Yesterday I got the new Ministry album, Houses of the Mole -- and it's excellent. (I especially like "WTV", a lovely revisitation of the "TV Song" tracks.) As some of the comments on that Amazon page indicate, it's Al's first really good album since Psalm 69. I started thinking about this and how Paris came back with Sonic Jihad after his lackluster Unleashed. I started to realize that some artists put out their best work when there's a Bush in the White House.

So today I spent my morning making this chart, which tracks the quality of the following artists over the past 12 years:

• Ministry
  
• Paris
  
• Public Enemy
  
• Ice Cube
  
• Michael Franti
  
• Tricky
  
• Helmet

While the numbers don't match perfectly (PE's Revolverlution was less than impressive, for instance), this chart does indeed show that many music artists release their best work when there is a Bush in the office to inspire them. I guess there's something about Bush policies that make for good tunes.

Interesting side note: While compiling this data, I realized that all of my adult life has been spent living under a Bush government -- when Clinton took the White House, Jeb Bush grabbed the Florida Governorship. I wonder what it would be like to have no Bush standing over me?

Other

Obviously we're all revulsed by the recent murder in a Fallujah mosque. But the award for best blog entry on this has to go to Baghdad Burning:

We sat, horrified, stunned with the horror of the scene that unfolded in front of our eyes. It's the third day of Eid and we were finally able to gather as a family- a cousin, his wife and their two daughters, two aunts, and an elderly uncle. E. and my cousin had been standing in line for two days to get fuel so we could go visit the elderly uncle on the final day of a very desolate Eid. The room was silent at the end of the scene, with only the voice of the news anchor and the sobs of my aunt. My little cousin flinched and dropped her spoon, face frozen with shock, eyes wide with disbelief, glued to the television screen, "Is he dead? Did they kill him?" I swallowed hard, trying to gulp away the lump lodged in my throat and watched as my cousin buried his face in his hands, ashamed to look at his daughter.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the best thing to ever come of the Internet is our ability to get individual perspectives from hidden spots on the globe dealing with the fallout of empire.

And finally: Yesterday's post on Satan's Laundromat has some very nice pics from a guest photographer, Keith Kin Yan of Overshadowed. Nice stuff on both sites.

TimeWaster™

Check out the funky Flash at Sketchy Animation.

Today I'm listening to: Ministry!

You may now post many angry comments chiding me for my rankings of your favorite albums.