Emo Conservatives

Now playing: Daft Punk - Robot Rock / Oh Yeah
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Oh, National Review, what won't you make up a "liberals destroyed it" myth about?

I'm sure we're all familiar with the "War On Christmas," where "every" retail store "forbade" its employees saying "Merry Christmas" to customers out of a desire to "Discriminate" against "Christianity". Most of the examples of stores I've heard this myth about are Wal-Marts, and anyone who thinks Wal-Mart gives a rat's rotting corpse about anything other than cash is retarded. When I first heard of this, I worked at Best Buy. That year, we had gift cards with a Christmas tree on, as well as one with a menorah. The two years after that, I worked at Borders, where we had no shortage of Christmassy, and even Jesusy items for the season. At no point was anyone, to my knowledge, told to say any specific holiday greeting to anyone else, or refrain from saying a specific holiday greeting. I have never bought the utter horseshit idea of a "war on" any particular holiday. It certainly didn't help that it is notorious liar Bill O'Reilly's pet project from late October to whenever he gets tired of hearing himself talk.

Today, on Valentine's Day, the bastion of conservative circle-jerkery known as the National Review Online had a column on how awful Valentine's commercials are. I happen to agree with them, mainly because most of them are sexist and based on an ancient and irrelevent way of thinking. NRO, however, claim the problem is the same as the "commercialization of Christmas and the candy-fication of Easter". Okay, I don't like the commercialisation of Christmas either, mainly because I like to think of that holiday as one of family togetherness and sharing what we have in common. Easter is something I haven't celebrated in some years, so I don't care so much.

But then, the NRO went on to say that Valentine's has been reduced to "mail-order seduction by a nation of salivating Caligulas?" The obvious meaning is that Valentine's Day, in the modern tradition a celebration of love, has lost its original meaning, and this has happened recently as a result of the loss of "traditional morals", meaning of course since "Leave It To Beaver" went off the air. This is yet another example of tories being desperate for a time that never existed and using holidays that never or only recently meant what they want them to mean.

Much like Christmas and Easter, Valentine's Day has its origins in a Roman festival. Lupercalia, yet another Roman fertility festival, was celebrated between the equivalent of February 13-15 and was abolished by Pope Gelasius I. According to Prof. Jack Oruch of the University of Kansas, no link between a saint named Valentinus (the alleged basis for "Saint" Valentine's Day) and a celebration of romantic love existed until the time of Geoffery Chaucer, when courtly love became popular. In short (too late), Valentine's Day and its historic predecessors have been, and always will be, about fuckin'. And really, I'm not sure why conservatives have a problem with that. Maybe they don't like what they find at every branch in their family tree.

(Fuckin'.)

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Now playing: Daft Punk - Face To Face / Short Circuit
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Free association - I need to write more goddammit

Now playing: Rob Zombie - Living Dead Girl (D.O.S.E. Mix)
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I haven't updated in much longer than I'd like, and I figure the next few days would be perfect to remedy that. Tomorrow I don't have class because my prof has a family thing. He also won't be there on Friday. Meanwhile, due to Liz having a doctor's appointment in Indy on Thursday, I won't be in class THAT day. So I had two days of class followed by a three-day weekend followed by one (possibly more) day of work. I feel like I shouldn't be wearing a shirt and have stains of all sorts on what clothing I do wear.

I'm officially desperate for a new electric guitar now. I keep finding all these awesome metal songs I want to learn to play and I feel like playing them acoustically sounds retarded. Plus, as digital and electronic as Rob Zombie's catalogue is, it would be asinine to play "Pussy Liquor" on a Grandpas Guitars. On the bright side, I remember how to play, and I remember several of the songs I knew when I was first learning. I have made it a point to forget all the Creed and Nickelback (one song each) I learnt because I am not a pompous no-talent wannabe.

As for newly discovered music that I recommend to anyone: Wolves in the Throne Room is great symphonic metal. I say symphonic because these songs could easily be considered symphonies on the quality, length, and intricacy contained. Rammstein is a band I heard of ten years ago and I thought they were pretty good, but I never really got into them because I was into generic rap and things one heard on the radio. Liz started flipping out about the song Spieluhr and then she found the linked video that reinterprets the (almost identical) story of the Doctor Who episode "The Empty Child". My fiancee, for the record, has excellent taste in most things - exceptions include Sex and the City and peanut butter sandwiches. Today I listened to a Foo Fighters concert recorded at Wembley Stadium in London, which was utterly fantastic and only confirmed my desire to see them play live. I add them to the list that includes Metallica, Flogging Molly, Ozzy, KT Tunstall (whole thing this time), Rage Against the Machine (before they break up again), Tom Morello (with or without a band), and anyone playing with Jimmy Page.

I hate people who tell other people what sport team they should support. I was recently yelled at by someone for wearing a Patriots hat. I wear the Pats hat (as well as Boston Red Sox hats) because I have a strong desire to move to Boston or at least the Massachusetts area, and I've always enjoyed watching both teams (Boston teams I do not support include the Celtics and Bruins, as well as any NCAA teams). I do not support IU, UK, ISU, USI, SIU, UE, PU, BSU, FU, FSU, FUAD, UCLA, St Louis, Chicago (any team), Cincinatti, etc, etc, etc because I do not enjoy watching them. The person who complained about my Patriots hat said I should support UK, at which point I had to mentally count to ten to prevent from slapping him for insulting me so badly. Really, life is bad enough telling people I am from Indiana. I would never seek to move down the evolutionary ladder via sports or anything else.

I've decided to start marking both the start and finish of my blog posts with what song I'm listening to at the time. There are several songs in between, but I think on the posts where I actually have something to say that would be horribly interruptive to the general flow and progression of my writing. After all, that is what I'm trying to do with my blog posts: become a better writer.

Obviously today was not a giant leap for writing-kind. I'm okay with it though, because it's some fucking content already.

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Now playing: Black Sabbath - The Sign Of The Southern Cross
via FoxyTunes

An edit! I nearly forgot - my friend Leah started a new jobs-related blog and twitter today. Check it out at http://leahsgotit.blogspot.com/ and http://www.twitter.com/leahsgotit.

Dr Gupta (CNND) and the economy

I'm really not confident in this administration anymore. I expected to lose confidence in the person I elected, of course, but I really wished I'd be able to watch the inauguration in peace first. So, gays: you're not a priority, we'd rather involve someone who hates gay people ... yet who claims he doesn't hate gay people, doesn't fear gay people, rather that gay people fear Christ (he said it. Yup, he did.) and ... you know, I'm not sure I can write about the things this guy has said. Having a functional brain and a severe lack of cognitive dissonance, I can't even begin to see where his line of thinking begins, let alone where it connects to other things. 

Not only that, but now Sanjay Gupta, a CNN doctor, is proposed to be the next Surgeon General of the United States. Based on his previous opinions (a glance at his Wikipædia article comes to mind) this makes me very nervous. I am guessing (uneducated guess though it may be) that now health care, which you would have to be a fucking crackhead to say "it's in great shape", is not a priority either. What's next, are we going to say "Fuck the economy" too? "Americans don't need to have jobs" sound like a good policy? Granted it sure seemed like we were going to hear it sometime soon during the auto bailout hearings, which lasted two to three weeks (as opposed to the bank/Wall St bailouts which lasted ONE).

This leads me to something I really just don't understand: If people are losing jobs the world over ... who is buying the things these people make? Who is paying the people who still have jobs? Seriously, if the economy is going south, why do I see people coming into my job at the mall and buying things? I suppose, sure, if people don't keep buying things regardless of the state of the economy (Which is FAKE anyway) then the economy will get even worse(er) than it is. But isn't that just horrendously cyclical? It feels like we ought to be able to just start producing, people will start buying with all the money they're making producing all that stuff they're producing, which in turn will create MORE jobs, ad infinitum. 

Granted, I know fuck-all about economics, but that's where I am.