WAKE UP AMERICA!

WAKE UP AMERICA!

Goodnight and Go

Here's the new Imogen Heap video for "Goodnight and Go."

"Goodnight and Go" isn't my favorite song on "Speak for Yourself," but there's not a song on the album I don't like. The video presents a slightly different mix than what's on the album as well. Still, if you're unfamiliar with her music, "Goodnight and Go" is an okay place to start. It's got the ethereal harmonies, the subdued electronica beats, and the catchy melodic and lyrical phrasing that make her distinctive.

I just got her first album in the mail yesterday. I had to order it from Brazil because it's out of print. Apparently some guy in Brazil had 84 unopened copies. Yay Ebay!

Oh what a difference

a smile makes. I bought Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill" album when it came out, and I don't regret the purchase. The album is full of interesting musical and lyrical ideas. I hadn't known that she was a fan of Cole Porter, but her cameo in "De-Lovely" made that plain, and then it all made sense. Her lyrics (especially "Ironic") are very Porter-esque.

As much as I have admired Alanis for her lyrical and musical ability, I never really thought she had a great voice, or that she was very attractive. Her appearance in "De-lovely" put the former perception to rest; her appearance in the "Everything" video puts the latter to rest as well. At almost exactly 35 seconds into the video, after her hair is cut, and she is just beginning the second line of the chorus ("You see every part"), her face bursts into this radiant smile. The first time I saw it I was literally stunned. I mean stunned. I couldn't believe it. I have never seen a woman go from "who cares" to "Oh my GOD!" so quickly. I was filled with the emotional equivalent of "I want to the be the cause of that smile"

The whole video is just of her walking down a 2 lane road in the middle of what looks like a desert. People come in and out of the scene, but the camera stays out in front of her as she walks. Later in the video, the sky darkens and she's walking through a thunderstorm. Shortly thereafter, the light returns the sky. But through it all, she never stops walking. Her pace and forward movement are a constant throughout the video.

One gets the sense that the road is her life, and through it all (good times and bad), she kept walking. One has only to listen to "Jagged Little Pill" to know that Alanis has had her bitter moments. That album is filled with one bitterly disappointed and angry story after another (albeit told in a lyrically clever fashion).

On the surface, the song is about unconditional love (the unconditional love that her significant other shows for her). Unconditional love is not an idea I subscribe to, but I also don't usually enjoy a song on a purely surface level either. What I like about the song is the sense of profound enjoyment she takes in being fully understood an appreciated. ("And you've never met anyone, as everything as I am sometimes") That's a sentiment that I can personally get behind in a big way. It's very rare that I feel like someone really "gets" me. So this element really appeals to me. It's enhanced even more by the fact that the song itself is an expression of appreciation for her lover!

The constant movement in the video is something I respond to as well. I have an appreciation of images of undiminished progress, or intransigient forward motion. Pearl Jam has a song called Indifference which contains the following lyric: "I will hold the candle / til it burns up my arm / and I'll keep taking punches / til their will grows tired / I will stare the sun down /until my eyes go blind / and I won't change direction / and I won't change my mind." Mudvayne (the heaviest metal band I've ever loved) has an album cover that features a young boy standing in the midst of a violent tornado. The back cover features the same boy in exactly the same pose standing in bright sunlight. The storm has come and gone, but the boy is still there exactly as he was: constant, unaffected, undamaged. The band King's X has an album with an inner cover that features a vast desert expanse. The foreground focuses on the cobbled clay of a dried riverbed. In the midst of all this inhospitable emptiness, a single brilliantly colored dandelion is growing between the cobbles. Once again, the theme is the same: life succeding in the face of all obstacles.

The tone of "Everything" is generally very upbeat. Even though the song refers to some dark places, it refers to them in the sense of them being in the past and being over with. When Alanis does some vocal soloing at 3:00, it's a sound of unhurried and relaxed triumph. The victory isn't just about having found someone to appreciate her, it's also about achieving the self-confidence and maturity to be able to appreciate and enjoy that, and to trust in it without suspicion or self-doubt. It's very difficult for me to relate the Alanis of "Everything" to the Alanis of "Jagged Little Pill." My congratulations to her for having reached a place where she could write a song such as "Everything."

There's one other thing that this video has highlighted for me. My drastic emotional shock at seing her face transform from ho-hum to radiantly beautiful at 0:35 has got me thinking about my own capacity for smiling. Smiling has always come rather difficult for me; not because I'm not happy; it's just that, as Ice Scribe put it, a frown is my screensaver. It sounds strange to say that I'm going to practice smiling, but that's exactly what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to make it feel more natural, and automatize it as a normal part of my self-expression. I figure my outside needs to match my inside and all that. Besides, maybe some smart, geeky, Objectivist woman will have a reaction to my smile similar to that I had to Alanis'.

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Fun

Rube Goldberg machines have always fascinated me. Noodlefood has posted a link to a 13 minute video showing some really great machines.

Here it is.

Food for Thought

I was reading this article and came across this passage:

“Today, Iran’s army is one of the most powerful armies in the world and it
will powerfully defend the country’s political borders and the nation,”
Ahmadinejad said in a brief speech before troops and missiles took part in an
annual parade.
“It will cut off the hands of any aggressors and will make any
aggressor regret it,” he said.
Ahmadinejad took the salute of thousands of
army, navy and air force troops. Battle tanks were towed past on trucks, while
helicopters and Russian-built warplanes flew in formation overhead. Parachutists
sailed down from the sky.

Why is it that you see all these 2nd and 3rd word countries having political parades that show off their missles? Our parades show of girls in skimpy clothes, happy music, and silly floats! Every now and then there's an air show where the Navy Blue Angels perform, and some other military equipment is shown off; but these are not political occasions paraded through the streets. What kind of politician feels engrandeured by the presence of missles and tanks?

Just something to think about...

Anyone know...

Where I can find a T-Shirt with the Danish Cartoons on it? I'd like to have one with a caption something like "Freedom of Speech is more important than sensitivity."

An Interesting Short Story by Dan Simmons

... can be found here.

It deals with the topic of the ever-growing conflict with the Islamic world. It also touches on the topic of how to fight a war, which is a topic covered very well in John Lewis' Defensor Patriae. I credit this lecture with single-handedly cutting through all the propoganda on war I've been bombarded with my entire life.

If you don't know the moral purpose of war, or can't understand why the Geneva Convention and concepts such as a "compassionate war" are self-destructive to any nation, or if the idea dropping a nuclear weapon on an enemy nation first fills you with all sorts of moral trepidation, or if you belive in the concept of "innocent civilians" in an enemy country, you need to listen to this lecture.

--Hat Tip NoodleFood

Bausch & Lomb...

... has a pretty poor reputation right now. From what I had read in the press before yesterday, it seemed a virtual certainty that Renu had been linked with a fungal eye infection. According to this article the link is based on "reports" of 109 cases of Fusarium keratitis. The FDA has interviewed 30 of those patients, "However, of the 28 who wore soft contact lens, 26 reported using Bausch & Lomb’s ReNu brand contact lens solution or a generic type of solution also made by the Rochester, N.Y., company." I didn't spend a huge amount of time searching, but I couldn't really find a more detailed explanation than that. If someone has one, I'd be interested in reading it.

But about these reports, did they also report wearing a red shirt any time in the last 6 months? This is a very weak link. I'm not saying that we should ignore it, or even that Bausch & Lomb should have acted differently. However, there's not really much evidence of any link yet, so there's no reason to panic. I watched a girl in my class terrify herself into near hysteria because her eye started to itch, and she's "been using that brand in the news."

I have a buddy that works QA at B&L, so when I saw him last night I asked him about the whole affair. Apparently, he's been working very hard recently as the FDA has been investigating the QA process for the last 3 or 4 weeks. They're down to asking what kind of glue was used to put the box together. That doesn't sound to me like they've been able to find anything of any substance to link Renu to these fungal cases.

There is a valid reason to watch the story and to discontinue use of the product. B&L has acted very responsibly so far. But it is far from a certainty that B&L has anything to do with the problem. It's not even very probable at this point. From everything I know on the subject now, I doubt that B&L will be found to be actual source of the problem. Still, it's possible, and I'll be watching to find out if I'm right.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster Strikes Again!

http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/living/education/14331100.htm

A Song by Frou Frou

Here's a song by Frou Frou called "Breath In."

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Latest Favorite Song

Last month I heard "Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap for the first time. I bought her album "Speak for Yourself" and listened to it non-stop for weeks, interrupted only by another album by a band that Imogen Heap was a part of called "Frou Frou." "Hide and Seek" is not representative of Imogen Heap's music, generally. It is a semi-a-capella piece in which she feeds her singing voice through her synthesizer and is able to harmonize with herself in real time.

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Random

So that commercial came on tonight-- you know the one--the guy is pulling the girl out into the courtyard. He tells her how much he loves her, and that he thinks he could marry her again, with all these people as witnesses... "Yeah right," she says. Then her parents and friends reveal their faces, previously hidden behind newspapers. He says, "So will you marry me, again?"

Commercial fades with message: "Buy Diamonds!"

So it got me thinking about this whole second marriage to the same person thing. What if you're married to someone, and you ask them to marry you again, and they say "No!" ?

Man, don't you feel stupid.
$

Out of the mouths of babes

I'm no fan of the DEA, so this video is especially funny to me. There were two things that struck me while watching it: the first is that after the DEA agent shoots himself and reaches for another gun, no adult objected. The second thing is that the children told him to "put it down." Go kids!

Jeez! Now the agent is complaining because his career is ruined, to which I have one comment: to quote Michael Palin in "A Fish Called Wanda," Good!

The Responsibility Argument Against Abortion

There are two major arguments that the so-called "pro-life" crowd use against abortion. The first is the "fetus is a life" argument, which I will not deal with here except to say it doesn't matter if it is or isn't: it's the mother's body. No one, born or unborn, has the right to tell another adult human being what to do with their own body.

The second is the argument from responsibility and it goes something like: "They knew that pregnancy is a possible consequence of sex, therefore they should take responsibility and have the child."

From wikipedia: "The word responsibility means the obligation to answer for actions. Often this means answering to authority. Responsibility is also loosely used as the recognition that in order to achieve one's purposes, one must act oneself ("take responsibility") rather than expecting others to do something (compare initiative)."

The answer to this argument is simple: having an abortion is taking responsibility. Condemning oneself to raising a child one doesn't want is irresponsible and destructive, both to one's self and to the child!

This is the same argument that is used to tell men that they have to care a for a child they fathered even if they made it clear from the very beginning that they didn't want children. If a woman chooses to have a child when the father has made it clear that he does not want to be responsible for one, then she should be the one responsible for the child's care. If she has the child on the understanding that the father will help raise it (i.e., he is aware she is pregnant, and has committed to helping financially and otherwise) then he does not get to change his mind later. Neither does she for that matter. It's a contract!

In today's legal climate, men don't have any choice in the matter whatever. If they dare to have sex with a woman, they are taking the chance that she will rope them into a lifetime of obligation that they may not want. The only choice we have is to make sure that we trust the rationality of the women we sleep with. There's nothing new there though. Men and women should be doing that anyway.