Ramble Blog

Not sure if I missed the original boat on this, but click on the picture above to watch Eminem’s video for “Mosh”. My opinion of him changes from year to year, album to album, but he does always seem to figure out some way to push everybody’s buttons and for the most part that can be a good thing. If nothing else, the video/song is a pretty interesting listen. Lyrics can be found here.

I’d provide more commentary, but it pretty much speaks for itself, plus I’m at work and can’t really take the time to crank it up. I had something else to say, but it’s slipped by now… oh well.

Ahhh, there it is… The most important piece of information for your mind today. In order to not go crazy, you can’t let spam mail bother you. Instead you must receive it with open arms. Today’s best headline in my spam box:

“Hungry Mheotr Backd00r 0wnage”

I love it…

Is he not the shit???

Yes, I was indeed wrong, Boston did not win 8-3…. Such a disappointment. With that early lead, I was sure that I was going to be right. In fact, St. Louis should be disappointed that I wasn’t right. How can you not even score? Boston spanked you!!! Boston won 8 playoff games in a row… Boston rules!

Wait… hold on… 8 games in a row… score was 3-0… ah-ha… there’s an 8 and a 3… I was close, my brain waves were just mixing the signals that they picked up… oh well, go Boston! May you lose to the Cubs next year.

Next!

In other news… Kris Kringle has a brother named Kevin. Kevin has a website with this crappy flash game that makes no logical sense. Please play it and let me know that you failed too… I finally got up to 2400 points, but the power meter makes no sense. Thank you.

and more…

“Won’t he stop already?”

What, would you rather have a bunch of little posts?

Whatever, don’t lie.

So less than a week left before the election, shweet… Can’t wait for the new president to take office. Anyhow, because I accidently requested Tuesday off of work, I’m going to play the part of a political junkie and glue myself to 3 television sets and a couple computers throughout tuesday and until the decision is final. Hence, there is a good chance that a lot of blog postage will be created. And.. woah, where did that come from… hey, look guys:

RambleWords – Election 2004

Yes, it’s true, a seperate blog specifically for election day, just to avoid an overload of nonsense at this one. We may love nonsense, but you don’t want to much of a good thing…

I’m not going to be around to post that when it happens tonight, so I figured I’d get it out of the way and be the first one… If I’m wrong you can all laugh at me, but I’m not wrong, so move along…

Prediction: Boston 8, St. Louis 3

How crazy is it that Boston almost loses to the Yankees and then turns around and wins 8 playoff games in a row…. that’s unheard of. I love it.

The legendary John Peel has passed away. He was a true fan, student, and supporter of music. Those of you who have had a chance to listen to your favorite band perform a Peel Sessions set know that it was something special. Music will miss him.

[bbc article]

Man, only 9.5 hours later and I’m already breaking the promise…

Ok, in slight defense of Ashlee, you’re right, it’s not her fault.

But.

This has all been more of a reaction to the Ashlee Simpson Machine, which Ashlee herself may not even understand that she’s a part of.

1) Yes, some people lipsync. It still doesn’t mean that it’s ok to do. If you’re a singer, that’s your job. You should figure out how to sing. The only excuse I’m slightly comfortable with is that of the dancing variety. Britney and Janet have extensive dance routines and are more of a stage act. To me, being out of breath is a somewhat better excuse.

2) A tiny bit better than Jessica in attitude. But Jessica has a quality voice. Her songs are still lacking true emotion, but she has a quality voice.

3) Jeez, you had to pick one of the worst seasons. But I’m still going with Real World Chicago. The Ashlee show just didn’t draw me in after watching it a couple times. Believe me, I’ve given up on MTV playing music by now, it just ain’t going to happen anymore.

4) Without actresses like Ashlee, good music would be better. Record companies would have to spend more time finding artists that they can work with long term. Artists that can make honest music would become more successful, encouraging more good music. Don’t forget what the Beatles and Nirvana were able to do for their respective and future musical generations. The artistic community challenges itself and the artistic community responds. Example, the Beatles write Rubber Soul, Brian Wilson is amazed, writes Pet Sounds. Paul and John listen to Pet Sounds, are amazed, immediately write Sgt. Pepper. Only a matter of a couple years and music was expanded indefinitely.

Crap, I have to go to work. But yeah, I agree, it’s not Ashlee’s fault, she’s doing what she has to do. It’s the systems fault. But, if we accept the system so easily, it will just get worse.

All of this talk about (Cr)ashlee “Burn” Simpson has made me slightly nauseous. It’s time to make up for that and turn things around with a brief low-down on a few rockin’ girls. Pictures and descriptions go clockwise from top-left.

Shirley Manson

She’s Garbage. Well, actually she and a few geeky producers are Garbage, but she’s the one that everybody knows. She sings, doesn’t lip-synch, writes her own lyrics, and rocks. As far as albums go, Version 2.0 is my favorite, the self-titled debut Garbage is second, and the “ehh, it was okay” Beautiful Garbage rounds it out. It’s rock, it’s got some pop, and she’s Irish. How can you go wrong?

Liz Phair

Indie rock is cool. Liz Phair is cool. Combine the two and you’ve got yourself a bowl full of cool. Until her latest album, which wasn’t so cool, but besides that, it’s all good. Start yourself off with whitechocolatespacegg and once you listen to “Polyester Bride” a couple times, there’s no turning back. You can then go back to the beginning with Exile in Guyville, a sonically rough and lyrically harsh but rocking album. After that, head to Whip-Smart to close it out.

PJ Harvey

Ok, I’ll admit it ahead of time. I own 3 PJ Harvey albums and haven’t had the time to ever listen closely to all except one. So, instead of pretending to review them, I’ll just state the facts.

• PJ Harvey is supercool
• Her real name is Polly
• She can play (well) guitar, drums, violin, cello, and sax (among others).

So without pretending I’m an expert, I can tell you that the newest album, Uh Huh Her, kicks serious ass. Advanced warning, it’s definitely not polished in a poppy way, very raw, but very good. The other two that I own but cannot really comment on are To Bring You My Love and Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. While I can’t claim to know that much about them, both are critically acclaimed, both are more produced for the average palate, and I’m betting they be good. Either way, check out PJ’s website for her full discography and the other 6 albums I’ve missed out on so far.

Norah Jones

Hmmm, the one I almost didn’t include on the list. I figured that it would be good to have an artist who is recognized as more main stream pop but still completely credible at the same time. I may not enjoy all of her stuff, but she did win an armful of grammies for her major label debut, Come Away with Me. I remember when her first single, “Don’t Know Why” first came out. We were sitting and watching VH1 or MTV at 2am, and all of a sudden we here this jazz song start playing. It confused the hell out of us because Viacom and jazz don’t normally go together. However, her voice was amazing and I was completely drawn to the song. I ended up buying the album, listening to it a few times, enjoying it, but not really needing it, and then giving it to my mom. She still listens to it all the time. So yeah, not sure what point I was trying to get across, but if any impressionable minds are looking for a role-model, choose Norah Jones.

Not CrAsh.

Note: Unless she does something else really really really stupid. I promise that this is the last post directly related to Ashlee Simpson. I apologize for the space taken up recently, but it’s just too hilarious to ignore.

If you haven’t noticed, today was a big day for Ashlee. She rose to the top of internet searches everywhere, her performance on SNLbecoming possibly the most watched SNL moment ever. She tried her hand at the spin game, blaming everything from her band, to her voice, to her acid reflux disease, to her band, to communist bastards that blackmailed her into lip-synching. I think she and her dad and the record company got tired of trying to come up with new excuses, so instead they did the best thing for everyone: Booked her tomorrow morning on the Today Show. The schedule:

7:40am, Ashlee Simpson sits down with Katie Couric to discuss her Saturday Night Live performance.

This is the part where she either plays the victim or takes full blame. We’ll see.

In the meantime you have a few things to keep you entertained:

• Watch Ashlee’s first hoedown remix video.
• Write a letter to Geffen ["Universal Music Group"] to explain how they could devote more time promoting and developing true artists, not hacks.
• Search file sharing programs for the best new thing in music, Paris Hilton’s single, “Screwed“.

Once again, I apologize for wasting valuable blog space. I’ll make up for it in the next post on true female musicians.

I’ll keep this short because it’s significantly less important than the lameness posted below….

Ashlee Simpson has posted an open call to the internet community to help her delete all those videos… Oh, Ashley, you wouldn’t be talking about this video would you? What’s to be embarassed over? Oh yeah, the whole fake hack thing… ehhh, don’t let it get to you.

“I made it very plain, we will not have an all volunteer army……”

What was that? Oh, our Pres. is talking… Wait, what did he say? Hold on, he just got corrected:

“We will have an all volunteer army!”

And they say Kerry flip-flops. If you haven’t caught this magical campaign moment, check out iFilm’s clip with Jon Stewart commentary.

Sugoi!

Of course, there always is a real possibility of the draft being reinstated. If another catastrophic event were to occur, and we were forced to invade another country (see 2006′s war with Syria and Iran) that was threating to destroy our freedom, we may need to call on our proud pawns to help us overcome the evil baby-killers.

Did I saw pawns? Sorry, citizens. Anyhow, to prepare yourself for this experience, the people over at enjoythedraft.com have put together a morale booster.

disclaimer: Bush’s daughters are displayed for promotional purposes only. They will be spending their “Operation Nuclear Freedom” time on a Texas airbase, defending our soil from Iran’s invading troops on the Mexican border.

post disclaimer: That was not a dig at anybody currently stationed in the Texas National Guard or any other unit of the armed services. It was a dig at the aristocratic pecking order bound to exist in a draft situation.

• sympathy – sharing the feelings of others
• apathy – an absence of emotion or enthusiasm
• empathy – Identification with another’s situation, feelings and motives.
• telepathy - oops, wrong post……

Forewarning: This is not a Michael Moore love poem and at the same time not a hate letter, just an expression and opinion that I wasn’t going to be able to formulate until it was written down.

So I wrote it.

I used to be a big fan of Michael Moore’s. Of course, I didn’t really pay attention during most of his career and missed out until Stupid White men came along. Our relationship is only a couple years running.

I couldn’t put my finger on it, but after Bowling for Columbine came out, I started to get some weird vibes from him in general. Just the way that he handled everything was kind of weird. But again, I couldn’t place it. I just knew that I didn’t think he was as kick ass as I did before, but still knew that he was doing good work.

Last night I got around to watching Farenheit 9/11 (oh crap, was that a link to a free download?). All of my questions were finally answered and all my popcorn was finally burnt.

I got the impression from his voice/words/expressions during the movie that he didn’t really care. I mean, he cared, but there was nosympathy and his empathy was out of practice. His agenda didn’t seem in the right place and neither did his heart.

As I watched him talk to the lady who lost a son in Iraq, I could almost hear his mind grinding away, trying to figure out ways to have her spit out the next sound bite. He was covering “talking points” better than Bush with a “Rove Monitor“.

That’s what got to me. I thought the movie itself was good. It was emotional and powerful in many places. Moore just seems to have lost touch with the emotions that made it so easy in the past for a reader/viewer to connect with his work. Does that make sense to anyone else?