When I was younger, I always found that lyric to be (more than a little) silly but sweet. It never occurred to me that it was entirely self-interested. After all, wouldn't you trade a paltry million dollars for a 2739-year lifespan?
So several years ago, the Rutgers radio station (WRSU) had a contest. I don't remember what I did to win it, but somehow I did win it. And the prize they were supposed to give me was all of Mary Lou Lord's records up until that point.
So I never got my records.
I was bitter. Even though I really liked her voice, I couldn't bring myself to buy any of the music that I was supposed to get for free. I ended up buying one of her EPs (Martian Saints) used a long time ago. I listen to it rarely, but it's really good, actually. I've listened to it twice this week. I'm still pissed I never got my free records. Now I'm trying to figure out if I ought to break the moratorium, give in, and just start buying them myself or what.
I'm certain I can't be the only person who has ever noticed that the Reggie and the Full Effect song "Thanx for Stayin'" is built on a sample from one of the Short Circuit movies. I think it's from the first one, but I'm not certain. I noticed this years ago, but for some reason I only now feel compelled to post it. Unfortunately, I don't have the movies, so I can't find the actual sound clip, but here is the sample from the song. Maybe someone else can figure out more on its provenance.
(20 sec. mp3 clip)
At times consciously, at times unconsciously, I have been censoring my music consumption. I've been using last.fm for about a year now and I think I've been too concerned with appearances. At first, I just tried to cut out classical music and podcasts (because I don't think they would really contribute to usage statistics that are meaningful to me - I want to know what people with similar pop music interests are listening to . . . if I want to listen to anything else, I can just ask Kara). But as time passed, I found myself stopping the last.fm plugin when I was listening to music that I thought would "taint" my statistics. I think this admission is probably more embarrassing than the music I listen to, but it needed to be said. So, ironically enough, I'm starting the plugin today with a song off Saves the Day's "Through Being Cool" record. And yes, that "sham" label applies to me. The truth hurts, sometimes.
I just saw this video of U2 and The Arcade Fire performing Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart." Be warned that the video is pretty shaky because it is hand-held, but the sound quality isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Bono sounds convincingly like Ian Curtis, which is a little surprising. As is typical when two full bands are on the same stage, there are a lot of extraneous members hanging around playing extraneous instruments (think of the gluttony of Temple of the Dog). This recording has the unmistakable feel of an impromptu "let's play a cover" decision and you can see the backup singers repeating the chorus an extra time and laughing about coming in at the wrong time. I'm not sure what I actually expected from the performance, but if for nothing but novelty value, I think this is one worth checking out. Oh yeah, and I like Régine Chassagne's boots. A lot of the comments about this are negative, but I don't really think it should be compared with the original so much as seen as an homage. (Although, when a band releases a cover on one of their records, I consider it open season to compare and criticize against the original version.)
Shooting the messenger (but missing): dishonest argumentation
I came across an article, written by a Professor David Schaefer (Political Science - Holy Cross), complaining about an anti-military recruiter organization called the "Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools." Upon first glance, I can't imagine why anybody would find a group who proposes that perhaps 14-18 year-old high schoolers are not quite mature enough to decide whether they should join our armed forces objectionable. High school students have impartial guidance counselors, teachers and their parents to help them decide what they should do upon graduating, so if our point of reference is the best interest of the students, it doesn't seem as if they need the military recruiters to guide them. It seems much more likely that the military recruiters choose high schoolers precisely because many students are impressionable and easier to convince. Professor Schaefer must surely realize this, so he does not bother to attack the reason why a group might attack military recruiters in our school districts; instead, he attempts to divert the reader's attention with an ad feminam attack against Arlene Inouye, a spokeswoman for the anti-recruiter group, that can only be taken as a cynical rhetorical device (from a man who teaches philosophy, no less). Not willing to address the elephant in the room (recruiting teenagers still in high school is basically an attempt to swindle students who don't know any better into enlisting to be shot at in Iraq), Professor Schaefer instead points out that Ms. Inouye recently published an article in an openly communist magazine:
During the [BBC/Public International Radio program "The World"] radio interview, Ms. Inouye identified herself simply as a speech therapist working in the Los Angeles public schools. There is another facet to her identity that she avoided mentioning, however, and it's easily discovered by using Google. Her article "Kick the Military Out of Your School! We Did in L.A. and So Can You!" was recently published in Dynamic Magazine, an organ of the Young Communist League. While the League's website does not disclose the nature of Ms. Inouye's role in the organization, "the militarization of our schools" and "the impact of military recruitment on high school students" are the major themes of the YCL's current "Realities of War Speaking Tour." The "Coalition Against Militarism in Our Schools" thus sounds suspiciously like what used to be called a Communist front group.
He tries to impugn Ms. Inouye by insinuating the she has lied about her background (because in Professor Schaefer's world, apparently, every spokesperson first identifies her political allegiances before addressing any issue). Realizing that he cannot actually prove that Ms. Inouye is a communist (and apparently not realizing that the specter of the red bogeyman isn't as terrifying today as it once was) he points to phrases in her argument that are similar to the Young Communist League's current platform as evidence that she must be a communist. I have not read any of Professor Schaefer's academic writing and I cannot comment on it, but I can only imagine that it is not as shoddily argued as this small piece. The only conclusion I can draw from this is that he is making an intellectually dishonest argument first by attacking the messenger rather than the message and second by not even making that attack an effective one.
Bruce Reed is positively gleeful as he points out President Bush's low approval rating. He's not alone. In fact, the New York Times has been hammering the point home all month. The trouble with this assessment, of course, is that it's just plain wrong. Don't get me wrong, I think Gilroy goes a bit nuts in his piece, but he's right that all of these rhetorical losses mean very little in terms of political power.
Ladies, do you really dig UNIX?
I ran into this shirt on ThinkGeek and it made me wonder: how many of the girls in these action shots actually have a computer running some UNIX or *nix OS? I'm guessing the Google employee probably does. The cute girl holding the O'Reilly book probably does, too. The girl with the stuffed Tux (the penguin) is also a likely candidate. But I'm skeptical of some of the more teenybopper-looking photos. Maybe those girls dig eunuchs. Touché, double-entendre'd shirt, touché.
Rock alert:
I just received an email saying that Lifetime will be playing in San Francisco in January! I definitely don't listen to the same music I listened to in 1998, but you can bet I'll be at that show. Tickets go on sale on the 20th.
Lightning rods are the Devil's work.
There is an interesting op-ed contribution in the New York Times today about how some Americans have always valued "faith" over reason.
Seasonal Colors
Now that I'm skinning my page (this refers to an earlier incarnation of this blog) according to the terror alert level, I'm hoping that the Department of Homeland Security plans to change the terror alert level according to the seasons (that is, the natural seasons, not the electoral ones - another link), because this yellow/orange color suits the fall, but winter is fast approaching and I wouldn't want my page to go out of style.
A bunch of my favorite artists in the past two years are pop duos: Mates of State, the Postal Service, the Knife, Tegan & Sara. Notice that the White Stripes do not make the list. The Kills are pretty good, but I'm still ambivalent. One significant feature of this set is that they all have at least one female singer (except for the Postal Service, who cater to, in Simon's words, people who "prefer guys that sing like chicks," rather than female singers).
Whereas "Bikini Kill" means "crappy music" in English:
I often feel that I'm in a minority of a minority in this regard. I like rock/pop music with female vocals, but I can't stand the music that women create as an answer to the male-dominated rock world. I thought Le Tigre released a decent first album with some good tracks, but they've fallen precipitously since then. And that's a feat, considering they weren't so high up in my opinion. Kathleen Hanna released a solo album (as Julie Ruin) that was actually pretty good, but probably because it was more about creating a pop album than about a "message," though there are certainly political tracks on that record. Bikini Kill was just plain awful.
In the past couple of years, some of my favorite albums have been by Rainer Maria, Rilo Kiley (despite their uncharacteristically trite single about the Iraq War) and the aforementioned duos. I think what's finally becoming clear to me (though I should have probably known it years ago) is that political music tends to suck. There are exceptions, of course, my favorite among them being the Clash, the Broadways, the Honor System, and Bad Religion. Two unfortunate and related issues arise for me when it comes to political music:
I rarely agree with the politics of the artists I like. Too often they're overly alarmist (granted a three minute punk song doesn't give you too much time to discuss subtler points of an issue), or are just plain too far to the left. For example, Propagandhi is a bunch of very angry Canadians who are sticking it to the Man. Canadians. Or the Honor System, for another example, are proud communists.
Most political music is forgiven for its crappy musicianship, vapid lyrics, and generally unredeeming quality because it is preaching to the choir. Think, Anti-Flag.
So what's my point?
I want suggestions. I don't have too many friends who introduce me to good new music. Kyle has been trying to get me to listen to a couple new bands, but I'm convinced I just don't like post-MTV post-punk. And I hate using "post" adjectives, too. Zack just introduced me to a song by the Notwist, and it's pretty good. Keep 'em coming (if you've got something good, leave me a comment).
An unrelated note:
My dear friends Rosalyn and Luis got married this past weekend in Miami. Congratulations, guys.
Since I found out about it, I have been duly disgusted by the "Conservative Punk" website, not because I don't like conservatives, though I tend to reject a lot of what they stand for, and not because I don't like punks, though I can't help but recoil in embarrassment at my own punk rock youth. Rather, the whole "wolf in sheep's clothing" conceit is a powerful deterrent, and here is that motif played out as fully as anywhere. I am not a big fan of contradictions, and "conservative punk" sounds more like a bad joke than a real movement. Anyway, there is a funny segment of that site endorsing a boycott of Chinese goods:
While some websites will encourage you to boycott companies based on the perceived political bend of their CEO (IE Buyblue.org), we at Conservativepunk feel that punishing workers because the suits might have made donations to political causes we might not like is not an intelligent use of the power of our dollar. Instead, we believe that our consumer power can be put to the best use through the boycott of Chinese goods.
So, basically, it's wrong to punish workers because "the suits" might have politics we don't like, but it's perfectly fine to punish the Chinese because their "suits" have politics we don't like. Good call. What was it I was saying about contradictions, earlier?
The punks go on to point out several reasons why we should boycott Chinese goods. Some of them are indeed valid, but the very first one is:
China's labor practices encourage outsourcing and drive down American wages. Aren't you tired of manufacturing jobs leaving the US?
In effect, aren't you tired of allowing the Chinese to compete with us fairly? Wouldn't you prefer to tip the scale back in our favor? I guess they take the punk D.I.Y. ethic so seriously that they demand we "do it ourselves."
Heir Apparent apparently errs:
I'm a little mystified by this report that Prince Charles plans to "explain the virtues of Islam" to President Bush. Apparently, he believes that the US has been too confrontational against Islam (as a religion, I take it). Believe me, I have plenty of objections to the Bush administration, and I have often complained about them here. But I do not think Bush has misrepresented Islam as a religion, and I can think of many occasions where he has made it a point to stress that our enemy is not Islam or Muslims. Frankly, I think too often our liberal (and honorable) tendency to try not to offend the sensibilities of others leads us to absurd situations where we are paralyzed to speak the truth. One group I particularly admire for taking a hard line against Islamist terrorism are the Free Muslims. Perhaps if Prince Charles advocated a line more akin to the Free Muslims (which British Prime Minister Tony Blair is now beginning to do) than an unconditional appeal to multiculturalism and acceptance, then Britain might be a less hospitable place for radical clerics who want to destroy the open governments that allow them to preach in the first place.
Sort of related to terrorism, I guess:
My friend Brandon asked to see the code for the terror alert function, so I thought others might be interested as well. Here it is:
function getTerrorAlert() 'Version 1.1
'*********************************************************************
'Do not modify the variables unless you know what you're doing. *
'(1) intTimeout is fair game, change it to whatever timeout length *
'you like, but don't exceed Server.ScriptTimeout. *
'(2) strErrorResponse is self-explanatory. *
' *
'Version 1.0: Got the alert *
'Version 1.1: Includes a timeout value. *
'Future versions aren't planned unless something is wrong with this. *
' *
'Afshin Darian - http://eighties-night.com/ *
' *
'AS USUAL, THIS IS UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE. CHECK MY SITE *
'FOR THE LINK TO THE MOST CURRENT VERSION OF THE LICENSE. *
'*********************************************************************
dim intTimeout : intTimeout = 10 'in seconds
dim strErrorResponse : strErrorResponse = "couldn't contact dhs"
'*********************************************************************
dim strTemp, xml, xmlhttp, timeStart, timeCurrent, LOADED, strURL
strTemp = ""
LOADED = 4 'This is the readyState value when xmlhttp has loaded
strURL = "http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/getAdvisoryCondition"
set xmlhttp = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
set xml = server.createObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
xml.async = false
call xmlhttp.open("GET", strURL, false)
call xmlhttp.send()
timeStart = now
do
timeCurrent = now
intTimeTaken = cint(datediff("s", timeStart, timeCurrent))
if (intTimeTaken > intTimeout) then
strTemp = strErrorResponse
call xmlhttp.abort()
exit do
end if
loop while xmlhttp.readyState <> LOADED
if (xmlhttp.readyState = LOADED) then
call xml.loadxml(xmlhttp.responsetext)
strTemp = xml.selectsinglenode("/THREAT_ADVISORY").getAttribute("CONDITION")
end if
set xmlhttp = nothing
set xml = nothing
getTerrorAlert = strTemp
end function
When I was a teenager, I used to listen to my vinyl seven inches while sitting in an expansive armchair in the bedroom I shared with my brother. We had placed the speakers on the two armrests of the chair, and I don't think the fidelity of any system I've had has been as good as that setup. Granted, it had obvious flaws (in that I couldn't listen to any format but vinyl, for starters), but it had its perks. Later on, when I bought a home theater system with an optical receiver, the quality was very good, but I guess I just never really set it up in such a way that I would be surrounded by its warmth. And now, finally, I have found a pair of headphones (thanks to Zack) that sounds as good as my records used to.
In other news:
Whenever I come across an issue on my computer, I try to see if others have the same problem (a Google search can resolve most problems). One problem that I can't seem to find documented anywhere is the instability of all BitTorrent clients on my iBook G4 12" running Mac OS X 10.4.2. Yesterday, I upgraded to OS X 10.4.3, and the problem seems to have been resolved. It's probably too early to make that call, but I've been running Azureus since the upgrade and it hasn't made my system unstable. If you're running a previous version of Tiger and BitTorrent clients make your system crash, know that you're not alone. I couldn't find any solution, I guessed that it was probably some system level issue, like a TCP/IP stack bug (because it caused all internal and external network traffic like web traffic and local user authentication to die), but I didn't know how to resolve it. I'll post here if Azureus crashes my system again. Hopefully, the next guy who searches Google for OS X crashing or becoming unstable, or "freezes," or "freezing" for that matter, might end up on here.
This video of two Chinese students singing "I want it that way" had me cracking up in my studio alone with headphones on. Notice the kid in the background who can't be bothered enough to watch the two serenaders. He's playing video games. Awesome. (I saw this via GNXP, and you might want to check out the other video in that post.)
It just occurred to me that I haven't made a "music" post in a long time. Part of the reason is that music is terrible, which is to say it's too much effort to find new good music now that I'm not eighteen any more. But tonight I'm going to bed with Scotch whisky and a guitar. So now's as good a time as any to tell you to check out The Falcon Is Bigger Than Jesus Dot Com. The Falcon, of course, hatched (as Brendan put it) many months ago, but I didn't mention it then. So I'm doing it now. Check them out. By the way, when I read "hatched" in regards to the band, I almost crapped myself. It was just too funny.
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