Micheal Gira/Angels of Light-We Are Him

I know, a very stupid reason to buy a CD is the artwork. Lo and Behold, this is a fucking great album. I've since gone and done some "pokin 'round" on the internets about Michael Gira, and before this disc I didn't know a goddamn thing about him.
I've since read some wildly varying reviews about the disc, but I have to say, this shit creeps me out. This is a "value added" purchase, in that unless you hang out with a bunch of art rock people from New York, I think most "normal" people will find this recording very scary. Of course I mean this all as high praise.
This is one of those rare CDs for me that when I first listened to it, I didn't know what the hell to think; or feel. Which in my case most of the time works out to be a recording I come to cherish very much. I could say more, but I can only recommend that you go find this, buy it, and listen to it. With lines like "your eyes are your holes where you suck in your need", I'm getting a feeling this is a keeper..
Also, the last Nels Cline record with the pics of the Hadron Collider on it is fucking fantastic. As usual. Go get that motherfucker too, and listen to where modern rock REALLY is.

Shuf, Shuf!

This is probably moronic, but I just had to publicly announce my severe admiration for Rachid Taha. That motherfucker rocks. Fucking Algerians. They're kind of insane. 'Tekitoi" and "Diwan" are 2 fan-motherfucking-tastic discs. Go get them. RIGHT NOW. I mean it. RIGHT. FUCKING. NOW.

THE DREAM HAS DIED (it's being wheeled into the ER right now!)

Well it turns out there is an expiration date for dreams. Let this be a lesson to you kids: DON'T TRY TO MAKE A LIVING AS A MUSICIAN. People say they like music, but the truth is nobody wants to hear you fucking play some idiotic piece of shit you came up with on your guitar. Just because there's a minor 7th chord doesn't fucking make you Thelonius Monk.

I have at least one piece of evidence to support my assertion that nobody gives a fuck about music anymore: because most places don't even bother to have PA systems for musicians to use! If that's not damning evidence, then I don't know what is.

So...let's summarize.

In order to have a successful career as a musician, you must:

1: Practice obsessively for the rest of your miserable life in order to sound good.

B: Amass tens of thousands of dollars of musical and sound reinforcement equipment in order to play gigs like a true professional, in the process, pissing off your partner who wonders secretly why you need to have "so much shit"


3: Find a woman(or man..whatever you're into.) that is going to be patient enough to put up with your bullshit while you work some shit job, and when you're not working, obsessing over some tiny fucking detail that nobody will probably hear anyway, besides your music coach, which will make you feel completely inadequate, thereby causing you to practice more and subsequently piss off your partner even more.


2: Try to find other people to play with that aren't huge fucking chemical liabilities and that have normal, human sized egos..

3: Attend a prohibitively expensive music school on the east coast, because that's where "real musicians" go, which is most likely filled with the offspring of the nouveau riche and old European nobility, who have never had to work a fucking day in their priveleged shit lives, and are most likely just pissing away a good opportunity because they don't know what else to do with their priveleged asses.

4: Slog your ass through countless bands that suck balls but think they're the next fucking Metallica/Modest Mouse/Animal Collective... etc..

D: Make sure to develop a highly refined taste for music that only you know, because in your head you think you're the coolest fucking thing to ever happen because you listen to some fucking stupid indie band called "Sick Pony" or something, (Dislcaimer: I do not actually know if "Sick Pony" is an actual band, and if they do exist, I used this name only for hypothetical and entertainment purposes, and mean no disrespect towards this fine outfit)

2: Pretend to live the "rock and roll lifetsyle " but in reality you will most likely end up living in some shit 3rd floor walk up filled with drug addicts, which in a way, is kind of rock and roll!

1: Inadvertently develop a crippling drug and alcohol dependency that you keep hidden from other people, laying awake early in the morning, praying for sleep to come, and loathing yourself while you do one more eyeball shot of vodka and another bong hit of Stevia and weed..

F: Develop a personality that outwardly is humble and gregarious, but when you get people alone you turn into a ADD afflicted douchebag that wears sunglasses inside, at night, in front of your friends, while you point out to them why they're such douchebags.

A: Seriously, you must develop your douchebaggery if you want to really be a real rock star. Also, make sure that you're condescending an judgmental towards your coworkers and friends

3: Gay bashing is always a good musician thing to do!

1: Never seriously get good on your instrument. Nobody appreciates a wise ass.

K: Foster an adversarial relationship with local law enforcement. FUCK THE MAN!

3: Leave behind a trail of failed relationships and unfulfilled debt obligations.

Finally, make sure that every decision you make career wise is the wrong decision. Wait a minute....

Farmers market melons

Well excuse me, but watermelon is fucking AWESOME.
There's a farmers' market up here, but "meh"
I WANT MY FUCKING MELON YOU LOCAL FUCKS!!! Don't get me wrong, I love mud and incest and teenage pregnancy, but I want FUCKING WATERMELON ASSHOLES.
One day...ONE DAY....

Fava beans

Boy do I love fava beans! Thanks a lot, Rocky.

Idea

Since I've been in a tiny but of a musical rut lately, I had the idea that I would record one improvisation a week on guitar. I'm not sure about how the fuck I want to go about this yet, because everybody that improvises practices their asses off, so even though the ideas themselves might be new to them, the technique certainly isn't I'm just tossing around the idea of whether or not I should practice before I improvise or not. Gonna put some more thought into it, then most likely go crack a fucking beer and watch The Peoples Court. Stay tuned..Or go watch the fucking Peoples Court. That show always makes me feel better about myself!

Fuck you, April Fools day

So, if there's any veracity to the notion that April Fools Day was a way to ridicule pagans for not believing in Christianity, well then FUCK YOU APRIL FOOLS DAY. Howz about we make fun of those fuckers instead? Oh, right, THEY'RE TOO BUSY BURYING SEX PREDATOR SCANDALS. At this point, nobody even fucking cares anymore. so. FUCK YOU APRIL FOOLS DAY. We're all over you, you goat fucker.

Congress...

Boy am I sick of these fuckers. The Republicans don't even try to contain their hatred and racism/sexism/homophobia, and the Democrats, well what the fuck do they do exactly??? They're in a fucking majority and they can't get anything done. Meanwhile I've been reading murmurs (See NYT Sunday article 02/21/10 by Lincoln Chaffee for starters) of a new "third party" which according to aforementioned citation, will be "the centrist majority".. Wanna bet? Never underestimate the pull of the whack jobs. How does anybody seriously believe the so called "birthers"?? Really? Somebody went back in time and planted a fake birth announcement in the newspaper in HAWAII? Wow. So it was alright for Cheney to change his state of residency during the first Bush/Cheney "election" in order to avoid constitutionally ascribed conflict of interest, (i.e. that the president and the VP can't be from the same state) But Obama wasn't born in this country? Kenya??? Is that where he's from?? Well somebody better start telling that to all of his friends that he went to law school with that he's just a big IMPOSTOR!! Anybody else being reminded of a movie starring Frank Sinatra, Angel Langsbury and Laurence Harvey?? Why is that when we have a bunch of goddamn chicken hawks in charge, that were too chicken shit to just do their fucking required service in the armed forces, or worse, in the case of Cheney, who got FIVE deferments, that suddenly people get all patriotic and stop giving a fuck about whether our implied assent to unjustified military action is correct or not? What the fuck is it about flag waving patriotic bullshit that gets people all flushed in their nether regions? If all these fucking assholes that were so gung ho for the war actually VOLUNTEERED (oops, I meant "forced to serve and deploy" because most intelligent people know that most of these fuckers would never actually put themselves in harms way), I have a suspicion they'd be a lot more fucking circumspect with their rabid opinions about idiotic, useless abstractions like "The Flag" and "Freedom".

So...It's okay for Bush,Cheney,Wolfowitz,Rove,Rumsfield and all those other seedy motherfuckers to fucking LIE to the American public, and walk away scot free, and NOW people are "feeling patriotic" and that NOW our government is fucking us over? Hmmm, I guess Bush Jr's tactic of leaving the cost of the Iraq "war" out of the general budget is good enough for most of these motherfucking spineless piece of shit "patriots" but suddenly Obama is the one being accused of "Generational theft"? What the fuck, McCain? What happened to you? Suddenly you're acting like a little yard dog, barking above your weight and not fucking doing anything, except irritating passersby. Thank god the Democrats have the balance of "power" because even though shit aint getting done, at least it's nothing, and not the huge cluster fuck of a shit storm we'd have if the Republicans had somehow magically managed to stay in power. We'd ALL be out of a job, and fighting in some country most of us have never even heard of.

One of the many thing that kills me about recent shenanigans is that a lot of the "opposition" seems to be motivated directly by GLENN BECK! Even he knows he's just a circus barker! And people still drink the Kool Aid. I remember a few years back somebody sending me a link to this diatribe of a letter about how the south should've been allowed to secede. (link, please!) I'm starting to feel this way. If these child molester hypocritical self serving fuckers want to bitch about government spending, while taking a disproportionate share of gov't subsidies (see Marietta county Georgia, South Carolina and Alaska) , maybe it's time to let "the Real America" have some real estate. Right in the middle of the country. Fuck em. Let them secede. We'll allow anybody that wants to leave to join the new country, consisting of both coasts, and a few states in between. We can provide free relocation money to all the "Tea Party" people, and they can start their own country, with their own constitution, or whatever they'd call it. Meanwhile, the rest of sane fuckers will just have to makes sure that they no longer receive any aid from us at all, and that they are required to have travel documents to enter our new country. I'll even pony up some of my own scant dough to help with the relocation. Let's try a new "grand experiment" in democracy, and see what happens when these right wing, reactionary, anti Semitic, nut jobs have to run their own country. I predict it'd fucking turn into the Balkan conflict USA style real quick.

I'm sick of it. I'm so fucking tired of congress and the senate not getting anything done. You'd think that a bridge just collapsing into the Mississippi river would be enough of a wake up call that we've gotten off track, but nope. Infrastructure? Fuck that! NO GAYS IN THE MILITARY!!! Never mind the fact that all of the people that dropped the ball leading up to and after 09/11 are now living comfortably in retirement, some with a a secret service detail, while the rest of us regular fucks are being fucked out of jobs and homes are left to pay the tab for the drunken frat party we just went through. Clinton got impeached for a fucking blow job, and Bush and all of his kith are free. Why isn't our elected legislative branch investigating wrongdoing by his administration? What's the problem?? OHHH, RIIIGHT. They ALL FUCKING APPROVED BUSH'S ILLEGAL ACTIONS IN IRAQ, SO THEY'D ALL BE HELD RESPONSIBLE.
Incredible. The criminals run free and people that have worked their whole lives playing by "the rules" are the ones picking up the mess.

It's time for a real change. If there's going to be a third party, I hope it will be the party of "fuck you, shut up and let us solve some problems already". Maybe another world war is what we all need. That way, we don't have to make any difficult decisions, and we can blame our "enemies" while we all star over, and rebuild, with a bunch of shiny new factories, and shiny new things.

Somebody call the organizers of Burning Man. At least they get it that starting over is good for the community.

The idiocy of the internet and solving life issues.

I got rid of my facebook profile a few months ago because I realized that 95% of the people contacting me on it were just making sure they were better off than me. Fucking assholes from my past reaching out as though they're friends, and then NOTHING. Between that and all of the toxic lies my family tells about our happy little past, it makes me want to jump off of a fucking bridge. Why is it okay for people to behave like selfish, destructive dicks forever, but then when they feel guilty, all is forgiven?? What the fuck? So I guess all the anger and hurt my fucking fuck dick family members caused is now far enough away that we can all have a good laugh about how fucked up it all was?? So it's okay to emotionally fuck somebody for a set period of time, and then when the guilt strikes, then the love in starts? Fuck that shit. Why are some assholes allowed to hold on to their anger like it's a fucking priceless artifact, and then when they realize how bad that is, they suddenly expect everyone around them to be game for playing "I'm sorry"?? I understand now where hatred comes from. I hate my family, and I feel boiling rage whenever they try to talk to me. I also hate most of the people I've met. At least half of them have been self absorbed fuckers, and most people I meet seem to make sport of gossiping. I've had it. I want to live with old, suspicious racist fuckers. At least they're honest about their hatred. I don't trust anybody that's in a good mood. The ground state of humanity is mistrust, anger and paranoia. If somebody says they love you, they're probably lying. We're doomed as a species. We're the worst thing ever to happen. Humans are shit. We are capable of such incredibly beautiful things, but then we have to go do shit like fucking go to war and create nuclear weapons. The only people I like are people I've met that have NOTHING to do with my family or my past. Even then, I can count my friends on one messed up, missing fingers hand. Humans are the scum of the universe. If there is indeed a GOD, you'd think that he/she/it would have a huge fucking hard on to show the universe what a great god they are by creating a species that doesn't fight, hate, or sow bitterness everywhere they go. But NOOO....we have creation myths that describe destruction and violence. There is no god. There is no purpose for our existence. We are filthy fucking animals with the evolutionary hiccup of the ability of Abstract Thought. The single greatest scourge in the universe. Abstract thought has allowed our puerile species to compartmentalize our violent intent, and rationalize the rape of other people and our planet. No other animal has been as purposefully destructive to the planet as humans. Sure, the dinosaurs grew too big, but it wasn't on purpose. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn't a design, it was an unfortunate accident. If that meteor hadn't struck the planet and wiped them off the face of the earth, things would be drastically different. Oooh, we know about Quarks and germs! But yet we still fucking kill each other. But we believe in GOD! He/she/it will save us! As long as we subscribe to a set of conditions that we THINK this all powerful being made up, we can rape and kill and plunder as much as we want because the OTHERS ARE UNBELIEVERS. So obviously it's okay to fucking skull fuck their children and murder them. When I was younger I thought that I loved people, but now that I'm older, I feel that everyone is a fucking lying opportunist and that there's no point in trusting anyone. Just look at our government. We vote with our hate. We don't vote for hope. Barack Obama was voted in because of how many people hated Bush. If that fucking moron had done just a little bit better, most people would've put fucking McCain and Palin in the White House. Where would we be then? I've always imagined that if warheads were hurtling towards us, I would break open a liqour store and have a last drink with my girlfriend/wife, or a barring that, a strange woman. How close we are to that. Humans are the worst thing to ever happen in the universe. If our children live to 70 I'll be impressed. there's a lot of sugar in the gas tank right now..