A Suspicious Slowdown

Today's song comes from a three-disc album by The Magnetic Fields called "69 Love Songs," and this is the first track off of it. I don't have any idea what the deal with the video is, but you're not supposed to be watching it anyway...this gives me an idea, I might do some of my favorite track ones over the next few days, High Fidelity style:



The Magnetic Fields - Absolutely Cuckoo

Before I get started, I want to point out something kind of funny about the buzz that the whole "social networking" phenomenon is getting with the way it's exposing lots of the stuff going on. It leads to some slightly awkward (but humorous) scenarios. Take, for example, these two Facebook statuses that appeared within seconds of each other yesterday and stayed next to each other all the way down the newsfeed:

Facebooker 1 : people of Iran, we are standing by you, may no more of your blood be shed!

Facebooker 2 : spent the day on a boat :] @ lake travis ... Now drinkin at trudys !!

Well, you know what they say...different strokes for different folks. Anyway, on to the main event!

Bloggers and reporters alike are still jumping all manner of guns by optimistically forecasting the awesome, totally rock 'n roll downfall of the Islamic Republic, but even Mousavi himself has been saying he wants to "restore" the Islamic Republic, not change the system fundamentally, so who knows.

So apparently there wasn't one gigantic, wave of people descending on Tehran today and the streets were relatively quiet, albeit very tense. I mean, I wasn't there, but that's what I've read. There are some interesting reports that the Assembly of Experts actually approves of Khamenei's statements the other day. That's interesting because the head of that assembly is supposed to be one of the fiercest rivals of Ahmadinejad and a critic of Khamenei, but that report did come from the Iranian state media, so maybe it should be taken with a grain, or perhaps a nice big block of salt. If it were true, that would be a huge setback for the protesters and it would prove that Rafsanjani, despite all the buzz about his inevitable crunkness, actually just dozed off in his La-Z-Boy a few days ago and he forgot to set a little alarm and now four of his close relatives have been arrested. (Update: they were arrested but are now released; apparently they were only held briefly)

In another interesting development, Speaker of the Majlis (Iranian parliament) Ali Larijani, on Iranian state TV no less, said that "a majority of people are of the opinion that the actual election results are different than what was officially announced." I can imagine a hilarious Tom and Jerry-like struggle to maintain control of the cameras and microphones at Iranian state telvision, because some of the stuff they're reporting isn't really flowing with the whole clamp-down-on-the-population thing.

Right now, Mousavi's Twitter page is reporting (I feel more and more like a douchebag every time I write that) that his news site has apparently been hacked and to "await further instructions." There's really no telling how many people are actually still willing to go out and fight, because they'll definitely have to fight now - the Iranian authorities have made it clear that no peaceful protesting will be allowed. Meanwhile, videos and images continue to circulate, including the horrific one of the girl from yesterday, which is on a few major news sites, including CNN. Things like that are bound to provoke some kind of reaction.

In the last bit of news I want to share about the Iran situation today before I delve into hours upon hours of mindless, absolutely pointless and frustrating work from my online nutrition class, there is still talk about that sneaky old trickster Rafsanjani pulling some kind of fast one over at the Assembly of Experts. There's really no telling because homeboy is being rather behind-the-scenes about the whole thing, which seems wise, but what that means to us is that we have absolutely no idea what will happen, or if anything will even happen at all. I guess we'll see whether or not he can get those knuckleheads at the Assembly of Experts in line over the next few days. I mean, it is a pretty big task...we're talking about a guy trying to oust the Supreme Leader of Iran, here. That would be so punk rock. In the meanwhile, Al-Jazeera has an enlightening report:



Wow, what an interesting accent that reporter has. As it is, I want to apologize for the increasingly cynical tone of these posts. I was sort of actually hoping to, you know, go to Iran at some point, so I guess I'm just a little bothered by all of the cosmic upheaval of my plans. Hopefully my tone (as well as other things) will improve over the next few days as my focus shifts to different issues...if that's even possible.