WRIR 97.3 Donate!

I love this station. I work for this station.
Why don't ya keep this station alive and DONATE some money to it?

Different levels gets you different stuff and you have till April 25th to get that stuff!

WRIR 97.3

I'm still doing my Breakfast Blend show every Friday 6-8AM.

This Saturday I am doing the local River City Limits show and Liza Kate will be playing live in the studio. Listen!


Thanks if ya help.

Monkey See, Monkey Doo

As if violence at home isn't enough, get ready to armchair quarterback the next big event in the Middle East.

We need drastic, progressive change. Open your mind now people, we are running out of options and sides to be on in this mess.

Don't want to dress in school colors: donate.

Silence.

Virginia Tech is a terrible, awful, tragedy, yes.
But instead of wearing school colors this Friday, I would rather donate to make a difference in law dealing with Gun Control. Particularly since our state is barely passing the grade.
Maybe more on this subject later, but now is not the time. Thoughts are with the families of the slain, anger goes to our system and way of life that is lost in a void of violent distraction overseas.

Reading : "Out" by Natsuo Kirino

Listening: "War on 45" by D.O.A.

More songs!

Couple of more "Cotton" Dick Clinton Songs are found.

"Bad 50s Tonto Show"

and

"Potato Wine Entropy"


Check them out HERE.

Spring!

So, Easter weekend?

Snow!

Ah you can never tire of Virginia weather. I just hope we don't get this stuff when we go camping next weekend. Speaking of camping, why haven't we as good citizens of this country, and stewards of this planet re instituted some new form of the Civilian Conservation Corps? THAT's where I would gladly not mind spending tax dollars instead of the war machine we're feeding now. Let's get all these kids that are geared toward war cleaning up our country instead.
Fix stuff here at home instead of tear down stuff elsewhere.

Speaking of war, I barely tolerated CBS news for a few minutes last night.
Story line up as follows:

--Senator McCain takes some super safe shopping trip to Iraq. We see he like rugs, food and has guys armed to the teeth surrounding him.
-- We see a story about how some National Guard is being called up to duty, but they don't have enough equipment, like guns and armor and night vision goggles.
-- Final bit before I had to turn it off. China has secret christians.

So basically this is what the "liberal" mainstream media is telling me:

--To go around in Iraq these days, you need a shitload of firepower to be safe.
--Our soldiers don't have enough stuff to be safe even though they are going to Iraq.
--And Christianity prevails, even in such oppressive countries as China.

So when all those Senators & Congressmen pass MORE funding to pay for war machine efforts and we lie down and accept it, it is because mainstream media has conditioned us to do so.
We must not let them get away with this....

I think we should support our troops, with tickets HOME. Planes, trains and automobiles, baby. Oh, and more funding should go to the VA Hospitals too. Otherwise, we're gonna have a lot of people running around with all this Iraq warJUNK in their heads. You know, stuff like having to run over little boys with their humvees or shoot them because they MIGHT have bombs strapped to their bodies. Tragic.

This will make you giggle if you like fart jokes.

Listening: VCR , Liza Kate.
Reading: Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian lives changed by Jamestown by Helen Rountree. To balance the last Jamestown book I just read.

New Song!

I have just discovered a new song by "Cotton" Dick Clinton.

It is called MUDVILLE so check it out!

I'll be doing the River City Limits radio show today, St. Paddy's Day, so tune in to WRIR from 5-7PM today and hear me spin the local sounds.

Watching: Ghost in the Shell Season Two!

Daylight Savings Scam

Listen to this.

Seriously, stop it.




Listening: "It takes a nation of millions to hold us back" by Public Enemy.
Reading: "Jamestown : the buried truth" by William M. Kelso.

Birthday is tomorrow

I will be 37.
Good weekend lined up:

Pizza & Beer last night.
Nice restaurant tonight.
Going to Liance's folks farm tomorrow for more food and cake and walking in the woods.

Things I like:

Ghost in the Shell Movie & Television Series
I hope to get Season 2 with my Federal Refund.
I recently bought the reissue of the Manga as well.

Planet of the Apes. Can you tell the nerdness of it all yet?

Also, I am slowly trying to start a metal robot collection.
I have a small bot from Pearl River NYC and a Bender so far...

I am happy and I also like to think I am aging well.

Reading: Un Lun Dun by China Mieville.
Listening: Friend Opportunity by Deerhoof

Quick Post

Some things to know:

Valentine's Day : Maybe we should start going with old traditions of dipping goat skins in blood? It's only a matter of time being how bloodthirsty Americans seem to be these days.

Great Backyard Birdcount : Geeky, but important to know, especially with all the Global warming problems people STILL want to ignore so they can make $$ and drive their big ass SUVs.

Target: Iran? : So there is alleged evidence that some weapons used by insurgents are coming out of Iran. Guess who supplied the rest of the weapons? US!!!! Sheesh...

We are determined to have a strong foothold in that area. Check out where all your tax dollars are going. It's the Middle East Disney!


Reading : Southern Lady, Yankee Spy by Elizabeth R. Varon

Listening: Rah Bras

War Lies & how Tom Brokaw is a Republican slut...

Our treasonous leaders want to put more troops into Iraq?

These links are the images of war from the press:

Pulling down the Saddam statue. A big symbolic moment in the war to make us feel good.
IT WAS STAGED.

Jessica Lynch, cutsie pie innocent gal hero? Supposed kidnapped and held hostage.
IT WAS STAGED.

Meanwhile, we are too busy being entertained to a million little pieces by our self-absorbed goddess Oprah who thinks we should be more concerned about her being wronged than our soldiers dying in a fabricated war.

Bush fakes a Thanksgiving Turkey dinner in Iraq. The bird? Decorative. Some even say it was plastic. Soldiers get the same old processed junk they usually get, maybe with some cranberry in a can for treat.

Mission Accomplished? Not really on a ship anywhere NEAR the Middle East like you were lead to believe, but rather California.

Meanwhile, Tom Brokaw, now retired to play golf whenever he wants, comments on the Democrat victorious 2006 election, saying that now is the time to find middle ground and compromise. What? After these past number of years of extreme right thinking, he wants middle ground? I think the pendulum needs to swing a little further the other way than that!

A great Mother Jones timeline of Lies.

Imagine the future images of war from the press we have to come.


OUR LEADERS NEED TO BE HELD RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS MISREPRESENTED WAR.

If Clinton (whom I'm no real fan of either) can be impeached for lying about some oval oral action, what the HELL is keeping this current Administration from being put to trial? The Congress, though winning a "democrat" majority, has too many corporate whores in there too. Something needs to be done. Tell someone the things you know, open the chatlines...protest.

Reading: George Washington's Mount Vernon: At Home in Revolutionary America by Robert F. Dalzell & Lee Baldwin Dalzell.
On Deck Reading: "Loop" by Koji Suzuki.
Listening religiously: "In the grip of Official Treason" Jello Biafra

The simplest way out is OUT!

Carl Sagan was one of the greatest people of the 20th Century

I have always felt that.

I remember watching episodes of Cosmos with my stepdad on PBS. Here this nerdy scientist guy drabbed in a brown suit was telling me things like "There are more stars in the universe than there are grains of sand on the earth." and streaming out on scrolled paper as best they could a number so unfathomable that they couldn't even actually do it. Blew my mind. He had a kind of new age vibe but it also made a lot of SENSE. He mathematically predicted life on other planets (borrowed from a colleague at the time) that made it not only probable, but also shed light on the danger WE are in and need to address to sustain the human race. Wow.

Also, he made me think about the world and the worldhood of the world (as such). I believe if there were one pop culture person in my youth that helped me think of things in the world today, it was him.

When we lost Carl, we lost a whole lot more than just a silly "billions and billions" joke.

Yes, I own the DVD set. Yes, I miss him. The world should too.

Link to something cool.
Another cool link.

...and the War on Terrorism put them back a thousand years...

Antiquation Mechanism. A device that my Liance and I learned about on a program on PBS a few months ago has now gotten more press on Boing Boing and more importantly here. Incredible, proving that Ancient Greece was perhaps the best society humans ever produced. Well, maybe a few slips of the slopes but was more democratic and open to new ideas than our current "free" world. They still don't know how "mass" produced or known this knowledge was or what it was really even used for. A good bet to me would be seafaring. I also bet the schematics were lying in a Library somewhere. Or maybe we need to look toward the East. Still, it is astonishing what history uncovers, when humans were more in touch with the earth and not so driven to not be a part of it. Imagine what is left to discover...

Reading as best I can this holiday season: Hard-boiled Wonderland/End of the World by Haruki Murakami

Spitting sonic rage with: Rio Grande Blood by Ministry

Bopping my holiday head to: Christmas Remixed 1 & 2 from Six Degrees Records

Shameless Music Plugs:

"Cotton" Dick Clinton plays The Mall

Noble Chicken plays Lump of Coal

If voting changed anything

Jello Biafra did a spoken bit on this a few years ago and some kind person was dedicated enough to transcribe it HERE.
Please please read it, it is quite informative...


Three candidates (only two heard from and in the running) in Virginia:

Gail Parker : her big platform? More trains! It's almost comical, yet ya know what? At least she is making a stand! Ha!

George Allen : please. This man is only a birthright away from Schwarzenegger, so it's frightening that he COULD be president someday...

James Webb : Apparently USED to support Allen 6 years ago!

You know what? Watching all these political debates between the two main players, and I will probably apply this to the last presidential election as well, it is amazing how OUT OF TOUCH they are with the people. Politicians have always had that shade of higher than thou, yes, but these days, man, these days...

How out of touch they are with common every day people? Completely. They have NO IDEA what some person goes through day to day to day to day. One stupid visit to a poor house or VA hospital or line cooks at a Wendys or anything like that don't make em KNOW diddly. It's repulsive to think that unless something is done soon, we will be creating a 2nd (maybe more already, I'm sure) generation of accepting this tripe.

Another thing, it's insulting to listen to them churn this rhetoric butter, making it easy to understand for us fools in the normal world, but when they get to the lawmaking, they use all this complicated and lawyer ridden language. That is just plain WRONG. Make it easy to understand. I guess that's what happens when you get a buncha bored lawyers and businessmen together.

How about one word: NOTA.
None Of The Above.
Let's maybe put THAT into the election mix.

While we're at it NO CORPORATE LOBBYISTS.
No extra election money or a cap on it at least.

Career politicians are NOT representing anyone but themselves.

Okay, get out there an vote?
No on all three amendments, please?

Reading: Kind of waiting for my copy of Crimson Labyrinth by Yusuke Kishi to come in the mail to me...

Listening to: Balkan Beat Box, definitely check it out!

Rebuild this Wall?

So we work for YEARS in Cold War conditions to "tear down this wall".

Only to build another in our back yard?

I wonder how many of those hired will be from South of the Border?

Excellent places visited or nearly visited by me in the past week:

U.S.S. Shenandoah Airship crash site
Big Muskie Bucket
Used Kids Records
The Blue Danube
Henricus / Dutch Gap
Antique Village

Note: Just when you think all good indie music has died, leave it up to the good bands to prove your ass wrong! Alice Donut, Nomeansno and Uzeda all have new ones out. Buy em!

Movie: Three Extremes
Books: World War Z by Max Brooks
Music, OH MY GOSH, music! Did you not read above??

FUNDRAISER: DONATE TO WRIR!!!! Radio for the rest of us!

George Bush just plain sucks

I am watching him read off the teleprompter what other people have written right now thinking he is a freaking idiot. I don't think anyone in presidential history has shit on the people he is supposed to represent more than him. You know I don't have to list the problems with this former baseball manager. I watched a little bit of the 9/11 5 year special on NBC, and I feel a sense of rage and anger at what those terrorists did that day, but I have the same feeling toward the Commander in Chief's behavior and his hoodwinked style governing with his neo-conservative bootboys in his hip pocket. But who sould I be angry at the most? The PEOPLE. How can a war in Iraq go from weapons of mass destraction to the The War Against Terror (T.W.A.T.) and we BUY this hindsight 20/20 style action? Shoot first then shoot others later? If so, then WE ARE DOOMED. Oh well, keep smiling!

I'm engaged! Popped the question at Natural Bridge Sept 2 and L. said yes! HAPPY!

Read: Nikki Turner's "Glamorous Life" (hilariously awful, the ghetto Danielle Steel)
Reading: Blood on the River : Jamestown, 1607 by Elisa Carbone
Getting ready to Read: Dark Water by Suzuki

Listening: lotsa stuff! I'm a DJ now damnit!

New York Don'ti

I am no curmudgeon when it comes to new things, but I have to say that New York Deli has all the charm and enchantment of the Carytown McDonald's redesigned "living room" area. Miserable.

So L. and I decided to give it a try, L. much more wary of the new design and atmosphere than I. The drab interior is a textured orange wall treatment, complete with shiny metal duct work and gee whiz, pictures of New York seemingly bought from the Garden Ridge catalog. There is a pull down screen and power pointish projector on either side of the dining hall and there is a DJ looking booth in the corner. Immediately I am thinking that these tables could be moved away and a rave could bust out at any moment. There is a cross section in the patronage; the west end couple with their teen college kid in flip flops; a young tattooed man with a pair of breasts for women, one with a child who leaves to never return; and old couple still trying to see what this new NYD is all about.

Waitress?

Oh waitress?

Oh here are our menus. L. orders the terriyaki wrap and I order the orange chicken entree for 10 bucks. Probably my first mistake, should have stuck with what the Deli WAS known for, like some stacked meat sandwich, BUT if it's on the menu, it should have some taste.

I order a PBR.

By the time I get the beer the couple next to us has gotten their second sets of drinks. Our waitress, oh waitress, basically ignores us the whole time. Looking across the room, there is another, more competent and pleasant waitress gabbing warmly to some table. Damn, we should have gotten her.

So our food comes, delivered by some lanky fellow from the kitchen, no nonsense in the delivery. I can appreciate that at least. L. says her wrap is okay. Mine? Oh, I'll let you know about it.

It comes in a bowl, stuffed nearly to the brim with rice drown in some nasty tasting orange "flavored" sauce probably from a bottle from Kroger or something. Then there are a few pieces of broccoli and red peppers and like 5 chunks of chicken. This meal is mostly rice and a residual taste that is as appealing as dabbing the terminals of a nine volt on your tongue for 20 minutes.

I order another PBR.

Waitress would rather wipe the table next to us, even though there is no one waiting to be seated, than to get me my second beer to get rid of this rancid taste from my mouth.
I don't finish my food, but the beer is emptied.

"Would you like a box for your meal?"
"Oh no, that will NOT be necessary."

Style magazine has no sense when it pushes a place that for has not even earned a reputation for what is has to offer BESIDES being open late. Don't tell me in some poetic language that this place is the electric keystone of neo Carytown when it can't even produce the goods on a slower evening for a proper meal. What, are they planning on advertising with your paper for a while? For a bar scene, the decor looks a little five years ago already anyway. For a restaurant, I think I will go to Bev's for a tasty grilled cheese, or Mom Siam's or Thai Diner Too, or Farouks, or Double T's or anything else but...

I do plan on a second visit, this time maybe sitting at the bar and ordering a proper sandwich, fingers crossed.

It's not a matter of missing what New York Deli was as so much as unimpressed and disappointed with what it has become.

Come on in, the water is fine!

Shockoe Creek Strikes Back

I don't care what anyone says about Shockoe Bottom and the flooding problem.


IT IS THE CREEK.

This creek has been around long before us, creating that little gulch in the city known as Shockoe Valley. Heard of it? I have always had a fascination with this historic and largely overlooked body of water. Indian tribes lived on the creek long before Chris Newport decided to plant a cross near the Falls and Poe supposedly learned to swim in it when he was a young lad. If it wasn't used for flinging waste and filth for so many years, ultimately turning into a sewage line, maybe it would have been given the proper respect it deserves. I have always planned on writing a pamphlet on the history of the creek, scouting the areas where it could have exactly been, exploring the valley till I find the source. It still exists, that I am sure, just under asphalt and in the valley (near what was known as Butchertown) and surfacing at it's mouth near the James much to our human dismay for years and years and years...

Funny how in Man Vs. Nature we ultimately lose.

Watching: Battle Royale, again!
Song stuck in the head by: Gogogo Airheart

Monkey Versus Robot

It's a phenomenon!
Come!
See!
Battle Royale of incidental proportions!

Story as myth
Battle as video
Needling into our culture as we speak!

When's the movie?

I gots a lots

I have a lot of things going on these days, sorry for not posting for a while. Moving, trips, cleaning old apartments, maybe even Djing soon! Sweet! Here are a few things in the world that I have opinions on:

They supposedly caught the Bonet girl killer, who looks like he is enjoying the press a bit too much. 2 things, either a nutter or a fake. The whole thing is gross. True, all parents manipulate their kids, to steer them into certain life directions, but smearing make-up on and having them sing "I wanna be the cowboy's lady" when they are just out of diapers just ain't cute to me.

More importantly, the federal courts have found that wire-tapping is a bad thing. And further proof that the Bush Regime is really representing other factions than the good of the nation, they are fighting it.

Finally, here in RVA, those jerkabilly killers that murdered 2 families on New Years Day have gone to trial. Here is a link of someone I have met that seems to be blogging it far better than I ever could. I didn't know them, but when I heard what happened (and WHY it happened --senseless robbery) there was such a sense of anger that pulsed through me it made me want those idiots who murdered them tortured to inches of their lives, only to be brought back to health, then tortured all over again, one for each life they took. Then spend the rest of their lives in a hole in the ground. No light, no free tv, no exercise, a hole. I like to think myself as a nice guy, but I have very dark and cruel thoughts for those that commit such crimes. I know it may be a little twisted of me but...

I digress.

On a happy note, I live in town again and love it.

Listening: Fleshies
Reading: Charles Stross "Glasshouse"

Star Spangled Banner - for sale

Happy 4th of July!

Today in history:

1826 John Adams & Thomas Jefferson 2nd & 3rd presidents, both died
1831 James Monroe 5th president, died
1865 1st edition of "Alice in Wonderland" is published
1867 Stephen Mather was born to one day organize US National Park Service
1876 1st public exhibition of electric light in SF
1916 Tokyo Rose, WW II propogandist, was born

Meanwhile, who is in charge of the United States charge today? Where have these powers that be taken us? Their children and their children's children will never forget. And what do you think they will think of us?
Just look here to see a possibility.

Happy fireworks day!