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| I'm a Bad Blogger (I Guess That Makes Me a Blagger) September 26th, 2006 -- Life's too short, my kids need me, my wife needs me, so I don't want to spend the time to write something out today. I have lots to say, just no time to say it. No one ever comments, anyway, even though I know there are dozens of people who read this page regularly (and you shall REMAIN my silent sycophants, I say!) Okay, three quick videos, and a link . . . First, Dragonforce: This second one's got some PG-13 language, and it also makes fun of the Dragonforce video up there: And lastly, Weird Al, making fun of people like me who watch videos by Dragonforce: And a quick link: Havok Flash Demos -- There's a whole page of them, but Claire and I played with this one for at least an hour a couple of days ago. As far as recording goes, we're going to be getting some equipment in the next week or so to start our work. Yes! Okay, last thing. You guys might remember my feud with the white supremacists (they refer to themselves as "kinists", but from what I can tell, all white supremacists are "kinists" and all "kinists" are white supremacists, so I'm going to use the more common term) a while back. Well, for some reason I wandered on to the blog of white supremacist half-wit "Scorebored", the guy who loves the South so much that he lives a few miles away from the Missouri-Arkansas border. By the way, down here in the real South, we have a word for people like him . . . "yankee". Anyway, I read this post, where he laments that a military writer he likes married an asian lady. It's typical of white supremacist writing, which loves to judge but hates to discern, is always long on condemnation but unwilling to lay out the ground rules of that condemnation. I wrote a short and abundantly polite post (we real southerners are polite) asking how much genetic material two people need to share in order for their marriage to be acceptable to the white supremacists, and he of course responds by saying I'm retarded. He tells me I'm not welcome on his blog, and says later in the same post that his blog is only for his friends, which includes all white Christians. Okay, well I'm a white Christian, so I guess some of his brain cells died between the beginning of his post and the end. I'm starting to think that maybe his wife is black, and he can't stand her, so that's why he hates interracial marriage so much. It's so funny to me that these people, who think of themselves as so intelligent and refined, can't even answer a simple question. Well, if any of you white supremacists are reading this, I'll ask you instead -- what makes a person your "kin"? Can you give me a definition of what "kin" is? It's the basis of your whole goofy idealogy, so if you can't answer it and defend your answer, you might start rethinking the choices that have led you to the worldview you hold. Alright, enough of that. You folks have a good week, Keith |
| Responsibility Laundering September 19th, 2006 -- One of the things I like the most about XM radio is it allows you to listen to an enormous variety of music that you might not necessarily listen to otherwise. Over the past few months, I've been listening more and more to the rhyme, which is a rap station that, while not really old school, is mostly rap that's 10+ years old. There's also another station, raw, that I've occasionally listened to as well, which is all newer rap. I've noticed a few differences between them: 1. New rap sucks. It's boring, one-dimensional, and uncreative. Take a lifeless synthesizer loop, add a generic beat, and yell some lyrics about how you deal drugs and run in a gang. 2. Older rap is awesome. It's creative, interesting, intelligent, and funny. Dang, is it funny. The music is a little more unrefined, but the lyrics and the variety more than make up for it. So, what's the deal? Why is new rap so bad? First, I'm sure there is amazing rap coming out of the indie quarters. I just haven't heard any of it, and that's kind of the point of this post. Rap started out as party music. It was supposed to be fun, danceable, something you could play at a party and people wouldn't go get something to drink. Just read the 1st verse of the first top 40 rap song, Rapper's Delight:  I said a hip hop, Hippie to the hippie, The hip, hip a hop, and you don't stop, a rock it To the bang bang boogie, say, up jump the boogie, To the rhythm of the boogie, the beat. Now, what you hear is not a test - I'm rappin' to the beat, And me, the groove, and my friends are gonna try to move your feet. See, I am Wonder Mike, and I'd like to say hello, To the black, to the white, the red and the brown, The purple and yellow. But first, I gotta Bang bang, the boogie to the boogie, Say up jump the boogie to the bang bang boogie, Let's rock, you don't stop, Rock the rhythm that'll make your body rock. Well so far you've heard my voice but I brought two friends along, And the next on the mic is my man Hank, C'mon, Hank, sing that song! But around the late 80s, a large shift happened in the rap world when Tracy Morrow, Andre Young, Eric Wright, and O'Shea Jackson (aka Ice-T, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, and Ice Cube) released rap albums detailing and glorifying their "gangsta" lifestyles. Many of these albums were notorious but not necessarily big sellers. Then came Death Row records, founded by Suge Night, who signed Andre Young (Dr. Dre), Calvin Broadus (Snoop Dogg), and Parish Crooks (Tupac Shakur), and on December 15, 1992 his labeled released Andre Young's "The Chronic", which basically ushered gangsta rap into the mainstream. You might think, "so what?" Afterall, it was gangsters making music, and people just happened to love it, right? Personally, I wondered how a bunch of thugs and high school dropouts in their twenties were able to find the tens of millions of dollars it takes to record, promote and distribute a major release. Well, it seems they had some help along the way. You see, Death Row got a lot of their funding from Interscope, which was half-owned by Atlantic Records, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Music, which at the time was owned by Time Warner. It's CEO was Gerald Levin, this guy:  You have him to thank for the fact that these lyrics got into every last nook and cranny of America: ******* ain't **** but **** and tricks Lick on **** **** and **** the **** Get's the **** out after you're done And I hops in my ride to make a quick run... I used to know a ***** named Eric Wright We used to roll around and **** the **** at night Tight than a ********** with the gangsta beats And we was ballin' on the ********** Compton streets Peep, the **** got deep and it was on Number 1 song after number 1 song Long as my ********** pockets was fat I didn't give a **** where the ***** was at But she was hangin' with a white ***** doin' the **** she do ****** on his **** just to get a buck or 2 And the few ends she got didn't mean nothin' Now she's suing cuz the **** she be doin' ain't **** ***** can't hang with the streets, she found herself short So now she's takin' me to court It's real conversation for your *** So recognize and pass to Daz Ah, so true. But, that's alright, because Gerald Levin put his picture on the back of the CD, right? He said "I've listened to this album, and I don't think it will glamourize a destructive lifestyle and hurt American culture." Of course he didn't. He probably didn't know who Dr. Dre was, and that's the point. I know all of this and the past few posts make it sound like I'm a liberal, and that I'm blaming white people for the state black culture is in. I'm not. Dr. Dre and the rappers like them were destructive forces, but rich white guys gave them a megaphone. Keith |
| We're All Dirty Hypocrites September 12th, 2006 -- I was thinking the other day about how the world would be different if we really knew every single person in the world on an individual basis. If we could see people who are poorer than us having to choose between food or medicine, would it make us a little more hesitant to drop $40 on dinner that night? I'd like to think that it would, so I did a little investigation about the world. I had the thought "what if we all lived on the world average income?" I know that's not really possible, due to the cost of living being so different around the world, and because a certain amount of income inequality is actually beneficial (if the inequality is based upon the contribution the groups make to the economy), but I thought it might be interesting nonetheless. So, what's an average household income for the world? Ready for this? First, the average household income for America is $43,000. Not bad. For my state, it's $39,000. Still, not bad at all. If you can't live on 40 grand a year, you probably have medical problems, high costs due to your job (e.g. malpractice insurance), or, most likely, expensive taste. The U.S. is not even close to the wealthiest country, though. Luxembourg tops the list with per capita income of $75,000, and the U.S. is number eight. If you run through this list, you'll notice that #25 is $26,000, #30 is $18,000, #40 is $12,000, and you start to realize that there are a whole heck of a lot of countries left, and numbers 47-181 all have a per capita income of less than $10,000. Yikes. The world average annual income is $5,755. Woah. That's $480 a month, or $111 a week. The only way I can imagine living off of that, besides going on welfare or food stamps, would be to share a nasty two bedroom apartment with 12 other people and eat the cheapest, nastiest food I could live off of. No wonder that the life expectancy list is similar to the per capita list. So, depressed yet? I wish I had some easy answers. As a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, my only advice is to spend money, but spend it well. Invest it, put it into the economy, don't just blow it on some overpriced food, or buy new cars every two years, or a new house every five. One of the most interesting stats I found is that a full 30% of the world is unemployed or underployed. I'm no economist, but to me that says that there is a ton of labor out there that wants to work and needs to work in order to survive. If we really want to help out the poor in the world, instead of setting up goofy half-witted charities which are doomed to failure, we would be outsourcing at every opportunity available. It makes economic sense, it helps people out, and it spreads the wealth. Sometimes people do genuinely need a handout, but many times they just want an opportunity to work. So, yeah, um, this site's about rock and roll, right? Bono Keith |
| Bunch O' Stuff September 4th, 2006 -- ITEM #1! -- WE HATE ACCOMPLISHMENT, PART III -- Don't worry, this whole post won't be complaining. However, I was surprised to learn, contrary to my theory that our society loves raw talent more than it loves hard-earned accomplishment, that the winner of the show America's Got Talent was a forty-six year-old violinist who had been practicing his art and discipline constantly since he was four. I guess we really do respect the fruits of dedication and hard work over the simple potential shown by unrefined talent. So, check it out, here's the winner of the first season. Congratulations from me to you on all of your hard work and committment to your art:  Wait, that's no 46 yr. old violinist! That's an 11 year old girl! I don't want to rag on her. I never heard her sing, except for the one note they always showed in the commercials. I'm sure she really is talented, and for a show that was trying to find talent, I guess finding a really talented girl is appropriate. But honestly, was her performance really the best of the competition? Was there no other singer with her technique, her range, her ability to move people, her experience? I personally liked the a cappela hip hop act (it's called hiphopapella, and no I didn't make that up), even though I think their street cred could probably have fit inside one of those hotel shampoo bottles, with room left for all the shampoo ("Head and Shoulders: now with street cred!"). ITEM #2! -- FUN GAMES! -- Alright, here's a game that's way more fun than it should be: UPDATE -- I took out the balancing game, because it's kind of boring after a while. Here's a link if you want to play it. In it's place I'm putting up my all-time favorite flash game, Babycal Throw: And here's another one: ITEM #3! -- JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE IS A CHOAD-MONGERING PIG FICKEY! -- Have you heard the new song by him? Sexyback? First line -- "I'm bringin' sexy back. Those mickey fickeys [ed. note -- hilarious censorship a friend of mine heard on TV] don't know how to act." JT got his solo career started by impersonating Michael Jackson, so I guess he's moved on to aping Prince now. Well, I guess he really got it started by singing a Michael Bolton song as the only male contestant in a beauty pageant when he was a kid. The really funny thing is he sings the big Mother Effort like it's supposed to be shocking, but it's so un-shocking that you'd almost be surprised if he didn't at least make an effort to shock. The F-bomb no longer shocks. Sorry. I felt the same thing when I was watching the first volume of Kill Bill. It just seemed so lame for people to be using the F-word so often. People don't, contrary to what Hollywood believes, actually use the word in every day speech. Not necessarily because it's so offensive, but because it's so pointless. It's a word with no meaning anymore, and no power left to shock. I was trying to think what kinds of things would be truly shocking coming out of Justin Timberlake's mouth, so I came up with some lyrics for his Sexyback remix: I'm bringin' sexy back I love children and I am a hack I think the flat tax can help out the poor And I support Bush and the Iraq War I'm bringin' sexy back Robert De Niro don't know how to act Fashion's a monumental waste of time Just like college and the March of Dimes I'm bringin' sexy back I love my country and that is a fact I think pornography is pointless too I've always wanted to beat up a Jew ITEM #4! -- POINTLESS VIDEO! -- here's Michael Batio playing terrible music on a double guitar: Have a great week, folks. Keith |
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