The Long Ass Kabalah Post

E! has a special report titled Hollywood's Kabalah Connection. Much like the majority of programming on the network it is an incredibly shallow look at its subject. The writers miss the entire notion that the Kabalah center attended by Madonna and other celebrities attend might not be all their is to it.

They spent an hour talking about the center and the controversy surrounding it, but spent almost no time talking about what Kabalah is. I find this incredibly curious. From what I am able to gather this is how most of the media approaches the subject--talk about it, but don't explain it.

What you do get of the teachings from the show is that there are alot of books and prayer services and classes, and you wear a $20 red string around your wrist.

They brought on a Rabbi to say that he finds the idea of wearing a red string for protection as foolish and he went on to say that they are only getting a fraction of the true teachings of Kabalah without a thorough background in Jewish tradition, ritual, and the Talmud and Bible. It would not surprise me if this Rabbis Kabalistic knowledge is not that deep, as it is my understanding that it is not as prevalent among mainstream Judaism as it once was, and he was most definitely not Hassidic.

I'll defend the red string by saying there is a strong tradition in most religions of wearing fetishes (a magickal amulet, etc.) of protection, and I see no difference between paying a church $20 for a red string to wear, and buying a cross or star of david or other symbol. If nothing else, it's much easier to fashion your own red string bracelet. I find it humorous that a rabbi would be so offended by the idea of a fetish such as this.

From what I could gather things like the bracelet and Kabalah water and the t-shirts and pins and whatnot are the centers way of gathering funds in the absence of the traditional tithe.

But back to the Kabalah itself.

See, the funny thing about Kabalah itself is that, much like Buddhism, it's not really a religion at all at its core, it's a philosophy. Robert Anton Wilson called it the cosmic file-a-fax system, since it seeks to encompass everything possible.

But also there is a division of Kabalah that most don't talk about or even realize exists. Donald Michael Kraig describes the split in his book Modern Magick:

First there is what I call the Kosher Kabalah. This has come about as a result of the need for a Jewish spiritual rebirth.... The Kosher Kabalah, then has a particularly Jewish tone to it. It benefits all students of the mystical as we are obtaining more and more ancient Kabalistic works which are finally being translated into Western tongues. But, because it is so oriented toward one point of view, it is not our main concern.

The WASP Kabalah follows in the traditions of the Golden Dawn. This system of Kabalah universalizes the Kabalistic wisdom so that it may be accepted by all, no matter your particular faith or lack thereof... Because the Kabalah has been safeguarded for thousands of years by the Jewish culture, it is obvious that it will have, in many instances, a Jewish flavor....you do not have to be or become a Jew or Christian or Pagan or follow any particular religion or belief in order to study the philosophy and magickal techniques of the Kabalah and traditional ceremonial magick.

Further, Kraig explains, there are four further branches of Kabalah, which overlap to some degree:

1. The Dogmatic Kabalah--This concerns the literature of the Kabalah, such as the Talmud, Torah, Sepher Yetzirah and the main book of the Kabalah Center, and the only one mentioned in the E! special, the Zohar.

2. The Practical Kabalah--The making of talismans and amulets, such as the red bracelets of the Kabalah center, but primarily more advanced fetishes involving various rituals. A talisman is a magickal fetish created to bring certain things to the creator or bearer, while an amulet is in item designed to repel things.

3. The Literal Kabalah--This concerns the numerology practiced by Kabalists. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet also represents a number, and through a process known as Gematria the values of different words and phrases are used to discover underlying meanings. Kraig uses the Hebrew words aheva and echod, which both have the numerical value of 13. Echod in Hebrew means one, and also God, while aheva is Hebrew for love. Therefore God=Love.

4. The Unwritten Kabalah--This concerns correspondences of the Tree of Life Glyph, which is largely an oral tradition, but is a focus of the WASP Kabalah moreso than the Dogmatic Kabalah.

From what I can gather the Kabalah center primarily is a teacher of the Kosher Kabalah, with an emphasis on the Dogmantic and Practical with little emphasis on the Practical or Literal.

The Rabbi enterviewed in E! is most likely acquainted with the Kosher Kabalah and may not realize the long existence of the WASP Kabalah.

Kabalah has a long tradition among Western Magickal practice, and was codified by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, the European society which claimed such members as Dion Fortune, Aleister Crowley and MacGregor Mathers. They took what until then had been only passed down orally from Rabbi to Rabbi as the Kosher Kabalah and open sourced it. They took the philosophic basis of the system and centered less on the Dogma and more on the Literal, Practical and the Unwritten.

This is the area of Kabalah that is unknown and ignored when people just assume that it is only a new age fad and give it no second thought.

The true power of Kabalah does not come from the study of dusty tomes or even in the making of fetishes, but rather in the contemplation of interconnectivity inherent in reality.

That is what the tree of life truly shows, and what is missing from what I see of the teachings in the Kabalah Center (though I admit I only get the distortions of the media on them, and they are seriously lacking in telling of actual teachings, concentrating, rather on what they try to make ridiculous, like the wearing of red strings), is that all things are connected. It tries to show that there are similarities in the connections of all things. Each letter of the Hebrew alphabet corresponds with a path or sphere on the tree, and also with anything else. You can apply it to body parts or anything else, this is why Wilson referred to it as a file-o-fax system. He went so far in one book to apply characters from the Rocky Horror Picture Show. AMOD and I worked on a correspondence of Rock Stars to pass the time at work.

This is what the people who devised Kabalah were trying to get across, not a bunch of rituals and dogma, they wanted people to contemplate interconnectedness. This is how you achieve balance and harmony in your life and with nature, by discovering that everything has a role and living in harmony with that.

Yeah.

Frivolous Morning Stuff

Yesterday I saw what were perhaps the coolest Star Wars figures that I've seen outside the Power of the Force line. They're targeted at smaller kids and are in a superdeformed style. They are the Galactic Heroes Line. Here are some pictures of them:



Of course, being the incredibly prone to impulse dork that I am I bought the Vader/Obi Wan and 3PO/Chewie packs. (Shut up AMOD. I know by buying this stuff I'm actively trying to repel most women.)

Artsy Fartsy

Look at what I drew on the computer the other day. The color is a quick fill just to make it stand out a little better. This is the first step towards getting a little bit of animation and interactivity here on the site. I'll be working on the shading and firstly animating a title menu/logo, and then on a few other things.

Stay tuned as I teach myself a few new things. Hopefully I'll be able to work up to actual cartoons of the moving with sound variety.

You Can Call Him Shirley

John Shirley on the reason.

Clerks 2 News

Yahoo News story on Clerks 2

The sequel picks up 10 years later.

"It's about what happens when that lazy, 20-something malaise lasts into your 30s. Those dudes are kind of still mired, not in that same exact situation, but in a place where it's time to actually grow up and do something more than just sit around and dissect pop culture and talk about sex," Smith said during an interview at his Hollywood office. "It's: What happened to these dudes?"

A new 10th anniversary DVD of "Clerks" debuts Sept. 7, and Smith said working on that three-disc set inspired him to write about what became of those characters.

The sequel — titled "The Passion of the Clerks" — is set to begin shooting in January. Miramax Films, which turned the original into a cult-hit after buying it at the Sundance Film Festival, plans to distribute the follow-up.

"It's funny, it's very raw, insanely foul-mouthed. In many ways it's the antithesis of 'Jersey Girl,'" Smith said, referring to his recent PG-13 comedy with Ben Affleck (news) as the widowed father of a little girl.

....

"I'm sure there will be naysayers who say, 'Oh my God, it's an opportunistic grab at a buck,' but it's not. We're doing it for nothing," Smith said. "We're going to do it insanely inexpensively. The budget will be somewhere between 250 grand and $5 million."

My thoughts on the story, firstly, a three damn disc Clerks Special Edition--Sweet!

I am one who would love to see the sequal, but my initial reaction to the idea before reading the entire story was--Didn't he say he was through with Jay and Bob and the Jersey Trilogy?

But if you read what he actually says about the story, it seems that he's planning on turning it a bit on its ear and making it more of the grown up movie that he was shooting for with Jersey Girl, with dick and fart jokes thrown in.

I imagine the point is to make Randall and Dante even more sad and pathetic. I also think it would be a funny gag to have Bob be clean cut and working as some sort of executive, with Jay working in the mailroom of his building and constantly using cuts to keep us from hearing Bob speak at length.

Jim Goad, He Make-a Me Laugh and Laugh

A nice sarcastic post on Islam from Jim Goad, which will probably offend some, but made me chuckle quite a bit. Following is the entire text since Jim doesn't have direct links to posts (I urge you if to read his site, as long as you don't blame me if you are easily offended. And also, I hope that Jim doesn't either a) fly out here to beat the shit out of me for posting this on my site, or b) just give me lots of bad juju vibes for it, I'm just trying to direct people to his site)

lite muslims® offer hope for unified world

CAIRO, EGYPT—Islam is the world's strongest social meme, yet its angry God and strict moral code have prevented it from swallowing up the Western mind like it has spread plaguelike over dumber, less-developed continents.

Now, a student youth movement of self-described "Lite Muslims®" may change all that, offering a version of Islam that is at once mellower and sexier than Westerners have come to expect.

"As depicted in the Holy Koran, Allah has a bit of an anger problem," chuckles Mazin Sami (second from left), an Egyptian graduate student in Islamic Studies shown here sporting some of his "Unisex Muslim Urban Wear" with a group of Arabic runway models. "The Lite Muslim® version of Allah isn't angry—he's perturbed...he's just a little offended by the way things are, that's all. But he's not a hothead, and he definitely doesn't lash out like the old Allah did."

Sami says his new 'n' improved Islam isn't nearly as anti-Semitic as the classic model. "We don't want to kill Jews," he assures me. "We just find them really annoying sometimes. Doesn't everyone?"

Perhaps the biggest selling point for Lite Muslims® is their embrace of Western-style carnality. "Let's put it this way," Sami tells me with a twinkle in his eye, "we don't believe that you should have to wait until you're dead to bag seventy virgins. And women don't have to cover their faces and ankles in public—just don't go wagging your gash around, and we're cool with it."

Sami's watered-down Islam makes its Initial Public Offering on Wall Street next week, and tastemakers predict that the West is finally ready to give Allah a fair shake. "We aim to put a Lite Muslim® mosque in every mall, alongside Starbucks and Hot Topic," Sami beams, "and the whole world will rejoice in the fact that Allah is beneficent, merciful...and pretty darned rad, too."

Ah, the deep belly laughs.

Odds and Ends Before Work

TNA Wrestling

I used to watch TNA Wrestling religiously. While I lived in Murfreesboro I went to their Wednesday Pay Per Views in Nashville pretty much every week starting from the first ones at the Municipal Auditorium, right up through when they brought in Lex Luger (which pretty much signaled the end of their live draw for me).

Today I was watching their Impact TV show (which I just happened to see was on, It's not exactly a staple of my week), and, while they are still putting on some entertaining X-Division matches and the new six-sided ring is interesting, I found myself not caring in the least little bit what was going on on the majority of the show, and when they were going to go to an interview by their 'lead analyst' who is a NASCAR correspondent, and was going to interview a NASCAR driver, I decided that I had much better things to do with my time.

I think it's pretty sad that I've gone from paying my weekly fifteen dollar tithe to sit ringside at their shows to not even being able to sit through an hour of free television.

I'm going to go on record now as predicting the death of TNA in 2005. I don't think they're going to last as a promotion more than the next year.

With their announcement that they are ceasing production of weekly PPV broadcasts from Nashville and a move to a monthly broadcast schedule from Universal Studios in Florida, I think that they are going to go the way of WCW and whatever the promotion was that was run by Jimmy Hart that was out of the same soundstage.

They will not survive coming to the world exclusively from WCW's worldwide arena.



Posers

I saw two punk-posers out today. I just have to say that when you go to a store to buy a look, complete with buttons, tie and striped shirt and, oooh inverted pentagram necklace. It's a lot like the stereotypical white guys trying to be gangstas. I guess it gives them some identity, but I have to say that a real punk doesn't go out to buy pre-ripped, cookie cutter outfits, but tend to just be dirty DIY types of people.

Tomorrow On This Station

Tomorrow a long ass post on Kabalah.

The Perfect Wrestling Game

Wrestling video games are a mixed bag in terms of quality, but they're essentially all going for the same thing, a fighting game that's done Kayfabe style. (Kayfabe is the oldschool term for not acknowledging that pro-wrestling isn't a competitive sport, but is in actuality, real)

Some of the games like the Smackdown series are quite good at this, but they aren't what I want from a wrestling game, so anybody out there with the ability to produce a wrestling game, listen up, this is what I want to play.

I want a game that is like Madden Football. I want to be able to play the booker for a federation if I want to, with the ability to put together angles and characters and work with the roster booking shows and creating merchandise. I also want to be able to play through the matches as a wrestler, where a booker will tell me what my angle is and how the match will end, and I have to work with my opponent to build a match that the crowd is into in the time available, not going out there to beat the other guy.

I want a game where the measure of success in the game is in the ticket sales and response at shows and in the television ratings the show garners. I want to be able to shape someone's career as a booker, or ruin someone I don't like. I want open ended gaming that breaks Kayfabe and is a combination of sim and fighting. Let the wrestlers get injured and have to go out there and put on a good show. Have problem guys who don't show up on time, or stop cooperating and you have to work on the fly to make the match/angle work.

You can even throw in a basic fighting game for those who want that.

I don't even care if it's an authorized game, just give me a robust character generator so that I can make the wrestlers I want to make. Make it so that I can turn Hogan into a curtain jerker, or elevate Paul London to superstardom.

That's what I want in the game. Stop trying to make Virtua Fighter in a wrestling ring and put some brains into it.

Excercise in Japanese

BoingBoing has a link to a MP3 download of an oldtime Japanese radio exercise show, I highly recommend it for it's cheerfullness.

Jurassic Park 4

Say you're a big time film company that's pretty much bled a franchise dry at the box-office, and you've also mined all of the ideas out of the base novels, what do you do?

If you're Amblin entertainment you go in a radically different direction. We've all see the shots of people looking and reacting to CGI dinosaurs in the first three Jurassic park movies, and from Moriartiy's review of the second draft of the script for Jurassic Park 4 at AICN, Amblin knows that.

As I said, they've decided to go in a different direction, think Theodore Rex meets Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I'll let Moriarty explain:

I want to tread lightly on what happens over the course of the rest of the film on the off chance that Mary Parent or someone at Universal is seriously going to make this thing. There?s the eight-year-old-boy side of me that thinks that a DIRTY DOZEN-style mercenary team of hyper-smart dinosaurs in body armor killing drug dealers and rescuing kidnapped children will be impossible to resist. And then there?s the side of me that says... WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! Nick is put in charge of training these five dinosaurs, X1 through X5, and the first thing he does is name them. ?Any soldier worth his pay has a name to answer to, not a number,? he says. So we are introduced to Achilles, Hector, Perseus, Orestes, and Spartacus, each of them a specially created deinonychus, which is sort of like a miniature T-rex. They have super-sensitive smell and hearing, incredible strength and speed and pack-hunting instincts, and they have modified forelegs, lengthened and topped with more dexterous fingers, as well as dog DNA for increased obedience and human DNA so they can solve problems well. All of this is topped off with a drug-regulating implant that can dose them with adrenaline or serotonin as the situation demands.

So they're Dino-dog's who have the names of ancient warriors. Maybe if the do some more re-writes they can make it where they're trained to fight by a giant rat, and their enemies are a ninja in body armor and a sentient brain in a big android body. There might even be a place in there for Whoopi Goldberg.

Seriously though, Amblin, make this movie now! It's about time that the man in suit genre got brought into today's technology. They tried it with Warriors of Virtue, but didn't quite get there, this is the one baby!

I was just looking at the WOV IMDB entry and I find it interesting that the plot synopsis begins with "A young man, Ryan, suffering from a disability, wishes to join the other kids from his schools football team..." not "Giant Kung-Fu fighting Kangaroos beeeeeyotch!"

Fury of the Thunder God

I've been offline for the past few days following a lightning strike near my house on Friday that nocked out my phone until yesterday.

Normal commentary will resume shortly, but I give you this incredibly evocative line from the book I am currently reading, The Tortuous Serpent by Donald Tyson:

Her pallid breasts dripped blood from the nipples of their eyes.

Thank you and good day.

Putt-Putt Proffessional

The Putt-Putt World Championship is on ESPN2 right now. I ask you, who is sadder a putt-putt touring professional, or a putt-putt color commentator for ESPN2.

The kids finals just finished, and two teams that face each other quite a bit (according to the color commentator), were in the finals. I could take them.
Imagine what it would be like to have a parent who is fanatical about your putt-putt potential.

"You get out there and give me eighteen aces, or no dinner for you!"

This is one of the most ricockulous things I've ever seen

I just don't think that it's true miniature golf unless you have a giant windmill.

*Edit-There were two old guys in the gallery. One had on shorts and no shirt, and the other was just wearing a speedo, and he kept rubbing himself. At a real golf course they would be breaking the dresscode. Do you think seeing them at the end of the hole constitutes a hazard, or at the very least, a major distraction?

Nuts

Who in the blue hell is eating so many cashews and mixed nuts here in Athens? I must put out three or four cases of them a night.

New Story

The Following is the introduction of one of the characters in the story that I am working on right now. This is a rough draft, and is pretty short, but I thought I'd share it with yall.

The Head was yelling again, but then, it was always yelling.

The only times that it seemed to stop yelling was when it was chanting, or on a few occasions, to stare at him as if to see if he was paying attention.

He wondered if this was what it was like to be schizophrenic. He thought that having a ghostly severed head that only you could see and hear that floated around you and was constantly yelling had to qualify you as some kind of crazy.

A severed Indian head, of the Tonto variety.

When it started, it wasn't even a head at all, just a voice, quiet as a whisper, but seeming to gain volume every moment.

The voice had started two days ago, the night he got the news of his father's death. He'd put down the receiver and that was when it started.

He'd almost shit himself when he woke up the next morning and the Indian was staring at him, its black braids hanging down on either side of his face, its eyes slits as it scowled down at him.

He supposed something like this shouldn't really surprise him, the Canon men had a history of instability. His father, Earl, had gone crazy when he turned forty, at the death of his father. Eddie was just getting a three year head start, that was all.

After Earl lost his marbles he'd just retreated back into the woods on his property, becoming a hermit, rarely coming into civilization at all.

His father had lived in the woods until he died, hunting for game and fishing in the creek that bisected the property.

Earl owned quite a bit of land, 150 acres, now Eddie owned quite a bit of land.

Goddamnit, could it please stop yelling for a minute to let him think?

It just screeched on and on in whatever language it spoke, berating him like an angry parent, it's black eyes bloodshot and wide.

Now it was floating in front of him, yelling into his face. It liked to do that when he was trying to drive, or talk to someone, or sleep.

Eddie's mother left his father a year into his self-imposed exile. His father had let her have everything but the land and a few mutual funds that he'd kept whose interest covered the property taxes.

Now the land and the funds were his, and here he stood in the living room he'd grown up in--a place he'd sworn less than five years ago never to set foot in again--plastic covering the furniture just as it had when his mother had left, the only difference between then and now in the house was a thick layer of dust and a crazy loud ass Indian head, dripping its ghost blood on the shag carpet.

Reading

I just noticed that the book I started reading, Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut, is stamped on the side "Hamilton County Jail Library Property." That means at least one murderer has probably touched this book before. Hooray!

Here are some Vonnegut quotes from Hocus Pocus that I found interesting:

Unlike my Socialist grandfather Ben Willis, who was a nobody, I have no reforms to propose. I think any form of government, not just Capitalism, is whatever the people who have all our money, drunk or sober, sane or insane, decide to do today.

'At least we still have freedom of speech,' I said.
And she said, 'That isn't something somebody else gives you. That's something you have to give yourself.'

Craptacular

From the sweet Jesus why department. I saw these on clearance at the Wal-Mart yesterday. Take a gander at the sheer magnificence of the Shrek/Nascar figure two packs from Mcfarlane Toys:

Now I ask you, good people, why? I mean, Nascar driver figures that don't come with some kind of car are bad enough, but, why this?

By The Way

Alf Season 1 on DVD. Out now. I expect someone out there to buy this for me.

This means you God-Man Scotty. I know you're reading.

The view of al Qaeda is 'anybody but Bush.'

Gunny has a new post on terrorists not understanding America.

I think that the real problem is that America doesn't understand the terrorists. Or at least the government doesn't really understand them.

Much like God Man Scotty not understanding that his being whacked out on steroids is being whacked out on drugs, the Bushies don't understand that the reason that the terrorists want somebody other than Bush in the White House isn't that they fear Bush so much, it's that they hate him and what he stands for.

The Bushies have convinced themselves that they are America, or they're just trying to convince the rest of us that they are.

Consider the most recent terror warnings of un upcoming high-profile assassination by Al Qaeda as reported in the Washington Times.

I think the most telling quote from the entire story is this one:

"The goal of the next attack is twofold: to damage the U.S. economy and to undermine the U.S. election," the official said. "The view of al Qaeda is 'anybody but Bush.' "

What this quote is really saying is that the terrorists will seek to keep Bush from being re-elected, while I, and many Americans would be of the opinion that he's doing just fine on that front himself.

You know the real reason that the terrorists don't like Bush and his cronies?

Oh, I don't know, could it be that he and his father are close personal friends of the Saudi royal family and the end of the Bin Laden family that Osama is lashing out against?

See, Osama isn't against America so much because he hates our freedom, as Bush would have us believe, rather, he's agin us because of our support of Israel and the presence of our military bases in Saudi Arabia and our support of the house of Saud.

Know how we know that?

Because, as David Cross points out on his "It's Not Funny" CD, "That's what he fucking said!"

But, they're doing all this because they hate our freedom.

And remember, anybody who supports Kerry or anyone other than Bush is supporting terrorism.

You don't want to support terrorists, do you?

Yard Darts XTREME!

So, awhile back we found a couple of sets of Yard Darts in the shed, and I had to go online to find the rules.

Now, I have to tell you, I found those rules tame and outdated.

I present to you now, the updated:

Rules for Yard Darts XTREME! (cause the first E is for pussies!)

Place the two circles on the ground about 15 feet apart. Each Player stands inside a circle, holding the Dart by the handle in the palm of the hand. Toss at the other circle with UNDERHAND motion. Toss the Dart as high as possible in the air towards the opposing circle, turns are simultaneous.

As each Dart arcs high into the air, player's should stare up at them following the trajectory of the opposing players Dart.

Playing Turns:

Turns are simultaneous.

Scoring:

In Xtreme Yard Darts!, you can score exactly 0-1-2-3-4 or 6 points in each round.

Point Scoring:

3 points for each Dart IN THE CIRCLE, not touching your opponent.

1 point for the Dart nearest the circle

0 points if you are a pussy and run out of the circle as your opponents Dart comes down.

Scoring Possibilities:

* 1 point - nearest circle but none in circle
* 2 points - one Dart in circle less one point if opponent is nearest circle
* 3 points - one player with 2 Darts in circle and opponent with one in circle or one Dart in circle and opponent is not near circle.
* 4 points - player with 1 Dart in circle and other Jart nearest
* 6 points - 2 Darts in circle, opponent none.

Nearest means that a Dart is at least another Darts length away from the ring.

Points in Xtreme Yard Darts! are only there for show, however. The real game comes in the pain and suffering you can inflict on your opponent.

To win a game of Xtreme Yard Darts! requires only the invocation of the pussy rule, which can be called in one of three ways:
[1] a player's refusal to enter the circle, or three consecutive 0 point plays by one player.
[2] fainting or heatstroke
[3] puncture by Dart of any of the key areas of your opponent: LEFT eye, soft pallet, Groin and skull.

Now, who wants to play?

Meet the New Creed, Same as the Old Creed

As you all should know by now the Greatest Rock Band In The Last Decade, and perhaps ever, Rock Super-Group Creed have parted ways.

According to the rest of the band, lead singer Scott Stapp, is a bit hard to get along with and that caused the split.

According to Scott it's because he was taking steroids and became Fat Elvis:

Stapp: I was basically on [anti-inflammatory] Prednisone for the last six months of the Weathered tour, and it bloated me up like a beached whale. I looked like fat Elvis. I had a nodule on my vocal cord, too.

So it was steroids that make him an asshole, that's it! Whew, I'm glad that one's answered. Somebody call up Fred Durst and David Cross and tell them that now he's off the 'roids he's really a nice guy and easy to get along with.

Stapp goes on in his MTV interview to say:

I found out later that you're not supposed to take it for that long. Afterwards [one doctor] said I risked damaging my voice forever and ending my music career. Quote unquote "rock doctors" do what they need to do if they're making money off you. It also made me very depressed and made me feel isolated to the point where all I did was sit in the bus and go onstage.

Could you imagine if Scotty couldn't sing anymore? What would the world do? Perhaps, I don't know, go listen to some good music, maybe take up knitting?

But Scott perseveres. He worked through the pain, through the drug induced Ashley. He did it for the people, and because he was told to. By Jesus (actually he doesn't say that he says that he was told to by the devil, "I was advised not to. I don't want to say by who, but it's whoever advises you as an artist.")

This road induced Ashley was what lead to the class action suit filed against Creed by fans attending one of their shows, seeking damages for the band (specifically Scott's) shitty performance at the show.

Stapp: I've heard the rumors that I was whacked out on drugs, and I can tell you what I was whacked out on ... Prednisone. I was exhausted, but I sang every song. I performed as hard as I could. Basically, the people who sued just wanted the press and attention and money. Everybody didn't sue; it wasn't a class-action suit. I think what got Mark upset was that it was his hometown and two people in the newspapers were bashing his band.

See, here's where Scott shows that he really doesn't have a clue, he's saying that he wasn't whacked out on drugs, but rather he was whacked out on Prednisone, which is a drug. Thus he was whacked out on--wait for it--Drug, not drugs. That's a big difference there slappy.

Not everybody sued for damages, just a few people from the crowd sued. The rest of them just don't have any musical taste or ability to spot a bad show.

At his core, though, Scott is really a quiet sensitive family man.

Stapp: That's exactly what happened. I'll be honest, reading all that stuff really hurt my feelings. I just thought, man, I'm just in a band, doing what I love, and I'm always nice to everyone I meet. I'm a real sensitive man, and I get my feelings hurt. I thought the whole world hated me, and I was depressed.

He's a real sensitive man. These things hurt him a lot. He's not complaining or whining, it only sounds that way in the interview. When Scott goes on to say that he's had medical problems all his life and sings through injuries, tumors and pneumonia, often all of them at the same time, it's just his heeding what the people around him say to keep the band going. Everybody (except the assholes who sued and all the people who don't go) would rather hear a horrible Creed show than wait for him to get better and hear a horrible Creed show.

You know, it's because we really just don't understand God-Man Scotty. He's a sensitive family man with a really good sense of humor, such as this little rib that he let loose on fellow untalented hack Fred Durst:

Also, I don't think some people got my sense of humor. Like that whole Fred Durst thing, that was a joke. When I sent him that anger-management book [after Durst dissed Stapp onstage for not talking to any other bands at a New York radio festival in 2000], I put a note in there that said, "Just to let you know God loves you." It was supposed to be a joke. Because I didn't understand why he did what he did, I was trying to be a smart ass. People took it like I was being serious.

Wasn't that funny? I mean, how could anyone take Scotty seriously?

But in the end, I think the most important thing that we can take away from the breakup of Creed is that they haven't really broken up since the Stappless Creed continues on as Alter Bridge.

Much as other bands who couldn't get along with their lead singers (Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Styx, Iron Dragon, Van Halen, Van Halen, Van Halen), the musicians in the band just went out and got someone who looks and sounds like their old lead singer.

So rock on Creedterbridge, bring us that faux-Christian rock power that only you know how to.

Don't worry about God-Man Scotty, he's doing alright. He's got a single on an album of songs inspired by the film "Passion of the Christ" (but remember don't pigeonhole him as a Christian Rocker, he's not). He's recording with hip-hop producers to see if he can water down that market as well, and he's going to continue on rockin until he and Creed regroup in about ten years when they discover that they don't make quite as much money apart.

Read the entire MTV Interview here.

35 Questions

Less Than 35 Questions That I Stole From BST

Since quite a few of the answers to these questions just aren't interesting, here is the abridged version.

1) WHAT COLOR ARE YOUR BEDROOM WALLS?

White.

2) WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?

Siddharta by Herman Hesse
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut

3) WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?


4) FAVORITE BOARD GAME?

Clue.

11) FAVORITE FLAVOR OF ICE CREAM?

Ben and Jerry's Vanilla Heath Bar Crunch.

15) FAVORITE DRINK?

Live-Wire Mountain Dew.

17) FAVORITE VEGETABLES?

Okra and Squash, fried or baked.

18) IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Something involving very little work and responsibility that pays quite a bit. Preferably something where neither I, nor my co-workers and/or bosses know what it is I'm supposed to be doing.

19) IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY COLOR HAIR, WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Color isn't really that important to me, as long as the hair is there.

21) TOP THREE FAVORITE MOVIES (IN ORDER)?

Blind Fury, Kill Bill, vol. 1, and Trainspotting

25) FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH ON TV & IN PERSON?

Wrasslin and Poker.

26) WHAT IS YOUR SINGLE BIGGEST FEAR?

The same as Tommy's:

I'll be sitting on the potty, and a snake will come out the pipes and bite me on my junk. There was an episode of Highway to Heaven were nobody believed this old woman that there was a snake in the toilet. And the guy in the A's hat found it and made everybody believe.

...Except in mine it's a gnarled hand that reaches out of the toilet and grabs my junk.

27) FAVORITE CD OF ALL TIME & RIGHT NOW?

Henry Rollins "Get Some Go Again" and Yellow Blues

28) FAVORITE TV SHOW OF ALL TIME & RIGHT NOW?

I really like The Shield, and The Office

31) WHAT WALLPAPER AND/OR SCREENSAVER IS ON YOUR COMPUTER RIGHT NOW?

Wallpaper:

I don't have a screensaver on.

33) FAVORITE CHAIN RESTAURANT?

Fat Moe's.

34) IF YOU HAVE A BOY (OR HAVE ANOTHER BOY) WHAT WOULD YOU NAME HIM?

'Lil Monkey.

Comments

okay. My commenting system is not here for flame wars.

If people want to flame one another they can very well do it through e-mail or other means.

I say again, this is not an open forum for everyone. This an open forum for me. Read it, don't read it, I really don't care. You want to call me stupid in the comments, fine, but as I said before, keep it clean. I am allowed to curse because it's my site.
Get your own site if you want to curse or flame people.

I have the commenting system so that people can have civil conversations that they can all take part in. Civil. No personal shots are allowed or will be tolerated.

If you want a forum site where you can go flame happy, there are many out there, but not here.

Shutting down the site is not the only way that I can cease people's ability to make comments, I can also ban them, but I'm not really into doing that unless they don't make the effort to get along.

Call me stupid all you want, but if you want to argue with someone else do it on your own time and in your own space.

The reason the option for e-mail address is there in the comments is so that people here can e-mail one another, I'm not taking your addresses to sell you things. If you don't want to give out a personal address, it is quite simple to set up an address at any number of free providers that you can use to snipe at one another.

I'm not looking for people to kiss my ass in the comments, if I was, then Gunny wouldn't ever get to say anything, nor would AMOD.

So to summarize, for anyone still with me, here are the ground rules for the commenting system:

1. No profanity.
2. No flaming.
3. No calling each other stupid (though you can still call me stupid).
4. Try to keep it to the subject at hand (i.e. the post), if you want to argue with me about something else, e-mail me.

I hope that clears up any confusion.

And, so I'm not misinterpreted, very little of what is on this site is serious commentary on anything, but I am serious about this.

Crazy and Convoluted

I've never watched the television series TimeCop. I've seen the Jean-Claude movie, and I've read a bit of the comic, but I was flipping by today and I had to share the description of the show from DishNetwork:

Logan and Eliot Ness work together to stop the Ripper who has joined forces with Al Capone, from retrieving his time machine.

Firstly, the Ripper (Jack I assume) has a time machine? Secondly, isn't this just a bit far reaching? Without watching the show, how and, more importantly, why would Jack the Ripper team up with Al Capone, who he knows nothing about? If he gained control of a time machine (or had one as the preview suggests) wouldn't he go for someone like, I don't know, Attila the Hun? Or Dracula, now that would be cool.

It's like a plot from one of the terrible seasons of Sliders.

Time Trax was never that convoluted.

One and Two

I have here a copy of A Program In Physical Education For the Elementary Schools of the State of Tennessee (Revised), from 1962. It is a teacher's guide for P.E. class and contains grade by grade suggestions for various activities for the kiddies. It also has diagrams of some of said activities, such as these for the fifth grade:



I especially like the elephant walk, I don't imagine that they do most of these anymore. Ah, more innocent times.

Silly Canadians

Why them crazy Canucks, it seems that a Wal-Mart store in Quebec done went and unionized.

I hope they have alternate employment prospects, cause I would have to imagine that they are soon to be gone from Wal-Mart employment.

"I hope that (Wal-Mart) will accept the decision and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement," Lemieux said.

Right, they're going to bargain exactly like the Kroger here in Athens did when their employees decided to unionize, everyone is going to be out of a job (except the Kroger closed up shop, I'd imagine that Wal-Mart will just hire new people).

Though the fact that there are only 150 employees involved seems to suggest that the store isn't a supercenter, so I wouldn't put it past the possibility that they'd just close up shop and leave town.

Reagan 1986

Because no one demanded it, here are a few pictures from when the Gipper visited my hometown of Athens, TN in 1986. I was there. It was quite hot and crowded, and all I really remember (I was only 9 or so at the time) was sitting up on the brick windowsill of one of the downtown businesses and not really being able to see anything. I don't know if my Grandmother took these pictures or not, but they've been in the same flip album for as long as I can remember, and here are some of them:

Fear Factor

Soooo, just after the completion of the Democratic Convention when the polls are showing a boost to Kerry Edwards and the news channels are talking about the Democrats, suddenly we get a raising of the Terror Alert System, and, surprise of surprises it seems that it may be based on information from pre-9/11.

What, you mean that the administration might be using be using what is essentially a worthless alert system to get people talking about the terrorists and listening to W again, do you? They wouldn't do that, would they?

Seriously though, if they're basing this on something that they happened to find on a computer in a terrorist hideout, I hope they realize that most people leave quite a bit of old information on their computer nowdays, what with the big-ass hard drives we now have.

I especially like the little jab at the internet in the article, how the terrorists found some of this information through public internet sites (damn that internet, we need to clamp down on it).