Diary of the Mad Pigeon

Who the hell are these guys?

This band is good on the surface, but even better when you understand the lyrics....which are pretty Dada to begin with. Anyways, the singer is apparently an MD who moonlights as a musician. Enjoy.

SOTD, 28 April 2008

An (unfortunately) little known record, that illustrates why exactly one shouldn't mess with a "Girl With Guns"

Tommy Shaw: "Girls With Guns"

I'll tell you now
And I won't tell you twice
Where when and how
I got some bad advice

I never thought I could handle
A girl with guns
And let me tell you
You can bet that I'm not the only one (oh no)

Stand tall, don't think small
Don't get your back against the wall
Shoot straight, I can't wait
Aim for the heart and fire away (No!)

I've come around
I understand today
And she's the target now
I'm gonna have my way

Everybody says
Don't go messing with a girl with guns
They don't need you
They couldn't love you
They couldn't be any fun (Noooo)

Stand tall, don't think small
Don't get your back against the wall
Shoot straight, don’t wait
To Fire away

An innocent bystander
Who forgets to look both ways
Who never tries to understand her
Won't feel the heat 'til it's too late (So I tell you)

Stand tall, don't think small
Don't get your back against the wall
Shoot straight, don’t wait
To fire away (So I tell you)

Stand tall, don't think small
Don't get your back against the wall
Shoot straight, I can't wait
Aim for the heart and fire away

Stand tall, don't think small
Don't get your back against the wall
Shoot straight, I can't wait
Aim for the heart and fire away

I am on such a weird '90s kick right now...

I don't get it. Not sure where this is coming from...my study music has turned into my high school walkman mix tape. Wait, actually, no. No. My high school CD-Man was never this good. I didn't get into good music until freshman year at the Zoo. Yes we had CDs then...and I am going to pick on Antitool mostly because I can (Rank Hath It's Privileges, and experience makes debauched ruins of even the best of us, and by that I mean Pidge of course, not me. Never. Nope.) This is random. I need a break. Denver Braa Yes That's His Real Name preserve me, I'm losin' it. I'm riding with L'Empereur at Borodino....

Let's see, in the past three days I've listened to almost nothing but:

My Bloody Valentine GUITAR. Nothing but GUITAR. Wall of GUITAR. WHAT?? I CAN'T HEAR YOU BECAUSE OF THIS WALL OF GUITAR!!!! AND FLUTE. THERE IS A WALL OF FLUTE! FLAUTIST!

Jawbreaker: Because if I didn't throw something obscure at you, I wouldn't be MOGS. Save your Generation, even though that's not the song I linked.

Teenage Fanclub "I didn't want to hurt you, whoah-yeah" Sometimes I think these guys were the Ur-'90s band. If you want to sound like an academic, you have to say that something is the Ur-something. It makes you sound really, really smart.

Teenage Fanclub & De La Soul from the Judgment Night Soundtrack "You played yourself" De La Soul...before they started playing second fiddle to little Japanese cartoon girls...c'mon, we all know it's Noodle's band anyway.....let it go.

Nine Inch mOGS....Actually, there were all these bands we liked to call "Five Inch Nails" (Gravity Kills), and of course Stabbing Westward....who were more like Three Inch Nails, no I'm sorry, that's Linkin Park.

Charlatans (aka Charlatans UK) "WEIRDO" ...I wasn't much for Madchester otherwise...most tactical organ riff, ever.

The Rentals...because Friends of P are down with me. or something. (Warning: the previous video features a class-C nerd explosion - Ozma and the RENTALS and former Weezer members together at once. I blame quantum tunneling)

I always liked Juliana Hatfield's One Good Song. And Liz Phair's too.

Weezer (yes Antitool, they were around before 2000) "My name is JONAS!!" You have to respect the fact that these guys once played a Nirvana covers show under the name "Goat Punishment." Antitool knows all about goat punishment, he lives in the Northern Tier in an underground silo. It gets a little boring up there. ;) Say It Ain't So!

Nirvana ("Grandma take me home, grandma take me home...")

Guided by Voices ("I am a scientist, I seek to understand...") ....nothing else behaves like Antitool....Except for TOOL

Soup Dragons (remember them? "Divine thing")

Green Day "It all keeps addin' up...."

Metallica "Exxxxxiiittttttt Liiigggggghhhhtttt" and one scary ass old man. And one scared little boy. Yes that means Antitool.

Arrested Development (aka: rap music safe for white people) "Take me to another place"

US3 "Funky. Funky." (okay so there was other "safe" rap music) ;)

Oasis (before they started to suck) "I'm feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic..." This song deserves to be played at grotesquely loud volumes. Absurdly loud even.

Ben Folds Five "Give me my money back, give me my money back you..."

Foo Fighters "Fingernails are pretty...fingernails are goood...." (Yes Antitool, they were also around before 2000)

Smashing Pumpkins (also before they started to suck) "Today is the greatest.....url I've ever known".... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHUd896Sur0

Face it Antitool. 90's rule OK? (well actually, Dandy Warhols rule, except when they suck) The 2000's suck :) Gen X will have it's REVENGE!!!!!!!!

Okay, someone get me a TDY to Europe. NOW.

...because if this is true, then the world will be ending not long afterwards!

MOGS: What has he got in his iPodses?

NO! NO MAS LOS EMOS!

Mexico just may be turning things around.

Let me get this straight: Open, dialogue-sparking hostility like this can happen in Mexico, but not here? What ever happened to good old-fashioned American confrontation?

...oh, wait, it's now somehow unhealthy and inappropriate in the hands of anyone but "the downtrodden".  Whatever the hell that means. Code Pink vs. the Marines=ok. Normal people vs. Emo types=not ok. Huh?

Сою́за Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик

Pidge has called me out in this post, for which I am more than happy to oblige him.  It will have to wait a bit, but in the meantime, here's something to help set the mood.

Now first, I have some homework assignments for you to read.  As you can imagine, I have a lot to say on this topic, on Russia in general, Vladimir Putin, etc, and I will come at it from a historical, rather than say an analyst's perspective.

How The Russian Empire Crumbled

The 90th anniversary of the October Revolution provides another occasion to wonder whether socialism was capable of removing national antagonisms and paving the way to a supranational world community.

by Gennady Bordyugov
Moscow (RIA Novosti) Nov 06, 2007
Anyone who has been following the stormy debate brought on by the 90th anniversary of the Great October Revolution may well wonder why its national aspects have been forgotten. Were they not intertwined with the social aspects? The events that shook the world took place in the Russian Empire, which had a very complex social-ethnic structure. And it is hard to say whether the social or the ethnic factors played a bigger role in those sinister events.

Take land, one of the Revolution's key issues: Russia being a country of peasants, the poorest social stratum of one ethnic group often sought to seize the landed estates owned by representatives of another ethnic group. And in the cities, too, the youth that had migrated from the countryside seeking to climb the social ladder often met with resistance from other ethnic groups.

Contrary to what some politicians thought, the abdication of the Tsar in February 1917 could not automatically solve the ethnic problem in Russia. There was an incredible upsurge of the national movements in Russia's borderlands, and they could not accept the Provisional Government's call for a "single and indivisible Russia". Even so, discrimination of non-Russians was abolished, and the autonomy of Finland and the Polish Kingdom was restored. The remaining ethnic groups were not granted any territorial rights.

The democratic government would, of course, pay a dear price for its failure to appreciate the magnitude of the ethnic problem. True, in June 1917, faced with a mass movement of peasants and soldiers in the Ukraine, the Provisional Government would delegate some of its powers to the Central Rada and recognize the national principle as the basis for the country's administrative division....

Read the rest

Well, I'm never writing another music post ever again

Okay that's a lie, but I gotta tell ya, I don't think I'll ever be able to top this one.

Favorite is the number 1 rated video on this list, or as I like to call it, "Friday Night."

MOGS

Sympathetic Fictional Villains?

Okay, here's a thread I ganked over from The Volokh Conspiracy, I thought it was too good to pass up.  Some basic categories are laid out below to consider:

I. The supposed villain turns out not to be villainous at all.

II. I sympathize with the villain because I disagree with the story's ideological message.

III. The villain isn't really responsible for his actions.

IV. The villain turns out to be the lesser of two evils.

And now, a few rules to consider:

1).  Historical characters are eligible ONLY if they have appeared in a work of fiction or mythology (see Rule 2)

2)   For purposes of this exercise, mythology and religious source documents count (I AM *NOT* CALLING ANY RELIGIOUS TEXT A WORK OF 'FICTION'), because they constitute an too important source of stories and characters to be left out - yes this is arbitrary, maybe ham-handed and uncouth, but I couldn't see cutting out the Iliad, or the Bible for that matter...

3) All fictional works are fair game: movies, operas, concept albums, short stories, video games, novels, I think you get the idea...

I'll post my own in a day or so...

Song of the Day

Admittedly, this is extremely inside-joke-ish, but still enjoyable by all :)

I must be craaaaaazy!   Do you think I'm craaaazy?...