Anton Newcombe's depressed futility of melody

"We Are The Niggers Of The World," an epic, Chopin-on-Valium piano instrumental, is beautifully-written, but Newcombe plays it the way newborn horses walk—that is to say, poorly. The beauty of it is that all those fumbled notes and labored arpeggios only serve to heighten the depressed futility of the melody, creating a pathos that wouldn’t exist if it was actually played well. A man who can’t be bothered to record more than one take of a song for which he is technically ill-suited is a man with a nation's worth of conviction.

This is typical crap one reads in any number of fanzines or blogs on any given day one makes the mistake of choosing to waste their time reading what some chump thinks about a given musical product released to the asteroid-like collapsing market of rock show biz. I know folks who love this Anton Newcombe shit bag. I gots no problem with him or his antics at all, as long as I never have to deal with it directly. There is a long tradition of brat rock to be sure. I mean, rock n roll at its very core is the music of spoiled ass American brats with no remorse for their mistakes in judgment. This culture of entitlement, though, also brought us the "nanny state" and the "Reagan Revolution" which birthed the deregulation of energy and communications industry and the "war on drugs." I see direct correlations between these seemingly disparate channels of pop culture, economics and politics. Perhaps it is just that I choose to see those relations. Overall, though, I think it is obvious that our culture has been modified towards, what I interpret as a dumb luck conspiracy of effete incompetents. This is not a new or provocative thought. And I may be fertilizing cliche with a risk of redundancy on such matters, or spitting at myself. With this in mind I could not resist sharing a bit from a review I read recently on line. The apologetic worship of the writer is nauseating. The review honestly says this piano piece sucks, but if it had been played correctly it would not have carried the same emotional weight? Such bullshit. This might be the beginning of my redundant, hate-filled fantasy of reviewing the reviewers. If I had more intellectual fire power I might attempt it. But I am just as lame and ill-prepared as the rest of this generation of losers produced by the baby boomer wave of neglect in public education. To be fair to those chronically self-obsessed off-spring of The Greatest Generation, it has been a steady decay from the start of the 20th century on. And it don't look good. As long as we have creative writing courses, though, at least we can find ways of saying that our shit don't stink. Guys like Anton Newcombe can be praised for their idiot genius by scribes of mediocrity tilling the dead soils of the WWW.

New Kind Of Servitude

"Supreme power covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered but softened, bent and guided. Men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrial animals, of which government is the shepherd."

Alexis de Tocqueville

Veggie Bible

"And the flesh of slain beasts in his body will become his own tomb. For I tell you truly, he who kills, kills himself, and whoso eats the flesh of slain beasts, eats of the body of death. For in his blood every drop of their blood turns to poison; in his breath their breath to stink; in his flesh their flesh to boils; in his bones their bones to chalk; in his bowels their bowels to decay; in his eyes their eyes to scales; in his ears their ears to waxy issue. And their death will become his death.”

MLK poem, 1st amendment and The N word.

"Negro is an archaic racial term referring to people of high melanin content mainly of African origin. Prior to the shift in the lexicon of American and worldwide classification of race and ethnicity in the late 1960s, the appellation was accepted as a normal formal term both by those of African descent as well as non-African blacks. Now it is considered by many an ethnic slur.^[1][2][3] "Negro" means "black" in Spanish and Portuguese, and the Italian "nero" is similar (Latin: niger = "black")." from Wikipedia.
Wow, I guess this just happened. I did not know this was considered an ethnic slur. I wonder when African-American will be considered an ethnic slur? I feel dirty all the sudden, afraid I am gonna offend somebody with a word that was once considered acceptable.
My son is studying MLK in class this month, of course. He had a poetry assignment and used the subject of the iconic civil rights leader for one of his compositions. Within the poem he used the word, "negroes." I felt a little twinge in my conscience when he said it. I saw a flash of the Michael Richards apology on Letterman, when he was laughed at for using this word. Thinking with my "institutional" brain I had a suspicion that this word could have fallen from acceptance since I was a lad. I punched it in Wikipedia and boom there it was in black and white.
Of course I told him that this word has become an old-fashioned word. I felt it was right for his poem, though, and should not change it. He had just watched lots of films and read several books that used the word gratuitously. MLK, himself, he said, used the word in his famous speeches.
This discussion lead to us looking at the 1st amendment and talking about the implications of it. We both decided the word was right for this work he created and he would stand behind it armed with his first amendment rights. Who knew that the word negro would lead to such a wonderful experience for me and my boy.
His poem:

"MLK"

Martin was a very brave man.
The joiner of segregation.
The one who readied the nation.
He and his family were threatened many times.
Many Negroes didn't even have two dimes.

I do have some underlying fear that he will turn the poem in and it will cause some sort of ruckus , resulting in Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton holding a sit-in outside our house. I guess I better stock up on non-perishables and bottled water in case we are descended upon by the media circus.

Student Printz - Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice

Student Printz - Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice

Cowboys Packers NFL Cable

I was grouchy all week about the fact that this game would not be shown anywhere I could easily view it because of good ol' greed. It has never been lost on me how corrupt the men in professional sports are. I know they are soul less vampires hell bent on hoarding wealth; Anal retentive mongers of resources; asshats with no hope for rehabilitation. The way they are and the way they do things is highly regarded by most people. At the very least no one really pays much attention to them and their lack of a moral compass.
As the game grew closer I ping pong'd between wondering where I would watch the game and how I would burn my Dallas Cowboys cap. I flirted for the first time with walking away from my Fanhood for another spectator sport, like English Premiere or UT women's volleyball or Buddhist Pro-Am Wrestling, PBA, PGA, MLS? I made a a few calls, but no one was really around all week. The emails were silent on the subject. The prospect of squeezing into a sports bar filled me with a low grade fatigue. Although Big Games at Sports Bars can be fun. I was not in the mood. And the fact that I had no choice was key in my perception.
The day of the game I realized I had been in the house pretty much for 6 days with a sick kid. My experiments with quasi-vegetarianism were crumbling like ground round. The black bean chili I had in the crock pot smelled delightful and tasted perfect but for the still uncooked black beans. I had wondered why all the recipes called for canned black beans instead of dry. This is why. One must cook them for a solid 10-12 hours before they are soft enough to chew. Still at this hour that chili is simmering on the stove, waiting for the frijoles negros to soften. With this in mind I breathed slowly and tried to imagine somewhere that would be showing the game, but that would not have a bunch of people in it getting drunk and slobbering all over the floors. A church, electronics store, day care facility, school library, nothing really came to mind worth a damn. I had family an hour and a half away that had the satellite service which was paying the NFL's price for their content. But it seemed a long way to go on a school night to watch a game. I had a friend who had it at his house, but he was out of town. He said I could go watch it at his house, but he'd need to tell his gun totin' neighbors I would be there. I never got that worked out to my satisfaction. I had little choice but to listen to Brad Sham on the radio. But, where i live that local AM station does not come in very clearly. There is lots of noise and fade out's, tremolo static and the like. I scoured the internet looking for some illicit feed from local Dallas TV stations or an NFL network hack of some kind. I was surprised that there was nothing. Out of all of the "3000 free TV channels on the internet" ad's I looked thru, none of them had the game. I finally came across one that claimed to have NFL network. For a few dollars I could tap in. So, I stupidly, desperately gave them my info and charged the price for their service. Of course as soon as I got in I clicked on "Sports Programming" and saw a tab for "American Football." Beneath that it said, "There is no game." And the NFL network was no where to be found. I sent them an email asking for my money back and gave up. Then I remembered something my wife had told me she saw about NFL.com showing it on line. I went to check it out, but it didn't look good. I only found weird interviews with Deion Sanders and some of the players. Some ad's here and there scared me off a couple of times. I tried the radio for a while and listen to it. But, as I grew impatient with this old world scenario, I clicked over once more to NFL.com and found a live-ish broadcast of the game there.
It was a bit jerky and buggy, but it was the best thing I could get. I felt an exhaling in my chest, a relaxation that I would not be totally alienated from the sports entertainment empire this night. The game was good. Lots of scoring and playmaking, yadayada. The coverage on the web site was delayed a bit I figured out from listening to the radio in conjunction. That was not a big deal for me. I am usually a little behind anyway.
One truly disappointing thing about the coverage was the disembodied voice of long time Cowboy hater Bryan Gumble. Knowing he is a commentator on this network really turns my stomach. It was a good thing then that my black beans were retarded. Chris Collingsworth I don't care for much either. But I have gotten used to him. And having the dust from Costas' aura on his well tailored suits helps me stomach his slightly morbid arrogant tones. Gumble is just flat out lame, though. Even if I excused his Cowboy hate, he lacks the basic competence even of Deirdorf. He got lots of things flat wrong. Calling delay of game when it was false start, calling injured players by the wrong name multiple times until he finally got it right. The last interference call on GB that gave our beloved Pokes the win was challenged and questioned over and over by Gumble and Collingsworth and later by the "in-studio" team member Rod Woodson. Who would be a bigger Cowboy hater than Woodson. Jack ass.
In the end the Cowboys won and all was right with the world for that moment. But, this has really changed my opinion of the NFL. I know my fathered stopped giving a shit a long time ago. For the same reasons as a lot of men. When money becomes the driving force behind any entertainment it loses some mysterious quality that only exists in systems that are naturally populated and nurtured by their inhabitance. Across the board we can see this to be true: Music, Art, Literature, Academia, Sports, education, farming, etc. Lots of things have been transformed into robotic systems proving over and over their vast advantage in efficiency. NFL network is not one of them. They are a behemoth in cosmic coverings. I gotta go check on that chili. Go Cowboys!

Texas Voters Fail To Show Up

16 Props. 9 Billion in new spending. 12 million registered voters in Texas. 1 million voted to pass every Prop. Ridiculous. I am pissed off at the people of Texas right now. I am gonna call all 12 million of you and fart in the phone. Ya bunch of lazy asshats! You deserve what is coming at you right now. For the million of you that voted...I cannot believe we passed Prop 12. Look at what is happening with the TxDOT and their toll road fiasco. You have been sold out to Spain. When the light blue helicopters come to take yer children away don't come cryin' to me.
OK, I feel better now. Maybe I should look at it in a more positive light. It take less than a million people to make a law or a change to an existing law. That is pretty easy to sway opinion. And even better, if one can somehow keep the law off the media radar it is likely to pass. Because, people seem to react to their ignorance in the voting booth by voting for something they do not understand. I think it might be some kind of psychological syndrome named for that. It could be thought of as a variation on Stockholm Syndrome. But, it is different.
Here is a picture of the proceedings wherein our Texas leaders sold us out to the Cintra-Zachary company. Put this one in yer family history photo album so you can show yer grand kids exactly the moment our national soverignty was lost forever. We can all personally thank Rick Perry for his distinguished role as puppet in this caper. Be sure and see what a nice life Mr. Perry has after he leaves office. Something tells me ol' Rick is gonna be taken care of. And when it cost us all a hundred bucks to drive to Dallas for the Red River Rivalry we can be secure in the fact that it cost Oklahomans the same as it does Kansans and Canadians and Mexicans and everyone in fuggin' North America. We will all be paying out the nose to drive anywhere if we are even allowed to drive anymore. By then the Climate Change witch hunts may have already taken this priviledge away from us.

Ok...rant over.....