Monday, March 31, 2003

As you know I went to the Henry Rollins talking show at MTSU the other night, and I have some thoughts on it that will wait until I write them down, but for those of you who weren't there here's a little bit of it illegaly recorded and presented to you here (There was nothing on any signs, tickets, or announcements that said you couldn't record, anyway most of Henry's early spoken word albums were recorded by himself or others on walkmans. I'm only pissed that I didn't take my camera).
Henry's disclaimer (1.2 mb, 1:00)
Hope you enjoy. Sorry for the poor quality, but little digital recorders only do so well. If you want more of the same, I suggest the Talk is Cheap, vol. 1 and 2 available at Henry's store for just 10 bucks for each two disc volume. You go buy them now.

Sunday, March 30, 2003

Hey, there's a blog called Humphrey Blogart, that must have taken them like twenty seconds to think up. I'm just pissed I didn't think of it first.

I sure do loves my new voice recorder, it lets me record my intermost thoughts and whatnot, and also record other people as well. Here for your listening pleasure is D-Master Robinson himself, Pimp Baby Face Innocent:
I suggest this one for your default sound.
Here he "threatens" Gunny.
Now, these sounds are in .mp3 format and you'll have to convert them yourselves if'n you want to use them for windows sounds. I figure all my computer savvy friends can figure out how to do that, but I would suggest Winamp. I'm not putting up the .wav files because those sumbitches can get pretty big and I am stingy with my hosting space, what with all the wrestling booty pictures I have to put up.
I should have more sounds soon for the Dorsey archive.

Enjoy, I hope this enriches your life muchly.

Thursday, March 27, 2003

People who know me know that I am a huge Henry Rollins fan. I have an entire bookshelf of his books and almost all of his cd's, including most of the live, self released albums.

I've always said that I would like to go to one of his talking shows if he came anywhere close. Little did I know that he was coming to a venue less than a mile from my apartment on Friday. I had no idea until I was in line to pay at IHOP the other night on my lunch break and the guy in front of me showed his girlfriend two red construction paper tickets with a yelling face on them. Henry's yelling face. Other people might not have recognized it in that brief instant, but like a twelve year old girl glimpsing the bare chest of Justin Timberlake, I knew that shouting face well.

I figured that he was going to be somewhere like Memphis or Knoxville. I remembered one of those being on the date-list that I got awhile back for this tour, but I was shocked when I went to his site and saw that he was coming to MTSU tomorrow. Here I was ready to skip work and drive to Memphis, and all I have to do is walk less than a mile over to campus.

I love this country.

Thursday, March 20, 2003

"...but I did know that the purpose of a prophet was to be wrong, that what a prophet does is give a wake-up call. If the prophet is successful we hear the call and the prophecy does not come true."
---Bob Frissell, Nothing in This Book Is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are


Even the craziest of the books sometimes make some sense.
Something that has been bothering me for a couple of days now is this backlash against the Dixie Chicks. Now hear me out all you redneck hooligans that read this site.

They were dogged twice last night at TNA wrestling, once by Bert Prentice and once on the show by Hacksaw Jim Duggan. I also read on the Drudge Report the other day that their airplay is down and that there are destroy Dixie Chicks album parties going on across America.

Now, I believe what Natalie Maines said was that she was ashamed that George Bush is from Texas. Perhaps there is more to the quote than that, but that’s all I have seen reported.

Hacksaw said he was tired of people downing America like the Dixie Chicks. I don’t believe she was downing America, she was stating an opinion of the President. The President is not America, anymore than Bill Gates is Microsoft. They are merely the managers of the particular entity.

Nothing she said was any worse than any Republican or Conservative pundit said about Clinton during his term, and no one raised such a stink.
Since we are now at war I figured the best thing to talk about would be my recently (yesterday) purchased copy of Larson’s New Book of Cults by Bob Larson. It has apparently been expanded from its previous editions and now includes (according to the cover):

  • Over 100 cults examined
  • Includes New Age Cults
  • New Section of Common Cult Teachings
  • Alphabetized for easy use

  • According to the back of the book:

    ENCYCLOPEDIC in form, popular in style, Larson’s New Book of Cults analyzes dozens of cults and movements from historical, sociological, and biblical perspectives. It will tell you what you want to know about the cults’ origins, their appeal, and their strategies. Most important, it details how each cult deviates from Christian truth. (-emphasis added)
    Parents, students, pastors, and people from all walks of life found the original Larson’s Book of Cults to be an indispensable, reliable reference tool. Now readers have the completely revised and updated Larson’s New Book of Cults, which includes chapters on the New Age Movement, trance channeling, and other recent phenomena.


    I like that it covers itself by saying cults and movements so that they won’t get sued for saying, oh that the Morman church, as well as all forms of Martial Arts are cults, or have cult ties (which the book does).

    I’ll keep you informed as I use this indispensable tool to spot cults and their philosophies as they try to influence my impressionable little mind.

    Friday, March 14, 2003

    Something I find interesting when I go to Hastings for my weekly buy some books and movies day is the amount of books in the current events section that are about why liberals are stupid, or why liberals hate America. These opinions are all well and good, and they are some people’s opinions, but I think the people who write these miss an important point. They may not agree with the people they call liberals, but it is the liberals among the society that prompt change.

    Without a good amount of liberals, who I think of as people who think differently from the status quo, or the perceived status quo, there would be no America, because we would have stayed a colony of England. George Washington and the rest of the founding fathers were liberals and they were, dare I say it...terrorists. What was the celebrated Boston Tea Party but an act of terrorism?

    But I’m not saying that all liberals are terrorists, or that all terrorists are liberals. Far from it. I think that very few terrorists are liberals. Most of the people with ideology’s that are willing to kill and die to prove a point are not that liberal. They come from B.S.’s that want to return the world to a previous state, or are just reactionary.

    I’ve gotten away from my initial point though. I think it is interesting how many of the books promote the “look at them and their crazy ideas” mentality that has been the bane of civilization for so long. The problem is not that we have different ideas as people, but that we refuse to admit that other people have different ideas, and that they may be right, or at the very least as right as us.

    I’m not suggesting that we all get out there and have a big group hug, but I think it would help things along quite a bit if we would at least start talking a bit, and I don’t mean the type of talking where we just wait to say our next point, but the type where we actually listen to the other person and try to understand where they are coming form. That doesn’t mean we have to try and change their minds either. Just listen.

    Communication is only possible between equals. That doesn’t mean that you have to treat someone as an equal, or give them equal rights, you should do those things, but it means that you have to try to think as the other person and actually communicate.

    More people should give How To Win Friends and Influence People a read and actually take the lessons to heart. How do you get people to like you? Genuinely care about them and what they are saying.

    I’m not telling you to just take any old shit that someone wants to foist on you, but listen to them. Find out where they are coming from and try to learn about them. They may only want to talk about their cats or their kids, or their work but you can involve them just as much in what you want to talk about.

    It’d probably help if everyone else weren’t such dumb assholes though. This is kinda contingent on everyone helping out and not being so stupid and seeing if the other people really aren’t interested in what’s being said.

    Hmmmm. I do have a tendency to ramble and preach a bit, don’t I?

    Grant Morrison calls communication the Holy Grail, pointing to the classic illusion of the two faces in silhouette that seem to form a goblet or vase. Communication and learning are the key, when you start talking about how someone hates something that they really feel that they love, like liberals and America, that is when you start making enemies and problems. Liberals don’t hate or blame America for the world’s problems anymore than conservatives do, and when one side starts badmouthing the other it only worsens the perceived divide between them.

    When Dubbya goes on the television to the world and says that North Korea is part of an axis of evil, guess what happens? North Korea’s dictator wigs out and assumes we are going to attack him, because we have in effect said that they are on our hit list. Then he goes and starts making threats and the whole thing goes to hell in a handbasket like that. Saddam Hussein is probably not a very good guy to have in power in Iraq, but when Dubbya goes out and calls him a murderer and then gives that dumbass little laugh, you can bet it wigs him out a lot as well.
    I think it’s time for the diplomats to actually start practicing diplomacy. We need to elect people to a position of authority that are intelligent enough to listen to other people and try to understand. All anyone really wants is for the world to behave a little more as they see it. The stupid people have run the world for thousands of years, and look where it’s got us. Maybe it’s time to let the smart ones try for awhile. I only ask for about two hundred years. I think that’d be enough to turn things around quite a bit.

    Don’t let them immananetize the Eschaton.

    Wednesday, March 12, 2003

    From now on I will be referred to as King of Customer Service. A woman came in tonight and was “Getting ready for the war.” She was buying many cases of water, Spam and Coffee. She was also buying flashlights and sleeping bags and apparently she has already spent over $1000 dollars on supplies for her “dugout” on her 15 acres of land, including a generator and a freezer.

    She said people keep looking at her like she is crazy.

    I walked around with her for about 30 minutes helping her find all of the things that she needed which filled up one of our L-Carts (probably about $250-$300 worth of stuff. The final thing that she wanted we had to stop for and go into automotives. She needed Tweety air fresheners. “Oh, aren’t they cute.” she said.

    John Adams in frozen said it was probably because it can get pretty rank and stale down there in a bunker, being as they are airtight and all.

    Apparently she has inside information from someone in the military. I do not doubt the veracity of her comments.

    She was also going to give me a tip for my help, but I turned her down. She offered to “buy my lunch,” but when I refused she said she would come back and bring me lunch one night.

    As long as that lunch is not Spam and coffee it’s cool with me.


    Sunday, March 09, 2003

    American Stories on CNN with Anderson “Channel One” Cooper ran a story today on a group of teens who were arrested for performing “’Jackass’ like stunts.” The kids filmed fake carjackings, murders and hit and runs to get people’s reactions.

    Sorry, but Jackass only does things that are legal bubba. Granted they did have the skit where they pretended to drive off with a baby in a child seat on the roof and crash on a bike with a baby on the back, but there were no simulated crimes involved. Also it is stated that they will accept no tapes and not to do any of the stunts shown.

    That said the parents of these kids, as well as the kids, need to be talked to about this. Pulling guns on drivers, even fake guns is not cool.

    On Fox News they had Michael Bolton’s thoughts on possible war in Iraq and T.W.A.T. (The War Against Terror). I can’t report them to you, because I don’t care. Have we truly hit that low on the talking head scale? What’s next Hammer?
    American Stories on CNN with Anderson “Channel One” Cooper ran a story today on a group of teens who were arrested for performing “’Jackass’ like stunts.” The kids filmed fake carjackings, murders and hit and runs to get people’s reactions.

    Sorry, but Jackass only does things that are legal bubba. Granted they did have the skit where they pretended to drive off with a baby in a child seat on the roof and crash on a bike with a baby on the back, but there were no simulated crimes involved. Also it is stated that they will accept no tapes and not to do any of the stunts shown.

    That said the parents of these kids, as well as the kids, need to be talked to about this. Pulling guns on drivers, even fake guns is not cool.

    On Fox News they had Michael Bolton’s thoughts on possible war in Iraq and T.W.A.T. (The War Against Terror). I can’t report them to you, because I don’t care. Have we truly hit that low on the talking head scale? What’s next Hammer?

    I went running with Joey and Chris for the first time in many months this morning after work. We ran about two miles, probably a little over that, about a quarter of Murfreesboro's greenway.

    Man my legs are starting to get sore already.

    For those of you who don't know him, Joey is a real asshole. For a visual, think Jon Bon Jovi crossed with Ted Nugent. It was Chris's first time running probably since high school and Joey ragged him the whole time. It brought back beautiful memories of Joey training me last year. Ah the memories. Joey went R. Lee Ermey on Chris. (Hey, R. Lee Ermey played a character named Gunny in one of his first roles).

    We wouldn't even have gone running today if Chris hadn't have challenged Joey. Joey was too tired to run, he said at work last night, but Chris said something about him chickening out so it was on this morning.

    The only solution to the soreness is to go run again on Tuesday.

    Saturday, March 08, 2003

    Just to copy Tommy, but to add a little twist of my own to it, here are the ten best Rutger Hauer movies ever made (at least that I’ve seen):

    10. Surviving the Game Yet another retread of the story The Most Dangerous Game. In this one Ice-T runs from Gary Busey and Rutger with their band of rich man hunters.
    9. Redline What I’ve seen is quite good in this film. I’ve seen very little.
    8. Breeders Rutger is a grizzled doctor who must help stop a horde of inbred vampire things before they overrun a small island town.
    7. Crossroads Rutger is the grizzled old warrior who must help some young magical prince or whatnot. Better than it should be.
    6. Flesh and Blood Naked Jennifer Jason Leigh. End of story.
    5. Split Second Rutger tracks an alien serial killer or something of the sort in a really rainy future. Also topless Kim Catrall pre-Sex In the City days.
    4. Omega Doom Quite possibly the worst film ever made. Robots fighting over drinking water or some such nonsense.
    3. The Hitcher Rutger is death. A helicopter is shot down by a revolver. There is a severed finger in the french fries. Jennifer Jason Leigh again, this time not naked though, but she is stretched between two semi-trucks.
    2. Blood of Heroes Post-apocalyptic rugby where teams travel from town to town to challenge the local team and the game is over when one team is able to impale a dog skull on a pike and manage not to get killed in the process.
    And Numero Uno:
    Blind Fury He’s a blind Vietnam vet, he’s crotchety and he has to protect a little pissant kid from mobsters, and did I mention, he’s a Samurai? Quality filmmaking here. Also starring Meg Foster and her creepy eyes and Randall “Tex” Cobb. It also seems that Lucas stole the fate of Darth Maul from the ninja at the end of this film.

    Honorable mentions:
    No Bladerunner or Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, those are real movies and we don’t allow real movies on this list.
    Wedlock Rutger and Mimi Rogers are linked by explosive collars, and if they get to far apart they will have their heads blown off. Hilarity ensues.
    The One That Co-Stars Gene Simmons I haven’t even removed the plastic on this one, because that would ruin my expectations of it. In my mind it is beautiful.
    Escape From Sobibor WWII film co-starring Alan Arkin about an escape from a concentration camp. Think Hogan’s Heroes without the funny, and with Rutger as Richard Dawson.

    That is all.

    Friday, March 07, 2003

    I just spent 45 mins coming up with quite possible the most witty and erudite post ever concieved by man, and what happens? This crap Imac just shuts the IE window down for no reason when I hit the post button. WTF. I'm not going to try to capture lightning in a bottle twice either.

    Wednesday, March 05, 2003

    From Tommy's list of the top ten films of all time:
    2. DefCon 4
    Absolutely the scariest movie of all time. So scary, that I've never seen it. Bill told me it was scary, and if it scares Bill, it would kill me. It's the second greatest movie of all time.

    A bit of explanation is in order here. I don't think that I've ever seen the movie all the way through either. It's about a space station that has nuclear missles on it, and in the beginning there is a big nuclear war and the station gets the orders to drop the missles on Russia and the crew members fight over whether or not to drop them while they watch these big explosions from space. The way I remember it the effects are really good, which means they are, in the words of the great Philipe Jones, some suck. I think they just used big flashes of color on a monitor screen.

    Anyway after awhile the crew decides to put down to earth to see if there are any survivors and whatnot. The escape pod lands and it lands on a beach with the hatch down and they start digging out and one the hear people up above and one of the crew members reaches up to try to get out of the sand and whatnot and the other crewmembers are like "No you idiot, don't do that, they might be irradiated freaks or something!" (I'm paraphrasing here). Then that guy turns around and is like "No I hear them it's o.k. you pussies" and then he gets yanked violently up and out of the pod by his arm.

    And I don't know what happens after that, that's the point where I change the channel. I think it's about 15 minutes into the movie. Scariest 15 minutes in all of movie history.

    I have a bit of the cold war paranoia about nuclear war so those types of movies always scare me, except for Red Dawn, but that's because Patrick Swayzee is in it so I feel safe. I always feel safe when he's around. I know he would protect me from the atom bombs.

    Sunday, March 02, 2003

    Lot's of sirens, fire and police, in the distance that seem to be getting closer. Always comforting.

    One of my old sites that I can no longer get into at Angelfire seems to have picked up some Java programming that I didn't put there. Something that says in the description on the code that it is a worm of some sort. I'm not going to tell you where the page is, but I haven't been able to get into it for well over two years (stupid forgetting passwords) and I'm surprised it hasn't been purged yet with the lack of activity.

    This leads me to a question. I understand why people are hackers, and to some degree why they write malicious programs. I even understad the idea behind monkeywrenching corporate and government web-sites, but why would you attack individual sites? Unless you have some personal grudge against the owner, I just don't understand.

    I also don't understand the attacking of the internet in general. If you destroy the internet, how are you going to hack then?

    It would be a bit like being an avid basketball player, but constantly burning down your school's gym. Where are you going to play, and with what? There isn't another internet floating around that I know of.

    Seems kindof pointless to me.

    I am listening to Jello Biafra's new spoke word album Machine Gun in the Clown's Hand, very, very good and insightful.

    Go to NoLogo.Org for some good, old-fashioned anti-corporate news.
    I agree with Tommy, we need some sunshine here in Middle Tennessee. Now I'm not a big one for the sunny days, but people get surly and ill-tempered in a lack of it. Look at the British.

    I don't know, but maybe I should do a sunshine dance outside. Something on the order of stamping up and down and shouting "Go away damnit!" at the clouds until they actually do.

    That should work, after all it did bring on the current bit of rainieness here.
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