Archive for category Ａｂｏｕｔ

• Gotta try harder on the titles.
• I said “counter-reform” when I guess I meant “counter-counter-reform”, thus destroying whatever I was trying to say. This chart (via) sums it up pretty well. It might even oversimplify the whole thing.
• I thought about Dirty not making my Sonic Youth Top 10 again. The weird thing about this list is it’s assumption you know nothing about Sonic Youth albums but know everything about the album Dirty (which is entirely possible judging by high school t-shirts of the time). If this was true you could have easily guessed I cut off the song “Youth Against Fascism” not because I’m a fan of totalitarian governments, but because it’s a lousy song. It also calls attention to the fact that it kinda sucks, but your kinda lame if you think it sucks because it’s politically correct. Which was half the shit in the 90s and it got old real fast. I also cut “Chapel Hill” which has one on the worse lyrics ever: “the hair in the hole in my head/too bad the scene is dead.” Some random dumb line and then, “sorry kid, everything good already happened.” I didn’t know he was talking about North Carolina, where they let the ear hair fly free, or used to. Then someone posted a picture of the cassette on tumblr. That whole second side is pretty weak. But that first side is great. I need to get it on vinyl and never flip it over. I stand by it not making the list.
• Nah, I’m being a total cock. Two songs have dumb lyrics? Compared to Goo? I like those other b-side songs. I just never had a real copy. I think when I finally went to buy it, it was already reissued with more tracks. More tracks! My dub version with two less is clearly the best version. Why don’t they reissue albums with the bum tracks taken off? They fulfilled the contract or whatever, give the people a break. So I’d figure, “why don’t I buy an album I don’t have?” One of those times I bought the rarely mentioned Hold That Tiger, which is basically a glorified bootleg from the Sister-era (I think it’s official…). The banter and Ramones covers are worth it even if the sound quality is not great. The performance is pretty close the records but it shows off their sense of humor which is sometimes easy to forget. Like if you listed to their first 3 records every day for a year-and-a-half, for example, this would be a good antidote to your resultant worldview. Let’s say Dirty is my 11 and Hold That Tiger is my 12.
• It should go without saying that the Ciccone Youth album is not counted in this list.
• I also talked about a “weird bunch” of metalheads that also listened to the Doors. That’s not that weird. It was pretty standard at that time for the most sterotypical seeming denim-jacketed longhairs to be into a wider range of music than most. And I suggest the paintballing had anything to do with musical taste. It was utterly random mayhem I avoided through sheer luck. One of out mutual friends got hit once (these were drive-bys, mostly aimed at stop signs) we all laughed about it and kept hanging out. Until graduation day, then you never saw or heard from em again. Just the way it was…then. I think they’re all scientists now, for real. Here’s a conversation that did not take place:
  metalhead1: Dude, let’s get that dude.
  metalhead2: Naw dude, I know that dude. His favorite Metallica album is Kill Em All.
  metalhead1: Dude!
  metalhead2: Yes, Master of Puppets is clearly their strongest work (to date) yet I respect his bold and divergent opinion.
  metalhead1: Agreed.

• In this post I said something about not understanding Africa (or Russia!). This suggests I understand Europe or even America outside of the Tri-State area. My whole tone about the UK situation is odd. Leaving it there.

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Not everyone believes in nutsos. But I think nutsos are a beautiful thing; a mysterious thing. You can’t generalize the belief in nutsos. It’s just those few bad ones, you know the ones. We call those the bottom of the bag. The important thing is to look at something before you put it in your mouth. But you would be missing out avoiding them entirely. I understand some people are allergic. Some people might want to bust a nutso, but that depends so much on context. Most of the time no one wants that: work, school, most parties. Other times it would be rude not to. It really depends what you’re talking about.

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You just can’t stop the meta. Like a leaky faucet that…maybe the water analogy is not too strong.

Well, guess what. Here’s a statement you don’t hear much on the internet: I am not an astute political thinker. I’m just not. But since I’ve been old enough to notice, everyone in power seemed to be doing an awful job. Before 9/11, I voted either Socialist or Libertarian. Literally flipped a coin. In 2000 I had moved and didn’t re-register. I didn’t really care, except for the social issues which are not really political issues. (Maybe half of Dems aren’t liberal enough on these issues anyway.) In ’04 I registered Dem which almost felt like doing something and since then the Dems have almost felt like doing something. Kinda shitty. I feel the same anger as the Wall Street protesters against the party but I’m against the “revolution” language. What we all really want is “counter-reform” but it’s not as catchy to yell en masse, so of course it’s going to get hijacked by something more extreme. Check out those Greek protests. They’re not protesting against Democrats and Republicans over there. But I’ll redirect you to the first sentence of this paragraph. I will not be running for political office, but as soon as cold weather hits, hopefully the Occupiers will be running for local office wherever they’re from. Because a lot of people seem to be into it, but then voting time rolls around and we’ve all got to choose between the guy who was directly anti-protest and the guy who was not directly anti-protest but who is obviously part of the problem but we can’t vote for that first guy obviously and the only other candidate thinks beer can tabs should be our new currency. So please, do that.

I also said in that post I hate “nutso utopians” as much as conservatives. I don’t know about that. I think society needs nutsos in way it doesn’t need conservatives. Altho in the case of Ayn Rand, same thing. (Just kidding, she wasn’t really a conservative. Hijacked! All these terms are completely useless.)

Some more updates:
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I’ve got to get this thing moving this blog back toward record reviews. Joined the Japanese site Netlog the other day, seems like a good place to blog in Japanese, or about learning Japanese, or about learning Japanese in Japanese. (Altho writing about it in English has given me something to write about cause I was blanking on the reviews.) Getting myself used to just being in a constant state of panic cause it seems like it’s going to be a long ride of that. It’s something you can get used to, right? It’s a dry panic.

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No, I am not promoting “the cross”. Not everything is a pun, goddamnit. I’m a buddhist. Sub-buddhist at best, maybe. So what.

I have another blog for my musical endeavors. I think I hate it. I don’t think blogging and art mix that well anymore. Maybe blogging and life in general don’t mix that well anymore. Not how I’m doing it anyway. Well, it was all an experiment. Fine.

So I have this post on politics now. Please note that this post is “Uncategorized”. Every other post is under the “music” category, presumably because every post is about music that I have made or am involved in making, unlike “Music Ja Nai“, which is not about that.

Got all that? OK, so I don’t think music or art in general mix with politics. The subject of art can be political, but the making of it can’t, at least within anything close to any “normal” kind of ideal. Take Komar and Melamid’s Most Wanted/Unwanted Song, democracy in action. Extremely well-done, but not making anyone’s heavy rotation. (Pretty sure FMU has played the Most Unwanted song at least a dozen times, but that doesn’t count.)

A lot of people don’t like politics because it’s boring. Yes! It should be boring. When politics gets exciting, there’s a serious problem. We all vote on what we’re trading for something else and that’s about it. Civil rights and religion should not even be political issues. I might sound like a conservative sometimes but I hate conservatives as much as nutso utopians. Really they are almost the same thing; Conservatives just think that utopia was achieved at some point in the past. (Altho I am picking FDR as my favorite president…what can you do.) Objectively speaking a progressively taxed democracy benefits the most people. (Also, objectively speaking Ayn Rand was a terrible writer.) It’s not socialism, but it’s half-way. So it’s also half-fascist? Does that make any sense? If it’s not all the way it’s not either, it’s democracy. Boring shit, the way it should be. Does your water meter have TV in it? No. It’s not there to entertain you. It just has it’s job, in the background. “Oh shit, we used a lot of water this month. Could use less or I could FUCK YOU, WATER METER!!!” Not the meter’s fault, dude. Could protest for free water, how do you know the water’s clean? Who fixes the pipes? Shit costs money.

This is where things break down: music is not clean water. Art is not civil rights. Since I don’t have extreme beliefs, I have no need to speak in code. The idea that current Republicans (since Reagan) are ruining the country is the moderate position. I tried to make it clever because stating the obvious is not an interesting topic. Maybe you’re a closet Republican! Ever thought of that?

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