I'm going to riff a little about music (remember, this site was supposed to be about music), but before I do, I'll just point out a few articles posted today at Common Dreams:

At times I've had people ask me, in all ernestness, as if I had a disease or something, "Are you a socialist?" Heh...I like this article, Why Marx is the Man of the Moment. I may have to go read Das Kapital.

I've railed on Senator Clintonbagger for a while. Well, the article Hillary on the Right sums it up for me.

And Follow the Uranium puts the focus on all this Rove tomfoolery where it should be.

That's enough with the current events...now onto something a bit more trivial & self-centered. (Hooray Internet!)

Which reminds me, Red Stripe -great commercials, really mediocre beer.

OK...a moment in our lives that really sucks is that event that makes you understand that you care for someone a lot more than they care for you. Not that the other person wants you dead, but just that things aren't going the way you thought they were. You really knew this for a while, but that moment when you actually accept the fact that not only are you not even a buddy, but that when you're not initiating whatever interaction you have with someone...you're pretty much not on the other person's mind. Now for some, this happens once in a while. For others it seems to be a constant state of existence. {cough, cough}

I should be able to write songs about stuff like this, but for whatever reason, I can't. Well, I actually know the reason, but I don't have time for the therapy to deal with my emotional dysfunction. I've tried to put this stuff down on paper and the results are horrible...really horrible. I still give it a shot every once in a while, but so far no improvements.

In today's music there seems to be a lot of people in my boat who go ahead and write this crap anyway. I listen to stuff the kids are into and the music is lame and the lyrics are the most amazing pieces of drivel you'd ever want to hear. I mean, my stuff's supposed to be a joke. And the kids I work with think it's the deepest stuff, that really speaks to them. I think that explains a lot. If that's the stuff that speaks to them, then Whoa Nellie!

I know that sounds like I'm being an old codger. (You haven't heard music til you've heard Ray Conniff, you little bastard.) But there is a little new music that comes out that I like. Actually it's more like bands get lucky and do one song I like, but the rest of it is crap. And most of the bands I like that are still around tend to put out some pretty lame stuff, but I'm not talking about bands with a history of doing good work. They're allowed to go in weird directions. It's the bands that start off sucking and get run.

[Tangent Alert] Now, when you get someone who listens and digs bad songwriting then becomes a music critic you get a review like some of the one's I've gotten for Sapphic Delight. It was here that I was going to put a link to a 2-year-old review that I had just discovered a couple of weeks ago, but the domain has since expired...oh well. But the reviewer actually believed that every song was absolutely true and was even concerned that Trials & Tribulations actually happened to me. And don't get me started about the lesbian fetish I'm supposed to have...jeez. I love it when critics decide to write about a CD and don't read the press material. [Tangent over]

Back to swimming in Lake Me...So I can't write serious songs, and I haven't been in the frame of mind to write Whitee songs, so what you get is a CD that is taking more time to make than a Boston album. With Boston, they take 10 years to put out a new album and it sounds just like the last one. My next one is going to be totally different in terms of music. Doesn't mean it'll be better - just different.

It may be my reading material. To work with language, you need a lot of examples of good writing. These days I tend to read a lot of left-wing stuff...pretty tough to go romantic when you're up to your tits in books on bringing down The Man. So I guess the lesson to all this is....um...wear clean underwear...no, that's not it...

Write what you know. But if you turn it into music get ready for people to throw shit at you.