Presented with no irony and I wish to fuck I didn’t have to:
I am running on a rum-and-mistletoe buzz, and am still working off the love residue from the show on Saturday. Believe me, I have an extensive, amazing, and wonderful playlist of Xmess songs. Currently at 371 songs. Ranging from Vince Guaraldi to Henry rollins, and no need to apologize for any of it.
But that song there was a fun, snarky, sarcastic part of the playlist. And like the 9/11 attack makes “Christmas At Ground Zero” mostly tasteless, the guntards have rendered it horrible. And I hate that. I hate that music can be turned into something that makes us feel horrible about something. That’s not what music should be. Yes, it can make you feel sad, and regret, and all kinds of other things; but that is PART OF THE SONG. Boomtown Rats’ “I don’t like Mondays” appropriated an atrocity to make themselves, and us, help us to deal with it. Using a song to inspire murder is an atrocity.
Atrocities performed after the fact, merely associate the songs with horrible events.
So I want to reclaim these songs. They were fun, and funny and they shouldn’t make us cry You know what SHOULD make us cry? That there are thousand of trolls who feel that every shooting death validates their decision to be paranoid and over-stocked with killing machines.
Here’s the Weird Al:
Fuck YOU Al-Qaueda, and FUCK YOU Homeland Security who wants us to feel paranoid every minute of our day.
Oh hey, here’s a bit of punk Christmas:
And here are XTC, keep in mind they also did the lovely ode to God’s greatness, “Dear God”
Here’s a link to BG and Neddie Jingo doing the same song (and others).And here is one of the New Classics:
Fuck these guntard strapped assholes. It’s the end of the year, and fuck me, even this song:
Will now be tainted, rather than a statement of resolve against despair.
Last year, I had no money and so I did smudgey charcoal drawings as gifts. When I got a little money in the new year, I framed them and hung em up. If you have been following the Arc of Zombie, this year is a bit better, and I had less time, so the smudgeys are left out, in favor of gifts that are desired and such as; and my Christmas Gift from the void is a bit of light in the future, and wonderful thanks.
And when light seems to be a real thing, then comes along horror and destruction inspired by the kind of paranoia that is the NRA’s stock in trade, and the specters of 20 mall children allow me no rest.
Fuck.
The only thing to do is let the Dropkick Murphys call the tune:
I am mortally offended that loosely-bolted-together motherfuckers have tainted music that I love. It’s not right. It gives those fuckers more power than they should have. I hate it muchly. Music is sacred, and people who kill children have no claim to it.
I refuse to allow it.
I have been rambling around some of the blogs and discussion boards, the ones that see more troll activity, because I know that those places are where you see the common talking point and mindless NRA gobble gobble splatted; I have been venting at those people there, and it has helped. It has also helped that the discussion of reigning in the KILLING TOOLS has apparently gotten some traction, and like shovel-less mikey says, I dearly hope that the resulting legislation has a decent effect and is not just pissing in the wind.
More painful disclosure. One of our nephews, a precocious adopted youngster who we had much more in common with than his parents, never managed to find his footing and blew his brains out in his parent’s backyard. We never really found out the provenance of the handgun involved, in our pain. But I have a hard time believing that increase levels of registration, monitoring, and regulation of firearms would not have given him a better chance of getting beyond his despair. Not to mention increased availability of mental health support, but in the absence of any guntards seriously advancing full funding of those services…
Further. Years after his suicide, it still makes me cry.
A better song:
Empire Of The Senseless 
The Ugly Americans = wore that tape out and could never find it again.
Weird Al – The night Santa Went Crazy is suddenly in extremely poor taste.
Dear God – Been on a semi constant loop for years, heavy, heavy song, and brutal right now.
I hate these fuckers.
Weird Al – The night Santa Went Crazy is suddenly in extremely poor taste.
As is “Trigger Happy: but fuck me that is the point. Songs that used to be sardonic or just snarky, and now nobody can ever play them?
The greatest and only Giftmas song I love: http://youtu.be/H3ogxQsMxO8
Nicely played. Dutifully added to the Zombei Christmas playlist. (and look, Jeebus is a zombie, he’s one of our’n. So don’t bitche about zombie Christmas lonkages)
Of course, I hate you foreverz because you had an alternative music Christmas song that I did not know.
Holy shit that’s a good song, thanks!
One of these days, I will manage a decent digital transfer of The Mighty Reindeer Lick’s epochal “Bells To The Wall” and then you will all be sorry, yes you will
It may be noted that the Zombizzle Christmas playlist was inaugurated by the Still Little Fingers version of “white Christmas” And then we got crazy and punk and sardonic and lovely and everything after that…
but we never killed any kids.
Sitting there. Cold and warm, perfect and oiled, the soft black rubber grips juxtaposed against the dull silver finish. My friend, my ally, my comfort – my magnum revolver, sitting there on the glass coffee table. I know it intimately, and yet it isn’t that thing I think it is. In a dark night of hopelessness it might be the end of me. But at the same time, in the darkest nights it makes me feel safe – it makes me know there are no monsters, not ghosts, no super heroes or villains. There are men, and men can be fought, and men can be killed, and I don’t have to hide from anyone.
I can smell it from here, the Hoppes and Oil and the cold certainty of the big, ugly rounds nestled in the cylinder. It’s a comforting smell. It’s been part of me, part of my life for decades. I don’t need to even open my eyes to reach out, pick it up and point it. It is as much a part of me as my car, or my thoughts. Its weight and wear feel like home, and with it in my had I know things I have no way of knowing. Connections to the lives spent, courage and fear and hate and horror, war and smaller, more intimate killing. It tells a story we can’t really know, but of which we are a necessary part.
The concept of fighting a mass murderer is stupid. My gun gives me a certain power, but there is much it does not provide. I can’t fight a murderer who started the fight, and I can’t lay down suppressing fire to cover my retreat. I must leave my gun holstered, as I must in most conflicts – there is a high bar, a challenging threshold to actually draw my weapon and begin to take lives. And make no mistake. I can hit what I shoot at and my .357 rounds do not deliver questions – they arrive with no questions, and leave no argument behind.
My guns are a part of my life, a part of who I am, but they are not magic, the convey no super powers, and they offer not guarantees. In my darkest moments my guns have saved me, either my life or my sanity, but like everything else, they have very real limits to their power…
Sitting there. Bronze and warm, perfect and glistening, the gleaming strings juxtaposed against the wood neck. My friend, my ally, my comfort – my Fender, sitting there in the stand. I know it intimately, and yet it isn’t that thing I think it is. In a dark night of hopelessness it might be thrown out the window. But at the same time, in the darkest nights it makes me feel safe – it makes me know there are no monsters, no ghosts, no super heroes or villains. It makes me feel like I can speak, and it can help me in that expression.
I can smell it from here, the strings and the oil and the stress of the proper tuning. I have rarely been able to reach the on-stage ability to make that instrument perform as part of my real life desire but It is as much a part of me as my car, or my thoughts. Its weight and wear feel like home. The sounds it produces are elemental. The feelings and the aggravation and with it in my hand I know things I have no way of knowing. Connections to the lives spent, courage and fear and hate and horror, war and smaller, more intimate things. It tells a story we can’t really know, but of which we are a necessary part.
My guitars are part of my life, a part of who I am, but they are not magic, the convey no super powers, and they offer not guarantees. In my darkest moments my guitars have saved me, either my life or my sanity, but like everything else, they have very real limits to their power…
[slow clap]
Well palyed zombie, well played indeed.
Y’know, I bet if I sold all my guns I could afford a sweet vintage amp or something cool. I think I might just do that. Yes indeed.
Rock on, mi amigo.
Rock the hell on…
~
Oops, how did that happen? I blame….
~
Good news.
Merry Christmas. Celebrating the birth of pre-zombie jesus since 0001.
http://www.architectmagazine.com/business/november-2012-abi.aspx
why is mikey perusing that kind of filth?
It was an Yglesias link.
Yeah, I know. That evil neo liberal sellout.
Well, even a stopped clock n all that, I reckon…
For nobody would understand… and you kill what you fear… and your fear what you don’t understand.
Just listening to Duke straight through and those words from Duke’s Travels resonates pretty deeply right now. So I share even thought it isn’t even a little bit Christmassy. This is though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjaPXihbORk
I’ll bet you think that ISN’T in the Zombie Xmess Playlist.
No. I would be shocked if it WEREN’T. It’s just one of my favorites and you hadn’t posted it yet. In other news– I get to leave the festering swamp of backwards thinking, right-wing delusion and paranoia that is Waukesha County for happier climes! I have accepted an offer to become the new Library Director in Woodstock, IL. Yay! A very happy Christmas present for me!
FIB!!!!
In days of yore, that would have been a serious insult, ZRM. With Turdwaffle in charge… not so much. No worries though, I will always be a Packers fan, and I won’t even be living in Illinois, just working there and using their roads.
Latest Turdwaffle plan to dumb us all down and make us pliant little worker drones: http://www.progressive.org/Walker-school-committee-curbs-the-curriculum#.UNHx3QMiIGo.facebook
Hard to listen to “Father Christmas,” too, because of the machine gun line.
Fuck.
Nope. Not buying into that at all. The mere invocation of a generic word for some class of weapons hasn’t become evil, or toxic. They are part of our world – people die in cars and of cancer, but we can still make reference to cars and cancer in our conversations, and especially in our art. And appreciating a bit or art that makes reference to a weapon in an ironic or passing manner certainly does not make us complicit in the slaughter. Somehow trying to pretend that humans don’t have a grand historical propensity to murder each other on an industrial scale doesn’t make that propensity any less dangerous, or real.
So sing it, appreciate it, embrace it. We need to try to change the madness and idiocy that has become an intrinsic part of our governance and our culture, but we don’t need to hide from or be ashamed when our writers and musicians and poets and artists call our attention to that madness and idiocy…
yeah, I’m just sayin that avoiding these songs because they include references to guns and stuff offends me, and I refuse to let guntards and whackjobs take music away from me.
…although “ack ack ack” is not really a Christmas song.
It is if you’re Bill the Cat….
It’s not so much that as a song that talks about a kid wanting a machine gun to scare all the kids on the street isn’t exactly what I want to hear right now.
I was watching a 30 Rock rerun, and they made a joke about someone killing a bunch of nursing students. I remember laughing at the joke before, and it was clever, but historical context can be a B sometimes.
I was gonna post the new Dropkick Murphys’ tune, you dirty gobdaw! It’s truly a keeper, innit?
OK, but how come I don’t have a huge trail of XTC fans tracking down the title of this post?
I think the safe assumption is that there simply isn’t enough XTC fans to constitute a huge trail…
I’m sorry for interrupting, but do you guys like this song? I want to sing it!! Get my Christmas twang on!!
Interrupting what?