So, someplace passed a law saying a business has the right to refuse service, and the usual oppressed folks are out to get you to trip on your words so they can condemn you.
There’s a business I know of that does pole dance fitness instruction. When the lessons start, the policy is the men have to leave. I am totally understanding of this policy, and don’t find it offensive at all. But, well, some folks need the world to revolve around them, I guess.
Haven’t been getting much guitar playing since discovering this guy. Went and saw him last night. There’s no way a youtube video will ever capture seeing him play live.
I was at a 24 hour MacDonald’s yesterday, waiting in line before some guys who were having some kind of trouble paying for their food and getting the heck out of the way. The cashier looked, I don’t know what the right word is, patient but also like she just wished the guys would get their shit together. So, it wasn’t a long line, just a slow one. So I had time to people watch. The place was crowded. Mostly young working age Hispanics, (like the gentlemen who couldn’t seem to process their transaction in line in front of me), and Hispanic families with young kids, a few working class whites and blacks, who mostly seemed familiar with each other, giving hugs and handshakes greeting each other with affection. It was a Mickey-Ds, so I suppose you could expect it appeared to be a microcosm of low income America. The demographics appeared to be older whites and blacks, and younger hispanics, just the kind of people politicians like to say they’re out to help. I had a sense that they didn’t feel like they were being helped.
One white woman took out her phone and took a picture of the hispanic guy with the baggy pants that was among the transaction-challenged then went and sat back down, (kind of smugly, I thought). That struck me as odd, as did the people who came in, and seemingly to know the cashier were reaching across the counter to hug her.
The Hispanics kept to themselves, it seemed, and the whites and blacks seemed very closely bonded. This led me to two lines of thought: Hispanic immigrants, (be they illegal or not, I think it’s relatively safe to assume that many of them are), still have a strong familial bond, whereas white and black America seems to have sort of let family become secondary to the pursuit of individual pursuits, and this seemed reflected in what I was perceiving in that restaurant, with younger Hispanics and their children running all over the place, and older, (and to be honest largely beaten-down looking), whites and blacks. Whether they were childless or not, the latter group’s children weren’t with them, if they had any. Or perhaps their children were grown.
The other line of thought that occurs to me, is that there is economic harm being done to low income Americans by not enforcing immigration law. It is largely based on language. I’ve worked on several Hispanic crews as the only English-only speaker, and it puts a non-Spanish speaker at an economic disadvantage.
All this from a too long observation at a 24 hour McDonalds. Call it racism or xenophobia, or jingoism, or any other word you can use, but I’m just writing down my observations, perceptions, and interpretations.
I like guitar work on this, but I’m afraid the vocals take a little away from it. Didn’t really put much thought into the lyrics until after listening to it a few hundred times. I didn’t mean it to sound suicidal, just first lyric I came up with that rhymed with envelope.
Mostly just guitar. (A lot better, I think).
Just listened to Halestorm’s Mz. Hyde followed by Pretty Reckless’s song Way Down Below. Good music, but being a bit older, I wonder, what does the conservative movement have to compete with the Sex Drugs And Rock and Roll culture that puts money in people’s pockets? Seems like all’s you have to do is write music that promotes decadence or bashes Christianity, and you’re going to have doors opened to you in that line of business. People connect with the music. They’re being sold a dream. Haven’t seen anything that conservatives have put forth that remotely competes.
This thought came to me last year while listening to Black Sabbath’s song War Pigs. Where would modern pop culture be without religious imagery? No Black Sabbath, no AC/DC. These bands owe their success to religious imagery.
There’s a lot to be totally pissed off about in the world, if you let it get to you. There must be some things that you control in your life. The amount of things that piss you off, or the amount of time you spend dwelling on them must be a couple of ’em. Don’t let it get to you to the point where it poisons your soul. I’d guess you won’t be able to attract positive, constructive people, if all’s they see of you is constant screeching about the things that piss you off. There is more to you. There’s probably a part of you that remembers being happier. Re-connect with the things that made you happier, before letting people who probably aren’t all that concerned with you see you as someone who is perpetually unhappy. Some of those people might find an interest in you, if they saw more of the happier side of you.
Just a little self-reflection, but I see it in a lot of other people, too, and realise there’s a lot of people who seem to be in that boat.
I’m a less concerned with the presence of illegal aliens in the country than politicians and activists pandering to them. Same with every issue you can think of.
Most days start with “anniversary of” type stories. (anniversary of STS-107 crash, Chris Kyle’s death, etc)
If someone well known dies, there’ll be a bunch of that. (actor from hunger games dies of heroin overdose)
And all of the sub-genres that spin off of any high profile death. (drug legalisation)
Then off to the sort of long trending stories that never get better or worse, are sort of just the run of the mill “we’re still thinking about this, but don’t plan to do anything about it” (Doctor tries to leave Aetna because they’ve changed the contract under obamacare, they say she’s still contractually obligated for another year)
Then the entertainment/sports stories. (super bowl)
Motor City Mongrel 