Okay, so I’ve been posting everything of substance on here over on myspace and have also been taking my longer forum posts from places like Whitechapel and using them in other places. Thus, I’ve been giving people easy (well, lazy is more accurate) access to all my writings. That ends now. Yes, you’ll still be able to see most of what I write on the myspace page, but from now on, only this main site will have the entirety of my ramblings. I’ll likely start adding a banner or hyperlink into all my posts everywhere else so that people can come here and see more, but now the burden is on them to make the trek over here. I hope that’ll bump my traffic up a little.
Sep
16
My previous post has already gotten some legs over on my myspace page. Go look at the comments.
Sep
16
I tried to let this go, but it keeps kicking at the back of my brain. About a week ago, a friend of mine posted an article and gave it as the reason he would be voting for John McCain in November. He even went so far as to say that seeing this forced him to vote for the Arizona senator. Apparently, the quotes from Barack Obama scared him so much that simply not voting was no longer an option, and now he must cast a vote for a candidate he hates so as to cancel out a vote for Obama. Well, I don’t want to argue his choice for president or his personal view of politics per se, but this article being the tipping of the scales for him is something I’ve gotta address, because I feel using it as such does him a disservice. Why? Because using this particular article as the basis for such a decision is dumb, plain and simple.
… Y’know, I was almost forced to reveal my friend’s name, which I’ve withheld because I don’t want anyone getting on his case, because none of the links he had worked… Fortunately, I managed to find the article he’s citing in its entirety in the one place on Google that lists it, the writer’s blog. And here it is. Go read it first, I’ll wait… *waiting*… Done? Good, let’s continue. I would immediately worry given the handful of pieces I decided to read plus the introductory essay on the fourteenth amendment that leads into a fiction book she wrote that claims that due process will be gone by two thousand fifty six… Well, she was off by about fifty five years on that prediction, unable to notice what was clear as day to the rest of us, so this should be fun.
First off, what the fuck is brandnewz.com doing with a five year old political correspondent? What in the world could this person possibly have to say about the subject of politics? “McCain is a poopy-head because he doesn’t know how many houses he has!”? There is only one reason you would send a five year old to cover a speech for you, because you’re an exploitative motherfucker who knows that nobody, even if cold-hearted enough, is stupid enough to shun a child in front of a camera crew.
This shows us our first major flaw: the writer of the article has suffered enough brain damage in her lifetime to take what a man says to a five year old as his end-all statement on a topic. I know that brain damage must have been involved because I felt an embolism rupture in my mind as I read it. This person has made the argument that this must be what Obama’s views are, despite volumes of other statements and proposition papers and the like that state otherwise. And despite popular belief, one can be in support of socializing aspects of our system without being a socialist, just like someone can believe in gun rights and tax abolishment without being a libertarian. The ugly truth that most people don’t want to admit is that very few people line up with any particular party’s exact doctrine because we all believe in varied things. So sorry folks, I’ve got sad news for you. Obama’s biggest crime here is talking down to a little girl. And it ain’t much of one because, well, that’s what you have to do.
Hmm, I’ll bet for the sake of wanting to “win the argument” you don’t agree with that last statement.
You could try to bullshit me and say “I talk to kids like I do to adults because they deserve respect!” but let’s be serious; you, me and everyone who has ever, ever, ever answered a “serious” question from a five year old has done so in “kiddie talk” because it is a language they’ll understand. We do this because children lack the mental capacity to take “Well Billy, as a socialist pig, I have the audacity to think that every single person should pay an equal percentage of their earnings into the system so that we can afford to give crackhead mothers who prostitute their children millions of dollars while asking absolutely nothing in return which will destroy the middle class (which is proven because they don’t have a middle class in outright socialist fag-commie societies) because I am evil and magic apparently exists, muhahahahaha!” and fit it into their worldview, which consists of “I wanna watch Spongebob!”
Are you insulted? Are you gonna be the one to set me right by proclaiming, “You’re under-estimating our tots!”? Fine, show me one… ONE… example of a child seriously being even remotely interested in politics without some adult’s hand up their ass like a goddamn puppet and I will change my tune. Just one. Hell, I’ll up the ante. Show me that bright-eyed little girl in Poughkeepsie who wants to know why socialized medicine is evil and corporate medicine is just dandy while her parents stand in the background scratching their heads going “I don’t know where she gets it, we just wanted her to watch the Spongebob.” and I will vote for John McCain. Here’s why it won’t happen: because kids don’t care until you make them care and the real bitch of that is they don’t know why they should care, only that mommy and daddy seem to care and that’s good enough for them because they have no frame of reference.
We talk to children like children because that’s what they are. I make baby talk at my friend’s baby because he “talks” back when I do it. I’ll give the long, drawn-out version to adults, because they can actually handle it. If you seriously used her suggested explanations, you’re more than likely to get a “huh?” out of the kid or at most an unreliable response. The simple fact of the matter being that little children have not developed the cognitive ability necessary to understand a broad spectrum of political ethos’ and make a decision based on their own feelings about what’s best for them… They just wanna watch the Spongebob.
This alone was enough to convince me that my friend had taken a wrong turn. Look, I don’t care if you disagree with a person’s policies, but at least disagree with their actual policies on their own merit, because this shit is silly. Of course, then I also eyeballed the article a little more and I found something to really be pissed about: the fact that the article isn’t really about socialism but about any and all income tax-based systems of government. This of course includes the one that my friend so fervently wants to defend from socialism, ours. It’s always funny when people cry out about the greatness of this land when they don’t want something to change in a way they don’t approve of then turn right around and try to push their changes on the rest of us, claiming this country needs fixing.
Look at her explanations she would give for socialism. Then look at how she has managed to lump socialism in with collectivism. This is not a woman who is against using tax money to set up a system by which people get government mandated medical care. This is a woman who is completely against the idea of income taxes in the first place. So at the end of the day, this isn’t about Obama, but our entire system of government with Obama just an unlucky target in the proverbial sights. By this logic, my friend should be just as opposed to John McCain, being the income tax lover that he is, as anyone because either candidate will support the “real” enemy here. I managed to confirm this digging through her blog and reading up on her support of people like Ron Paul. People who want to abolish income taxes outright and rely only on consumption taxes and the like. This system, like any, has plenty of problems. I personally support the idea of a flat income tax no matter how much you make, but I recognize the problems inherent there, too.
So the bottom line is that my friend, who I consider a smart guy, has decided to use a shitty article that isn’t about what it claims to be about to push his decision. Like I said, dumb. I feel he would have been better served just stating that he feels Obama’s economic policies are unsound, or flat out admitting that he is opposed to our current system of government and stop hiding behind buzz words like “socialism”. Hell, I’d even accept the equally dumb, but at least funny “I think Sarah Palin is hot and I think if we give her four years under the public eye, we’ll at least get a couple of tabloid panty shots out of it.”
Sep
12
Two Quick Reviews of Things I’ve Never Reviewed Before
Justin | 
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09 12th, 2008| 
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Justin | Uncategorized | 09 12th, 2008| Comments Off on Two Quick Reviews of Things I’ve Never Reviewed BeforeThose two things being an album and a restaurant.
First, I’d like to take a moment to talk about Metallica’s new album, Death Magnetic. Maybe I should wait a few weeks for the album to settle in and for those songs that tend to grow on you to work their magic, but what the heck, might as well see what my jerky knee has to say about it.
My immediate reaction to this outing so far is “Hey, this sounds a bit like old-school Metallica.” Granted, it’s cleaner, and there are plenty of examples of the band’s growth in there, but there is a definite hearkening back to the old days of the group. There’s even an instrumental track, Suicide & Redemption, just like there was on the …And Justice for All album. I’m sure this will please many people. Many are the fan who dropped off after The Black Album, claiming that Metallica had sold out or many other claims that I find ridiculous. This new collection of songs should go a long way towards winning back those folks.
I have a dirty confession to make here, and it’s this: back when Load originally came out, I was one of those people who stopped liking Metallica because they had cut their hair and refused to just keeping repeating themselves over and over ad infinitum just to please people like me, the jerks. What can I say, I was sixteen at the time and prone to be a drone. But something magical happened; I grew the fuck up. Not about everything (that will ever be an on-going process), but about figuring stuff out for myself instead of shaping my reality to fit those of my peers. And by the time Reload had a few singles on the waves, I had gotten over myself and given it and Load serious listens. And surprise surprise, they were really good. As were all the albums that followed. Metallica had become to metal what Scorsese is to film: this total bad-ass that comes along every couple years and shows all the assholes out there how it’s done, regardless of what they’re doing. Hell, look at Saint Anger, an album unlike any other Metallica release, but it completely blew away anything else released within it’s timeframe with its speed/thrash focus and raw power.
That said, if you’re like me and happened to be fond of the newer Metallica works, you will probably still like this album very much. Why? Because I have yet to meet the person who says that new Metallica is great while old Metallica sucks. Yes, there are people who prefer the new stuff, but my point still stands: you cannot go wrong with Metallica, no matter what era.
So my instant favorites are the first single, The Day That Never Comes, the third installment of The Unforgiven and the track Broken, Beat & Scarred. But again, we’ll see how I feel in a few weeks time once I’m used to everything.
One final note and I’m done. There is not a single song on this disc that clocks in at less than five minutes, with seven out of ten passing the seven minute mark. That right there is a lot of metal, motherfucker.
Knee-jerk grade: B+, only because I get the feeling that the main reason the album sounds the way it does is because they want to win back those people who are still mentally stuck in the eighties.
Okay, that review took longer than I planned so let’s see if I can keep this one to less than eight pages…
I usually wouldn’t review a restaurant, because I’m really easy-going when it comes to food. I don’t notice ninety-five percent of it because I mainly eat for fuel, not enjoyment. However, if something is absolutely fabulous or complete garbage I will take note. There is also the case of that prompted me to write this: the place with food that is over-priced.
Up until recently at 7450 W. Cheyenne Ave, Suite 108 there was a restaurant called Joey’s Only Seafood that I was fond of because they had generous portions of fish and chips at a very decent price, but no more. Sadly, they must have been bought out or had some other tragedy befall them, because now the location is occupied by a restaurant called Sato that has an Asian bent to it.
I decided to give it a try and order dinner to go for my grandmother and myself. She wanted the shrimp and fries with a full-size greek salad to save for the next day’s lunch while I opted for the grilled herb chicken breast. It was clear once I’d gotten home that something was terribly amiss. The salad was about the size of one of those Wendy’s ninety-nine cent menu house salads and had almost none of the ingredients promised on the menu (I only now realize that this is because what they had given me was supposed to come with my meal and they had simply forgotten her salad altogether), and the main courses were puny given their prices. The shrimp consisted of eight medium sized shrimp and a handful of french fries for thirteen dollars while my solitary chicken breast, with its swallows-worth of miso soup, cost seventeen. So we called to complain about the salad, and the lady apologized, offering to replace it with a larger salad that was made to specification. When I went to pick up the replacement, she slipped me five dollars and apologized again. I think that’s a classy move, considering we didn’t make it seem like we wanted any sort of refund.
Overall, I thought the chicken tasted great despite there not being much of it and my grandma said the shrimp did little for her while the fries seemed like they’d been sitting under a heat lamp. Either way, we didn’t feel like we got our money’s worth, especially considering the large number of restaurants in my area with better priced menus.
So maybe if they change their prices (they’re a new business, so maybe they just need time to adjust), I’ll give them a better rating than the C- they’re getting now.
Well, not necessarily a short review either, but that’s how I roll, baby.
And with that, I’m off to the weekly Drink and Draw meeting.
Sep
11
Since I’m sitting here typing already, I want to let you know of the sad passing of Necrophiliac’s Hearse, a local band I was doing some artwork for. The part that makes me extra sad about their demise is that I now don’t have to finish the artwork and won’t be getting paid… This is real bad because the money would have paid most of my major bills for the month. So now I have to hurry up and figure out something else before I end up deep in the hole…
Anybody need some artwork done? Maybe some large-format prints?