Ringtones Of A Tweenage Girl

So every few months when I see my niece, she gets a hold of my phone and changes all of the settings. Which sometimes I’m cool with, other times a little less so. Sometimes she picks a background that works better than the one I had, something that I can actually read the display without stopping and holding the phone up to my face and squinting to make out the time. (The zebra picture worked out really well for me, for example. The two tweenage girls making faces at the camera, a little harder to read, on the other hand).

Now, as any uncle would be, I think, I was amused when she changed my ringtone to a song by her favourite artist, “Our Song” by Taylor Swift, and so I left it on.

Now, before I go any further, I feel like I should explain something about myself. When I first moved to New Mexico in the early 90’s, a friend of mine once observed “I don’t get how you’re from Detroit, but you play country music on your guitar”. I guess he was expecting something a little more along the lines of KISS’s Detroit, Rock City, or something. But the point is, that when I lived in the city, I listened to a lot of southern rock, blues, bluegrass, and country music.

Not that I wasn’t around hard rock when I lived in the city, it just didn’t seem to resonate with me as much at the time. I used to take my acoustic guitar over and sit in during rehearsals with my buddies’ Ann Arbor thrash band, just to play along. (In fact, they considered me a blues guitarist, and when my buddy would get behind on his rent, his landlord would insist that I plug in to his Ampeg, and I’d sit in on all night long jam sessions, but I’m pretty sure that’s a whole nother story of its own). I played bass in a pretty good metal band for a while. But when it came to guitar, I ended up playing in a Southern Rock band while I lived in Detroit.

Now, I’ve had a lot of folks at various points in my life expose me to different music, for instance, the thrash and heavy metal influences of my Ann Arbor buddies, was re-introduced when I moved to Socorro, NM (where my landlord, again, considered me a blues guitarist, and turned me on to Slayer, Sepultara, Pantera), and finally the too many to list heavy metal influences I ran into living in Albuquerque.

And, that’s kind of where this little diversion rejoins the original thesis of the story. Most of the folks I worked with as a stage hand, the only band I played in while I lived in New Mexico, were into metal. From the perspective of the folks I knew, Albuquerque was a metal town, (although that’s also where I developed a love for Ranchera music, but again, another story).

So when I’m working onstage with all of my heavily tattoo’ed and heavily pierced work mates, and a Taylor Swift song busts out on my cell phone, well, it was a matter of time before I finally changed it.

Of course, I just saw my niece not too long ago, so Taylor Swift is back on my phone’s ringtone. Truth is, now I have one more reason to smile when the phone rings. \m/Yeah, Taylor!\m/ You ROCK! haha.

Cho’s English Teacher

/meh

Watchin’ Dave Chappelle all weekend didn’t prepare me for this crazy bitch’s “nigger”-word fest. This is the writings of a highly acclaimed poet and English Teacher at a highly respected college, Virginia Tech. Apparently this teacher was so freaked out by the Virginia Tech student who went on and killed 32 students, that she had him removed from her class. They say they should’ve known by his writing that he was a potential homicidal nutcase.

This is the writing of his English Teacher. Thank god she’s not a conservative talk radio host, huh?

The True Import Of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro (For Peppe, Who Will Ultimately Judge Our Efforts)
by Nikki Giovanni
Nigger
Can you kill
Can you kill
Can a nigger kill
Can a nigger kill a honkie
Can a nigger kill the Man
Can you kill nigger
Huh? nigger can you
kill
Do you know how to draw blood
Can you poison
Can you stab-a-Jew
Can you kill huh? nigger
Can you kill
Can you run a protestant down with your
‘68 El Dorado
(that’s all they’re good for anyway)
Can you kill
Can you piss on a blond head
Can you cut it off
Can you kill
A nigger can die
We ain’t got to prove we can die
We got to prove we can kill
They sent us to kill
Japan and Africa
We policed europe
Can you kill
Can you kill a white man
Can you kill the nigger
in you
Can you make your nigger mind
die
Can you kill your nigger mind
And free your black hands to
strangle
Can you kill
Can a nigger kill
Can you shoot straight and
Fire for good measure
Can you splatter their brains in the street
Can you kill them
Can you lure them to bed to kill them
We kill in Viet Nam
for them
We kill for UN & NATO & SEATO & US
And everywhere for all alphabet but
BLACK
Can we learn to kill WHITE for BLACK
Learn to kill niggers
Learn to be Black men

I’m kinda sick of the anti-white sentiment in this country, myself.

Been Readin’ Some Depressing Shit Lately

It’d be nice if I could find stuff to read that doesn’t piss me off once in a while.

I Still Think About 9/11

9/11/01 was my one year anniversary at a job I had. While my co-workers were gathered together watching CNN on the tv in the conference room, I sat at my desk and watched over and over again the videos of people jumping out of the towers.

Looking back on that day, I also think it may mark a period in my life where I became more engaged online than with people in real life. I had more involved discussions online with people in the Nederlands, than I did with any people I knew in real life, about what it all meant for the future.

I was watching some of those videos again over this past weekend. I won’t link to them for now. They’re easy enough to find if you look. One thing I didn’t realise is how hard conspiracy theorists worked to convince themselves that, well, I have no idea what they’re trying to prove. And I don’t care. Their bizarre video detective skills have nothing to do with the images burned in my mind of those people’s last seconds alive as they fell to their deaths.

I haven’t forgotten, at least, not yet.

SMCSWFL Old Media, New Media – Thoughts

One advantage of setting up the database I used to keep track of clients and sales at a job I had, is that after I had moved on, I had access to the data. It wasn’t until I was working on my resume that I thought, “wouldn’t it be cool to know just how much money I was bringing in?”. And so I queried it, and being happy with the number, added that little snippet to my resume.

But what if I had done that while I was still working there, I wonder? Would have I got to thinking that I deserved a raise, or that I should’ve been getting a bigger cut? It’s possible. But my job would’ve been the same, either way. I was quite happy knowing that my boss got a great deal, and that the majority of the customers got what they wanted. (We all know, there’s just no pleasin’ some folks.)

The reason I use wordpress is that it has statistics. It’s a motivating factor that I know occasionally a couple people read what is basically a personal journal. But I’m not monetizing this blog. The ROI of this blog is that I feel like I have a couple occasional readers somewhere. So I’m clearly no expert on any of this.

But the thought comes to me, actually through my pops, who still has life lessons that I need to learn. “You’re here to serve.” I’m very much into free stuff, and I’m also very much into people turnin’ a buck where a buck’s to be turned. Measuring metrics of social media, in my opinion serves a motivational purpose. But trying to assign numeric value, to me, seems a little like chasing the wind. Maybe folks who spend their lives finding ways to measure it have a better grasp, well, they’d better if they’re doing it as a business. To me, it comes back to that simple little phrase, “you’re here to serve”. Provide something of value. Or focus on sifting through marketing data to try to assign a number to the value you’re providing. In my non-professional opinion, your time is better spent on providing, rather than measuring, the value.

That’ll be two cents, please.

The Uppity Side Of Naples – A Local Pub

So I stopped in a local pub for the first time since I’ve been in town, planning on a quick beer. Since this isn’t a real bike friendly area, there was nowhere to lock up a bike, so I tucked it and my backpack out of sight behind the bushes surrounding the unoccupied patio.

When I came out, I saw my bike had been propped up against the building in the parking lot, in clear view of any one walking by and from the road.

So here’s the thing. I was sitting right there in the bar, if they had simply asked me to move my bike, no problem. Even though where I left my bike was in direct sunlight on a hot day where there were absolutely no people on the unoccupied patio, I’m fine with moving my bike if it’s a problem. But, rather than ask me, they simply moved my bike to somewhere where in most non-tourist towns, it would likely have been stolen if I had been inside for a half hour or more.

It was flagrant disrespect. Same to you.

Where’s Your Mind At?

As I’ve explored all of my various interests, I realised, that in my search for a purpose, I’ve become so distracted by various concerns, that maybe I need to step back for a minute, and really come up with an answer to that question.

W’aaah…

Pardon me for thinking Congress is acting like a spoiled child who broke an expensive toy, and is now crying to Daddy to buy them a pony.

Wasn’t the housing crisis caused by the government getting people into houses they couldn’t afford? Now they want to get people into insurance plans they can’t afford? Is Congress in the business of writing sequels to catastrophes now?

Uncle Hobart

I wouldn’t know where to begin explaining why I called him Uncle Hobart, since he wasn’t my uncle, exactly. As a way of getting started, let’s just say that I was tight with a family, and so like everybody else, I called him Uncle Hobart.

People tell me that I was the only one who could work with Uncle Hobart. He had a reputation of running helpers off. I’m not going to gloss it over, Hobart was a cantankerous son of a bitch to work with, but we got along okay. He yelled a lot, he cussed a lot, he got mad if things weren’t just so, and sometimes he’d get mad even if everything was just so. Every now and then, he’d sheepishly say “I misspoke”, which was humorous, coming from him.

He drove up from Ohio every day, and was the first one on the job, every day. He was the very definition of a hard drivin’ man. He’d have a cooler full of that orange well water that’d give me the shits, but when you’re busting ass in the hot sun, a drink of water’s a drink of water. He loved to talk about his farm, his tractors, women, and bluegrass music.

I’d love to flesh out the story more, but the fact is, I’ve always been convinced that part of why me and Hobart got along so well, where no one else did, is that we shared a love of music. I was probably a tolerable helper. I got to where he had everything he needed before he had to ask for it, but it was the times sittin’ in the truck on the way to a job or to get lunch, we’d pop in a cassette and listen to bluegrass that kept him from running me off.

Understand Unions draft-addendum

It’s interesting to me, that the same union that has been implicated in assault on a private citizen, also worked closely with the President early this year, in framing what would become the current Health Reform Bill. These are the people we will trust our lives and well-being with. How does it come about that what started out as a janitor’s union would have such a stake in health care? The health care workers unions that were absorbed by the SEIU seem to have a large stake in this plan. But what really strikes me, is that public sector jobs are less affected by things like recessions than those caught in the private sector. One group consumes taxes, the other pays taxes. How is it that the tax consumers seem to have such a disproportionately large say in what gets put in a bill that affects the larger group of tax paying private citizens?

That the people framing this bill would call on the unions to “hit back” at the concerned citizens who feel their voice is not being heard is troubling. The back room dealers seem to feel threatened by the ones who will pay most for the deals being struck. I think that should be a major concern to anyone who believes in a representative government.