Eddie Murphy was blowing up, going from another SNL guy to big-ticket movie star, in the early 1980s. I went from having no idea who he was, to having seen him without knowing who he was, and then to having friends on the school bus suggest “Raw” to me.
I remember catching a few minutes of SNL between other things got me a rebuke from my mother. That stuff was dirty, she said, and shouldn’t be allowed on television. That’s why they kept it late at night, and it wasn’t something I should watch, wasn’t for children.
Eventually I saw Raw, but before that I believe he had an album called Eddie Murphy: Comedian. Either that or I’m misremembering it and I’m too lazy to go hustle up a specific answer from wikipedia. But there was a bit called “Black Movie Theaters” about how he, and any other person of similar skin pigmentation, talked back to the movie screen at the theater. And how white people didn’t do that.
I learned very young then, before fifth grade, that not only were the differences between “white” and “black” funny, but that I was either neither or both, and never only one or the other. I couldn’t dance for a damn, but I knew funk when I heard it, and felt music sometimes just listening and sometimes when I helped perform it - ripple through me and make me cry tears of pure unadulterated joy...
The slow lazy drift I’m getting at is that I talk back to The Rachel Maddow Show, I talked back to Politically Incorrect before there was a Real Time with Bill Maher, and I talked back to teevee and movies since I was a kid - when I wasn’t speaking the lines along with my favorite characters like a proto-geek oughtta should’ve.
Kevin Smith, another content producer who gets talked back, laughed with, and invited into my home everyday - recently mentioned the 1990s film Pump Up The Volume. This was probably my first big ugly gratuitous geekout. That movie inspired me in many ways - from memorizing it and repeating it like many friends did The Princess Bride, to recording myself a cassette with the soundtrack of the spoken word segments and the songs missing from the “official” soundtrack album...to the senior project I wrote for an English Teacher where I paraphrased, stole, remixed, sampled, and expanded upon the premise of that film - essentially creating my first work of fan-fiction years before I knew it existed.
I compose these words of remembrance, recollection, reflection and humor as I listen to The Rachel Maddow Show. When that’s over I’ll switch to any of the other parallel tracks that I pay any of my precious attention to. I learned from my mom and her mother that parallel processing is not an abstract but a constant and we do it everyday right here and right now with our own two hands and brainlobes.
(Maddow mentions something about Mitch McConnell speaking into a microphone and I volley my banter back at her: “Are we sure he knew it was a microphone, he’s older than everybody but Harry Reid and John McCain?!?”
And WTF is with nation-building in Afghanistan? You have some swampland, maybe a bridge or a used Edsel to sell me, too? Anybody old enough to remember the last Presidents who tried to sell that lie should be jeering as loudly as possible!
Nobody else has ever succeeded building a nation in Afghanistan, if the people there could’ve built a nation, there would’ve been one when we got there. They call it the Graveyard of Empires for a reason, dammit.
How about building up the infrastructure at HOME for a change? Otherwise the troops will come home to a pock-marked landscape, barren of life, with crumbled fallen bridges and roads so bad you’re better off on the dirt. Let’s see a President acknowledge that reality here on the ground at home right now!)
I’m sure somebody could devise a method by which we could test my retention from what I’m ostensibly “viewing” as I co-process or multi-task but I’m confident of the process and can pause, pivot, and flow around what I’m doing with variable attention to the tasks and inputs currently being accessed, processed, created or otherwise manipulated.
The way most people absorb their media, whatever they choose, may be changing. I don’t know if I’ve been ahead of the curve or behind it, and I’m sure it’s a little of both, but I can’t imagine shoveling more shit into my head. The world tries hard enough to fill it with shit. But Jackass, American Idull, So You Think You Can Shit Your Pants?, who in fuck has time for this braindead bullshit and how in fuck did it ever get popular enough to have more than one fucking episode?
Whenever my time is come, my ticket is punched, and the ending looms nigh, I’d hope that you all can put me on ice and wake me back up when my fellow Americans, humans, earthlings, whatever - they’ve all stopped embarassing themselves so frequently with devotion and attention to things which actively make people stupider.
Until then I’ll still be sitting right here, laughing with Futurama, talking back to Maddow and Colbert, writing stuff I’d be too fanboyishly ashamed to even GIVE to Doug Stanhope, or doing my own strange wobble between dialogue like Kevin Smith, prose like Garrison Keillor, hoping for the style of Piers Anthony, and generally being a premature curmudgeon concocting open-source thought-grenades from mere words and intentions.
Boo! My forked tongue and I are up here, floating about four feet off the ground in a lotus position, a megaphone in one hand, a middle finger in one hand, a sword in one hand, a fat black marker in one hand, sputtering out scrunchy sarcasm, muttering out morose memes, tweeting twisted tracts, fanning out our peacock feathers of anarchy and dissent behind us, casting a shadow over the soapbox on the sidewalk below. And we cast off billions of glowing opinionated filaments tangling in your aura, toying with your misconceptions, seducing your straight-laced-ness, and undoing the mundane wherever they come into contact with it.
I’ll write you a shelf of books, produce and design them myself, leverage a history of interesting stories, promise an almost endless procession of deep and profound conversations, and then I’ll go pick up a guitar and a keyboard (and a head full of samples) and start making half-assed music like I always imagined that someday I would. What you got? Where you at? What you doin? Hit me up...let’s take this sleepy world and spin it like a top!
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
button action
I remember back when Kevin and Ralph had just started Hollywood Babble-On. Last year. Kevin said something about needing something to close on, close with, a closing slogan, gag, tag line. Some button action was needed, he said.
It really didn't take them that long, busting through as a chart-topping podcast from the very beginning, to come up with several regular segments, a rough shape of each episode, and some tasty, tasty memetic obscenity I need not repeat here.
Similar to my HB-O obsession, I've been an almost regular viewer of the Rachel Maddow show. I remember her on Air America with Lizz and Chuck guiding us through some rough waters. Keith Olbermann is a stand-up guy with a fresh worldview I wish could be a regular on Real Time with Bill Maher.
I know there's "a story" behind a recent notable change in the ending segment of her show. I just don't care, that's not what interests me about it. Rachel has started closing the show with "the best thing in the world today" as an unmistakeable counterpoint to her former mentor's Worst Persons in the World segments.
Only because the stale, uninspired soundbitten tape-loop of GOP State Television over there at Fox Noize finally made enough pitiful whimpering about Keith's segment, weeks after his MSNBC show had ENDED...only then did any response become as little as an afterthought.
Socially divisive politics, fearmongering and religious blinders aside; anybody who stands up straight in the face of adversity and speaks truth to power without just worrying about their own ass...them's the ones you know you wanna watch. They're the ones acting like you wanna wish you could, given the chance. Canaries in the mines.
Shine truth like a light, get sunshine into all the darkest places. Kill the nastiness beneath all lies underwrit and subsidized by offering-plate monies.
For a Republican Party so utterly terrified of Sharia Law, it sure is redundant, repugnant that they pursue relentlessly a Christian Puritan version of Sharia Law for America. With their every waking moment right here and now in 2011. Just watch them...
Eek! We really digressed and drifted there. I didn't mean to whip out the soapbox and megaphone quite so fast.
Came in here to say/mention/notice that Rachel found her button moment, her button action as Kevin might say.
Of brief note today is that I think I've buttoned up a few large tasks, plates I'd had spinning for 3-4 months at a minimum and for some, closer to 2 years. I'm hoping this turns out to be The Summer Of Names Taken from whut All That Ass We Kicked.
Even just on a personal level, that would be just fine by me. I have two hands, I have new tools, I have a fresh perspective. I'm all about making It Happen. Won't you come along???
It really didn't take them that long, busting through as a chart-topping podcast from the very beginning, to come up with several regular segments, a rough shape of each episode, and some tasty, tasty memetic obscenity I need not repeat here.
Similar to my HB-O obsession, I've been an almost regular viewer of the Rachel Maddow show. I remember her on Air America with Lizz and Chuck guiding us through some rough waters. Keith Olbermann is a stand-up guy with a fresh worldview I wish could be a regular on Real Time with Bill Maher.
I know there's "a story" behind a recent notable change in the ending segment of her show. I just don't care, that's not what interests me about it. Rachel has started closing the show with "the best thing in the world today" as an unmistakeable counterpoint to her former mentor's Worst Persons in the World segments.
Only because the stale, uninspired soundbitten tape-loop of GOP State Television over there at Fox Noize finally made enough pitiful whimpering about Keith's segment, weeks after his MSNBC show had ENDED...only then did any response become as little as an afterthought.
Socially divisive politics, fearmongering and religious blinders aside; anybody who stands up straight in the face of adversity and speaks truth to power without just worrying about their own ass...them's the ones you know you wanna watch. They're the ones acting like you wanna wish you could, given the chance. Canaries in the mines.
Shine truth like a light, get sunshine into all the darkest places. Kill the nastiness beneath all lies underwrit and subsidized by offering-plate monies.
For a Republican Party so utterly terrified of Sharia Law, it sure is redundant, repugnant that they pursue relentlessly a Christian Puritan version of Sharia Law for America. With their every waking moment right here and now in 2011. Just watch them...
Eek! We really digressed and drifted there. I didn't mean to whip out the soapbox and megaphone quite so fast.
Came in here to say/mention/notice that Rachel found her button moment, her button action as Kevin might say.
Of brief note today is that I think I've buttoned up a few large tasks, plates I'd had spinning for 3-4 months at a minimum and for some, closer to 2 years. I'm hoping this turns out to be The Summer Of Names Taken from whut All That Ass We Kicked.
Even just on a personal level, that would be just fine by me. I have two hands, I have new tools, I have a fresh perspective. I'm all about making It Happen. Won't you come along???
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
American Cellphones Suck, Give Me Something Cheaper, Better, NOW!
Herein Mr. Rantypants goes bazerk! Consider this your only warning.
***
The cellphone market is still absolutely worthless, useless, and every one of you suckers paying for your damn phone over again every month are convincing me the pod people have gotten everybody but me and a few other sturdy souls.
I must admit I’d like an android phone. Now that the apple sheep have worn the very idea of the cellphone into something resembling truly useful and not just a vain and overpriced, underpowered paperweight.
The concept of being able to view maps, inquire about points of interest or necessity while on the move, on the fly, in the car, or walking around a city, this appeals to me very much.
Paying a premium price for the chance to use it everyday when I might actually use it twice a week or less, strikes me as something so stupid I can't even compare those who do it to sheep. Because sheep can be cute.
Not zombies either, because zombies can kick ass. The kind of person who'd pay for the chance to do something he knows he won't is the logistic equivalent of a bucket of boiled assholes.
Tweeting, facebooking, goddamn Nascar and couchpotatovision on my phone? Tigger, please! Shoveling more mass-produced milquetoast muck into your trough for the sheep interests me NONE. Those are doors I’d choose to open very carefully at a distant future date on your device if I choose to make it mine. Pay extra? Nev-ar!
I will not pay more for any feature for one single day before I choose to be ready. Get over yourselves, it’s NEVER been worth $89.99-$149.99 every month for a godphone that won’t work everywhere because America’s cellular (if not our internet) infrastructure is an International Joke.
Someday all these zombie-sheep will wake up and cast your dimwitted capitalistic hubris into the lake, tied to a large stone! And I will still be laughing.
The device should damn well be able to PLAY anything I choose to load or throw at it, nimble as VLC and ready to stop on a dime and let me scratch video back and forth if I choose to. This isn’t rocket surgery.
Phone as camera? Normally I could care less if it takes pictures or video, sure that’s nice and all but I will never pay extra for it.
If it’s there at all it had better be 3mp and capable of video no less than NTSC 640x480 29.97 fps or just don’t bother. Decent zoom is mandatory during video as well as stills, and not locked but zooms in/out DURING recording, and the jitter control better be above-average to amazing, or don’t even bother.
The display had best be large, if not the entire face of the device. No flip phones, no double-wide suppositories. Touchscreen or easy FULL size dialpad and full qwerty, with no slider or crackberry form factor, either. Thin and narrow enough to be pocket sized is absolute, anything bigger invites being smashed by a hammer.
Just like any monthly cost above $29.99 for full internet, unlimited text and free to your mate’s handset regardless of carrier - anyone denying you these basic necessities deserves being hit with a hammer, too!
So just in review, starting from a product called the Samsung Replenish and extrapolating the desired experience, let us state that the product may require a 2-year contract. This is a new concession I have made, it has been a long time coming, and it is marginally acceptable if the rest of my terms are met without complaint.
The monthly rate locked in for the life of the contract, with no overage fees EVER agreed to never ever ever, maxes out at $29.99 for a period of 24 months.
With this fee there is free long distance after 8pm;
unlimited internet use;
unlimited text messages;
optional add-on for video or image messaging
beginning at $2.99 per month for 250 messages;
GPS capabilities at extremely reasonable rates;
option to lock out Nascar and television completely
without express, specific consent;
and an optional $3.99 monthly equipment protection plan that replaces the phone via USPS with tracking/delivery confirmation for your replacement within 48 hours.
Let’s see it, America, right now. Give me what I want, baby! Meet my demands, show me you still know how to do anything better than everybody else does.
I’ll be right here, waiting...and not accepting any less than I know you can provide.
***
The cellphone market is still absolutely worthless, useless, and every one of you suckers paying for your damn phone over again every month are convincing me the pod people have gotten everybody but me and a few other sturdy souls.
I must admit I’d like an android phone. Now that the apple sheep have worn the very idea of the cellphone into something resembling truly useful and not just a vain and overpriced, underpowered paperweight.
The concept of being able to view maps, inquire about points of interest or necessity while on the move, on the fly, in the car, or walking around a city, this appeals to me very much.
Paying a premium price for the chance to use it everyday when I might actually use it twice a week or less, strikes me as something so stupid I can't even compare those who do it to sheep. Because sheep can be cute.
Not zombies either, because zombies can kick ass. The kind of person who'd pay for the chance to do something he knows he won't is the logistic equivalent of a bucket of boiled assholes.
Tweeting, facebooking, goddamn Nascar and couchpotatovision on my phone? Tigger, please! Shoveling more mass-produced milquetoast muck into your trough for the sheep interests me NONE. Those are doors I’d choose to open very carefully at a distant future date on your device if I choose to make it mine. Pay extra? Nev-ar!
I will not pay more for any feature for one single day before I choose to be ready. Get over yourselves, it’s NEVER been worth $89.99-$149.99 every month for a godphone that won’t work everywhere because America’s cellular (if not our internet) infrastructure is an International Joke.
Someday all these zombie-sheep will wake up and cast your dimwitted capitalistic hubris into the lake, tied to a large stone! And I will still be laughing.
The device should damn well be able to PLAY anything I choose to load or throw at it, nimble as VLC and ready to stop on a dime and let me scratch video back and forth if I choose to. This isn’t rocket surgery.
Phone as camera? Normally I could care less if it takes pictures or video, sure that’s nice and all but I will never pay extra for it.
If it’s there at all it had better be 3mp and capable of video no less than NTSC 640x480 29.97 fps or just don’t bother. Decent zoom is mandatory during video as well as stills, and not locked but zooms in/out DURING recording, and the jitter control better be above-average to amazing, or don’t even bother.
The display had best be large, if not the entire face of the device. No flip phones, no double-wide suppositories. Touchscreen or easy FULL size dialpad and full qwerty, with no slider or crackberry form factor, either. Thin and narrow enough to be pocket sized is absolute, anything bigger invites being smashed by a hammer.
Just like any monthly cost above $29.99 for full internet, unlimited text and free to your mate’s handset regardless of carrier - anyone denying you these basic necessities deserves being hit with a hammer, too!
So just in review, starting from a product called the Samsung Replenish and extrapolating the desired experience, let us state that the product may require a 2-year contract. This is a new concession I have made, it has been a long time coming, and it is marginally acceptable if the rest of my terms are met without complaint.
The monthly rate locked in for the life of the contract, with no overage fees EVER agreed to never ever ever, maxes out at $29.99 for a period of 24 months.
With this fee there is free long distance after 8pm;
unlimited internet use;
unlimited text messages;
optional add-on for video or image messaging
beginning at $2.99 per month for 250 messages;
GPS capabilities at extremely reasonable rates;
option to lock out Nascar and television completely
without express, specific consent;
and an optional $3.99 monthly equipment protection plan that replaces the phone via USPS with tracking/delivery confirmation for your replacement within 48 hours.
Let’s see it, America, right now. Give me what I want, baby! Meet my demands, show me you still know how to do anything better than everybody else does.
I’ll be right here, waiting...and not accepting any less than I know you can provide.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Resurrecting Advertising
I know, I know. Any of you actually reading this who've known me in meatspace will say "but don't you hate ads and turn them off any chance you get?"
I do. But bear me out.
I grew up hearing WCCO AM radio in the car because we waz poor white trash who couldn't afford an FM radio, let alone an 8-track deck in the dash, or Star-Trek-worthy unimaginable things like Powered Windows or Air Conditioning. Not for us, nope.
Anyway, WCCO did live spots. Ads read live on air from prepared copy, but often ad-libbed, peppered with topicality, and improved in the process.
Flash forward 2011 and I'm sitting hear listening to Kevin Smith and his lovely wife Jen Schwalbach doing their Plus One Per Diem daily radio show on the internet. (Or a podcast. I think you can get it any way but mainlining it, honestly. And somebody's sure to figure out a way to do that soon enough.)
I do not like ads. I hate it when youtube or hulu or whoever just zaps a totally random-length ad before a clip that may be SHORTER than the damned ad. Hello, stupid! Thy name is Advertising.
But then Kevin and Jen start doing live spots. And they remind me why I didn't mind Boone & Erickson or the Cannon Mess doing their stupid live spots, and I didn't tune them out or turn them off. This sh-t is funny!
Jennifer and Kevin can flub their lines, goof off, laugh, start over, berate each other, support each other. There's so many ways the understanding provided by a background in their Plus One weekly podcast will make these ads transcend their capitalist intent, it's just unreal.
So I say to Fox and whoever else still cares to shovel their advertising shite into prime time teevee: want viewers to stay for the ads? Get your stars to do a few live spots like Lucy and Ricky and Ed Sullivan had to do. Let them have leeway to screw it up or make it better, and people are gonna stay TUNED for that spot.
It's not like you haven't figured this out, youse Ad Media in general. There's great examples of breaking the paradigm more often lately than in previous decades, from this lapsed teevee viewer's perspective.
But I just noticed I don't listen to the streams of Kev/Jen on SIR, I listen to the podcasts. I press pause and step away for a minute, often. So I found myself just now pausing them in the midst of another live spot ad.
And I thought to myself: "Whatsamattayou?" for just a second before noticing that I actually WANT to hear this one.
I do. But bear me out.
I grew up hearing WCCO AM radio in the car because we waz poor white trash who couldn't afford an FM radio, let alone an 8-track deck in the dash, or Star-Trek-worthy unimaginable things like Powered Windows or Air Conditioning. Not for us, nope.
Anyway, WCCO did live spots. Ads read live on air from prepared copy, but often ad-libbed, peppered with topicality, and improved in the process.
Flash forward 2011 and I'm sitting hear listening to Kevin Smith and his lovely wife Jen Schwalbach doing their Plus One Per Diem daily radio show on the internet. (Or a podcast. I think you can get it any way but mainlining it, honestly. And somebody's sure to figure out a way to do that soon enough.)
I do not like ads. I hate it when youtube or hulu or whoever just zaps a totally random-length ad before a clip that may be SHORTER than the damned ad. Hello, stupid! Thy name is Advertising.
But then Kevin and Jen start doing live spots. And they remind me why I didn't mind Boone & Erickson or the Cannon Mess doing their stupid live spots, and I didn't tune them out or turn them off. This sh-t is funny!
Jennifer and Kevin can flub their lines, goof off, laugh, start over, berate each other, support each other. There's so many ways the understanding provided by a background in their Plus One weekly podcast will make these ads transcend their capitalist intent, it's just unreal.
So I say to Fox and whoever else still cares to shovel their advertising shite into prime time teevee: want viewers to stay for the ads? Get your stars to do a few live spots like Lucy and Ricky and Ed Sullivan had to do. Let them have leeway to screw it up or make it better, and people are gonna stay TUNED for that spot.
It's not like you haven't figured this out, youse Ad Media in general. There's great examples of breaking the paradigm more often lately than in previous decades, from this lapsed teevee viewer's perspective.
But I just noticed I don't listen to the streams of Kev/Jen on SIR, I listen to the podcasts. I press pause and step away for a minute, often. So I found myself just now pausing them in the midst of another live spot ad.
And I thought to myself: "Whatsamattayou?" for just a second before noticing that I actually WANT to hear this one.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
4 the people who r still alive (work in progress)
THIS is the summer won by BAMFs
half man, half seal
THIS is the summer of BRINGING back the LOVE
maybe we'll actually get to BRING 'EM HOME!
let the sunshine in!
I cannot be the only man unashamed to be so happy he cries
THANK YOU America 4 being MOAR than we expected!
I ain't afraid no more!
We made it through the night!!
an incredible gift of a day to be alive
SO God and Goddess blesst
that everybody, especially minorities
but even the skeptics, the cynics and the trolls
can't help but at least imagine
if not feel it in the marrow of their very bones
what it feels like when America keeps Her promises!
So let's mend our fences
let's put our house in order
then we'll bring our promises
to everyone
everywhere
someday sooner than we thought possible if you'd asked us a week ago.
++++++++++++++++++Happy CINCO!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you artists and bands linked here, for helping keep us sane all this time with your incredible songs.
Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution - It's A Wonderful Life
Steve Earle - Home To Houston
the Honeydogs - 10,000 Years
Soul Asylum - Lately
Son Volt - Jet Pilot
Jason Isbell - Dress Blues
Ben Folds - All U Can Eat
Mike Doughty - Fort Hood
Ani DiFranco - November 4th 2008
Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion - Hurry Up And Wait
half man, half seal
THIS is the summer of BRINGING back the LOVE
maybe we'll actually get to BRING 'EM HOME!
let the sunshine in!
I cannot be the only man unashamed to be so happy he cries
THANK YOU America 4 being MOAR than we expected!
I ain't afraid no more!
We made it through the night!!
an incredible gift of a day to be alive
SO God and Goddess blesst
that everybody, especially minorities
but even the skeptics, the cynics and the trolls
can't help but at least imagine
if not feel it in the marrow of their very bones
what it feels like when America keeps Her promises!
So let's mend our fences
let's put our house in order
then we'll bring our promises
to everyone
everywhere
someday sooner than we thought possible if you'd asked us a week ago.
++++++++++++++++++Happy CINCO!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you artists and bands linked here, for helping keep us sane all this time with your incredible songs.
Bandits of the Acoustic Revolution - It's A Wonderful Life
Steve Earle - Home To Houston
the Honeydogs - 10,000 Years
Soul Asylum - Lately
Son Volt - Jet Pilot
Jason Isbell - Dress Blues
Ben Folds - All U Can Eat
Mike Doughty - Fort Hood
Ani DiFranco - November 4th 2008
Sarah Lee Guthrie & Johnny Irion - Hurry Up And Wait
Monday, May 2, 2011
help turn "yes we did" into "yes we will!"
A full night. No even slight hint of regret I haven’t gamed yet. Portal 2 will still love me longtime when I get to it.
President Obama reported to the American people that the persons tasked with such soldierly skills have killed Osama Bin Laden. Despite never wishing to cheer at death, I am complicated by emotions.
So despite that cognitive conflict, I hope everyone feels like it's a New Day.
I’ve been moved to tears repeatedly and it don’t matter. It’s a big damn day in America. "We" got Osama Bin Laden. I think that long sigh we're all letting out is a breath we've been holding together for ten whole years.
There are a great many happy people at this moment in NY and DC and everywhere else. It’s hard to keep myself from welling up just thinking about it. Joyful tears indeed.
Yes we did!
And now let me compose contemporaneously to the tune of Pete Seeger's "Bring 'em Home."
“will we bring the troops back home? Yes we will, yes we will!
will we win health care for our elderly? yes we will, yes we will!
will we protect social security? yes we will, yes we will!”
more verses coming...
President Obama reported to the American people that the persons tasked with such soldierly skills have killed Osama Bin Laden. Despite never wishing to cheer at death, I am complicated by emotions.
So despite that cognitive conflict, I hope everyone feels like it's a New Day.
I’ve been moved to tears repeatedly and it don’t matter. It’s a big damn day in America. "We" got Osama Bin Laden. I think that long sigh we're all letting out is a breath we've been holding together for ten whole years.
There are a great many happy people at this moment in NY and DC and everywhere else. It’s hard to keep myself from welling up just thinking about it. Joyful tears indeed.
Yes we did!
And now let me compose contemporaneously to the tune of Pete Seeger's "Bring 'em Home."
“will we bring the troops back home? Yes we will, yes we will!
will we win health care for our elderly? yes we will, yes we will!
will we protect social security? yes we will, yes we will!”
more verses coming...
Saturday, April 30, 2011
today's random moment of joy
I know I'm a curmudgeon, a misanthrope, a whiner, full of rhetorical vitriol for the slightest whim.
Doesn't mean it might not be that I'm becoming a recovering-misanthrope.
Toward that end, here then is today's random moment of joy:
Reading my favorite music magazines back inna day, watching the music of The New Pornographers and the Squirrel Nut Zippers make fans out of the writing staff of Spin, if I'm not mistaken, Toast/Cake, the Twin Cities Reader, and CMJ New Music Monthly.
...we now return you to the scheduled programming, already in progress...
Doesn't mean it might not be that I'm becoming a recovering-misanthrope.
Toward that end, here then is today's random moment of joy:
Reading my favorite music magazines back inna day, watching the music of The New Pornographers and the Squirrel Nut Zippers make fans out of the writing staff of Spin, if I'm not mistaken, Toast/Cake, the Twin Cities Reader, and CMJ New Music Monthly.
...we now return you to the scheduled programming, already in progress...
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
two steps forward, one step back & a smack upside the head
I'd make some allusion to that subj/title line about how the nation took 2 steps forward electing Barack Obama President.
[But I'm getting tired. Long day and I dropped my 1000 words a foo different places already. Brain, let me wind down fer a while? Okay? After this post? Alright, we gotta deal. :) ]
Our one step back was the whole DOMA/homophobic laws BS. Of course the other shoe to drop on that score is that the birthers are still hawking snake oil, shuckin and jivin in blackface for all their rhetoric's difference from overt racism.
On a personal level I'd say today's two steps forward were Stan Rogers and the Jive Aces. Stan's song in question being Barrett's Privateers, a pirate chanty obviously beholden to no nation. The Jive Aces were just blowing bubbles of pure joy with a cover of a song not even their own.
Of course the internet, being the hot tempered redhead it for-sure has to be, points out that enjoying the music of The Jive Aces is some kinda implicit endorsement of Scientology. And despite my caucasoidality I wanna shout "n-gga please!"
I do possess a rancor for the corporate politics that hide behind the CoS and documented cases of what it's done to individuals. But the Catholic Church has probably done more wrong in the continuum of history than Scientology has been around long enough to accomplish. Get it through your heads.
When it's just the music - be it Beck or the Jive Aces, it doesn't automatically mean it's tainted. That's not American, to think that. It just isn't.
Granted somewhere beneath it all there may be a dicey, slippery slope I can on some level admit, but I shall not back off my enjoyment of this one song. Or any Beck song, dammit.
There are times, Anonymous, when your crusade against Scientology seems a tad fascist its ownself. I love your spunky enthusiasm, it makes me smile and honestly your existence alone elevates the level of the debate, but you're not possessed of an utterly level head. (except against Fony. full steam ahead o'er there. I got yer back!)
Your Scientology connection offers at best a 3% doubt that I'll find nothing beneath the precise musicianship of Jive Aces resembling a true and vibrant dynamic creative heart like a Johnny Cash, a Merle Haggard, Mark Olson or Ani DiFranco lurking beneath their skin.
For all the enjoyable ride, I ain't ventured further than the one track. I just discovered it today for fecksake.
Know what, America, let's have a little heart-to-heart here, shall we? We'll walk around the playground of Music Circa Now and I'll be all impolite and point for your own betterment.
See over there? That silver-painted man meditating naked is Stuart Davis, f-ing brilliant rockstar musician and bard among men. Don't spew or anything, but he's a buddhist or something-as-yet-to-be-determined. We'll walk by quick so you don't get any ON YOU...cooties! Ewww!
But ya know what? You big pussy, America?
I heard that the last name Levy might mean Jooo! Hevvinstabetsy! Abandon ship! Wait, didn't we finish a war we didn't start to save Jews? For somebody with an awful lot going for you, America, you can be pretty schizo about Jews. Admit it.
I love the Honeydogs till my dying day and it could make no diff if they were Jewish or Pakistani to this Euro-descended mutt. They are a gift you ought bear witness to, fool. Act like ya know!
I love Low. But somewhere on the scuttlebutt pond I heard whispers they're ... Mormon! Quick, everybody freakout! Oh, that's right, nobody cares...
Brother Prince is a Jehovah's Witness. Despite feeling he betrayed the nondenominational roots I heard in the song New Power Generation, I respect his wishes. btw, shouts out to Brother Isaac from my days at Charter, another JW.
Big whoop. Get your spirit on, Amen, Hallelujah, Shalom Salaam. Om mani padme umm...
Religious TOLERANCE? How about religious indifference??
Try some on, America, do ya good!
Tip of the hat to Jive Aces.
[But I'm getting tired. Long day and I dropped my 1000 words a foo different places already. Brain, let me wind down fer a while? Okay? After this post? Alright, we gotta deal. :) ]
Our one step back was the whole DOMA/homophobic laws BS. Of course the other shoe to drop on that score is that the birthers are still hawking snake oil, shuckin and jivin in blackface for all their rhetoric's difference from overt racism.
On a personal level I'd say today's two steps forward were Stan Rogers and the Jive Aces. Stan's song in question being Barrett's Privateers, a pirate chanty obviously beholden to no nation. The Jive Aces were just blowing bubbles of pure joy with a cover of a song not even their own.
Of course the internet, being the hot tempered redhead it for-sure has to be, points out that enjoying the music of The Jive Aces is some kinda implicit endorsement of Scientology. And despite my caucasoidality I wanna shout "n-gga please!"
I do possess a rancor for the corporate politics that hide behind the CoS and documented cases of what it's done to individuals. But the Catholic Church has probably done more wrong in the continuum of history than Scientology has been around long enough to accomplish. Get it through your heads.
When it's just the music - be it Beck or the Jive Aces, it doesn't automatically mean it's tainted. That's not American, to think that. It just isn't.
Granted somewhere beneath it all there may be a dicey, slippery slope I can on some level admit, but I shall not back off my enjoyment of this one song. Or any Beck song, dammit.
There are times, Anonymous, when your crusade against Scientology seems a tad fascist its ownself. I love your spunky enthusiasm, it makes me smile and honestly your existence alone elevates the level of the debate, but you're not possessed of an utterly level head. (except against Fony. full steam ahead o'er there. I got yer back!)
Your Scientology connection offers at best a 3% doubt that I'll find nothing beneath the precise musicianship of Jive Aces resembling a true and vibrant dynamic creative heart like a Johnny Cash, a Merle Haggard, Mark Olson or Ani DiFranco lurking beneath their skin.
For all the enjoyable ride, I ain't ventured further than the one track. I just discovered it today for fecksake.
Know what, America, let's have a little heart-to-heart here, shall we? We'll walk around the playground of Music Circa Now and I'll be all impolite and point for your own betterment.
See over there? That silver-painted man meditating naked is Stuart Davis, f-ing brilliant rockstar musician and bard among men. Don't spew or anything, but he's a buddhist or something-as-yet-to-be-determined. We'll walk by quick so you don't get any ON YOU...cooties! Ewww!
But ya know what? You big pussy, America?
I heard that the last name Levy might mean Jooo! Hevvinstabetsy! Abandon ship! Wait, didn't we finish a war we didn't start to save Jews? For somebody with an awful lot going for you, America, you can be pretty schizo about Jews. Admit it.
I love the Honeydogs till my dying day and it could make no diff if they were Jewish or Pakistani to this Euro-descended mutt. They are a gift you ought bear witness to, fool. Act like ya know!
I love Low. But somewhere on the scuttlebutt pond I heard whispers they're ... Mormon! Quick, everybody freakout! Oh, that's right, nobody cares...
Brother Prince is a Jehovah's Witness. Despite feeling he betrayed the nondenominational roots I heard in the song New Power Generation, I respect his wishes. btw, shouts out to Brother Isaac from my days at Charter, another JW.
Big whoop. Get your spirit on, Amen, Hallelujah, Shalom Salaam. Om mani padme umm...
Religious TOLERANCE? How about religious indifference??
Try some on, America, do ya good!
Tip of the hat to Jive Aces.
Monday, April 25, 2011
had it up to here with the likes of you ppl
now youtube, comcast, I just want to watch videos with absolute ZERO hiccups and 12-minute-loading-times-for-a-45-second-damn-clip.
I will never care less if you are loading at resolution of 12trillion x 12trillion p - load in the immediate infinite NOW or do not ever, there is NO TRY. You will not be warned again!
I know you two don’t play nice together, and if I let you sit next to each other all you’re gonna do is bicker, fuss and fight.
I honestly don’t care what you like, I’m gonna load every one of these videos I have any interest in - each to its own tab so it can load completely before it gets an iota of my attention.
And if you don’t like it, I don’t think I wanna play with you anymore.
You can just not be my friends, okay? Is this really too much to ask?
I will never care less if you are loading at resolution of 12trillion x 12trillion p - load in the immediate infinite NOW or do not ever, there is NO TRY. You will not be warned again!
I know you two don’t play nice together, and if I let you sit next to each other all you’re gonna do is bicker, fuss and fight.
I honestly don’t care what you like, I’m gonna load every one of these videos I have any interest in - each to its own tab so it can load completely before it gets an iota of my attention.
And if you don’t like it, I don’t think I wanna play with you anymore.
You can just not be my friends, okay? Is this really too much to ask?
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