A Message to the Red States

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/07/blue_state_to_reds/

Reach out and sneer: Dem radicals speak to the Red States

By New Democrat Outreach Program

Published Sunday 7th November 2004 12:30 GMT

The defeated Kerry may have called for unity last week, but already radical elements inside and outside of the Democrat party are arguing for the abandonment of the old ways of cosy consensus. One such organisation, formed even as the last queues for the ballots ebbed away, styles itself "The New Democrat Outreach Program." The Register has been contacted by one NDOP activist, styling himself Commandante Camembert, with an early draft of the organisation's first communique to the nation. "We must," says Camembert, "learn to speak to all of the people. But we mustn't be afraid to sneer when we do it."

We think they've got that right already, although the "outreach" may need some work. Anway, here it is:

An open letter to the Red-State victors:

With hard work and superb organization, you have triumphed over John Kerry and the forces of Blue-state paternalism. Congratulations. The multinational corporations that hold you in bondage remain free to profit off your sweat nearly tax free, while their overpaid senior execs continue to pay a pittance in personal income tax.

Your primary and secondary schools will continue to turn out third-rate pupils with limited opportunities, while you enjoy the satisfaction of making it on your own without health care when a catastrophic illness bankrupts your family.

Your agricultural universities will continue issuing Ph.D.s in football, and bogus Protestant Evangelical and Fundamentalist theology, and how to jerk off a bull safely. Your children will learn to borrow enough money to erect chicken houses so that they, like you, can take custody -- not possession, but custody -- of Tyson's chicks, feed them, rear them, assume losses from those that fail to thrive, and in the end earn just enough money to service their endless debt, and realize a profit of perhaps $12K a year. Your bank thanks you; Tyson thanks you; George W. Bush thanks you; and I thank you.

A Message to the Red States

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/07/blue_state_to_reds/

Reach out and sneer: Dem radicals speak to the Red States

By New Democrat Outreach Program

Published Sunday 7th November 2004 12:30 GMT

The defeated Kerry may have called for unity last week, but already radical elements inside and outside of the Democrat party are arguing for the abandonment of the old ways of cosy consensus. One such organisation, formed even as the last queues for the ballots ebbed away, styles itself "The New Democrat Outreach Program." The Register has been contacted by one NDOP activist, styling himself Commandante Camembert, with an early draft of the organisation's first communique to the nation. "We must," says Camembert, "learn to speak to all of the people. But we mustn't be afraid to sneer when we do it."

We think they've got that right already, although the "outreach" may need some work. Anway, here it is:

An open letter to the Red-State victors:

With hard work and superb organization, you have triumphed over John Kerry and the forces of Blue-state paternalism. Congratulations. The multinational corporations that hold you in bondage remain free to profit off your sweat nearly tax free, while their overpaid senior execs continue to pay a pittance in personal income tax.

Your primary and secondary schools will continue to turn out third-rate pupils with limited opportunities, while you enjoy the satisfaction of making it on your own without health care when a catastrophic illness bankrupts your family.

Your agricultural universities will continue issuing Ph.D.s in football, and bogus Protestant Evangelical and Fundamentalist theology, and how to jerk off a bull safely. Your children will learn to borrow enough money to erect chicken houses so that they, like you, can take custody -- not possession, but custody -- of Tyson's chicks, feed them, rear them, assume losses from those that fail to thrive, and in the end earn just enough money to service their endless debt, and realize a profit of perhaps $12K a year. Your bank thanks you; Tyson thanks you; George W. Bush thanks you; and I thank you.

evidence of voter fraud

• More than 4,500 North Carolina votes lost due to voting machine overload
• Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio
• Adolf Hitler was elected in a general election, too

evidence of voter fraud

• More than 4,500 North Carolina votes lost due to voting machine overload
• Glitch gave Bush extra votes in Ohio
• Adolf Hitler was elected in a general election, too

a thought

i understand why "art music" exists. i understand absurdity, dadism, the need for a composer to express himself. i understand the contributions that esoteric music has made to the mainstream, and i have composed my share of avant garde pieces to explore this facet of musical creation.

but when i listen to your five minute atonal composition consisting of a
grand total of seven different sounds, don't tell me that the reason i don't like
it is because

i don't get you

if it's not hard, then it's not art. if you didn't slave over it, then it's just a byproduct of your quest for musical expression

but fortunately for you, THAT doesn't mean SHIT

Moving...

So I have sucessfully moved my web presence over to a new hosting provider. I'm totally stoked about this, and so far things are going well. Over the next few days, i hope to move all the email services from the old machine to the new one. I'm moving from OS X to debian, so there may be some issues along the way...we'll see...

death to spammers

awhile back i had to turn off comments for my weblogs, as i was receiving that oh-so-familiar viagra and penis enhancement spam in my comments. i've recently installed a plugin by James Seng which should allow me to turn them back on. it makes use of the CAPTCHA technique for detecting spambots.

i'm giving it a quick try on this message, and if it seems to work out, i'll be turning it on for good.

UPDATE: DAMN! it's been so long since i used comments, i forgot how i had never fixed the colors or whatnot. It also seems the plugin is having an error, i'm going to hack away and see if i can get it to work.

UPDATE: sweeeeeeet......

the game of life

it's incredibly unusual for me to post this many times in a week, much less twice in a day, but...

when i added that emblem at the top, i got thinking about how i had never written a game of life program. this is one of those standard things all computer science students do at one point or another, but since i didn't want to do things the standard way and had to drop my CS major, I never did.

so, anyways, check it out....

the weblog formerly known as...

so, although i did take some pleasure in my chosen title for this weblog, being the simpsons fanatic that i am, i decided that it sounds too much like some angsty goth kid's page of lamentations.

bubblehouse is relatively meaningless, except being the name of a mmw tune that i like a lot. i also figure it's good to have the title be connected with the domain name.

so i leave you with the following...

Homer: What's wrong with you?  What are you trying to hide from me...
       [Homer opens the door and sniffs]  What's that smell?  Onions...
       chili powder... cumin... juicy ground chuck?  It's chili!  Oh, my
       god, I'm missing the chili cook-off!  [whining, fidgeting] I'm
       missing the cook-off, it's going on right now, and I'm missing 
       it.

Marge: All right, I was trying to keep it from you, but I had a good
       reason.  Every time you go to that cook-off you get drunk as a
       poet on payday.

Marge asks him to remember last year.  In a flashback, we see an
obviously drunk Homer, a Duff in each hand, standing in the cotton-
candy machine.  "Look at me...I'm a puffy pink cloud." he mumbles,
before he climbs out of the machine and lies on the ground, where dogs
lick at him.

Back to the present.  Homer is shuffling around in the closet.

Homer: Well of course, everything looks bad if you remember it.  Now
       where are my chili boots?

the privacy monsters

i really don't like it when i have to fill out a form to download something. it doesn't matter what the site asks for, or how much i want what they have to offer; i just don't like being forced to fill out a form before i check their stuff out.

however, as a webmaster/musician, there comes a time when you'd like to see who it is that is really paying attention to your work.

i've set up my mp3s so that when you download them, you're taken to a page where you can optionally fill out some information about yourself. it's kind of like a less obnoxious version of a guestbook.

oh, and this is for my use only. it's not going to be publicly posted, since things like that have a pretty large capacity for abuse. and if you do in fact want to leave your email address, you have my word that it won't be resold or anything like that.

so, if you would like to take the time to fill the form out, that'd be great, but if you have the same issues about them that i do, i understand. anyways, thanks for your time.

mastering issues...

it's funny...i read an article last night about how people new to mastering tend to over-do the bass end when mastering, typically putting too much boost on the super-low frequencies, and not the low frequencies that our ears hear the most of.

well, anyone who's downloaded a copy of Atmospheres, be careful listening to it at higher volumes, especially if you have any bass bost on already. i nearly blew out the speakers in my car when i first tried to listen to it. ;-)

anyways, i hope to have a newly mastered version of it up in a day or two...

UPDATE: man, i never did that, did i? oh well...

a confession...

sometimes i go back and change dates of blog entries to make it look like i update my site more frequently than i do. the last three entries were all written on the same day.

<sigh>...that feels better...

workin' for the man...

i had the beginnings of the interview process today with american express financial advisors. i'm rather torn over what to think about it, because it's not the kind of job i ever imagined myself doing. it's basically very much like a medical residency; you don't get paid shit to start, but if you get through the first two-to-three years, you'll be making around 100k.

i'm not concerned about the money. it's very exciting to think about making that much, but the part that kills me is that they told us straight out, "plan on working 60-65 hours a week for the first two years."

i really don't like working, and i especially don't like working 10 hours a day, six days a week. furthermore, doing so will make it very difficult to work on my music, or even look for another job. i feel like i should take it just because i need a job so bad, but i just don't think it's going to happen.

this is a career-type position, and it's set-up with the idea that it's only worth going through all the bullshit at first if you're going to continue in the industry. i really don't want to do this, because that means my career path will have to change from wanting to be in I.T., to being a financial advisor.

and shit, who really works 60 hours a week anyways? i did that at american music for six weeks and it nearly killed me. granted, you're making overtime, but sheeeit....

<sigh...>

getting the fuck outta dodge

sometimes, i admire vagrants. syracuse seems to have quite a lot of them downtown. i guess i don't think of this place as being that big, even though i guess it is. the truth is, nobody wants to be homeless, or otherwise forced to panhandle. but the prospect of only having one thing "to worry about" is alluring, at least in theory.

i've known various types of vagrants. there's the most obvious kind, aka the bums. but there's a few other variants, such as the lot trash that show up at every jamband concert, squatters in more metropolitan areas, or a more positive kind...maybe i'd call them hobos. the kind of person who drops everything and just decides to wander the earth ("like cain in kung-fu").

i find the idea enticing, especially since i really feel like i'm only a few steps above hobodom myself, what with the unemployment and all. of course, i'd want to wander like that only if i had a big enough fund so i could not have to worry about eating and stuff.

but then again, i guess that's the difference between hobo and traveler.

to blog or not to blog...

...that isn't really a question, since it's obvious what was my decision. i'm not sure if blogging is really for me, but i figure i'll give it a try...

i tried LiveJournal for awhile, but i just didn't like it. maybe it's because i couldn't think of anything to put it in. i figure running my own will let my customize it and maybe do some cool things. i'm not even sure what to focus on; probably music will be my focus, since that's about all i care about. maybe occasional posts about other things i'm thinking. we'll see...

one thing i don't want is some stupid blog where i talk about shit that no one would ever want to read, which may be unavoidable.

i really hate the word 'blog.'