annnnndddddd.....
I'm going to check in really quick. For those of you who haven't given up yet, who keep clicking on this shit every day hoping for some brand new mind-blowing insight (all negative three of you), I just wanted to let you know that for my part I will be back in the middle of July. I'm getting married in two weeks (!), and am contemplating a move so things are extremely up in the air.
However I will be back with a vengeance when that is over, whether on this blog or in another form. I'm working on what tack to take and it depends, to some extent, on what the headspace of the other contributors are.
Until then I just wanted to say that when i was driving back from Toronto my MP3 player ran out of batteries. I found Ryan Seacrest's top 40 on the radio and decided to educate myself on what the "top" songs in the country were. I think I caught like 32-24 or something. Somewhere in that range was a new Nickelback song that I had (thankfully) avoided. It was called "If Today was Your Last Day". It is essentially just a series of cliches strung together in a typically boring Nickelback motif. However it struck a chord with me because Glass Animal and I were once in a band called "Ben Flash and His Boyish Good Looks". We wrote a song called "Everyman's Opus" which attempted to do the same thing, except as a joke.
It got me thinking if our central failure as a band was not to have pretended to be more serious. I mean there is no way Nickelback wrote those lyrics with a straight face, yet it is pulled off with such awful oomph, that I guess it struck a chord with a couple of 14 year olds. The thing is that was our target demographic... I just don't know where we went wrong.
Anyway, I'm seriously considering suing them for the co-opting of our idea. It may be the my in roads in to blogging full time.
I'm working on including a copy of Everyman's Opus, when I do I will post it here. It looks like I may have to use pod-casting software, which is OK because I want to do that anyway.
WORD
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Ohio
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/us/31border.html
I'll go out on a limb and say this is the most outrageous news story I've read this year, at least from within American borders.
Can anybody tell me how it makes legal sense for a couple of Mexican guys making $4-500/wk selling drugs in Ohio (to a "ready customer") to end up with a 16 year sentence in a cage for fucking MANSLAUGHTER? Other than "something has got to be done" and "[putting these men in jail is] ... like sweeping sunshine off the roof" (real quote), I'm not seeing any legal OR practical justification. I suppose the feds have succeeded in sending a non-existent message to an incredibly violent and profitable industry that these "killers" have basically nothing to do with. I'm guessing the drug cartels aren't exactly trembling with fear.
At least we've ruined the life of the guy answering the phones in order to feed his family!
Hypothetical: If Henry buys a gun from an illegal dealer, and then Henry shoots someone in the head, is the guy who pulled the trigger somehow not responsible for the death? OH WAIT, BUT WHAT IF HENRY IS A REALLY NICE PERSON AND THE DEALER IS MEXICAN? CAN'T WE HAVE A SWITCHEROO?? LULZZZ :P
Too bad the dead guy's mother isn't a Mexican, because they could charge her with manslaughter for giving her son money to buy the drugs. If only.
(Final note, if we had a sensible health insurance system in this country, the "victim" would still be alive. So...can we charge Richard Nixon as an accomplice?)
Mm
I'll go out on a limb and say this is the most outrageous news story I've read this year, at least from within American borders.
Can anybody tell me how it makes legal sense for a couple of Mexican guys making $4-500/wk selling drugs in Ohio (to a "ready customer") to end up with a 16 year sentence in a cage for fucking MANSLAUGHTER? Other than "something has got to be done" and "[putting these men in jail is] ... like sweeping sunshine off the roof" (real quote), I'm not seeing any legal OR practical justification. I suppose the feds have succeeded in sending a non-existent message to an incredibly violent and profitable industry that these "killers" have basically nothing to do with. I'm guessing the drug cartels aren't exactly trembling with fear.
At least we've ruined the life of the guy answering the phones in order to feed his family!
Hypothetical: If Henry buys a gun from an illegal dealer, and then Henry shoots someone in the head, is the guy who pulled the trigger somehow not responsible for the death? OH WAIT, BUT WHAT IF HENRY IS A REALLY NICE PERSON AND THE DEALER IS MEXICAN? CAN'T WE HAVE A SWITCHEROO?? LULZZZ :P
Too bad the dead guy's mother isn't a Mexican, because they could charge her with manslaughter for giving her son money to buy the drugs. If only.
(Final note, if we had a sensible health insurance system in this country, the "victim" would still be alive. So...can we charge Richard Nixon as an accomplice?)
Mm
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Pyroclast
for Craig Arnold
A poet makes the news
for wandering off, gone
missing in search of
poems on volcanoes.
Somewhere among the cinder
cones or perhaps the calderas,
rescuers remain convinced
that you did not burn
in a lava lake, or dome,
but met heavy vegetation
or a steep ravine on your
way down. Beneath rock
magma pools as crustal plates
converge. Are you here, where
the new earth cools? Did you
melt with the mantel plumes?
Or are you ash, floating above
a ring of fire? From the photo
you took yourself in mud
they follow your footprint
and a viscous hope: that
you are yet made flesh,
not disappeared like mollusks
from a thousand empty shells.
for Craig Arnold
A poet makes the news
for wandering off, gone
missing in search of
poems on volcanoes.
Somewhere among the cinder
cones or perhaps the calderas,
rescuers remain convinced
that you did not burn
in a lava lake, or dome,
but met heavy vegetation
or a steep ravine on your
way down. Beneath rock
magma pools as crustal plates
converge. Are you here, where
the new earth cools? Did you
melt with the mantel plumes?
Or are you ash, floating above
a ring of fire? From the photo
you took yourself in mud
they follow your footprint
and a viscous hope: that
you are yet made flesh,
not disappeared like mollusks
from a thousand empty shells.
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