vs. Smashing Pumpkins, Joy Division vs. RHCP, and Muse vs. Beck.

Also, I've resolved to burn some vacation time to visit one of these giant music festivals next year. It makes sense, when you think about it - I loved going to CMJ and MacRock while I was a member in good standing of WCUR. They're a great way to soak in a shitload of music in just a few short days, and some of my favorite all-time performances were seen while bumming around with my good college radio buddies.

However, I've decided that I want to up the ante next year, and go see one of these HUGE festivals - the kind that all the blogs go crazy over for a week. Lauren was surprised by this, as it seems that I've never expressed a genuine desire to travel before. But yeah - next year, I'd like to fly to Austin for SXSW, or maybe Austin City Limits. Perhaps we'll go to Coachella? We might go alone, or we might get a group together. Who knows? Anyway, if you've been to one of these big festivals, let me know. Do you have a preference between those three, or is there another big one that I should go to that I'm missing? Consider this post a solicitation of your sage advice here. I want to leave this area for a week to explore another city and see dozens of bands all at once.