Standard Mischief

But that doesn’t explain things exactly. Maybe it might be more accurate to say that I’m burned out over music. Or I refuse to get passionate again about music. Or whatever. Or whatever you are listening to is fine. Unless it’s all rap, all the time or mind-numbing, headache-inducing, repetitive techno. How anyone can listen to that techno crap without chemical enhancement is beyond me.

For a while there I just left it on the local “progressive” station, whatever the heck that means. Right away there I noticed the bane of top-40, the play list. The rock stations weren’t any better, playing the same damn three acceptable-to-the-target-demographic, white-guy-remakes-old-blues-songs, over and over on light rotation. I listened anyway, because everyone else was too and there was some unfed need for polyphonic sounds of dissent. I got disillusion at a festival at RFK stadium. I had the foresight to bring some binoculars, and by sharing them and looking towards the stage’s big screen, you could barely make out the set while the music, constrained by the speed of sound, arrived to my senses like a poorly dubbed late-night b-movie. My now ex-significant enjoyed herself immensely. I went on a strict diet of news and talk radio.

By my reckoning it was just years before, I stood at my first and last show at WUST music hall, right up against the stage, the toilet tissue stuffed in my ears as ersatz earplugs, as the live sonic wave passed through me and a diver landed directly on my head on his way to the thrash pit. Made a lasting impression (not physically) of how a live venue performance ought to be properly pulled off. Live shows at the Mall and other small venues echoed this.

Even here is the eliteness, sellouts, minimum required trivia and minutia to be memorized. Do you have your ripped jeans and plaid, and your boots laced the proper way? My favorite gothic plate cut his hair short and now I don’t know exactly how I should express my individuality. I can’t believe that you’ve never heard of those guys! The paisley guy that slid into emo. Here’s a collection of music mixed with you in mind.

It’s just some music, not a lifestyle or a philosophy or the sink for my disposable income or a movement. Let me assure you that this exclusive scene has the same sameness as that one. The players, and markers, and the movements are merely different.

What brought this on? Well I’m not dumping angst here. Not at all. It’s the junction of a major threat that derailed into a rack of pre-distressed six pocket BDUs available at a major department store. The combat boots I have at home that are older than the kid that’s giving me looks because I’m wearing something that’s akin to his gang colors. Stuff that a younger me wouldn’t even rate as ?mediocre-core? on heavy radio rotation and labeled as the oxymoron “pop-punk”. Remembering what I was like at seventeen and something that has struck a chord in my head and perhaps my heart as I dug it out of an archive of a few years ago.

I’m not going to name anything here. Well OK, I will, but I’ll put it under the fold. Because I’m not terribly interested in what you listen to unless I say ?this sounds pretty good, who does it?? and I think you are the same. I’m not aiming to get you to download something that you can listen on your fashion accessory headphones in the dark and feel you have a connection to me.

It’s an experiment. I’m always experimenting and I think the guy will eventually ego search engine himself to my place and I think he deserves the same little lift that I get when someone points to something I’ve created and indicated it gave them a little lift. Because that’s pretty neat. And maybe I am venting a little angst, but just a little bit.
(more…)

Written by JJ over at Say Uncle’s place.

Chuckaquiddick.

JJ Says: Merely a reference to liberal bias when laws are broken. In Chappaquiddick, Ole “Gimme-anudder-drink” Ted drowned a woman, and the feminists and liberals were silent. Chuck Schumer’s staff (DSCC) used fraud to steal a black conservative’s credit report, (Ed- it was Michael Steele, MD’s current Lt. Governor) and the liberals are silent. So, I think it is somewhat funny to tie them together. Part commentary on the liberal history of ignoring faults and truth to further a movement, and part reminder of what kind of people make it into the government.

JJ’s blog is here.

Sometimes you just gotta stop and read the comments.

OK, yup, I’m really on the ball here. Most people seem do to this stuff before the new year is out. Oh well.

Best Beer to bring Backpacking.

The requirements of a good trail brew are that it must come in cans, so you can crush it and carry it out, and must taste good, even if it isn’t ice cold. The idea here is to bring yourself just one can to drink and relax with at the end of the day’s hike. At one and a half pounds per 12 ounce can, I’m not gonna lug a 12-pack very far.

I nominate Yuengling’s Black and Tan, in a can. A mixture of Yuengling Premium Beer (40%) and Dark-Brewed Porter (60%). Yum.

Worst Brazenly Obvious Bias in a News Story.

That would have to go to ABC news for the headline “White Supremacists Riot in Toledo, Ohio” (where the neo-nazi people weren’t the rioters).

Originally when I discussed this, Jacqueline cautioned me about the old saying “don’t see malice when stupidity seems to explain things just fine”. and OK, I’m willing to do that, but when you combine the headline with the tagline;

Headline – “White Supremacists Riot in Toledo, Ohio”
Tag line – “Mayor of Toledo, Ohio, Declares Emergency, Sets Curfew After Hundreds of White Supremacists Riot”

and then you look at their so called “correction”:

Headline – “Emergency Declared After Anti-Nazi Riots”
Tag line – “Ohio Mayor Declares Emergency, Sets Curfew After White Supremacists’ March Turns Violent”

and then you notice that someone reading that still could wind up confused, not to mention the fact that they failed to admit in the revised story that their first headline was wildly misleading. At this point, you start to wonder about their “pure as wind driven snow” totally unbiased objectivity.

And then you notice that the picture they included with the news story does seem to show some kind of disturbance, but it wholly fails to convey exactly who is doing the rioting.

And then you notice that the incorrect story is still available on the server almost three months later, and you start to think things like perhaps they really are totally unbiased, except of course for White Supremacists, who clearly don’t deserve the same level of truthfulness in the media as more mainstream groups do.

All well and good, but when I run across blunders such as this, I would think that the media peoples would bend over backwards to show that they were unslanted, objective reporters. Perhaps they should publish a correction that looks something like this.

Headline – “Nazi March Peaceful; Counter-Protesters Riot”
Tag line – “Mayor of Toledo, Ohio, Declares Emergency, Sets Curfew After Hundreds of Counter-Protesters Riot”

By JOHN SEWER Associated Press Writer

(Notice of Correction. ABC news has corrected the headline of this story from this earlier version. We sincerely regret any confusion generated by our mistake)

TOLEDO, Ohio Oct 16, 2005 – Protesters at a white supremacists’ march threw rocks at police, vandalized vehicles and stores and cursed the mayor for allowing the event…

To do otherwise, and you fully deserve any standard corporate munge anyone tries to affix to you, (i.e Always Broadcast Communism) and whatever reputation that comes along with it.

Favorite thread that I participated in on another blog

“…We had to fight to get a season opened on the black bear that’s a problem in the panhandle. It was being opposed by a bunch of eco-freaks that have never been outside the beltway. People who order sustainably harvested wooden measuring spoons made by real third world people who get paid a living wage, from out of an overpriced catalog so they can feel like they live close to the earth. Then they have an absolute heart attack when the first bear of the season is taken by a 8 year old girl. Are they afraid she’ll do a drive-by shooting next week?…”

Best Cerebral Discussion in a Thread on another Blog

JJ and I rant on about Alexander Hamilton. Should we have have followed his advice and never enumerated any rights in an effort to keep the federal government weak and limited, or was he a closet monarchist, proposing disaster?