Long time no post

Well, here's my attempt to begin writing again. How about we start with a Eagles of Death Metal cd review? Sure, why not. No one listens to them and no one will find this post. Its a match made in heaven! Or maybe the place with the pointy sticks . . .

And away we go . . .

The Eagles of Death Metal get no respect. Named after a stoned comment while listening to some archly dark metal, “if we were a death metal band we’d be the Eagles of death metal,” they have never been taken seriously. Written off by meager rock minds as a joke band, EODM isn’t one, unless you think quality is a joke. Seriousness has become a pose for many in the rock world, and childhood friends Jesse (Boots Electric) Hughes and Josh (Baby Duck) Homme pose their band as serious fun. This isn’t the Darkness, or Spinal Tap. And with this final installment in the EODM triptych, it’s matured into one of the seriously finest cd’s of the year.

Homme, who is the sonic master behind this party boy duo, is the front man for Queens of the Stone Age. And he’s made every track on “Heart On” a stand alone masterpiece. Pick a song, any song, and the craftsmanship radiates like a 57 sunburst Les Paul. Guitars matter to Homme, and the way he’s placed each rhythm track, bass line, drum pattern and solo lead makes each stand alone, shimmering. It’s the kind of cd that makes it hard to stop playing because you know whatever your going to do after you turn it off is not going to be as much fun as listening to the next song.

Space won’t allow me to pontificate about the beauty of every single rip here but a few mustn’t be missed. (I Used To Couldn’t Dance) Tight Pants’ falsetto chorus “I don’t want to do what I’m supposed to, I just need someone to get close to,” whipped up funk rhythm section, shuffling drums and fuzz box guitar will pull “the ladies” as Hughes likes to say, on to the dance floor. Cheap Thrills, with its Budweiser frogs on steroids bass and scratching interwoven guitars fairly signify the aforementioned song title’s conflicted hedonism. Changing gears, Now I’m a Fool, melodically winks at Steely Dan’s Only a Fool Would Say That, narrating the illusions of Hollywood love while pointing toward a new vulnerability in Hughes bad boy persona. I’ve seen him have bouncers kick d-wits out of his shows for uncivilized behavior toward his female fans, and it’s nice to see that side now appear on record. And the title track Heart On follows up by asking “once your heart’s broken, what do you do?” to which Homme and Hughes answer “I only want some pieces of you.” The sum here is much more than the pieces and the pieces are delectable.

If there is a standout to the cd it might as well be Wannabe in L.A... With a woof and a cowbell the circulating melody runs across the freeways of Hughes story and gives a brief history of the band, one that judging by the black velvet portrait on the back of Homme holding a fork may be done. But they’re not finished. Not as long as there is room on the dance floor.

Just wrong or perfect?

This is taken from a blog called "Fables of the Reconstruction." He took it from another blog. I'm not sure, but this might be one of the most disturbing light switches on record.

I hear that Mr. Obama is being elitist. What I notice is that both he and Hillary are pandering to the "Christians." Guns, church and bitterness do go together, historically speaking. I think that we hear the truth so infrequently in the mass media we forgot what the truth was. Whomever owns this light switch is either bitter, or embittering.

I'm Lazy read this

I haven't got the time to be pissed off or even mildly confused about things today. Here, read this, you'll laugh like a maniac.

http://overheardlines.blogspot.com/

More crazy dreams

Last night was a doozy. It started off with myself as a boy, say 11, and I had this crush on this girl, say 15. We lived in this little town dominated by a round-about, and I remember seeing her riding with her mom in a Mercedes. I was in a car with my mom (dream mom not really my mom) too and I saw her and we were both wearing sunglasses. We gave each other some sort of little secret sign, acknowledgement from car to car as it seemed that our moms didn’t want us together.

From this situation I was sent to some sort of new school, not the regular school where I met this girl maybe but a new school just on the outskirts of town. It was like a business park kinda, the entrance was all glass doors in a glass wall and the seats in the class were in two or three rows about ten each facing the teacher so that our backs were to the door. I went somewhere, maybe the bathroom, and this new kid comes in. He’s a black kid and while he’s kid sized and he comes in and sits in a vacant seat in the front row he’s clearly older, experienced, even jaded. He was sweating I think and he asks/ gets up to go to the bathroom and the teacher says, “the police will always go after you first” something like that. It was bigoted for her to say this and it pissed him off. So I go back into the row behind him and he disappears to the bathroom but he leaves his backpack and out of that come this reptilian/ marine serpent snake monster creatures who proceed to kill like 6 students. I remember lying on the floor while the attack took place, and I really didn’t see the violence. Just felt something creepy on my neck.

Next time I come to class I’m delivered by a really long limo and before I get out these employees of my mom jump out, armed, looking for the monsters and searching the room to make sure all is safe for me. I guess I’m sorta a golden boy. Anyway, the room is pretty large and a large part of it is given over to this kinda organic area, like giant leaves or pods shaped like Pringles that the employees begin to pull apart looking for the poison serpent disc shaped monsters. What they find is a deer-like creature, with a really bizarre head like an American Indian totem creature and they drop this little marble ball into its mouth which falls into its sea-like belly, there may have even been a small explosion at this point. From here my perspective goes all “Fantastic Journey” with me and some other co-pilot searching in our little submarine for the creatures. We find one and shoot some darts, which penetrate and explode in a creature which is flat and disc-like. It then becomes apparent that this might not be the greatest decision on our part as the creature has a mother and she’s gigantic and now maybe a bit pissed at us. Then I wake up.

The night before had a disc theme too. What I remember was that I had to pee and so I started pissing in this rather deep toilet and there was some stuff on the sides so I started to use my stream to clean off the imperfections. As I turned from one side of the bowl to the other my stream got stronger and stronger until I became like furious and I began to dissolve from the feet up. I do believe my wife was around to witness this. From this point space aliens in a gigantic disc vehicle absorbed me into their craft and soon after we came hurtling back to ear, with my wife running to get out of the way of the impending impact. The disc hit the ground on edge and then I woke up.

Some dreams bite

Last couple of nights I've had some dreams that were frankly a bit scary. Not really nightmares because I was never out of control. But dreams full of threat and searching, with a bit of violence. I'm not thinking portent. Mostly its just gotten warm around here and I think the brain is giving me a better show at night.

Two nights ago I had a dream that involve a pile-up on a road (Waring) that I drive every day. Its two lanes each way with a median and its got a bit long curve in it. The speed limit is like 35 but people drive too fast on it. In the dream some guy in a Datsun 240z painted primer grey is follow some other rice-burner of newer make around the corner and they are joshing for position. I've got the whole family in the car and just as the guy gets around me a car with a couple of rastafarians (or as we call folks in the NFL with dreads: stinkheads) pull out from the curb and this guy tags them, causing me to do a 180 and I end up ramming the trunk of my car (not one I recognize, some piece of shit sedan) into the rasta car hard, impacting at the drivers door. I'm now facing oncoming traffic around the corner and people are driving too fast and close to stop so its turning in to carnage infront of my eyes. I'm worried about the health of the rasta guys, and I'm worried about getting hit by the idiots who aren't stopping in time. One car is going way to fast and the passengers are hurled toward us, hitting a car at the curb and this one guy just sorta disintegrates, I turn my head to avoid seeing more and I can feel body parts (which is weird cause I don't think the windshield is broken) lightly spray me. I look up and there is an ear, neatly sliced off on the dash or somewhere, and for some reason there is a fish tank in the car standing on end. I pick up the ear and neatly put in gooey side down on the glass thinking: somebody is going to want this back. More cars continue to crash and with some sort of supernatural ability I pull our car closer to the curb so we can avoid being hit. Now how's that for a nice dream? My wife had just kicked me out of our bed for snoring and I went downstairs to the extra bedroom and had this dream straight away. It was the most vivid colorful dream too.

Last night I had a couple of good ones but the best was included a Saber-toothed Tiger, who sorta became attached to me, cheek to cheek as we careened down San Roque Rd. We started at my folks house, he was sleeping at the base of the driveway and I woke him up and then we sorta skated (can't tell you how) down the street. He was half-awake so first I took him right at this bus that was coming up the street to try to rouse him. Then we went down the street swerving back and forth. Eventually we made it to State street (which is perpendicular to SRR) and crossed it, whereby the road changed into some other road, lined by trees. I think that we ended up at the beach but I really can't remember anything more.

I could analyze these dreams to death but there's really nothing in them that requires a whole lot of thought from my perspective. There are no revelations. Just stuff taken from my life and mixed together along with maybe a late dinner or two. The brain goes as the stomach rumbles. I wonder what I should have for dinner tonight!

BTW spell check is down right now on the blog server. Its a blog so your not supposed to care.

Interesting women

I got caught in my car by an actually interesting story on NPR this morning. The topic was Muslim women in Britain and their new empowerment. Granted that any woman who thinks that becoming more patriarchal is the way to more political power is smoking some powerful shit, but the conundrum of being faced with Britain's stupid and racist obeisance to all things anti-terror and American has apparently led a certain group of Muslim women to both argue for sharia law and and takeover of their tired ass man-based culture. One woman, her eyes but a slit in the fabric of empowering self-denial, argued compellingly that she'd never vote in a British election unless it was to bring on the atavistic hell of dogmatic religious law by the ballot. Ah, the joyful power of getting to play the victim! Fuck the Enlightenment! I want certainly and perhaps the comfort of getting to play with other girls without the boys getting to watch. Purdah or something like that. She was pissed too that Jack Straw, the PM, had the temerity to what to talk to her face to face and not behind her veil. Its enough to make somebody weak think that laser-guided bombs are not an over-reaction. Even though they are.

Chicken or egg, why try to play nice when the "other side" is so full of shit? Well, sure, we in the West, if you believe in such a monolith, have done a hell of a job killing Muslims. They have been victimized. Except that I don't think we have actually bombed any M-folks in Manchester or Chelsea. Probably this is too small a point to parse given, yadda, yadda, prejudice, yadda, salad bowl etc. However let me go on a limb here. If you hold your religion more dear than your country, do us all the good favor of keeping that shit to yourself. Your fucking mosque, synagogue, chapel, goat pen did not build as much of this life you are now leading as you think it did. My dad, and thousands like him, white, educated, ethical, socially ignorant, scientific, objective, progressive, and now both loved and vilified built the lion's share of the world we all live in. And for that they can be cursed and thanked. If your here waiting for Armageddon, please don't feel like you need to delay departure for me. The spacecraft is hiding behind the next comet. Drink the juice and go see your leader.

As you can see, work has been a little pissy today. I'm not really that against the believers, true, deluded or simply traditional as long as they aren't too arrogant about pushing their unquestionable knowledge down my throat. I simply don't believe in unquestionable knowledge. I did my fucking homework and I got an A. Getting an A in a madrasa is like being a really good drug dealer. There's some honor in it but its still insanity. I may end up in hell but it would seem to be one of my own choosing and most assuredly won't be the one designed by either Pentecostals or Osama Bin Ladin. They may kill me. That bugs me a bit and it bugs me more that they may kill my kids or grand kids with their stupidity and need for certainty. And everyone who gets offended by someone else who has spit at their god, get over yourself. This woman over at ESPN named Jacobson got in trouble for saying, at a celebrity roast, "fuck Notre Dame." I won't say what I want out of respect for mystery. But really, do we have to play nice when the people who want respect only want to bury us?

I sound like a tired old white guy who tried for years to be understanding but found out that if you show weakness people will just climb up your ass. I will continue to take my lumps with the good humor of someone who has been treated fairly in this unfair world. But I'll hold the line at voting for Hillary. That bitch is wearing a veil. And she's really not that interesting.

A New Species

A new year demands new thinking. That and I'm just tired of the old junk. My brain, which I was beginning to think would never turn out anything interesting for my soul to contemplate, seems to have recovered. Weird shit is happening daily. My stress levels are down. I am back to fantasizing about various impossibilities, ones that have just enough reality attached to keep them from drifting into the void. My kids are cracking me up daily. In fact they should probably get the credit for getting me out of my most recent philosophical cul-de-sac. Them and Joe Strummer. In his new biographical documentary "The Future is Unwritten" Joe goes into a pretty good funk post-Clash and then after a while snaps out of it. He became something of a hippie toward the end of his life, which while not recommended, is OK if you've never been a hippie. Basically one day he woke up and said to himself, "I'm still alive." That's about all it takes if you say it to yourself in the right tone of voice.

An old employee just happened by today and it didn't surprise me that he was here given that I had thought about him a few weeks or days ago. What the fuck happened to him? Well, besides alcoholism, nothing in his previous straight life seemed to do it for him and after his folks died he just went nuts. Literally. Dealing drugs, smuggling illegals over the border, stuff like that. But he didn't seem unhappy. In fact he seemed to have embraced his demons in a way that calmed his own fears down, for the fear of the unknown can provide one with many a visit to Hades, sans the actual placement of the foot in hell. I am of a similar species of neurotic. Not so willing to delink from reality but with some aspirations. I'll report back after a lunch or two with this most interesting bloke.

I read a book, The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houellebecq. This would be the first book I've managed to finish without a gun to my head in a fairly great while. And what a book. In the end he suggests that the problem with humanity (I'm going to elide a great deal here) is that we are sorely in need of a new paradigm. Religion was supplanted by Rationalism which left us with soul killing Materialism. Which means the guy with the biggest dick wins. Back to a Hobbsian hell is hardly an upgrade. What to do? Become a new species, who no longer needs reproduction to define it. Sort of a moral eugenics I guess. Without the killing of inferiors. Just the raising of superiors. Like I said I elided a lot. Read the book if have the time, for just in the way he handles many thorny intellectual problems it is worth it. Translated from the French, of course. The irony about the book is that it attacks hippie idealism, something that sorta saved Strummer. But what is the same about both is that both get the bigger point: you have to live for something outside yourself. And that should be my mantra, because that's what I do better than the living only for moi.