Monday, April 30, 2007

The Clorox Girls at Cooper Manor

The Clorox Girls

Alec Holland sends me word of this must-see house show:

Thursday, May 3rd
122 E. Dalzell
8:00 PM
$5.00
BYOB

THE CLOROX GIRLS (Portland, Oregon)
www.myspace.com/cloroxgirls

Here’s The Clorox Girls website, and here’s plenty of YouTube action.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

Saturday, April 28, 2007

New Mount

And I didn’t even have to prostitute myself ....

Anchovy on White Ram, ShereKhan

Click the pic for a larger version.

Anchovy is my dwarven hunter in the Muradin realm riding her new white ram. Her pet is a tiger from Stanglethorn Vale named ShereKhan. It took me a week of farming to raise the gold to buy the mount.

Friday, April 27, 2007

ROCK FIGHT! KSCL 91.3 FM Friday, April 27, 2007, 6 to 8

ROCK FIGHT!

Hello again, chronic connoisseurs!

Friday is here with another ROCK FIGHT! on KSCL 91.3 fm.

It’s another fine week for exploring some old underground tunes. Check out The Dead Milkmen, Gary Numan, Talking Heads and other 80s germs. Move on to the 90s with Beck and Radiohead. Then settle into this century with Bloc Party, The Bird and The Bee and Modest Mouse. Plenty of great tunes.

The after party is at Cooper Manor, 122 E. Dalzell here in Shreveport. God Stewart, Kenny and The Flesh and Elevado are gonna blow your eardrums out. Doors open at 8:00. Cover is $5.00. Be there!

And tune in ROCK FIGHT! from 6 to 8. The podcast will be up tomorrow.

Here’s the poop:

Song                        Artist
-----------------------------------------------------
Hotwax                      Beck
My Fair Lady                The Bird And The Bee
Little Thoughts             Bloc Party
Plans                       Bloc Party
Punk Rock Girl              The Dead Milkmen
Smart Patrol / Mr. DNA      Devo
M62 Song (Four Tet Remix)   Doves
Bingo Master                The Fall
Earthworm                   Flipper
Are Friends Electric?       Gary Numan & Tubeway Army
New Genious (Brother)       Gorillaz
War Anthem                  Hammers Of Misfortune
Elena                       Juana Molina
The Insect Eater            Lene Lovich
New Church                  Lords Of The New Church
New Gods                    Meat Puppets
Float On                    Modest Mouse
Everything Is On The One    Parliament
Attack                      Public Image Ltd
Under The House             Public Image Ltd.
No Surprises                Radiohead
Blitzkrieg Bop              Ramones
Halloween                   Siouxsie & The Banshees
Ugli                        Skinny Puppy
Rain King                   Sonic Youth
I'm Not In Love             Talking Heads
Pulled Up                   Talking Heads
The Wrong Way               TV On The Radio
Back In Flesh               Wall Of Voodoo
Runaways                    XTC
The Space Between           Zero 7

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Milk and Mounts

A couple of things today ....

First, thanks to Erik Marcus at vegan.com for turning me on to this hilarious segment from The Colbert Report. I hope you remember it with your next glass of milk. Is there any reason to drink that stuff? Evidence shows it actually leeches calcium from your bones, and you can get plenty of calcium from green, leafy vegetables and enriched soy and rice milks. Rice milk, by the way, is wonderfully delicious and is even yummier on cereal.

Here’s the video:

Next, you might know that I play a lot of World of Warcraft. It occupies a major portion of my free time. In the game, when you reach a high enough level, you can buy a mount to ride to different areas. Riding is fast, and there’s a certain amount of prestige associated with your mount.

However, rides ain’t cheap. In fact, the most sought after rides, epic mounts, cost thousands of gold. So it’s no surprise that a real-world market has developed for in-game gold. You can buy gold with real dollars at certain websites, and it gets delivered to your WoW character’s account. I’ve done it before -- $15.00 for 100 gold.

One player, though, needed to raise 5,000 gold to purchase her epic mount. She came up with an interesting solution. Check out these Craig’s List personal ads.

That’s right -- supposedly a female player prostituted herself to raise the money for her epic mount. The 5,000 gold translates to about $700.00. Redonkulous! Still, I wonder if her quest for an epic mount indeed procured her an ... ahem ... epic mount.

I only need 140 gold for my ride. What can I do for you?

Friday, April 20, 2007

ROCK FIGHT! KSCL 91.3 FM Friday, April 20, 2007, 6 to 8

ROCK FIGHT!

Hello, militant musicologists.

It’s Friday, so time for another ROCK FIGHT! on KSCL 91.3 FM.

This week it’s an extravagant double-play fiesta! You get two from the Butthole Surfers, The Dead Milkmen, Sonic Youth and Franz Ferdinand, and sort of two by Radiohead -- one song from them and a very cool jazz cover of “Paranoid Android” by Brad Mehldau. Plenty of other great stuff, too.

So, tune in KSCL from 6 to 8 tonight while you kill Shadowmaw Panthers for those blokes in Stranglethorn Vale!

Sorry, no podcast this week, but you can listen to some older ones.

Here’s the playlist:

Song                          Artist
-------------------------------------------------
52 Girls                      The B-52's
Manipulation                  The Black Angels
Paranoid Android              Brad Mehldau
Human Cannonball              Butthole Surfers
In The Cellar                 Butthole Surfers
I Love You, You Big Dummy     Captain Beefheart
Lay Low                       The Church
Coup D'Etat                   Circle Jerks
Capital Radio One             The Clash
Everything's Goin’ On         The Dead Meadow
Big Deal                      The Dead Milkmen
My White Devil                Echo & The Bunnymen
Lipstick Vogue                Elvis Costello
Take Me Out                   Franz Ferdinand
Cheating On You               Franz Ferdinand
Meantime                      The Futureheads
Cinderella                    The Fuzztones
Tiptoe                        Goldfrapp
Antenna                       Kraftwerk
High Rise                     Ladytron
Narcisist                     The Libertines
Ride The Sky                  Lightning Bolt
Eurochild                     Massive Attack
We Will Rock You              Melt Banana
Mental Hopscotch              Missing Persons
What People Are Made Of       Modest Mouse
The Village                   New Order
Take California               Propellerheads
The National Anthem           Radiohead
Kill Yr. Idols                Sonic Youth
Shadow Of A Doubt             Sonic Youth
Promise                       Violent Femmes
Always After You              The Walkmen
Suffice To Say                The Yachts

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Two dissidents, Zinn and Chomsky, on Democracy Now!

historian Howard Zinn

This week Democracy Now! has been featuring both Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. The two noted humanitarian dissidents commented on a variety of matters, especially, as you might guess, the Iraq War. Here are some of their more piquant observations from the transcripts.

Zinn urges soldiers to practice civil disobedience from Thoreau's example:

And so, that (Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience) stands as a classic statement for Americans, that it's honorable and right to not to pay your taxes or to refuse military service or to disobey your government when you believe that your government is wrong. And so, the hope is that today more soldiers who are asked to go to Iraq, more young people who are asked to enlist in the war against Iraq, will read Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience, will take its advice to heart, realize that the government is not holy, that what's holy is human life and human freedom and the right of people to resist authority. And so, Thoreau has great lessons for us today.

Zinn on patriotism:

So today, for instance, the highest act of patriotism I suggest, would be opposing the war in Iraq and calling for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Simply because everything about the war violates the fundamental principles of equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, not just for Americans, but for people in another part of the world. So, yes, patriotism today requires citizens to be active on many, many different fronts to oppose government policies on the war, government policies which have taken trillions of dollars from this country's treasury and used it for war and militarism. That's what patriotism would require today.

Chomsky on the Iraq war:

This is one of the worst catastrophes in military history and also in political history. The most recent studies of the Red Cross show that Iraq has suffered the worst decline in child mortality, infant mortality, an increase in infant mortality known. But it’s since 1990. That is, it's a combination of the affect of the murderers' and brutal sanctions regime, which we don’t talk much about, which devastated society through the 1990's and strengthened Saddam Hussein, compelled the population to rely on him for survival, which probably saved him from the fate of a whole long series of other tyrants who were overthrown by their own people supported by the U.S.

And then came the war on top of it which has simply increased the horrors. The decline is unprecedented. The increase in infant mortality is unprecedented; it's now below the level of, worse than some of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It's one index of what's happened. The most probable measure of deaths in a study sponsored by M.I.T. incidentally carried out by leading specialists in Iraq and here last October was about 650,000 killed, soon to be pushing a million. There are several million people fled including the large part of the professional classes, people who could in principal help rebuild the country. And without going on, it's a hideous catastrophe and getting worse.

Chomsky on whether the U.S. can "win" the Iraq War:

It depends on what you mean by win. The United States certainly has the capacity to wipe the country out. If that's winning, yeah, you can win. It's -- in terms of the goals that the United States attempted to achieve, the U.S. Government, not the -- the United States, to install a client regime, which would be obedient to the United States, which would permit military bases, which would allow U.S. and British corporations to control the energy resources and so on, in terms of achieving that goal, I don't know if they can achieve that. But that they could destroy the country, that's beyond question.

Zinn on the same:

Noam said, yes, we could win in Iraq by destroying all of Iraq. The Russians could have won Afghanistan by destroying all of Afghanistan. We could have won in Vietnam by dropping nuclear bombs instead of killing two million people in Vietnam, killing 10 million people in Vietnam. And that would be considered victory, who would take satisfaction in that?

Zinn applies the Viet Nam lesson to Iraq:

Just as today when they say, oh, there will be civil war, there will be chaos if we withdraw from Iraq. There is civil war, there is chaos and no one is pointing out what we have done to Iraq. Two million people driven from their homes and children in dire straits, no water, no food. And so the remembrance of Vietnam is important if we are going to make it clear that we must withdraw from Iraq and find another way, not for the United States, for some international group, preferably a group composed mostly of representatives of Arab nations to come into Iraq and help mediate whatever strife there is among the various fractions in Iraq. But certainly the absolute necessary first step in Iraq now is what we should have done in Vietnam in 1967 and that is simply get out as fast as ships and planes can carry us out.

Chomsky on the current U.S political climate for progressive change:

There are periods of regression. We're now in a period of regression, but if you look at the cycle over time, it's upwards. And there's no limits that it can't reach.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Kenny and The Flesh at Cooper Manor 04/15/2007

There’s some new photos of Kenny and The Flesh performing at Cooper Manor Sunday, April 15, at my Flickr site.

Kenny and The Flash get better every time I see them. They were particularly good last night. A violent double drum and bass assault with cracked-out shens from singer Kevin. Moments reminded me of the best of Lightning Bolt, Death from Above 1979 and Melt Banana. My opinion is that these guys are the best band in town right now, and you should catch a show. I also think they are ready to take it on the road.

Also, there’s this recent message from Alec:

ATTENTION: No more punk shows at COOPER MANOR.

I tried to be kind to you guys and open my home up so that rad bands could come through and we could all have fun and thrash together, but I guess that my gift wasn't good enough for some of you.

As many of you know, I had a show here last night with ANS and Opposite Of God where me and the bands were selling records from our own personal collections. As a promoter, sound guy, and bassist in one of the bands playing last night, I don't exactly have a lot of time to be watching over the records I had set out. I thought, "Hey, let me enlist some trust into some of these possibly rad kids to actually let me know if they're interested in buying records," but no. Instead, I end up ripped off. It appears as though all the LPs I DIDN'T sell are now missing as well as most of the 7" I had out.

Due to the thievery of little punk shit heads that I allowed into my home, there will be no more thrash or hardcore shows to speak of at COOPER MANOR. I hope you guys have a lot of fun not being able to have any bands that you like come through Shreveport anymore.

I will continue to book what I think are radder shows with foreign bands and bands I already have booked, but you will not see another band with 1-2-1-2 drum beats come through again. You did it to yourselves. It was fun while it lasted.

Friday, April 6, 2007

Internet Vacation

I am taking an Internet vacation to concetrate on new writing and music. I'll be back sometime after April 13, 2007.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

ROCK FIGHT! KSCL 91.3 FM Friday, April 6, 2007, 6 to 8

ROCK FIGHT!

Hi again!

Friday is almost here, and so is another edition of ROCK FIGHT! on KSCL 91.3 fm.

It’s Good Friday, so this is an extra good show. It’s mostly oldies this time, with plenty of punk/new wave classics like “Rock Lobster”, “Praying To The Aliens,” “Jocko Homo” and “All Cats Are Grey.” But there’s also plenty of new stuff, too, from the likes of Beck, Bloc Party and Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. And there’s electronica from Colder, Goldfrapp and the chillicious Ulrich Schnauss.

So tune in! And call in: (318) 869-5297.

Also, new for this week, the entire show playlist is available as a podcast. Visit rockfight.podbean.com to listen, or use this miniplayer:

Here’s the poop:

Song                                Artist
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Rock Lobster                        The B-52's
Motorcade                           Beck
Hope For The Heartbeat (Remix)      Bill Nelson
The Tulips                          Bloc Party
Tornadoes                           Butthole Surfers
Crazy Love                          Colder
All Cats Are Grey                   The Cure
Moonage Daydream (Alternate Take)   David Bowie
Ashes To Ashes                      David Bowie
Peter Bazooka                       The Dead Milkmen
Jocko Homo                          Devo
Airbag                              Easystar All Stars With Horace Andy
Nocturnal Me                        Echo & The Bunnymen
Thursday                            The Futureheads
Praying To The Aliens               Gary Numan & The Tubeway Army
U.K. Girls (Physical)               Goldfrapp
Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream)     Icicle Works
In A Hole                           The Jesus And Mary Chain
The Twist                           Klaus Nomi
The Model (London)                  Kraftwerk
Weekend                             Ladytron
Sinister In The State Of Hope       Loney, Dear
Computer Games                      Mi-Sex
Gods Of Aquarius                    Nina Hagen
Bunker Soldiers                     Orchestral Manoeuvres In The
Christine                           Siouxsie & The Banshees
Shake The Sheets                    Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
Black And Blue                      Tilly & The Wall
Playhouses                          TV On The Radio
As If You've Never Been Away        Ulrich Schnauss
How We Livin'                       The USA Is A Monster

Monday, April 2, 2007

Let's Do Some Scovilles, Man!

Naga Jolokia

I have been hearing recently from various sources that vegetarianism is “unmanly,” and that conversely, eating meat is macho. Of course you see ads plugging meat as a manly food, dismissing tofu as something sissy. These attitudes spread over into other media like opinion columns, blogs, conversations, etc.

I am not going to bother arguing the ridiculous notion that a man’s diet determines how macho he is. It’s just absurd on the face of it. Instead, I’ll just point out two things.

First, how macho is meat exactly? How much manliness does it take to go to the supermarket and buy some packaged meat from an animal that was cruelly tortured during its life and suffered an agonizing death? I’d say none. And I thought that people who torture animals are regarded more as psychopaths and bullies rather than exemplars of manly virtues. Does torturing animals to obtain meat somehow change that?

Second, I can easily think of one food more macho than meat. It’s a vegetable, and it’s so manly it even has it’s own measuring scale. I’m talking peppers and Scoville Heat Units. You’ll seldom see a man back down from the so-called challenge of eating steak, but offer him a few habanero peppers and see him squirm.

The hottest pepper in the world is from India, the primeval home of vegetarianism. Pictured here is the Indian pepper Naga Jolokia (naga morich, bhut jolokia), the chili tested hottest in the world at 1.04M SHU, enough to blister your mouth! How does that compare to other peppers? Here’s a handy scale courtesy of Wikipedia:

Scoville rating Type of pepper
15,000,000 - 16,000,000 Pure capsaicin
9,100,000 Nordihydrocapsaicin
2,000,000 - 5,300,000 Standard US Grade pepper spray
855,000 - 1,041,427 Naga Jolokia
876,000 - 970,000 Dorset Naga
350,000 - 577,000 Red Savina™ Habanero
100,000 - 350,000 Habanero Chile
100,000 - 350,000 Scotch Bonnet
100,000 - 200,000 Jamaican Hot Pepper
50,000 - 100,000 Thai Pepper, Malagueta Pepper, Chiltepin Pepper
30,000 - 50,000 Cayenne Pepper
10,000 - 23,000 Serrano Pepper
7,000 - 8,000 Tabasco Sauce (Habanero)
5,000 - 10,000 Wax Pepper
2,500 - 8,000 JalapeƱo Pepper
2,500 - 5,000 Tabasco Sauce
1,500 - 2,500 Rocotillo Pepper
1,000 - 1,500 Poblano Pepper
600 - 800 Tabasco Sauce (Green Pepper)
500 - 1000 Anaheim pepper
100 - 500 Pimento, Pepperoncini
0 No heat, Bell Pepper

 

What’s your manliness level? Personally, while I won’t dine on animal corpses, I’ll be happy to throw down a few Habaneros with you. That’s the hottest I’ve had, and I wouldn’t turn down a try at something hotter. Would you? C’mon, sissy!