Rule by.....

OK, in retrospect, the song should be called "Plutocracy in the USA," since plutocracy is rule by the wealthy, whereas oligarchy means "government by the few, esp. for corrupt and selfish purposes." Not to say that those are necessarily mutually exclusive designations.... But plutocracy always makes me think of "rule by animorphic Disney characters."

Kapitalist Handbag

Searching for "Kapitalist" online, I thought I'd find many bands with that name, but apparently there are more named Chaotika. However, we might need a rule about any name that already has a dance club with its own handbag:

Then again, the name "Kapitalist Handbag" has some song title potential. Do you think the Beatles, or Metallica, or Beatallica came up with song titles first, then lyrics, then music?

Found an interesting trend searching for "Kapitalist Handbag" which lead me to "Capitalist Handbag". Seeing only 1,560 search results on google, I thought pluralising "handbag" would bring the search down to more Google Whacking potential. However, the search for "Capitalist Handbags" led to 31,100 results. This confirms the fact that capitalists like things in plural, because they can afford more handbags.

I am going to have to admit right now that I am more musical than lyrical. Without knowing what process Hetfield/Hammett or Lennon/McCartney used, I think of the music first, or at the same time. So, here is an intro:

  Middle Class Burden

F#5    F#5/E    F#5    F#5/E   F#5    F#5/E    F#5   

It's    not    my     fault    that    everything's

B/F#  A/E

so    easy

F#5    F#5/E    F#5    F#5/E   F#5    F#5/E    F#5   

--middle  class   and   white  it's   considered

A/E

a crime!

F#5    F#5/E    F#5    F#5/E   F#5    F#5/E    F#5   

My    burden  is    explaining  how  I got  what I

B/F#  A/E

needed --every-

F#5    F#5/E    F#5    F#5/E   F#5    F#5/E    F#5   

job    every     loan    every    thing   every

A/E

time...

(C) 2004

It looks more complicated than it is, more reflecting a lazy left-hand style with thumb (lifts for E, Hendrix style) and no more than 3 strings at once, but not all power chords (5). I think the next verse would be based on the subdominant (B), same riff.

This stuff is hard to write when listening to bachata and cumbia, but maybe that will enhance its style.

--gh

Oh..and I think a good name for a conservative punk band might be "Kapitalist."

-m

4-TRACKING SOFTWARE..

So..I was lamenting the fact that we hadn't taken advantage of geography and formed our con-punk band while we were in Maryville. But then I realized that this is probably the whole reason the "Information Superhighway" was created. So for instance, there is this. So I think we should collaborate on an album...

At the very least, Fairly Crass (perhaps featuring Shaken Moneymaker Syndrome and Los Haddocks del Norte) should finally, finally, finally, finish an album. Or at least a song.

-m

LYRICS..

OK, for the first verse, the part that goes:

I am an anti-christ
I am an anarchist,
Don’t know what I want
But I know how to get it.
I wanna destroy the passer by
’cos I wanna be anarchy,


...how about this:

I am a fan of Christ
I am a man of Christ
I know what I want
and I know how to get it.
I wanna destroy the middle class
'cos I wanna be oligarchy


It needs work..

-m

Reedin' and Punkin'

Lessee. . . . I'm currently slowly working my way through the 700-page Pushcart Prize anthology from last year - it's an annual compilation of the best stuff printed by small presses (fiction, non-fiction, and poetry). Well worth the time; some of it is crud, but there's a lot of good stuff, as well as some pretentious "I'm in a writer's workshop and so surely everyone wants to read about my sexual frustrations" sorts of pieces. Overall quality level is very high, though, and pretension quotient is very low. I'm also starting Matt Rohrer's new book of poetry (whose name escapes me right now) - Matt is a good friend of mine from high school and was the best man in our wedding. I tried reading "I, Claudius" by Robert Graves (a fictionalized "autobiography" of the stuttering Roman emperor) earlier in the summer, but sort of got bogged down. I think that may be more of a depth-of-winter project rather than a lazy-hazy-crazy-days-of-summer project. Lisa and I are still working our way through an out-loud--before-bedtime-reading of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix." Finally, I'm working my way through Eric Schlosser's (who also wrote "Fast Food Nation", which I highly recommend) "Reefer Madness", which explores the underground economy - illegal migrant farmworkers, the drug trade, and I can't remember what else. That's my sitting-in-the-tub-and-back-of-toilet reading. If I actually focused on a single book, I might actually finish one of them some day.

In other news, Ninja-master Rumsfeld can be found here.


If we ever do actually form our capitalist punk band, we could do a remake of the Sex Pistol's song, entitled "Oligarchy in the USA." I'm still working out the lyrics, but if anybody has some suggestions for verses that could fit into the song structure of "Anarchy in the UK", let's hear 'em.

IIIIIIIIII.....wanna beeeeeeeee....oligarchyyyy...get rich, destroy! Ahhahahaha!!!!

Finally, I'll leave you with this story, since I don't know what to make of it....

Bennett signing in

So, yeah. Various things -- hotmail is, in fact, teh suck. However, the invitation I got was expired so, even without the suck, I couldn't join. 'Cept that now I did. So, yeah.

Pyro would be awesome. And backstage (backblog?) Betties.

As far as lists go, do books that we're supposed to be reading count? Cuz I have loads of those.

The Devil In The White City

Can we exchange which books we are reading this summer? If you have 500-hours of forest hiking duty, you can exempt yourself from this game.

Currently, I am consumed by The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson (writes for Atlantic Monthly). I know it is a year old, but this is the Midwest, and well, you know...

This is the kind of book I would read even without the serial killer story woven in. I also learned a lot more about Frederick Law Olmstead, whose later life was not that dreamy.

I really want to know what k-dubya (S's dagaare name, I think) is reading.
--gh

MORE STUFF..

So Bennet isn't online yet, because he has Hotmail (everyone point and laugh!). I'll let him figure it out (hint: it involves not having Hotmail, which sucks, for numerous reasons).

Perhaps we should get us one of those counter/tracker things..

And some links.

And some pyrotechnics.

-m

Blog, bloggishness, blogosity, blogorama, blogesque

Hello all,
Just checking to see if this works. By the way, I opted to change my name from the rather pedestrian "S" to the more interesting "Kabiebayo", which is the Dagaare name that the folks in Lisa's village gave me when I visited Ghana - it means "travels and sees." It's a shortened form of a Dagaare proverb that says, basically, that it is only when one travels that one realizes just how little one knows of the world.

ALL SET..

OK. Invitations have been sent to:

Steve
Rawkstah
LyleDeanBurgher

Anyone else that should be included? Abbei teh Cat? Henry Rollins? Francis?

-m

Tornado Warning for Gage County

Mark is now an admin, you can invite folks and change things. I want Rawkstah's "Dad"...

It's amazing that I am sitting under a beautiful blue sky, slightly humid, and warm enough to almost welcome summer -- and yet we are in a tornado watch. Looks like Gage had an actual warning...

I still think they messed up when naming those alerts "watch" and "warning." It is the equivalent of the common call when a foul ball is hit: "Heads UP!" --which actually means "duck!" Since "watch" only means that conditions are favorable, it makes "warning" seem that nothing is really imminent. In fact, "Tornado Imminent" sounds more threatening than "warning." And now a warning can be made because doplar radar "thinks" it sees tornadic activity, increasing the frequency of warnings, making people less cautious than they should be.

Any suggestions for a better system? We can forward them to the National Weather Service, (NWS).

From NWS: 

* AT 1247 PM CDT... RADAR INDICATED A 

SEVERE STORM WITH A POSSIBLE TORNADO. 

THE MOST DANGEROUS PART OF THE STORM 

WAS LOCATED 8 MILES SOUTHWEST OF ADAMS... 

OR ABOUT 10 MILES NORTHEAST OF BEATRICE... 

MOVING EAST AT 25 MPH.

When Van Halen recorded "Jump" in 1984, I was so MAD. Now it is playing on the local classic rock station... elderly and stuff.

RAISON D'ETRE..

Is it time to invite blog-commenting all-stars yet?

-m

BETTER

OK. That fixed that.

I say we keep our previous blogging styles. For instance, my titles look like this:

RONALD WHO?

-m

see if this works.

-rawkstah's friend

usernames

Now there is something else that I have to figure out, I was not expecting the username "mark", I just would have thought it would attach to your regular blogger account.

Maybe I should invite Terra to see what the email looks like... Terra? No wait, that really is a nom-de-whatever, since, surprise, I am the actual author for her page...
--gh

K.

K. I'm here. Just spent 3 days up in the mountains, attempting to start to core trees. It snowed on us. At this point, I feel I must reiterate the immortal words of one of the best professors I ever had, Ken Gerow:

"This [ecology] ain't rocket science; this is complicated!"

I probably shant (where does the apostrophe go in that contraction?? "shan't?" "sha'nt?" "sh'a'nt?") be posting often, for the next month or so, as I will be dodging bears and mountain lions, braving the snow, trudging up impossible inclines, etc., all in the name of science.

-m

As if there weren't enough diversionz on the net...

This is the second coming of StaircaseWit, I've been meaning to write a book about that.
--gh