Bye Bye Mitt-bot 2008

The AP is reporting that Mitt-bot 2008 isn't buying any TV ads for Super Tuesday. In other words, he woke up, looked in the mirror, asked his biggest contributor for a donation was turned down cold.

Looks like the Republicans have decided.

And with the news coming out about Bill Clinton's foundation, and my dislike fo the Clinton haterz, I've pretty much decided as well.

However, all I care about in my dark, evil little heart is that Rush, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity and Hugh Hewitt are going to have to shill for a man they hate. How long until they start backtrackign and justifying their "change of heart" about McCain?

Why Five: Favorite Albums

Top Five Albums.
Wow. This is much harder for me than I thought it would be:

1) Beatles – Abbey Road. Some people swear by Sgt. Pepper’s, other people like the early pop albums, but me, this is the culmination of all of the work they did their entire career, the relentless pop work of the early stuff, the experimentation of everything from Revolver onwards. I love every song on this album.

2) Killing Joke - Extremities, Dirt & Various Repressed Emotions. No other song has hit me in the gut quite as hard as “Money Is Not Our God”, and they follow it up with “Age of Greed” and “The Beautiful Dead rapid fire afterwards. I like their early work, but this album made me a lfietime fan on the band and Jaz’s unique view of the world.

3) The Ramones - Hey Ho! Let's Go: The Anthology – Yeah, it’s a greatest hits collection, but the Ramones were a singles based band, not an album band, and this is a huge collection of their stuff showing that they were the band we needed. I have all of their albums, but when I want to listen to them, I pull this out and it works just as well as Rocket To Russia.

4) U2 – The Joshua Tree – Yeah, it was their big commercial hit, but it stands up to repeated listenings better than their other work, and each song still has impact. It took their punk roots and fused it with blues, country and gospel in a way that just makes the sound explode out fo the speakers.

5) Reverend Horton Heat - The Full Custom Gospel Sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat – Like most people sick to death of hair metal and pop, I was a customer of Sub Pop records in the early 90’s. I heard this band on a sampler, and it awakened my inner rockabilly fan. I quickly devoured all of their work, and I am still a huge fan, all because of this album. I can not listen to this album without getting a huge smile on my face.

Oddly enough, my favorite band, Rush, isn’t on the list. I was introduced to them through watching their concerts and mix tapes made by my college g/f, so I can’t really point to any album and say “That’s it. That’s my favorite.” I don’t think I can put a mix tape on as a favorite album, can I?

Dammit, I'm a punk

At lunch today, I went with a guy in his mid 20’s and another guy who is in his early 40’s, like me and we were talking about music. When we got to talking about punk, it was VERY hard for me to describe punk to them because they knew next to nothing about it, and I had trouble describing it.

Why?

Punk wasn’t just the music. Sure, there were punk bands (and if you bring up the Sex Pistols, I’ll beat you to death with my Doc Martins…they were no more a punk band than the Backstreet Boys were a grunge band), but there was so much more to it. It was about stripping rock music down to its bare essentials, getting rid of the whole idea of being “rock stars” and getting the consumerism out of rock music. It was about working class attitudes, individualized thinking and a healthy disdain and sarcasm about mainstream culture. A punk is happy to rub people's noses in realities they don't wish to acknowledge. It’s the music and attitude of the outcast, and while it is realistic, it’s also amazingly idealistic. Appearances, however, are diverse, not uniform: clothes do not make a Punk.

The Ramones are the most influential band, not because of their musical talent, but because they reminded people that ANYONE can pick up a guitar or a drum set and make music. You didn’t need the London Philharmonic Orchestra, know how to write an opera, charge $75 for a concert, or have a stage show that rivals a Broadway production. The Ramones reminded us songs could simply be about what we want to do and what we don’t want to do.

Myself, every so often, I need to get back to my inner punk, which is one of my goals this year, but my punk comes through writing. How about you?

Saturday Night Live, the first five years

Saturday Night Live, the first five years

I have started a new blog...no, not here on Agent of Change, but on my own website (as part of its restart). I will be watching the Original Five Yeas of Saturday Night Live and blogging about it, listing the bits and my opinions of them.

It just got it's first post where I go over the first episode of the series, and will get a new review every week. Come on over and give it a look:

http://www.solitairerose.com/snlblog.html

What I'm thinking about today

-The car is making a noise I don't like. I'm hoping it is because ti is 20 below and not because the brakes need work.

-I may actually get one of the big projects at work done today. Then the editing of it starts.

-So far this year I have put together a low budget movie pitch, been invited to write a TV pilot, have two web comic ideas that may see print by the summer and have a friend pushing me to start a podcast.

-I'm a typical American in that I don't believe I will ever get out of debt.

-I was a much bigger fan of the Psychadelic Furs than I thought.

-Am I the only one who thinks that Bill Clinton is giddy that he's back on the campaign trail? People have forgot that he was SUCH a fighter and they are shocked he's an attack dog...just like Edwards's wife.

-BTW, if Obama thinks he's getting attacked now and it's a bad thing, just wait until the right wing slime machine puts them in his sites.

-I should run for President if it can nab you a wife like Dennis Kuscinich's.

-All things considered, things are going decently. A few big setbacks in the last week, but not half as bad as last year.

Hydrox

Hydrox cookies were quietly discontinued a while ago. They were renamed "Droxies" a while back, but that didn't help falling sales, and the cookie is now gone. When I first encountered them, I thought they were a cheap, generic knockoff of Oreos, but they were the original and Oreos were the cheap knockoff.

Just goes to show, you can be the first with an idea, and still get your ass handed to you by someone stealing that idea.

Election Predictions

So…it’s finally time. After a seemingly endless campaign, we get the Iowa caucus. Having been to a caucus, to declare a “winner” is just damn silly. People don’t vote, no delegates are chosen, and the process is amazingly complex. But, they will declare winners tonight, so here are my predictions:

Democrats:

Clinton wins, Obama comes in 3rd and Edwards gets second and becomes the “big winner” in that the media hasn’t been paying attention to him for the last few months, and he’ll be interviewed everywhere. One of the lower polling candidates (Dodd, Biden, Richardson) will drop out of the race in the next three days.

Republicans

Huckabee wins and all everyone talks about is how Romney collapsed. Ron Paul gets a smaller number than expected and his followers claim the process is rigged. McCain comes in second, and Romney has his Howard Dean moment, limps along for a while and is gone in a few weeks, never to show up on the national stage again. Rudy is ignored by everyone, Thompson drops out within the next three to five days.

Last prediction? We know who the nominees are by the first week of February and everyone loses interest for the next six months.