Sunday, June 19, 2005

All the Best Daddies Have Cowboy Issues

Blah blah blah, Sunday and whatnot.

The State of the Music Industry. Okay, I've bought three albums unheard from three bands that usually produce quality music, and the albums...suck? What the hell is going on with music these days? How is it that, six years after the Napster revolution, we still have albums that are 90% useless filler? Is this what we get when an industry refuses to grow and instead lashes out to attempt to fill the status quo? I'm honestly just baffled here, and it's gotten to the point where I have to download three or four songs off of an album to determine if I want to buy it, and I generally have a pretty rigid ethic about that sort of thing, one of my little quirks. Oh well...

Sweet Merciful Christ it's Cheaper to Build an H-Bomb Than to Fuel My Car. Oil is up to $58 a barrel, and it looks like $60 is a cinch. I suppose this is the market creating pressure for oil alternatives, but they need to start showing up NOW. Oh, and I wonder more if we see prices AND profit keep going up, will we see nationalization of oil companies in other countries? Something to think about.

Dick Durbin Reveals Himself to be a Spineless Fool. Well, there goes my idea of a hero. His statement: "More than 1700 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and our country’s standing in the world community has been badly damaged by the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

"My statement in the Senate was critical of the policies of this Administration which add to the risk our soldiers face.”

“I will continue to speak out when I disagree with this Administration.”

“I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood. I sincerely regret if what I said caused anyone to misunderstand my true feelings: our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration and total support.”

Fuck that noise, you spineless coward. Have the courage of your convictions. Of course, then you wouldn't be a politician. Such a conundrum.

Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers. Now, I have to be honest here. I've struggled with matters of faith for almost 10 years. When I was young, I was one of those obnoxious upright Mormon kids who didn't know any better, who feared drinking and smoking as if they would kill me outright the moment they passed my lips, who was terrified of sex and passed that off as a desire to remain celibate for God, etc. etc., but I also deeply believed in God as a "personal" friend, if that makes any sense at all (in hindsight, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me and I lived it). Since then, I've gone from Mormon to Christian to Agnostic to Buddhist with some traces of Atheist thrown in here and there as my rational mind and the part of my mind that wants to believe in some higher purpose go to war. Reading this call for sensibility (which really calls for those sane members of the Church to unite and not accept extremism), I realize that you can have both, that they don't necessarily have to be at war if Christianity provides you with a coherent, useful worldview. This has certainly made me rethink my stance on my own faith as of late.

Fuckers. Heh. Have a joyous Father's Day.

Posted by crimnos @ 9:49 AM