Title Lonk
but mainly, this:
Is the final straw. Fuck you America. here’s a fork, turn you over, you’re done.
Image for Massive Online Pinko Ahemmorage (I do not have privileges to post it at 3Bulls, apparently):
I need a fucking haircut.
Also need to get my passport.
NOT RELATED.
Further updates as events warrant. But do not count on it.
I looked in the mirror today
My eyes just didn’t seem so bright
I’ve lost a few more hairs
I think I’m going baldI think I’m going bald
Seems like only yesterday
We would sit and talk of dreams all night
Dreams of youth
And simple truths
Now we’re so involved
So involved with lifeWalk down vanity fair
Memory lane everywhere
Wall Street shuffles there
Dressed in flowing hairOnce we loved the flowers
Now we ask the price of the land
Once we would take water
But now it must be wine
Now we’ve been
And now we’ve seen
What price peace of mindTake a piece of my mind
My life is slipping away
I’m aging every day
But even when I’m grey
I’ll still be grey my way
Oh, yeah; robots:
Robots + Zombies = Zombie Roombocalypse!
I was not going to do much in the way of posting for a while, I am swamped with responsibilities (and don’t get excited, any work I am doing now won’t be funded or paid for a couple of months, so I am living on credit) but after Big Bad Baldie and Tengrain both posted on it, I felt the blog call.
As you may or may not have heard, Democrats submitted petitions for recall of Turdwaffle today. ONE MILLION SIGNATURES.
That’s almost as many as voted for the dick-knuckle in the first place, before most Wisconsinites knew what an egregious whore for the rich he is. For reference, 540,00o names are enough to trigger a recall. it is usually estimated that you need to exceed that by 15 to 20% to have a decent buffer against challenges. This number exceeds it by 85%. In addition, over 800,000 sigs to recall the Lite Gov, and four other republican shit-weasels who weren’t eligible for recall last summer.
What an asshole.
So it looks like we are headed into the third gubernatorial recall in the nation’s history. Proud of yourself, Scott-choad?
Anyway, here’s a song from Elvis (not the fat dead one) singing an appropriate sentiment. Sing along! I included the lyrics; mildly modified for the circumstance (and it is amazing how little modification is necessary). Elvis’s visceral loathing expresses my feelings pretty damn perfectly:
I saw a newspaper picture from the political campaign
A man was kissing a child, who was obviously in pain
He spills with compassion, as that young childs
Face in his hands he grips
Can you imagine all that greed and avarice
Coming down on that childs lipsWell I hope I don’t die too soon
I pray the lord my soul to save
Oh I’ll be a good boy, Im trying so hard to behave
Because there’s one thing I know, I’d like to live
Long enough to savour
That’s when they finally put you in the ground
I’ll stand on your grave and tramp the dirt downWisconsin is the whore of the country
Walker is her madam
And the future looks as bright and as clear as
The black tarmacadam
Well I hope that he sleeps well at night, isn’t
Haunted by every tiny detail
Cos when he held that lovely face in his hands
All he thought of was betrayalAnd now the cynical ones say that it all ends the same in the long run
Try telling that to the desperate father who just squeezed the life from his only son
And how it’s only voices in your head and dreams you never dreamt
Try telling him the subtle difference between justice and contempt
Try telling me he isn’t angry with this pitiful discontent
When they flaunt it in your face as you line up for punishment
And then expect you to say thank you straighten up, look proud and pleased
Because you’ve only got the symptoms, you haven’t got the whole disease
Just like a schoolboy, whose heads like a tin-can
Filled up with dreams then poured down the drain
Try telling that to the boys on both sides, being blown to bits or beaten and maimed
Who takes all the glory and none of the shameWell I hope you live long now, I pray the lord your soul to keep
I think I’ll be going before we fold our arms and start to weep
I never thought for a moment that human life could be so cheap
Cos when they finally put you in the ground
They’ll stand there laughing and tramp the dirt down
If you have a bit to spare, here are a couple of places to send a bit of help in opposing the waterfalls of corporate cash pouring in to save that cross-eyed motherfucker’s ass:
http://www.unitedwisconsin.com/jan17
http://www.progressivesunited.org/
https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/orangetoblue2012?refcode=2012_01_17_Wisconsin
The big stone head is coming for you, Turdwaffle.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled not-posting.
Title Lonk
Ned, we got 6 inches of snow or so tonight, and it is getting cold…and the snow keeps falling. I have shoveled, a bit, but by morning it will be deeper and the shoveled portions drifted in and the sidewalk packed down by the college students and the driveway plowed in…and the snow keeps falling.
It is your kind of weather. I will just keep a shovel ready for you, shall I Ned? I imagine you will want to be here as soon as you can, to enjoy the cold and the snow.
On the other paw, Wisconsinites deal with the snow and the cold by drinking heavily. i am having a Cuba Zombre right now, as a matter of fact, and if the snow keeps up, I am likely to stay home and drink all day tomorrow. And you know what they say about that; you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.
But I ain’t here to whine about the fucking snow. Well, I am, whining about the fucking snow I mean, but primarily I am here to do a drive-by post with just a video to annoy the fucking HELL out of the Nuance Hammer.
Look at this:
Usually mashups don’t do much for me, but this one fucking rocks. I think Phil would have approved; who’s with me on that? It’s on SoundCloud if you want the audio, and I certainly did.
One final item. I finally managed to find a workaround for ripping an audiocassette; although it is from a crappy boombox, and I will keep looking for a higher quality solution. BUT; what I wanted was this:
I recorded the audio on a VHS, then transferred it to the highest quality cassette I could lay my hands on, and the performance was really really good. They were really at their best at the time, and I had forgotten that Peter Holsapple had played with them on this. (Famously, Mr. Holsapple once stopped by my crappy old blog to correct my error in attribution on one of the db’s songs).
Anyway, 20 years is not well served on magnetic media, although it still sounds pretty good. No bleed throughs, at least.
SOME PEOPLE will certainly give me shit for that music, but fuck if I feel guilty. Saw them at this joint with Camper Van Beethoven opening up; in fact, the second picture is fucking close to where we were sitting for the show.
hey lookit, this. I found the date and setlist. The internozzles can be kind of fucking awesome.
support: Camper Van Beethoven
set: These Days / Sitting Still / Driver 8 / Hyena / Cuyahoga / The One I Love / Shaking Through / Feeling Gravitys Pull / Rotary Ten / The Flowers Of Guatemala / I Believe / Superman / Cushy Tush / Can’t Get There From Here / Seven Chinese Brothers / Pretty Persuasion / Improv (My Plane Won’t Start) – Auctioneer (Another Engine) / Little America
encore 1: Fall On Me / We Walk / Toys In The Attic
encore 2: Oddfellows Local 151 / Strange / I Can Only Give You Everything
encore 3: King Of Birds (1 verse) / Sloop John B / Begin The Begin / Just A Touch / After Hours
[UPDATE EDIT, related to Ned's comment below and my response, and Ned, around here we refer to him as "Turdwaffle"]
Check this out:
nice job, Turdwaffle. Well done. You're fired.
That’s in front of a shuttered GM plant in Janesville. Janesville is pretty red (Paul Ryan’s ground), but considering how blue-collar it is, I suspect he is losing ground there. Should be, with nice little rub-their-noses-in-it moves like this one.
Number one in the Mr. Handsome and Lake series…
Arc of a Doggie
Title Lonk.
I am falling short even of Von’s fabled ‘posting a video’ level of sweat-breaking; in that I am only posting a picture. The slackery is palpable.
Tonight, we finished the construction phase of our test-bed robot. I call her Betty:
It’s not elegant or extravagant, but it is going to serve the purpose. On Saturday, the 2012 Build Season starts in earnest, and we have six weeks to build the fully functional counterpart (we don’t know the parameters of the game until Saturday).
Combined with my sudden onslaught of actual architecturey, expect this to be about the best I will be able to do, other than the usual smattering of posts whining about deadbeat clients. Sorry.
Mendacious D style odds and ends at the beginning of another year, at least as we arbitrarily mark it.
Interestingly, for the collidge-student-heavy neighborhood we live in, typical weekends get kind of noisy; heck, I remember MY first beer. But last night was unexpectedly quiet, for the most part. I guess all the students were back in their hometowns, behaving themselves, rather than in our neighborhood pretending to be adults. We’ll take it; it’ll warm up all too soon.
Myself, I laid kind of low last night, watched the Walking Dead marathon all day, then movies all night. Time went by regardless of whether I was paying attention, and the calendar still changed. The planet continues turning whether I participate or not; while that is a thought that does not come easily to a blogger, it is oddly comforting. Besides, I had my share of beverages the night before; I trust you all will tell me who I insulted and now need to tender apologies toward. In fact, I have a couple of ‘apologies’ pre-loaded in the hopper…
This particular incarnation of the Empire (it regenerates from time to time, like Doctor Who) has only had its doors open a little over six months. Opened to acrimony and displeasure from pretty much everybody, and has gone downhill from there. So, Winning!
As is the way with Imaginary Digital Friends (and real ones, for that matter) when emotions are running high, there were arguments and misunderstandings and vituperation. And sometimes people move on. It’s unavoidable and bittersweet. For my part, I regret the parts I have played in such things, and apologize for the way I said things; words are a blunt instrument in my hands, and easy to raise bruises with. I say the things I do with passion, but not enough forethought; and the ‘Publish” button is all to easy to push. [in fact, it should be made harder to find. Perhaps have some word verf on it, saying things like "Are you sure you want to do this?" "Have you checked for spelling errors?" and "I can't let you do that, Dave"].
Personas on the Internozzles are funny, weird things, and it’s easy to forget there are people at teh end of them. It all seems like a story. And once you get to know these personas, sometimes (usually involving alcohol), it is all too easy to punch through the persona and hit the person behind the facade. It’s happened to me, and I know I’ve done it to others. These acts we act are very often not much of a disguise at all. It’s not a formal resolution, but I recognize that I need to consider such things a little bit more, as well as perhaps making some strides toward writing what I mean, not just what sounds good.
Look, I’m not going to sand off any rough edges; these days, rough edges are all I have left. But wielding the blogpost with more skill is a worthwhile goal.
Thin Line Between Love and Hate, indeed , Chrissie.
I have friends and colleagues who are having just as much fun as I have been with this stupid profession. “Profession”. I kind of get the impression that Republicans really hate architects, which is kind of weird; I would think pretentious twits who serve their every egregiously tasteless impulse would be more popular. I guess banksters are more favored. In any case, I know one who saw two years of 10% salary reductions, capped off with a layoff of half the office and a 50% salary reduction. I guess that’s one way of making people move on voluntarily, rather than taking the hit on your unemployment payments. And the bigger firms are scavenging smaller projects that would normally go to people like me.
In any case, I have had some success on a professional level this past year; last year’s major project won the Mayor’s Design Award, and this year’s won a renovation award known as the Timmy. They got built, on budget and on time (mostly) and are rented up to very positive reactions from locals and the tenants. I have the next one in the pipeline, and as is the custom, will be forced to do most of my work before receiving payment for nearly any of it, because what am I gonna do? Since nobody is hiring, it keeps the wolves from the door. But the next couple of months look to be kind of high stress.
I still enjoy what I do, when I get the chance to do it; I still get a special feeling (not THAT kind of feeling, you perverts) when seeing new buildings that sprung out of my mouldering, shambling imagination; I still believe that the work I’ve done contributes positively to the City and people’s lives.
Besides, I sold that stupid guitar all those years ago, and this is kind of all I know how to do. Although if Blizzard is looking for a Gameplay Environment Designer, I am open.
The Road to the Stupor Bowl goes through Lambeau Field this year, which is never a comforting thought to the other NFC teams. Sorry, Brando. Your high school shop-teacher quarterback acquitted himself pretty well, actually, and between KC and the Bears, other teams have a blueprint for beating the Packers. Unfortunately, that blueprint involves running the ball a lot, and if a team does that, they still have to outscore Green Bay; which has only happened, umm, ONCE last year.
I was just digitizing Learning To Crawl, and mis-typed the fourth song as “Watching The Clouds”. Which is a better song title, Chrissie. But we were all so much younger then, you know? And yes, B^4, I have seen the Pretenders play. Simple Minds opened up; Hynde was preggers with Jim Kerr’s child. That kid is now eligible to vote, drink, and join the Army. I continue to time-travel, at one second per second. Good times, good times….
2012. Huh. Who’d a thunk that zombies would make it this far… and we still don’t have our fucking flying cars.
TITLE LONK.
Back in college, my room-mates always had a pretty good indicator of when financial aid disbursement happened; there would be a case of beer in the fridge and a stack of new vinyl by the stereo. Yes, I have always been a music hound, which giave my parents some bemusement; our house, growing up, was never a hotbed of music listening OR playing.
Who knows why it speaks to me so strongly? There’s some kind of void, and loud rock and roll has always kind of filled it at least partly.
As has been mentioned, using a USB turntable and the simplest possible process, I have been digitizing a pile of old records. Near as I can figure out, I stopped buying vinyl in late 1987 or early 1988, which makes sense; that would have been when I got my first post-graduation job, and had my first CD player for a couple of months at that point. Back then, dinosaurs roamed the earth, CDs were still 50% more expensive than vinyl, and Wife Sublime gave me a CD of The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway for my birthday, which would have set her back about 40 bucks (3 thousand in today’s dollars).
The better, more crucial parts of the vinyl collection have been replaced either on CD or digitally, for the convenience factor (also, some of those albums were pretty chewed up and needed to be replaced); so the Record Industry has been successful in their ploy to get me to pay for the music more than once! Well played, you slowly dying soulless motherfuckers!
Here’s an indicator of how long ago I stopped buying the big black CDs: THERE ARE NO MEKONS RECORDS IN THERE.
So, looking at my music liberry, I have added something like 1800 songs recently, of which maybe 1500 are from vinyl. Many of these are old classic rock or has-beens, or weird-ass prog rock. But a fair number are also local bands; yes, I have always Supported Local Music.
One of the local albums I processed was The Blend, by Brian Ritchie. As I was listening to the album, I see that a friend of mine, Ken Baldwin, had played drums on the record. Although I had met Kenny a couple of times during those days, I came to know him more recently on the professional side, as he had been working for some Real Estate companies on project financing. We did some preliminary work, but nothing that ever got to the point of making money for either of us.
And then, recently another friend from those days mentioned on FaceHell that Kenny was in the hospital, reportedly with lung cancer. I hope Ken had been able to get into some kind of health care situation in more recent days, but knowing that he was a musician and an independent consultant lately, I doubt it.
So here we are, on the cusp of another year, watching the Republicans continue to destroy the middle class in order to enrich the top 1% even further, as if buying another yacht with an elevator and a servant staff will fill the yawning void where there used to be a human, while (another) musician is dying
I may not be making a living anymore, but I am not a heartless miserable grasping sonofabitch. That’s something.
And I have this music, which still fills my heart and mind with anger and energy. And hope.
Not saying I won’t fold like a house of cards in the upcoming year, but for now, Bring it, 2012.
Friday Musical spew and End-Of-Year Fol-De-Rol. 44,405 tracks, 212 gigs and change. 120 days of music, if I started listening now, 2012 would be a third over before it all finished. It’s a plan.
1. The Coroner’s Gambit, The Mountain Goats. John Darnielle is one of those artists that still has a day job. The tension and distress shows in his music. When I’ve seen him play, he starts with an acoustic guitar, playing more aggressively and with abandon until too many of the strings have broken, then switches to electric and turns it up. “The enigma Variations/on the stereo” indeed, John, I recently digitized those LPs.
2. Lay Down And Die, Goodbye, Alice Cooper. Pretty old early effort. The mix is terrible, and other than the lyrical content, sounds like nearly any other late-60s psychedelic thrash.
3. Makeshift, The King of France. Speaking of psychedelic. Here’s a band that I have only acquired in digital format (yes I am backing up regularly) and it is subject to the listening habits we got into the tall commenting weeds about recently. I rarely hear them when I am listening on purpose, but they crop up on random. As you might be able to tell, random is kind of rare, hearing a band in the din of 40,000 other tracks can be a challenge. I have to keep working at this.
4. Maybe The Poet, Bruce Cockburn. The angry liberal singer-songwriter from north of the border, author of If I Had A Rocket Launcher. hey, not only did I see this guy and his phenomenal band on the World of Wonders tour, I did load-in/load-out, and follow spot (fucking promoter wouldn’t even comp us t-shirts for the lighting duty!) I was holding a ladder for the lighting techs while they did sound check, and between songs, chatted a bit with Bruce. Nice fella, exactly what you would expect from a Canuck. YES I AM STEREOTYPING.
Anyway, this is a great song, also. If you like the seasonal stuff, Bruce also did a great and fine Holiday album, him and his guitar (titled, perplexedly enough, Christmas), a few years back.
5. Tabouli, Los Straitjackets. The BEST surf-instrumental-alt band working in Mexican wrestling masks, BAR NONE. I know I will take heat for that opinion, but who can argue the point? They played at Summerfest, so OF COURSE I saw them. Fits right in, and they had guest vocalists. The between song Spanglish banter is hilarious.
6. The Final Cut, Pink Floyd. To all intents and purposes, a Roger Waters solo album.
Years ago, we had one of our favorite nephews kill himself. For weeks afterward, we listened to this album nearly nonstop. In fact, I think I bought the CD at that point, because the cassette I had was in crappy shape. In any case, I still can’t listen to parts of this album without thinking of Mike. He never deserved the kind of shit he got in his life, and the family couldn’t figure out what kind of help he needed.
7. Pissing In A River, Patti Smith. Well, thankfully; a light song. Heh. Substance McGravitas had a funny kind of post about Ms. Smith recently, and her book Just Kids. Too much time around people like Andy Warhol, I guess. Her songs are still good though.
8. Next To You, The Police. The Police used to be kind of a rocking punky band. Who the fuck gave them money?
9. From Time To Time, The Stubborn All-Stars. Third Wave ska? Fourth wave? What are we up to? Dunno, I love ska of all kinds. The iPod alarm clock woke me up today with, among other things, a song from Something To Do, local ska kids and fine people, all. We see them several times a year around town, Summerfest and in bars.
10. People Like Us, Talking Heads. Wow, we used to listen to Talking Heads all the time. I had a graduate design studio that had a project to design a house for David Byrne using the lyrics of the band to establish the parti. We listened to this disc all the time, and I alienated my fellow studio-mates by covering the sides of my workspace in political cartoons and articles. Kind of like an analog version of this blog, now that I consider it, but with less cursing. Well, no, not really. The cursing is pretty much the same.
11. Lily Of The Valley, Queen. Queen are one of the bands that I’ve loved since I was an idiot in high school. In my vinyl efforts, I skipped right over the Queen section, because I have replaced all those LPs with CDs or digital copies. Freddie Mercury should have lived forever, but at least he lived like a fucking rock star before he went, even before he WAS a rock star.
12. Winterlong, The Pixies. Pixies covering a Neil Young song? O MY yes, please. Saw them at the Eagles club with Zelmo, on one of their last pre-reunion tours. Wow loud. And also at the Amphitheater, on one of those reunion tours. Opening for Pearl Jam? something like that. For a weirdo, I really expected Black Francis to ramble on between songs MUCH more. The guitarist, Joey Santiago, is responsible for the music direction on the HILARIOUS black comedy Weeds.
13. Dog Years, Rush. One for BRANDO and LAURA, who have exquisite taste in hard rock like I do. Actually, this is one of those songs where Neil Peart pushes the metaphor WAY too far. RAWKS anyway. HALPING JENNIFER.
MOAR Halping Jennifer:
14. Big Green, Neil Young. Heh. weird. I mention Neil Young and Pearl Jam, and here is a song from Mirrorball, which as any fule kno (even upside downies) Young recorded WITH Pearl Jam. Well, it SHOULD have worked. Crazy Horse is still the best band to back Neil Young, though (and I HAVE seen that). Yes, it was a barn show, which I usually avoid, but Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Sonic Youth, and Social Distortion? IT MIGHT GET LOUD.
15. Pon de Floor, Major Lazer. W.T.F.? Yanno, maybe I have overdone this music thing. In any case, I am adding one more, because I DO NOT know where the fuck this one came from.
16. Green, Another Sunny Day. Well, a little strummy twee Brit-pop is a pretty good way to end this one. I know there are SOME PEOPLE who don’t like this kind of thing, but since they don’t hang out here, I ain’t worrying about it, you know? I like it fine, fine indeed.
Well, for a Friday Musical Spew [End of Year], that post had a lot of death in it. Maybe it is like lancing a boil, and I can get rid of the bad? I know, not likely, but in any case, now I need a drink and it’s only 10 AM.
Related articles
- Vinyl Records Are Cool Again (chicagotalks.org)
…and when you don’t have money, break out the charcoal!
Some of y’all may remember when Jennifer and I did some bog-drawing a while ago, and I did one of our pupzilla. Pleased with the result, I eventually completed the Fuzzbucket Series, of our other various fur-bearing owners.
Well, this year we have new hair-generating units, so the only solution is orbvious:
The leftish one is kind of twitchy.
And also completed an illustration featuring Young Zombie, in a lovely sweet heartwarming moment (don’t get used to those around here, right?) after we got back from vacation one year:
And finally, from me to all of you– in 12/8 time, key of A flat major, shoot ‘em the tune Cambot:
What, like a good action scene don’t belong in Christmas?
