DeLay Indicted!

From AP:

WASHINGTON - A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, forcing the House majority leader to temporarily relinquish his post.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAH!

This is a mere slap on the wrist, but at least he technically didn't get away with it.

Giant Squid Seen Alive!

From Yahoo! News:

This is a photo released by Dr. Tsunemi Kubodera of the National Science Museum, showing an 8-meter (26-foot) long Architeuthis attacking prey hung by a rope, white line at left, at 900 meters...

Until now the only giant squids that have been seen were dead, washed up on the beach.

I dunno I thought this was kinda cool, shut up.

'1984': Sound Familiar? part 3

Here's another exerpt from George Orwell's "1984". Again, this is from the book in the story that the main character reads called The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism.

"In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word "war," therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist."

Remember, this shouldn't be taken directly as Orwell's word, this was something that one of his characters wrote. It came from Orwell, but its not necessarily his idea or opinion or view or stance or belief. Its not for me to say whether meant it to be taken seriously, but we can all agree that it's a worthy quote.

'1984': Sound Familiar part 2

I've found the most outstanding quotes from George Orwell's "1984" are in the book that the main character, Winston, reads in the story. Its by a character named Emmanuel Goldstein who is seen by "The Party" as their ultimate enemy. This is from the third chapter of the book, specifically the part that addresses why even as society becomes more and more technologically advanced, poverty still "has to" remain.

"But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction--indeed, in some sense was the destruction--of a hierarchical society...It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small priviledged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty...would sooner or later realize that the priviledged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance."

"Goods must be produced, but they need not be distrubuted. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare."

My emphasis, of course.

Orwell wrote this in 1949!

I think everyone in the Bush administration has read this book, but is using the knowledge from it in the opposite manner in which was intended by Orwell. Crazy stuff. More of it later.

Re-reading '1984'

Yeah, the power outage gave me enough time (and lack of other options) to begin re-reading the long, disturbing George Orwell tale: "1984". Actually, the outage gave me enough time to just about re-finish the book. I only have a few pages left and since I'm re-reading it, I know that nothing really interesting is left to read anyway.

In re-reading this amazing work of art, (real art, I might add) I found some quotes that I'm going to post at various times in the very near future. One of those is right now:

(this is being said by the main character's interrogator near the end of the book)
"...In the Middle Ages, there was the Inquisition. It was a failure. It set out to eradicate heresy, and ended by perpetuating it. For every heretic it burned at the stake, thousands of others rose up. Why was that? Because the Inquisition killed its enemies in the open, and killed them while they were unrepentant. Men were dying because they would not abandon their true beliefs. Naturally, all the glory belonged to the victim and all the shame to the Inquisitor who burned him..."

Take that quote and substitute "Inquisition" with "War on Terrorism" and "heresy" with "terrorism" and "heretic" with "terrorist", and you have "my opinion". Orwell wrote this in 1949. Why has this logic not been passed down since then? Okay thats a silly question to which I already know the answer, but all the same, the quote puts the whole "war" in an amazingly realistic perspective, while giving an historical example of how our current foreign policy has already failed in the past. Gotta love Orwell.

Happy Birthday Ray Charles and John Coltrane

Two greatly missed jazz musicians, born on the same day, four years apart.

Came back

We left at 6:30 am for Big Spring, Texas.

By about 2:20 pm we were in Liberty, and the storm had turned a lot more east, so we just came back. Took us like 20 minutes.

I really don't agree with being back here, mostly because we're planning on leaving again if we find out that the storm turns back this direction. I think we should just be better safe than sorry, but here we are. I mean, now there is no way we're going to get away before the storm hits. There's no point in leaving again, even if it turns directly at us and all of a sudden grows to an even stronger cat-5, because traffic is fucked up.

...but what do I know, I'm just a kid.

Evacuation

My dad says we're going to head for a place called Big Springs, TX. He said we accidentally drove through there on the way to New Mexico one time.

This is crap, I had to wake up at like 5:30 this morning, but I don't think we're leaving until a lot later.

I personally think my home of Highlands, TX is going to be pretty safe. I've got a feeling we're going to come back with no damage to the house, and little damage to the yard. We already know that Highlands doesn't flood, because its high groud.

Who knows, this benefit concert that we're putting on at our school in late October could end up raising money for us!

Category 5

Crap.

In the meantime, Cindy Sheehan made it to D.C. today. Good for her.

Rita is now Category 4

Oh my God. Its still got more than twenty-four hours to itself in the open gulf.

Friggin' SWEET

No school, kick ASSSSSS!!!!!

The Thing called Rita

GAY.

This is really turning out to be one Hell of a hurricane season. As if Katrina wasn't enough for everyone, this new hurricane has enough time to become a category 4, according to forecasters, and there's still a possibility that it could hit Louisiana.

Of course, most forecasters believe that Rita will hit Texas. I saw a predicted path online last night that showed the middle of Rita running up Texas just east of Houston, which is where I am.

On the bright side, maybe we'll evacuate to Austin. Austin rules.

Anyway, I'm starting to think that maybe its about time to stop arguing about global warming and start doing something about pollusion. Even if we don't prevent hurricanes, its a good idea either way, and there's no time like the present.

I smell a Democrat in '08. As if that will change much.

Stupid fans

Having been to two rock concerts in the past two months, I realize how dumb rock fans have become.

Does anyone care about guitar solos anymore?

When I saw Green Day back in August, Billy Joe did an extended guitar solo in one of the songs. He was over to the side of the stage, doing an assisted power stance on the monitor, and practically playing his guitar AT the crowd. He was obviously trying to get a big roar fromt he crowd during the solo. It didn't happen. It was like no one even noticed what he was doing.

Granted, he's not that great of a guitar player, but thats not the point. The fact is, most of the people there only wanted to hear exactly what was on the cd, they don't care about any added guitar solo stuff, its just not cool to them. They call themselves fans? When a guitar player who you came to see is doing a solo, looking right at you and not the guitar, just waiting for you to give him deserved props, and then you don't, you're an asshole. Period.

And then a few nights ago at Weezer, in any given song, there would be no upsurge in noise from the crowd during or after a guitar solo. I'll admit, most of Weezer's guitar solos are pretty cut and dry, but isn't that supposed to be a standard time for a crowd-goes-wild type thing?

Maybe I'm just picky about props because I know what its like to perform, but maybe people are just STUPID.

Weezer

I saw my second Weezer concert last night. They opened for Foo Fighters. With all due respect to Foo Fighters, Weezer should never open for anyone. Maybe they switch out from city to city, who knows.

Anyway, I tried to sneak up to the front just before they started playing "El Scorcho", but I got caught and almost got kicked out. But it couldn't have been a more perfect time to be up out of my seat because just when they went into the punk rock double-time part I was in the open walkway between the center section and the box seats and skanked my ASS off just before they told me I couldn't stand there and that if I jumped over the rails again I would have to leave.

All in all, it was a geektastic show, and though it obviously wasn't as special as the first time, it was probably the most fun I've had since then. Its just fun to go to a show where you know every word to every song...

this is hilarious

I know this is kind of irrelevant right now, but still

And the winner is

...it has been for decades now the responsibility of the Army Corps of Engineers to manage flood control along the Mississippi River. Louisiana most assuredly was given federal money for whatever purposes, but the money for the levees, several hundred million dollars to be used by the Corps, was actually CUT by the Bush administration, and reappropriated for the Iraq war.

This was Ron's comment on my blog about the Blame Game where I stated that I didn't know "who's side" I was on. Not that there's two distinct teams in this Blame Game, but I wasn't really sure what my opinion was.

I got it now. What really went wrong was that the different levels of government, such as local, state, and federal, were just not communicating well at ALL. If there was any good that came out of this storm, it was the knowledge that our "Homeland" isn't all that "secure". Basically, the American government has no idea how to help its people.

(as if the Iraq War wasn't proof of that already)

The Blame GameCurrent status: neutral

By now we've all heard the arguments in the nation wide debate on whether Katrina was handled properly.

I've heard arguments from both sides, and I still have to claim neutrality.

One of the best questions is why wasn't the National Guard pre-posted near the area so that they could get to the city as soon as the storm passed? This hurricane did not just sneak up on us. That sucker was coming. So why was New Orleans left to fend for itself for the first two days? I haven't heard an answer to this question yet.

On the other side of the argument, I've heard that the government of Louisiana has received vast amounts of money from the Federal government, but used none of it for things that were needed, such as levee repairs. I've heard that every computer model of a cat 3 or higher storm hitting New Orleans showed that the levee would breach. So if the state of Louisiana really had recieved as much federal funding as some right-wingers have said they did, shouldn't the state and local government be the one's to blame?

There are many more arguments and accusations that have been made, but I see these two as the main ones.

I'm sure I'll develope an opinion about this whole thing soon.

In The Public InterestBush, Katrina, and Big Oil

From Ralph Nader's weekly column on nader.org.

...Gasoline was averaging $1.36 per gallon on January 3, 2000, and is now racing towards $4 a gallon, having soared over $3 per gallon in many localities this week. Oil analysts are not reporting any shortages of supply worldwide, until the rigs and refineries were hurricaned last week in the Gulf of Mexico region raised such specters. OPEC has been pumping oil at record levels. There has been no sudden spike in demand.

......

If the price of wheat suddenly doubled, why would the loaves of bread in your supermarkets suddenly be marked up or the loaves on their way in transit? The price hike for wheat would not have reached them. Then why does the price of oil and gasoline spike up when these supplies were already purchased at previously lower prices?

......

Such questions are not on the minds of Bush and Cheney, who hail from the oil world. Imagine - experts in the industry that is gouging America that they are, and they keep leaving America and Americans defenseless.

click here for all of it

There was a lot more but it was just a little bit over my head, but the wheat:bread/oil:gasoline analogy was my favorite point that he made.

Is the price of gas really supposed to increase so quickly, even if production in the Gulf is slowed down so much?

I heard Bush said that price gougers were going to be arrested, I wonder what his idea of gouging is. I think we've been getting gouged for years.

YOUTH BRIGADE IS COMING TO HOUSTON

Oh my freaking GOD!!! Youth Brigade is playing at Fat Cat's on Thursday! Holy shit!!!!! This is a CLASSIC band from the '80s!! Oh man I HAVE TO SEE THIS!!!!!!!!

The Drafted

Our first LP is coming out this month.

Here's some streaming audio for anyone who hasn't heard it on myspace or purevolume.
(these streams are supported by geocities, be happy if they work)
"Don't Get Me Wrong"


"1,000 Dead"

Happy late birthday to Charlie Parker

I've been listening to Charlie Parker lately and I was just now reading a biography about him and it says he was born on August 29th, 1920, wish I could have caught that sooner, but better late than never.

Charlie Parker (aka "Bird") was one of the first sax players who dared to play fast. He's a textbook example of bebop, an amazing improvisor, and its a shame only jazz fans know who he was.



Happy Birthday, Bird

Alligator Haze

Hope its not too soon to start blogging about non-hurricane related subjects, but I thought I'd just write about something kinda funny.

I've been sick this week, my medicine of choice: Nyquil. I came to school yesterday and told Mr. Moore, "I'm all Nyquil'd out right now," and he said "Ahh, alligator haze all day,".

I just said, "yeah", and went about my school day. "Alligator haze" stayed with me. "What the hell is an 'alligator haze'", I thought.

So, for a laugh, I came up to Mr. Moore in 6th period and asked him, "Whats an alligator haze?".

He looked at me like he saw a ghost, his mind was completely.....(I'm on Dayquil right now, can't think of anything).

ooooooookay this stuff is starting to kick in hard, can't really concentrate, uh, okay, he said "alligator haze" is from a Stroke 9 song, about being drunk in New Orleans.

Okay, this was somewhat hurricane-related.