another amazing speech from obama

best speech he’s given in quite some time.

oil!

i’ve been thinking much on the end of the world lately, or at least more so than usual. this isn’t due to the obvious reasons, but more to the collective unconscious and collective dreams of the world. before the movie ‘the dark knight,’ at least half of the trailers revolved around apocalyptic themes. and these were all big budget movies.

this bothered me, because i think that hollywood reflects the dreams of the world, and therefor, right now the world is dreaming of its extinction.

are people dreaming of this on purpose? i doubt it, but its definitely on the average person’s mind, and there is also a cynical part of me that believes people want the world to end soon, so they can be guilt free. i.e. if the world ends from an otherworldly presence (relgion, aliens, super-villains), then they will not feel responsible for the pollution and war-hawking we are all in fact responsible for. (even bikes have parts made of oil).

for example, christians have been hoping for the second coming of christ since the year 1000. but more recently, most non or a-religious people i know believe in the mayan prediction that the world will be over in 2012. i think this is bullshit and cowardly.

this all abstractly brings me to something i read today on david byrne’s excellent journal.
(davidbyrne. com/journal)

after reflecting on rising oil prices, and discussing the many things derived from oil, and their eventual inaccessibility, byrne concludes with this very nice statement, which made me slightly more optimistic about the future.
:

“This sounds depressing and ominous, but I sense that one’s quality of life is not actually tied to these goods, and is certainly not tied to the automobile and all the roads and services it’s demanded for almost a century…. In fact, after some very nasty times we could — if we don’t let our anger and pain get the better of us — emerge with a better quality of life than what we have now.
“

ah, thank you mr. byrne.

thanks filbert!

i’m listening to portland radio authority right now and hearing the new jam from criminally underrated portland band “mad orange fools.” its the demo and i feel lucky enough to have been giving a shout out right before hearing it. thank you danny pack! thank you filbert! thank you pra!!

p.s. check out m.o.f.’s myspace here

“meat is murder”

its strange, last night i had this dream where i was meeting someone’s parents in the midwest somewhere. i was in a really bad mood in the dream, largely because i felt people were normally ignorant and i think i was frustrated that people misinterpreted my views to be something negative.

(in fact, this probably stemmed from at my radio show, when i started talking about confrontations and why i think they’re healthy to have. further, i argued that they don’t have to, and in fact shouldn’t stem out of anger. this whole discussion ironically stemmed from my own anger at the massive lack of assertiveness i’ve seen around portland, or. the whole subject of confrontation stemmed out the topic of gentrification, but i’m losing track and i’m sure i’ll post on all these matters later).

so, in the dream i noticed the parents had some left over mcdonald’s wrappers, and like an elitist pig i told them that i think mcdonald’s symbolizes almost everything wrong with society, with us, and with the world. they were reluctant to listen to me, but since they were nice, they asked me why i thought this. i suddenly realized i was being unfairly angry at them, and tried say the following without sounding pompous (it was… quite a challenge. i never read all of those cool books about fast food, and also, i was dreaming and having trouble putting my thoughts together). anyway, it was something like this:

(point) the amount of rainforests they destroy through raising cows (this was my biggest concern and i went on about it for a while)

(point) the amount of pollution from transporting the meat across the country.

(point) the fact that they flavor their meats. (in this argument, i went a little overboard about how by eating artificially flavored burgers, and rarely eating real meat, kids were growing up without a sense of taste. due to this, our country eventually only craves junk and artificiality. its not enough to eat cheese, people have to eat chips flavored like cheese)

(point) the unbelievable unhealthy aspects of it, the fact that the corporation calls it a “meal” and people think of it as such (though i didn’t say the following in the dream, i’d like to right now state that if people considered mcdonald’s junk food and only went there every now and then to snack on a fry or fake chicken, it’d be largely less detrimental to us. it’d still be bad of course).

the dream went on for a while after that, and i’m not sure where it led us, but i’m sure it probably involved leaving the house and suddenly being in a different part of the world or something. you know how dreams are.

anyway, the strange thing about this dream was that i woke up, went online and first went to my favorite blog, 3 quarks daily. they had the following video on it (which wordpress isn’t letting me post for some reason. hmm, just follow this link instead).

anger!

ever been mad at bush before? did you stop being mad for a while due to the hope of an actual good president coming into office next year? well, if you’re like me, you’ll fall down in anger after reading this.

its an article from the bbc about bush’s newest mission to find bin laden. of course, he would wait until the end of his second term to actually do something productive about the day that gave him everything he wanted. (of course, capturing bin laden at this point wouldn’t even be that productive, considering the amounts of terrorists that have popped up in retaliation for our unjustified war and unconstitutional torture.)

early steve martin

why did it take me so long to recognize the brilliance that is early steve martin? is it because i associate him with queen latifa? anyway, i’m bummed i didn’t like him till now, and also that i couldn’t find the really funny cat joke on youtube, but here’s a couple i hope you all enjoy:

m audio

i just got new monitors. they are my first pair of ‘studio’ monitors and they are made by m-audio. though they’re not professional or whatever, they were much cheaper than the average monitor, and i just have to thank m audio once again for saving the day! i guess they are sort of like the wall-mart of recording equipment, except you don’t have to feel guilty about destroying america when you buy stuff from them.

anyway, this is my first post. you probably will never read it. but you can expect his blog to be about everything and nothing, and to probably only be active in strange spurts when i’m suddenly in the mood to share my thoughts with the world.