Facebook has made my blog obsolete

Oh, well.

holiday...celebrate?

From an utterly fascinating book I'm reading right now called Lies My Teacher Told Me...this is part of an account from an Arawak leader who had fled from Haiti to Cuba following Christopher Columbus's slave trade, exploitative and genocidal activities shortly after "discovering" the Americas...

Learning that Spaniards were coming, one day (the leader) gathered all his people together to remind them of the persecutions which the Spanish had inflicted on the people of Hispaniola:

"Do you know why they persecute us?"

They replied: "They do it because they are cruel and bad."

"I will tell you why they do it," the (leader) stated, "and it is this - because they have a lord whom they love very much, and I will show him to you."

He held up a small basket made from palms full of gold, and he said, "Here is their lord, whom they serve and adore...To have this lord, they make us suffer, for him they persecute us, for him they have killed our parents, brothers, all our people...Let us not hide this lord from the Christians in any place, for even if we should hide it in our intestines, they would get it out of us..."

Columbus would have been proud of our modern, predatory form of capitalism, I think. It might be slightly more subtle on U.S. soil, but it's certainly not when conducted upon other lands (Iraq, Afghanistan, Central and South America, Africa and so on)...

here's a shocker...

Amazing how many people can get maimed or killed because of the greed of rich people. It doesn't surprise me at this point, but it still makes me feel sick...

Eager to Tap Iraq's Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion

finally...

I've intensely despised Goldman Sachs for years now...going back to when I first learned how ubiquitous (and shady) they were in relation to the growing trend of privatizing roads and highways. And I've been waiting for someone to dig into all their bullshit and incestuous dealings for just as long. Finally, the great Matt Taibbi comes to the rescue. It's a bit long - okay, really long - but definitely worth the read. The first couple paragraphs alone give you a decent idea where he's headed...

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.

Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

Oh, and make sure you watch the video interview with Taibbi if you follow the link. He's brilliant at translating intentionally-convoluted processes into a language most of the rest of us in the real world actually speak...

(continued...)

I'm pretty sure all we did was re-elect Bill Clinton...

...which isn't to say that we shouldn't have, given our choices. But, as I've always said, the problems continue because of the choices we're given...which, in turn, is dictated by a very broken and corrupt system. But I digress.

"Dozens Dead" in U.S. Drone Strike

when all else fails, provoke

Memo Reveals U.S. Plan to Provoke an Invasion of Iraq

Nothing we all probably didn't already know. Just seems like it's been a while since we've read about it in such stark terms...

I got the ringworm

Ain't that some shit? Guess that's to be expected, though, considering where I work and what I do. At any rate, I've finally found some time and motivation to attempt keeping up on the blog once again. Yay, cyberworld. I'll get more into my new life here...I don't know. Soon, hopefully.

Anyway, last year was kinda screwy for me in that I didn't know I'd be changing jobs, moving a couple states west, making a whole lot less money, etc. So while I'm usually pretty late in posting my favorite music released the previous year, I'd like to think I have a few decent excuses for how stupidly late this one is. And I know no one cares what I think in this regard. It's just that for some reason feel incomplete if I don't publish my music list every year somehow somewhere.

So here's what I bought last year - and this year, in an effort to catch up - ranked by how I humbly rate them. (And I'd better get on the stick for '09. There already albums released - or soon to be released - by some of my absolute favorites...Sepultura, Meat Puppets, Autolux, Dalek, Goblin Cock, Marmaduke Duke, Kylesa, 50 Foot Wave, St. Vincent, Steve Earle, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, These Arms Are Snakes, The Paper Chase, and one of my favorite Dallasites who I'm just tickled is finally releasing a full-length of her own, Laura Harrell. And I owe the gubment a shitload of money thanks to my move out here last year, so it won't be easy...)

Anyway, here they am...

2008 albums:
Aimee Mann, @#%&! Smilers
Torche, Meanderthal
The Knux, Remind Me in 3 Days...
High On Fire, Death is This Communion**
Blood on the Wall, Liferz
The Sword, Gods of the Earth
Cafe Tacuba, Sino**
Fucked Up, The Chemistry of Common Life
Santogold (self-titled)
Prong, Power of the Damager**
I Love Math, Getting to the Point is Beside it
Cavalera Conspiracy, Inflikted
Public Enemy, How You Sell Soul to a Soulless People Who Sold Their Soul???**
Metallica, Death Magnetic
Radiohead, In Rainbows
The Mars Volta, The Bedlam in Goliath
Motorhead, Motorizer
Tomahawk, Anonymous**
Bob Mould, District Line
Fishbone, Still Stuck in Your Throat**
The Breeders, Mountain Battles
Scars On Broadway (self-titled)
Doug Burr, The Shawl
Smile Smile, Blue Roses

**Actually released in 2007, making this list all the more lame.

adios, amoebas...

It's been good, Dallas. Mostly.













I'll catch up with you from the next time zone to the left...















PS - Thanks again, Tim. I'll do my best to pay you back.

Fishbone 101

A while back on Jeff Liles' History of Dallas Music MySpace page, I took it upon myself to leave a brief dissertation on the true greatness of - and sad lack of appreciation for - Fishbone in a comment on one of the ticket stub pictures I gave him.

For those who don't know much about them, there's not much more I can say here that I didn't say in the aforementioned comment...although, I would recommend a quick read through the band's Wikipedia page. So instead, I'll just share this clip. Crank it up if you can. And pay attention to just how tight those guys really are in the midst of the absolute onstage chaos they created. Then imagine experiencing that intensity for, like, two solid hours. It left you exhausted, exhilarated and in awe. At their peak, they were the best band in the world. Past their peak, they were still the best live band in the world. Unbelievable shit.

(Oh, and in case you are wondering who the Kendall Jones both I and Wikipedia reference, he's the guitar player on the left who sings the bridge to "Party at Ground Zero." I hope he's better now because his life was a tragedy for a while...)

Turn the shit up, pogo and enjoy...!


And lest anyone think Fishbone were strictly a ska band, you can check out some of their heavier shit here and here and in this additional live clip below. There wasn't anything those guys couldn't do better than anyone else. The first of those links makes me particularly sad in a way because Kendall wrote and sang the song. However, he'd already fried and left the band by the time it was released and they'd joined the Lollapalooza festival in '93. So in the video, it's keyboard/trombone player Chris Dowd shown singing. But it's a particularly poignant song in hindsight given its religious theme and the "religious" reasons for Kendall leaving / freaking out.

Swim (seriously heavy)...

I have talented friends

Kate is amazing...













Frank the kitty thinks so too.