"fight the real enemy"

If you are my age or older, you likely remember Sinead O'Connor appearing on SNL, singing Bob Marley's "War", and then ripping up a picture of the pope. And if you are like me, you might remember how she was denounced for being a liberal, anti-religious provacateur, and for pulling a cheap publicity stunt.

But do you remember what that was actually all about? Because I didn't, until I was reminded just now:

I’ve come to talk to O’Connor today to discuss what almost no one seems to remember: She tore up that picture of the pope to protest pedophilia in the Catholic Church and the complicity of the church hierarchy.

My thoughts on this are twofold: 1) you don't have to a be a paranoiac to see that insititutions--be they coporate, governmental, or religious--have a vested interest in manipulating the public narrative. And the larger, more powerful, and longer-lived those institutions are, the better they tend to be at doing this. 2) Sometimes the weirdos on the fringe have a point.

my humble celebration of free speech

I really want to participate in Boobquake, but can't for (what I hope are) obvious reasons.

I also am planning to participate in Everybody Draw Mohammed Day, even though I am by all accounts a lousy artist.

Then it occurred to me that perhaps I can make up for this by doing what lots of talentless artists do, and simply substitute crass audacity for genuine inspiration, AND participate in both events AT THE SAME TIME!

And so...



Please feel free to duplicate, augment, disseminate, etc., as it suits you.

"i guess it matters...we're not punk anymore"

Trey and Matt are my heroes.

i wanna play too (first random 5 tracks)

Unlike RW, I won't commit to doing this every week, but I thought it would be fun to do it at least once.

Also, mostly because it's easier since the iPod I have is the small kind without any display, I'm doing this from my iTunes library on my laptop, which consists of everything I've bothered to rip from my CDs (about 40% of what I actually have, biased against all the classical and jazz because I prefer to listen to those uncompressed) and everything I bought/stole/was given in digital format in the first place (basically all the music I've acquired since about 2005 or so.) So this is a random subset of a not-quite-random subset.

Anyway...feel free to use RW's grading scale to mock me in the comments.

Head Down - Soundgarden

Alt lys er svunnet hen - Dimmu...

Aerobicide - Julie Ruin

The Fragile - Nine Inch Nails

In 3's - The Beastie Boys