Stuff that happened while I was gone

Gerlands is now Food Town.
Why? Whats the difference? Whats the point? This is gonna be one of those things where all the locals still call it by the old name for 20 years.

They bumped up the speed limit on Crosby-Lynchburg.
Mmmm, 30 to 35. Like my dad said, "Now everyone can go 70 instead of 65".

They launched the space shuttle.
Big woopty freaking doo. What is the point of space travel? Face it, getting water from Mars is a stupid idea and its quite pathetic that we think we have to consider doing it. Lets use all this NASA money to improve our own environment, not use other planets as tools for our survival. I hate NASA.

Something else happened too.
I just can't remember what it was.

I is back

I am return from a week of church camp. Its not what you might expect, they don't address any type of world issues or politics, its more of a personal thing. I really wish they'd talk about the importance of nonviolence, though. You don't have to say anything about war, just stuff about how violence is self-destructive, but to keep campers coming they have to stay away from controversial subjects. But this week we did talk about having material things as top priorities in life and how that sucks, which is a pretty anti-capitolist idea, which makes it an anti-Bush idea, and that is awesome.

Gone till Saturday

Okay everybody (thats like two people), I won't be able to post all week, I'm goin' to CHURCH CAMP! HELL FUCKIN' YEAH!

So in the meantime, go here. And why not here? And here. And here. And here.

And uh...listen to Bob Dylan.

'He looked like a cornered fox'

from CNN.com

Police confirmed to CNN that armed officers had shot a man dead at Stockwell station in south London.

One witness, Mark Whitby, told BBC news the man appeared not to be carrying anything but was wearing a thick coat that looked padded.

Whitby said a young Asian man was shot five times after being chased into a train carriage by three men.

"As the man got on the train I looked at his face. He looked from left to right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit, like a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified," said Whitby.

"He sort of tripped but they were hotly pursuing him and couldn't have been more than two or three feet behind him at this time.

"He half-tripped, was half-pushed to the floor. The policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand, he held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him.

click here for all of it

Stunning. Unarmed man gets chased by the cops, they corner him, he gets five bullets at point-blank range. He must have been guilty. Okay, he could have been armed, I'm sure thats exactly why he never shot at them.

In The Public InterestTop 10 List for the Labor Movement

By Ralph Nader

Rose Ann DeMoro is the Executive Director of the California Nurses Association (CNA) – the country’s fastest growing union. Since 1992, union membership has grown from 13,000 to the present 63,000. And it was since 1992 that the nurses became more prominent in participating in and running their own unions. No coincidence.

Here is her succinct critique labeled “Top 10 Problems with the Current Debate in the Labor Movement”.

“1. There are no real ideological disputes, in part because the current AFL-CIO leadership and programs were, mostly, put in place by those now challenging them...

2. No workers or rank and file union members are involved, and it is their labor movement...

3. No issues affecting the majority of working Americans are being debated – declining real wages, the health care crisis, the continued erosion of democracy in the workplace, outsourcing of jobs across the skill and pay spectrum, a deteriorating social safety net, declining support for public education, environmental degradation, social justice and ongoing racial and gender inequality, alienation and disaffection from the political process.

4. No real solutions to these problems are being proposed...

5. The specific proposals by the Change to Win group are structural and bureaucratic, not programmatic...

6. The notion that the salvation of the labor movement reduces to "density as manifest destiny" is historically false, and analytically shallow...

7. If the issue of organizing was simply dues rebates we could all rest easy. But that notion is painfully oversimplified...

8. Perhaps because the corporate right is so extreme, some “progressive” analysts have been portraying the dues rebates and proposed forced mergers as core issues...

9. Limiting the executive council to the biggest unions would further reduce the influence and voice of women and people of color in labor leadership.

10. No discussion of non-bureaucratic strategies are on the table..."

click here for the rest

I didn't realize there was still a labor movement going on. Of course, when you read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the Unted States", you find out that the labor movement has always been much more present than it seems.

Backmasking is Bullshit

Backmasking:
hiding messages in song lyrics that are heard when they are played backwards.

A friend of mine gave me a link today to this backmasking site. Its got a bunch of song clips from the Beatles, Brittney Spears, Eminem, Pink Floyd, etc. It shows you the forward lyrics, and you can listen to it forward, and below there's a "reverse play" button where you can hear the clip played backwards. It doesn't show you the "reverse lyrics" unless you click on the link of that title, which was a great idea, because when you listen to the song clips played backwards, you can't understand shit!

You cannot intentionally write lyrics that make sense forward, and include a different message when its played backward, its impossible. It gets even funnier when you click on the link to see the "backward lyrics", because when you listen to it again, there's always a tiny little resemblence in maybe one or two of the backward syllables, and the rest is all in your head if you actually believe it. There's even this Beatles song that has some backward-sounding lyrics when you play it normally, but even when you play it backwards, its just gibberish!

I'll admit that Britney Spears' "Hit Me Baby One More Time" has a quite audible one (yes Ron, I know you've talked about this before, but now I've actually heard it). The lyrics "...with you I loose my mind, give me a si...", sound almost exactly like, "sleep with me I'm not too young" when played backwards, but whats so strange about the lyrics: "When I'm with you I loose my mind, give me a sign"? Nothing! Its a coincidence, damnit! And even if its not, whats so surprising about it? We all know she's a whore.

Here's the site, prepare to be UN-AMAZED!

Cast a vote!

Where's bin Laden?

Vote In Our Poll!

Current Poll Results!

Its says "our poll" because its from The Drafted's myspace.

Scotty gets beemed up for eternity

Okay that title is pretty evil, I'm sorry, someone had to. You want proof that "they come in threes"? Check out the triple farewell thats making RealArt RealDepressing right now. Again, another evil joke, I'm under some spell right now, gotta go...

Tancredo: No apologyHe believes bombing of Muslim holy sites has been discussed

By M.E. Sprengelmeyer, Rocky Mountain News

WASHINGTON - The remarks were hypothetical but the outrage was real.

Facing mounting criticism, Rep. Tom Tancredo on Monday refused to apologize for suggesting the United States could target Muslim holy sites if radical Islamic terrorists set off multiple nuclear attacks in American cities.

......

In the interview, talk show host Pat Campbell asked Tancredo what the United States should do if terrorists were to strike several U.S. cities with nuclear weapons.

"Well, what if you said something like - if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites," Tancredo answered.

"You're talking about bombing Mecca," Campbell said.

"Yeah," Tancredo responded.

......

He stressed that he was not advocating an attack on Islamic holy sites, but that counterattacks had to be considered - and perhaps telegraphed ahead of time. That way, he said, both sides would know the stakes under a worst-case scenario, much as they did under the Cold War theory of "mutually assured destruction."

click here for all of it

Okay, so even though the terrorists are "fundamentalist Muslims", its a good idea to target places like Mecca in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States? Thats like saying that all Muslims are fundamentalists. I can't believe people like this are actually in office.

And (from the same article) get this:

...his words are coming under more scrutiny because he has started traveling to test the waters for a possible presidential candidacy in 2008.

Yup, just can't wait till two-thousand-and-eight.

Punk has nothing to do with Jazz, I'm sorry

Okay, this is my soapbox, this is where I let it out. My friend (who very well may be reading this) and I were arguing about whether early hardcore punk was influenced by "jazz". To be specific, my friend said our band shouldn't play Green Day's "American Idiot" because "we're not pop punk". But he said it would be okay for us to play "some jazz". I said that if we cant play Green Day because we're not "pop punk", then we can't play "jazz" because we're not "jazz" either. He said "jazz has a lot to do with the influences of early hardcore musicians". I disagree.

First of all, the word "Jazz" is virtually meaningless. There are countless musicians that have been labeled "Jazz" who sound nothing like each other, so who the hell knows what "Jazz" even is?

Second of all, just because the guys from Bad Brains used to play "jazz" and East Bay Ray of Dead Kennedys played "jazz" doesn't mean that the music they wrote was influenced by "Jazz". Of course you can traise all music back through time all the way to one source, and in the end its all just music, but the fact remains that "Jazz" sounds nothing like "Punk".

Nothing that has ever been called "Jazz" has sounded anything like what has been called "Punk". (I know, there's this little genre called "Jazzpunk", but that proves nothing. You can take any two genres and combine them, that doesn't mean one had any influence on the other.)

"Rock 'n' Roll" was a simplified version of "Jazz", and "Punk Rock" is a fast, sloppy version of "Rock 'n' Roll", but the whole point of "Punk Rock" is to be loud and offensive, and everything thats been labeled "Jazz" has represented the opposite of that. And although both "Jazz" and "Punk Rock" were also meant to be cutting-edge and different, that doesn't mean that "Punk" has a sole connection to "Jazz".

So with all this in mind, if early hardcore musicians we're influenced by "Jazz", which "Jazz" musicians were they specifically influenced by? Who can tell me that? I listen to all kinds of "Jazz", specifically "Bebop", and I play in our school's jazz band and I'm in a hardcore punk band. I find little connection. Just because a bunch of people(including the musicians themselves) say that punk was influenced by jazz, doesn't make it true.

Made a poetry site

Yeah, I made this new geocities site where I've put some "poems" that I've written. Keep in mind I am in no way a poet, I just come up with cool shit sometimes. I've actually posted one of my few poems on this blog before called "grease monkey duo". I actually only like one of the poems thats on the new site, but anyway its www.geocities.com/somekindapoem if you want to laugh your ass off at some horribly cliche bullshit that came out of my gay brain. (no I'm not gay)

i...........................hate...........................sentences........

Tales from a Key Club Convention

For anyone who thinks the kids in Key Club are upright citizens or do-gooders, think again. Do-gooders? Maybe. Upright citizens? Not all of them.

If you're like me and you're not really sure what Key Club actually is, it doesn't matter.
Here are some quotes from an IM converstation I had from a Key Club member who was at the Texas convention in April:

the chick that was supposed to run all of our meetings got kicked out because she was caught in a boys room. ha ha ...she's the chick in charge of all of texas and oklahoma...

but yeah, it was funny, the video had these guys in tuxes running down the hall of the hotel with super soakers and busting in a room with a girl and a boy.

lol.... well... see, its more... we're not the druggie drinking types. but the key clubbers like to get down, you know what i mean?...like, the convention dance... oh man. so much humping in such a small space

So there you have it. Wow, I guess this is kinda like my first exposé. What can I say, I just love the truth.

In The Public InterestAn Open Letter to George W. Bush

By Ralph Nader

On June 28, 2005 you addressed the nation in prime time about the situation in Iraq. You called the casualties, destruction and suffering in that country "horrifying and real." Then you declared: "I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it," you asserted and went on to explain your position.

My question to you is this: "Who is doing the sacrificing on the US side besides our troops and their families and other Americans whose dire necessities and protections cannot be met due to the diversion of huge spending for the Iraq war and occupation?"

.......

Companies like Halliburton, from which Vice President Dick Cheney receives handsome retirement benefits, keep getting multi-billion contracts even though the Pentagon auditors and investigations by Rep. Henry Waxman have shown vast waste, non-performances, and not a little corruption. Not much corporate sacrifice there.

You and Mr. Cheney need to be reminded that your predecessors pressed, during wartime, for surcharges on corporate profits of the largest corporations... the precedents for such an equitable policy, at a time of growing federal deficits, occurred during World War I, World II, the Korean and Vietnam wars...Past Presidents increased taxes on the large companies as a way of spreading out the economic sacrifice a little. Instead, during record...corporate profits, you reduce their contributions to the US Treasury and military expenditures.

......

Without some measure of sacrifice, programs are misdesigned to pursue stateless terrorists in ways and areas that actually produce recruitment opportunities for more such terrorists. Note your own CIA Director Porter Goss's testimony before the Senate earlier this year. But the resulting warmongering, where the "intelligence and the facts" are fixed to the policy, became unsavory re-election strategies in 2004.

You have often told us that you want to nominate federal judges who believe in a strict construction of the Constitution. How about a President who believes in the strict constitutional authority of Article One, Section Eight which gives Congress and Congress alone the power to declare war? Requiring a declaration of war, together with legislation requiring, upon such a declaration, the conscription of all eligible members of Congressional and White House families would assure that only "unavoidable and necessary wars" are declared and fought.

Sincerely yours,

Ralph Nader

click here for all of it

What more could be said? As far as I can tell, Bush's support is mainly based on his Christian "beliefs", not his policies on war, education, or economics--and how could they? The only way anyone can possibly stand behind our president is if they don't understand whats going on, or they just don't care.

'London Calling'

Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap. London gets a terrorist attack

This is just what we needed.

Dammnit, do you realize what this is going to do? The same effing thing that 9/11 did, turn everyone into a bunch of "freedom-loving" pseudo-patriots. Just when dissent was on the rise and Bush's approval rate was at an all-time low, BAM he gets a new free ride on the public approval train from a big scary terrorist attack: "Oh, good thing we've got a president with a backbone, I feel safe under his leadership, he hates terrorists too, which is good because I REALLY know what I'm talking about when it comes to that sort of stuff. God bless Bush!". Thats hardly an exaggeration.

But America still has time to wake up, four more years, right?

A well-kept secret about Pearl Harbor

I was reading my Zinn book today, A People's History of the United States. I'm on the chapter about World War II called "A People's War?". According to Zinn (remember, this really is a history book, its in the history section and everything), the attack on Pearl Harbor was not as unprovoked as the media made it seem back in 1941. We actually did do something to piss off Japan that may have caused them to attack us on that horrifying December morning.

You see, before 1941, we had no problem with Japan. They were picking China apart just as much as we were, but they got a little too close to our tin, rubber, and oil interests in Southeast Asia, so the U.S. put "a total embargo on scrap iron, a total embargo on oil in the summer of 1941".

We screwed Japan out of some money, and that just may have been a reason why they struck. Its important to know this kind of information because it helps to better understand a situation and keeps one from turning to brash rationale like "the Japanese are evil", which led to detention camps for Japanese people in the western United States after Pearl Harbor. Our history books in public schools say that the attack on Pearl Harbor was totally unprovoked and thats why we absolutely had to join the war, and thats simply not true.

Its a shame that one has to go out of his way and choose a book to buy that will give the whole story, but self-education is always a good thing anyway. I encourage (and challenge) anyone who is reading these words to somehow attain Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States and educate yourself about our country's history. Do it now. If I can, you can.

Youth Brigade kicks ashe (updated 7/5)

I found another 80s punk band that totally rips my face off. Their name was Youth Brigade.

I got this documentary from Netflix called "Another State of Mind". Its a film made when Youth Brigade "went on tour with Minor Threat" and Social Distortion. The reason for the quotes around Minor Threat are because Minor Threat didn't actually tour with them at all. You don't see Minor Threat until the very end when the tour ends in Washington D.C.

But back to the point, Youth Brigade is just one of those bands. Totally hardcore punk rock strait from the 80s and only from the 80s. The band was a trio of brothers, the Stern brothers. They started the Better Youth Orginization (BYO), which put on shows, promoted bands, put out records, and promoted unity among alienated youth, or punks. In fact, the BYO is still around, they're mainly a record company now. Here's their site.

Anyway, check them out somehow.

Nike applogizes for ripping off Minor Threat

From Nike's website, courtesy of RealArt

Nike Skateboarding sincerely apologizes for the creation of a tour poster inspired by Minor Threat's album cover. Despite rumors being circulated, Wieden & Kennedy and Odopod had nothing to do with the creation of this tour poster and should not be held accountable. To set the record straight, Nike Skateboarding's "Major Threat" Tour poster was designed, executed, and promoted by skateboarders, for skateboarders. All of the Nike employees responsible for the creation of the tour flyer are fans of both Minor Threat and Dischord records and have nothing but respect for both.

Click here for the rest.

Yeah, Nike's real sorry about it. "by skateboarders, for skateboarders", please, FOR NIKE! It was an AD for NIKE! When you work for Nike, you're not just a skateboarder or a Minor Threat "fan", you're corporate--a traitor, a hypocrite. Damn Nike.