Last of the V8 Interceptors

Northumberland County Rock Special: Anthracite Rock & Fuzz Funk in the ‘00’s

2010-10-27T14:54:00.002+07:00

Perhaps one should be listening to the record being reviewed while reviewing it. I’m not. I’m listening to the news prattle on about ninja assassins and Terror Babies. However this being the 21^st Century and still no hoverboards or Moon Monoliths, I’m entitled to bend reality to suit my own needs.

Yes, this decade is a stream of letdowns, like alcoholic absent parents forever breaking your heart. The back end of 2010 is just sort of the bow on the pile of failure, hearbreak, defeat, and disappointment that is the beginning of the Future. Beer and Preztels as a band, soundtracks this decade, it’s crushed hopes and ephemeral anxiety in an authenticity and integrity that has long gone overseas to work 12 hour shifts for 12 dollars a day.

Central Pennsylvania might as well be the Third World, especially with the oil shale boom now oozing it’s way across the region. Central PA was taken vigorously for all of its worth; it’s land and it’s people for most of the 19^th and 20^th centuries and bears the evidence of this ravishing on the land and the people, the children of this sick and sad love affair today. It’s from these open wounds that Beer and Preztels emerged.

Having witnessed the pieces of this band slowly come together from the forgotten corners of Central PA, having watched them span the wasteland’s breadth: from the burning strip mines to the hollow steel towns. Having been in the audience and shared a stage, they are the intersection of time and space and geography. They are the right men for the dirty job of trying to make sense of this malaise of our age.

Their work spans this entire foul decade, and beyond. The crude sounds squealing out of a forgotten corner of their windbag hometown in the haze of the Y2K, the spastic fits and shouts and aural assaults of the middle of this quagmire of a decade to this, 2010’s … In Time. In Time indeed. Beer and Pretzels have pushed themselves and their audiences to the outer edges of acceptability. I’ve heard their name disparaged and cast away in fits of rage and ignorance. Yet the band plays on, because they have to. They play fiddle for at the firehall wedding that is the hopelessness of being 20something in the brutal modern age. They are products of their time, relying on machines and gadgetry like so many of their cohorts. Mired in the technology as they are, they are not tools of their tools. Guitars smash, drums pile drive and the tech underneath their feet is stomped to oblivion. At times the band destroys itself, leaving members and friends in their wake.

… In Time is a culmination of sorts. The members of the band themselves becoming more familiar with their instruments, themselves, and most recently their surroundings. Songs like 17927 bear out the most obvious example of the loot and pillage of the region, the ever burning underground mine fire of Centralia. This incident and town and now this song, testify to the abuse of first the environment, and then the people who live in it, the riffs providing the 21 gun salute. Pills’n’er Beer and The Only Way Out of a Paper Bag Is By Drinkng the Contents are odes to the lifestyle. Cases of watery beer sucked down to pull on that coat of courage, and “Classic Rock” radio. Pills’n’er Beer evokes the Chevrolet swagger of the 1970s at the same time reminding you that all those stories about the good old days are science fiction. There’s even a wah wah solo. Nights of trying to forget, the realities of everyday. To attempt to forget is to try to drown a fish. This is the new age and what it takes to see it through on a daily basis.

Dropped From The Rafters is the epic of this album. A “Dazed and Confused” in half the time and not being excrement from a commercial behemoth. Dropped From The Rafters is the distillation of the last 10 years of Beer and Pretzels: spastic riffs, the technology freak out, and desperate shouts, all in 3 and a half minutes. This is quintessencial Beer and Pretzels, their “meat and potatos” if you will.

Central Pennsylvania needs heroes, and no Boss or Cougar(Mellencamp) can save us. The best we’ve got to soundtrack our way through this wasteland(the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road was filmed in Central PA) is the spazz funk of Beer and Pretzels. To hate them is to blind yourself to the carnage around the block, across the state line and 5 time zones away. To embrace them is to admit, that it’s 2010 and there are no hoverboards, and it sucks.

Beer and Pretzels "... In Time" can be found here

Korea

2009-06-12T16:02:00.001+07:00

Korea is a magic, mythical, cheaper funland than Japan, or at least that is how Arirang portrays it. But I'm not talking about the wonders of Daewoo products, Super Junior, or clever word plays with Seoul (Seoul of Asia anyone? snicker away), I'm talking about that other Korea, the one that time forgot, the one that still pines away for a workers paradise on earth.

I'll admit, most of my knowledge about North Korea or The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea as they call it is limited to murky stories from refugees, National Geographic TV specials, Team America and Wikipedia. Fairly slim to say the least.

However, given all the attention the DPRK is getting these days, I'd like to offer myself as a commentator on the situation. I'm sure I could speculate with the best about life in the hermit kingdom, motives for the saber rattling, and just why those two cute as a button journalists were kidnapped. I figure it won't be long before they call me anyway, with CBS putting up VICE editor Shane Smith as a DPRK expert. His qualifications? A VICE piece over a year ago where him and some other Canadians attempt to visit the DPRK. I remember the piece because they hung out in the northern China swinging city of Shenyang.

While I was in Shenyang, I used to teach at one of the school's branches that was in the embassy district. A term I use loosely as it consisted of one block that housed consulates for Russia, the Koreas, the U.S. and Japan as I recall. All shitty little squat buildings surrounded by a high wall and serious looking guards in uncomfortable uniforms.

You can tell the U.S. consulate/embassy wherever you go. It's the one with the most amount of people and the one that's always forted out for ragnarok. The DPRK consulate however, looked like a display house. Empty rooms and no curtains. The lights were on and nobody was home. The Chinese guards out front never flinched, but they were the only signs of life. And of all the times I walked to and fro, over the course of a month or so, that's the way it was. It was the spooky old house at the end of the lane. To top it off, the other end of the block, catty-corner from the South Korean consulate was a Swiss restaurant. Swiss. As in Switzerland. As in the purveyors of bank accounts, cuckoo clocks and army knives. It was built up like a chalet too. It was mental. Every dish had cheese as I recall. I tried to picture the DPRK folks coming out for their one guarded night out on the town to experience some imperialist debauchery and huddling into that chalet, pilling on the cheese. But such is Asia, and such is globalization I guess.

I don't know if I've ever met a North Korean before. I've known plenty of people who went to the border, the Yalu River. The Chinese actually have boat tours for foreigners eager to point and gawk. Kind of like Bird In Hand or Intercourse PA if they were nuclear states with a hard on for imperial corruption(Social Evils as they call them in Vietnam). None of my friends ended up being kidnapped though. My wife was shushed at the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum though.

So that's it I guess, I want to be a pundit and claim some more of my 15 minutes. I know a thing or two about a thing or two.

Thailand

2009-06-10T12:38:00.003+07:00

Like many people of my generation, our first exposure to Thailand was through the final characters of Street Fighter 2. Not much thought about the geography was spared as these characters were ridiculously(and plain ridiculous) difficult. A military dictator with a glowing fist? Yeah that's Thailand.

But it isn't.

Thailand is quite a place beyond expectations, somehow sleazy, seedy and clean and orderly at the same time. Thailand was never colonized but drives on the other side of the road. They've had more elected leaders than I've had birthdays, but still have a solid monarchy. They're poor and rich at the same time, the most developed nation after Malaysia at their end of the world, which is a multidimensional statement.

Recently Thailand has had a rough patch of sorts. Probably starting with the tsunami a few years ago, leading into the leadership crisis of last August and up to now, yesterday in fact with Buddhists(what the fuck?) bombing a mosque in peninsular Thailand(the part that runs into Malaysia). Thai politics are a murky affair with only two constants. The monarchy isn't going anywhere and the military will overthrow you if you can't get your shit together. There is no on paper part of this, but it works rather well as a system of checks and balances.

The turmoil of the last year so to speak has derailed the tourism recovery that was almost complete in the aftermath of the tsunami. Nothing like being swept out to sea to scare off partying Americans/Australians and pasty Europeans. Then in August the legitimacy of the prime minister was called into question after the guy who installed him fled under embezzlement charges. The people took to the streets and occupied government buildings, CNN and BBC broadcast chaos and mayhem, neglecting the fact that it was Thais against Thais. Everybody knows tourists are the economy and it makes no sense to chase them off. This was the backdrop to my wife and I's marriage actually. Smiling Thais warmly reassuring us that foreigners are loved. But that nonsense doesn't play well on the TV and so pasty westerners "looking for adventure" decided to play it safe (In Mexico?). The final nail in the coffin was the occupation of the airport by opposition supporters. Sure the airport was closed down and chaos reigned, but the protesters apologized, attempted to explain themselves, and handed out bottled water to stranded tourists. Probably why I will always have a soft spot for Thailand.

More of the usual ensued in the following months, a new PM was elected sort of and just as things settled in, the party that was initially protested against(under suspicion of illegitimacy) suddenly starts taking to the streets in protest themselves. Confused? I break it down and keep track of it like this: The initial wave of protesters back in the fall of 08 wore yellow and all their banners where yellow. This recent wave of protesters handily wear all red and have red banners. Reds and Yellows. Again Thailand makes it so easy for us foreigners.

But again, protesting doesn't play well on the global news services and the westerners get skiddish rather easy in this post 9/11 world. Not me, nor my wife. Thailand holds the promise of lax censorship laws, Burger King, sidewalks, and ladyboy cabaret. With the Bacon Cheese Whopper and clothing that fits in mind, we took a weekend to Thailand 2 weeks ago, in the midst of a lull in the Yellow/Red protest/counterprotest cycle.

It was a ghost town. A really desperate ghost town. The problem is, and what the Yellows and Reds seemed to suffer an amnesia about, is that Thailand is a tourist destination. Tourism is the constant income source over the fast buck of cheap labor. Well, with both shot in the foot and limping off, Thailand doesn't have much to do. Crowds of hawkers with no one to sell shit to, attractions with nobody to go to, and the ladyboys singing Tom Jones to one sleazy looking North American and a lone Korean businessman. The protesters, Red or Yellow were and still are upper middle class. Doctors and Lawyers and Students who could afford a few days off to make banners and stick it to the man as such. The pirate DVD sellers, the hemp bag hawkers and the ladyboys don't have that option. Everyday is a hustle, and the bourgeoisie in their need to loudly let their indignity be known have scared off the very people who made them. Those dollars, and they are dollars by and large (or Euros) drive the economy. They're not always 100% on the legal, but once they are in the economy, they tend to stay domestic.

Nobody could predict that the global economy would choose the pre holiday season to melt down, but to launch on a good clean government bullshit campaign in the midst of this century's Great Depression seems suicidal, or masochistic. Or both. But, as I've seen firsthand, it's those at the very bottom, the people, man, woman or both who are suffering.

Stop Making Sense

2009-05-13T15:38:00.005+07:00

Watching the series Stargate SG-1 has been a healthy source of discussion between my wife and myself recently. Topics from Richard Dean Anderson (who might be another candidate for my Scott Bakula film idea if Mr. Quantum Leap falls through)to the burgeoning British Columbian film scene(like Hollywood, but with more of that back yard Christmas lights and Handycam feel).

Of course there are the holes in the plot, some of them big enough to hide an F-350 SuperDuty in (honestly who bounces around to other planets without basic antibiotics?), but otherwise it's a great way to lose an hour. Much better than anything Nicolas Cage has put out in the last ten years (I'm dying for the sequel to Con Air after sitting through The Knowing). Mostly Stargate SG-1 is a great excuse to build on those wacky episodes of Star Trek like when they all ended up in 1920s Prohibition. Aliens that are actually humans (boy does that save on the budget) and any excuse to put Armin Shimerman into a costume.

Stargate SG-1 (and a couple of highballs) made me think of time travel, and of a incident a few years back. I used to go to a fair number of music majors' recitals and whatnot at the university in my home town (didn't go to the ones at the university I actually attended, because well, it wasn't as "dangerous" I guess). I did a lot of stuff at the university in my hometown out of perceived entitlement, "sticking it to The Man" sort of shit. Anyway, I was walking out semi satisfied when I brushed past a dude. I looked the guy in eye, and for some reason I was convinced this was me for another Sliders-esque reality. My own personal end up in the past and dress up and have an easy to swallow philosophical moral or contemporary societal critique all within an hour of network programming.

This dude was the reality where I did chores, enjoyed jam bands and drove a late model Lexus. The reality where I had kids with banal names and went to asshole factories like the above mentioned university. I dutifully sold all my Alice In Chains CDs when I got "serious" and secretly hoped that the kids would rebel a little more thoughtfully than smoking shitty pot and endorsing the Carson Daily Lifestyle. This dude sort of begged me not to become him, and so I retreated to the jungles of Southeast Asia.

I think if I had put a Flux Capacitor into my 89 Civic and managed to get it's 4 cylinders up to 88 MPH, what would happen? If I was to slip back into 1995 and give myself stock tips and a talk about the underground music scene, would it help any? Or would this sudden injection of cool on 13 or 14 year old me create a coolness imbalance in the Earth's magnetic field and turn the future into this sprawling Terminator future, where machines with red eyes play In On The Killtaker and quote John Cusack as they drive over human skulls? Would it?

Maybe it's early signs of Swine Flu, which the media blitz on has reminded me of what a great movie 12 Monkeys is and how little I realized it when I saw it. This in turn reminds me of how difficult it would be to find a copy of 12 Monkeys here in Vietnam because the natives don't watch anything beyond the level of a 12 year old girl and the tourists and expats all want to watch deplorable shit like The Knowing. At least I can sit around watching Stargate SG-1, thinking about all the wonderful planets out there that look like British Columbia.

The Entertainer

2009-04-27T14:13:00.004+07:00

One of my most favourite verses, and poignant critiques (the most to say in the least amount of time/sub textbook length) is in Billy Joel's The Entertainer. He's lamenting that his life's work, his magnum opus, is "cut down to 3.05". While not commenting about length equaling an automatically great piece of art, indeed one of the most significant works in the history of American Underground music is Minor Threat's "Straight Edge", which is only 45 seconds long. I often complain that in film today, that the current trend of making big budget films longer is merely a disguise for lack of content. I lament the death of the 90 minute action film. The come around on this is a problem I've suffered with this blog. Two actually.

1) No reader comments

2) Despite an almost infinite amount of time to find, process, discuss, digest information, I personally have less to say in an even less than coherent fashion.

The recent posts, few that they are, have been long, perhaps longer than necessary, owing to an introduction or demonstrating a historical predilection for long windedness. So lets today break it down in 3.30 type segments, as that is more or less the idea length for a cross format radio "hit".

Due to the amount of free time and the general state of the world (and living in a former combat zone) I've been playing multiple combat simulation games for Playstation 2. The conclusion is that despite combat being a part of everyone's life everyday (either you are participating directly, i.e. shooting people or you are indirectly participating: playing Call of Duty, watching the History Channel, or demonstrating against Darfur). Combat is inescapable, which for me, highlights the choice to make these games so blatantly "unrealistic". I worry about the historical and even psychological ramifications of this. Even such violence driven fair as the Rambo series didn't escape from the fact that war is bad, and it will fuck you up. Despite blowing up a small town and kicking Brian Dennehy (and a young David Caruso) to the curb, Rambo ends up in rumpled, hysterical tears at what Vietnam did to him and his squad. There is no such scene in Call of Duty or SOCOM Navy Seals.

My wife and I regularly drink in an Irish themed bar, run by a Vietnamese woman and her Singaporean husband. An American and an Australian, in an Irish Pub in Vietnam run by... well you get the picture. This is the stuff that Thomas Friedman built his career on, what allows him to write shit like The World is Flat and be quoted and cited by budding historians, economists, and political science majors. Globalisation is doing some really weird shit in really weird places. And I don't think the good quite outweighs the bad yet.

My wife and I went to a music festival this past weekend put on by a motorcycle club and a land mine awareness charity. The bill was almost all southeast Asian, with New Zealand and Australia contributing. The most obvious thing for me was that only one band on the bill was made up of exclusively folks from Vietnam. And this band sucked ass. It was the worst elements of post Nirvana Alternative and Metal all on one stage. It shat me this was the best the promoters could come up with, but also leads me to the question was this the ONLY thing the promoters could come up with? I can't believe that a nation with as much of the population being under 30 as Vietnam doesn't have a more present youth culture. Or to put it in Punk Rock terms, that the kids don't have anything to say. Personally or politically they are silent. The best band at the fest was I Am David Sparkle, who despite the lackluster handle, killed everything and didn't use a single word. The other bands, from places such as Thailand, Philippines, Singapore (where I Am David Sparkle hail from), were competent bands with an earnestness that I could get behind even if the music didn't move me. This is missing from Vietnam.

And there it all is.

Everything's Gone Green

2009-04-22T09:49:00.003+07:00

I can never remember when Earth Day is, and I suppose really it doesn't matter much. Thinking "green" tends to be a luxury for those who can afford the privilege. The attitude in the developing world is that green initiatives are seen as new tools to arrest development. The idea is that the developED world got to be developed by raping and pillaging (maximum use of resources) so why can't the world's developING populations do the same? We set the example and monkey see, monkey do.

Not a day goes past where I don't see somebody dumping coolant in the gutter, pissing on temple walls or trying to drive a Hummer down a 700 year old street. Supposedly there are mountains around Hanoi, but I've only seen them when I've been 5 kilometers out of town. The lake that I live on is full of trash and human shit, it regularly has dissolved oxygen fluctuations that result in massive fish kills. People run air conditioners with the doors and windows wide open. Cheery isn't it?

Here's a bit from an Earth Day past:

I visited Centralia the other night, how about that's my Earth Day celebration. I cannot think of a greater convergence of environmental, economic, cultural, and class issues that are more than slightly pressing in one small forgotten town. It's all there plain as day. The local youths, bored and resigned to floundering lives, drink away their future and toss the glass to the side, as the sulfur steam pours from open sores in the dirt. A thriving town of multiethnicity robbed of a future so I can leave my lights on all night. The decaying Euclid haul trucks sitting in their oil and coolant like old people wasting away at a nursing home, shitting themselves out of neglect. The sound of the metal rusting screams that once, I was important, I made a few people alot of money. I was powerful and mighty. The men who made me, who owned me and drove me are gone, perhaps decaying not far from where I return back to my base elements. The screen doors on the few abandoned houses that remain, keep a beat for the screams of the 785Cs that toil barely a mile away.

The sounds of leviathan pieces of machinery provided background as I looked at tombstones that bore names I could not pronounce, yet lived about as long I have if they were lucky. Their lives lived with little control over their fates. Dictated by the "market", "what's good for the company", and "tough times". Cannon fodder for the economy. The world was the neighborhood, but the neighborhood was the world. Drinking away the chronic aches and pains, praying to the vague notion of god to save you from the equally vague notion of the economy.

Dad's Army/Hogan's Heroes

2009-04-20T15:46:00.001+07:00

I decided that I'd had enough of the Grand Theft Auto series after I reached a crescendo on par with the last movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I knew I had gone as high as I could as I did doughnuts over a drug deal gone bad in my 1989 Honda CRX clone as Rod Stewart's "Young Turks" blazed on. Somehow I knew it would never be this good again.

With Iraq, Afghanistan, Pirates, North Korea and watching Over There in it's entirety (and well, living in MF'n Vietnam), I decided to get a hold of some combat simulations, 1st person shooters, whatever the kids are calling them these days. I bought as many SOCOM, Call of Duty, and miscellaneous others that I could find. The others included a modern battlefield type one(which subsequently didn't work, perhaps the biggest political statement out of all of them) and a American Civil War game (wins the WTF? category and also turns out to be my favourite).

Lets start with the Call of Duty series, or as I like to call them: An Afternoon of Programming On The History Channel: The Video Game. You guessed it, Call of Duty focuses on World War II. You jump characters and theaters, it starts off in the Pacific Theater, moves to Europe and then back to the Pacific.

As a disclaimer I should note that I to this day hold the Super Nintendo as the penultimate video game platform and had an 8 year isolation from console gaming in the late 90s to mid double 0's. Gaming for me then was Sim City. Coming back into modern console gaming I found that there are many more buttons crammed onto the controller now and much more is expected than point and shoot and jump. I thought that GTA had prepared me for this, but Call of Duty proved otherwise.

The controls proved to be clumsy and unintuitive at best (I think the ISO needs to develop a standard for what buttons shoot and reload). The character moved like a fat guy holding in a Burger King shit, not the best when storming a machine gun nest. Coming off the GTA series I found the environment a little constrictive too, but then most of the Pacific Theater was on islands smaller than Lycoming County PA. My Commanding Officer sounded like R. Lee Ermey which added a touch of class. It feels like a lot of the budget of the game went into weapons, the sounds and the physics of period weaponry.

Call of Duty 3 was no better, it was like being stuck in a rat maze surrounded by people doing awful Robert De Niro and Matt Damon impersonations. The game play was slightly better, but all of the Call of Duty games have this nasty way of fragging the player in that it's easier to pick up a hand grenade than it is to get rid of it. Much of the same could be said for Medal of Honor series of games. Same shit, different buttons and character actors.

The SOCOM series, or everything that is in some way distantly related to Tom Clancy (which should tell us that it's strictly fiction), was much more challenging, and not in the way the game makers intended. In SOCOM Navy Seals (ooooo Navy Seals!) Combined Assault, one plays as a member of the highly elite and expensively equipped Navy Seals Special Operations team. This in turn means that every time one goes into battle it involves a whole Best Buy full of pointless electronic extras. Tasers, GPS devices, night vision goggles, binoculars, shit, shit and more shit. It made me long for the Ye Olde Days, when it was one man and a musket. SOCOM involved the least amount of actual combat and the least fun value. More time was spent on "goals" and trying not to shoot the AI players who went they weren't standing in front of my rife, came around on my flank and were promptly shot for being mistaken as enemy combatants.

The Civil War game I found was actually co-designed by The History Channel, dispensing with any middle man. It also was the easiest one to learn the controls for and get down to what these games are all about, the kill. The game is played out over various episodes from the actual American Civil War, but not in chronological order, and not always for the same team. Sometimes I was a Y'all'n southern gentleman and the next mission a right good Yankee. But as I said, the fun was in the pure shooting and killing. No bullshit, bare minimum objectives and only one weapon to choose from at a time. No sidearms, automatics, bazookas, kazoos or bells and whistles, just a repeating rife and righteous glory. Or something like that.

The real failure of all of these games and perhaps the genre as a whole in my opinion is that the fail to deliver the reality of war. This is "war" as imagined by Risk playing Tom Clancy reading armchair riders. People who continue to promote this Flying Leathernecks vision of modern combat. Nowhere in these games did I burn villages, have my weapon jam, endure a jingoistic CO. I did not shoot at kids, coked up with no future and a Chinese made RPG. I did not yank gold fillings nor cut off ears. I didn't sit and watch as tank crews burned alive. I didn't, after the mission was over, get blinding drunk, beat my kids and caterwaul like Jim Morrison after the 5 minute mark in The End. My platoon wasn't suicide bombed and I didn't trip over CNN pretty boys trying to get journalist credibility, feeling guilty that all the "good" wars are long gone. These games are the only games that are sold and consumed in Asia now, beating out everything except the soccer/football games. These selective episodic versions of history, with all the horror and ambiguity forgotten about. It weighs on me as I find that I want to pull a Private Pyle on the R. Lee Ermey character in Call of Duty.

No none of that sort of "reality" got in my way. Maybe I'm too old for video games any more, or maybe my niche is is fighting the War on Drugs with a monster truck and Journey's Escape album. But then I had to explain that Cabela's Big Bass Adventure wasn't a real fishing simulator because you fished without two cases of Schaffer tall boys and didn't say "fuck it" at 2pm and head down to the VFW.

Welfare Love

2009-04-09T10:30:00.005+07:00

I'll offer this link to a piece about Dubai as a conversation starter:

Dubai

It was a rather thorough article, although I'm not sure if I agree about some of the authors conclusions and the overall tone suggests that the author really didn't want to go to Dubai anyway.

The developing world is like the Wild West. Anything goes, and anybody makes anything go. The miscreants, sociopaths, criminals, dreamers, delusional and desperate are the ones that end up on any frontier. They are forced out either literally or by societal norms. England used Australia as one big Section 8 style housing project for 100 years. Imperial Spain gave ships and crews to all of it's psychopaths in order to conquer "the new world" and America sold it's poor on the vision of The West as not a treeless mountain desert with people who already thought of it as theirs, but as a paradise that God himself thought America should give them.

We probably aren't the shining beacons of all development has to offer, but then again the not so bright side has often pushed us here in some way or another. Fast money, easy non permanent immigration, just even the prospect of a job in some cases.

Most of the time it's not the Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now equation that I relate to, it's more often the Robert Redford of Jeremiah Johnson. You take to the edges of society because they don't want you, and by the time you've figured this out, you really don't want society much either.

As to me currently, I'm watching the entire Star Trek original series and here's one observation thus far: Modern 1 hour television series, when issued on DVD work out to between 44 and 47 minutes. Star Trek works out to between 53 and 55 minutes an episode.

Breaking The Law

2009-04-03T14:10:00.000+07:00

This was written shortly after arriving back to Vietnam from Australia. I'm not sure of it as a complete thought, which is why it languished for 2 months, but it touches on two things certain: Not being a native Australian, the presence of authority was noticeable (compared to the more subtle hand of authority in America), that this presence of authority was not always a clearly "malevolent" force. CCTV in public spaces and infrastructure is a bit heavy handed, but having a clear national network of healthcare and social services is refreshingly civilized. I'm not sure if you can have one without the other, and really what does this all mean? Does it matter? How does this comfort with authority influence culture? Again, I find that the questions don't have answers.

Thinking about my 2 months in Australia and I was half thinking about this earlier today, the biggest different thing about Australia and a point I felt, let's say, uncomfortable about was the rules/laws.

I was uncomfortable in that same way you are when you are 5 and go to play at somebody's house and they aren't allowed toy guns or caffeine or swearing, or tell you are going to hell for liking Billy Joel (actually happened to me). Perhaps I exaggerate, but I found myself curbing my language and holding in farts in Australia. Not physically maybe, but more mentally.

Australia is an extreme place as I have mentioned before, deadly extreme if you watch the news. Mr. Death is everywhere in some places. Sharks, sunshine, driving on the road, Australia tends to deal in dead swiftly and frequently. In American you can get stabbed for a pair of shoes, but in Australia more than a few things will EAT you, or kill you in less time it takes to scream regardless of your shoes. That's if you don't get cancer from the sunshine, (or turn into a massive piece of cholesterol from all the meat that is served). This is just the natural order of things, not even talking about crime.

Perhaps because so much ambient stuff can kill you, Australia has a relatively low murder rate. Who needs to hack your boss with an axe when you can feed him steak with a side of bacon and then go for a swim with him?

However the rules and the hand of Law seemed to be present everywhere just under the surface. It was uncomfortable, but yet justified in some way. It make sense to have a law against burning shit if you look at what happens when you do, 200 dead and 1000 homeless. That's enough for me not even burn a CD on total fire ban days. I thought Smokey The Bear hammered the message home, but watching your neighbours burn to death as they try to flee kind of trumps the bear.

Not even as large scale as that, people end up dead or missing limbs from just trying to go for a swim. Atleast 5 people were attacked and two more ended up dead from sharks. A fellow in Western Australia almost ended up dead from just trying to go fishing.I've never thought so much about rules and laws, but it's different in a land that is as severe as Australia. And then I think about the herculean task of trying to govern a country like Australia.

In addition to being a severe land, it has vast resource wealth and outsider mentality. What a heady cocktail all three make. The national, state, and local government is charged with trying to balance all three as I mentioned before, not an easy task, especially when one thinks about the most valuable commodity to Australia: water. How does a government fairly (or even unfairly) regulate a resource such as water? Does nature deserve it, because Australia is one of the most naturally diverse places on Earth? Does a town deserve it, because they live there too? Does the livestock deserve it, because they live there too and provide a living? Do you rob all three when a fire breaks out? You start working on legislation to try and hold it all together, to keep the nature there, to support the people and the economy, but really it's a shell game after a while.

I really admire how Australia attempts to govern and police themselves, as it's not just a question of buying a shotgun at Wal Mart (or K Mart to keep it real) and killing your neighbor. You can legislate all that rather easily and most would agree on the laws that would be necessary. In Australia it's a question of owning the gun, it's use and then if the killer uses more than 20 liters of water to wash up the mess and if the hot shell casings ignite a fire that burns both killer and victim and their town.

Perhaps that was the subtle uncomfortable feeling, the legislation of life, and how to continually work that process so as not to have a police state, but yet just survive.

Foreign Correspondent

2009-03-20T15:53:00.003+07:00

This is from about 2 years ago, but as we all know, nothing really falls out of date anymore. In full disclosure, I did edit this slightly before posting it on here. I've missed once again, key grammar, syntax and spelling mistakes, but that's just American English.

I always find it suspect when celebrities suddenly jump in on a cause and it suddenly becomes a great concern. Events like Darfur just don't happen one day. Where was all this concern months or years ago? Why now? Is there a sudden number that the death and suffering of innocents has to reach before it becomes an issue?

On behalf of my nation, I apologize and accept that the actions of my nation, my society, and my lifestyle have led to the series of events that is "Darfur". Being suddenly concerned is not going to change a goddamn thing though. Darfur is just one sort of event occurring on a continent that this sort of thing occurs routinely on. And the Western world is responsible for this. All of the colonialism, the aide that was rocket launchers instead of rice, the manipulation of news.

The meddling of western powers in Africa goes back ages, no need for a history lesson. The short of it is that the west comes in, offers to civilise a group of people, swindles their resources, and leaves. They come back when more resources are found and the current regime has been committing too many "human rights violations". Western nations pulled out and lost interest when being a colonial power became too expensive and didn't fit the profile of a nation who purveys democracy. Of course this retreat was much quicker that the centuries of smashing cultures and when we left and took all our fancy stuff, they had nothing. Minimal infastructure, a shell of a government and a monkey see, monkey do version of how a nation should work. We lambast corrupt African governments, but they learned how from corrupt colonial governments of the industrialised world. Are the machinations of our leaders any better just because they hide it instead of riding down the street firing AK-47s out of the sunroof of bullet proof Mercedes limousines?

Otherwise, Africa languishes as a news black hole. We are informed of the astronomical death rates, exotic diseases, eccentrically psychopathic dictators, and then allowed to throw our hands up in despair, thanking our god that it's not us, and send some pocket change to buy rice. Some A list celebrities who are falling into obscurity or in desperate need of credibility go to Africa like the Toto song. Strange people, wild animals, exotic locations. I know I don't like it when tourists park their fat bourgeois asses all over where I call home, I can only imagine how other people with less than I do feel about it. Fat fuckers in RVs and SUVs blow into my town and tell me how "quaint" it is. It's not an amusement park, it's my home for better or worse. Africa is one big amusement park for those who have money and want to throw it around and feel like they are making a difference in the world. We still treat them the same way our Social Darwin touting great grandfathers did. They need "saved", they are less fortunate than us and we must help them. Sounds like the golden oldie of "Manifest Destiny". White Man's Burden: the Angelina Jolie and Sally Struthers version. I'd also like to again use one of my favourite terms from American History, carpetbaggers.

How about instead of buying a goddamn cell phone or fucking pair of pants, which 5 years ago most of these companies admitted they were manufacturing under conditions themselves that constitute "human rights violations" we all take a long hard look at ourselves and what our governments have been doing. How about we demand more accountability and transparency in foreign affairs. It’s not nearly as fun as buying a shitty cell phone, but perhaps more worthwhile?

I'm tired of the hollow emotions that people put forth. I can't stand any more "days of recognition" and such. I have no time for it in my life. Eazy E once questioned why he should care about Africa, since they don't care about Compton. I'm not sure if I agree with the statement, but it is one that tells of the frustration at this end. We should have been "caring" a long time ago, and I hope that "caring" now does not mean throwing shock and awe at the situation.

I'm not willing to put on a sticker or buy a phone, but maybe I'd go myself. How many of the sticker wearers or cell phone buyers would go themselves to invest their time in handing out aid instead of sickeningly justified consumerism?

Or how about we start talking about our own problems here too? How about we talk to each other before Smith and Wesson do the talking for us? My ability to care has been run ragged like a Las Vegas streetwalker.

"The river stretched like a main circuit cable to Kurtz himself..."

2009-03-11T10:16:00.000+07:00

I used to hide from humanity in the least likely of all places to do it: a mall.

The Schuykill Valley/Frackville Mall served as haven when I'd had enough of people and their shenanigans. For those out of state/country, Frackville is a medium sized American town, whose glory days have long since passed. It's noted for a penitentiary and for being a fuel stop/ramp on Interstate 81 between Harrisburg and Wilkes - Barre. About a 100 miles of what road map makers would fill in with nothing. At some point in the early 1980s (I'm not all too sure on the time frame) a mall was built a Frackville, making it largely the only mall between those two dots.

As I said, the town's glory days quietly ended a generation ago and the mall never really had a chance. A few typical mall stores cling to life there, but most of the time, especially weekday afternoons the mall is empty. The security guards sit with the old folks and rehash those glory days. The main attraction for me was an antique store that hovered a fine line between trash, kitsch, and treasure. I'm not sure who is looking for a Minersville high school year book from 1947, but it's there for about 10$ if one so desires. To connect to the last post, pieces of Voltron showed up there too.

To go there I as I did during the week as a refuge from University, it was much like Omegaman except the zombies spoke Eastern PA Anthracite instead of Jive. I never noticed what the theater was playing, but the youths of greater Frackville had claimed it as the holy ground of their people. These kids, even their mall sucked, but they still had some life left in them. Most of my home state is already post apocalyptic without the release of the actual apocalypse is the inevitable conclusion after a watery soda and a stale soft pretzel from the food court. The end already happened and nobody bothered to tell them.

Malls in Asia aren't nearly as much fun in my opinion. They are still new and something to wonder. People plan their day around going there, eating at KFC or Pizza Hut or the local franchise. They stuff themselves full of food and then walk around, looking at all the stuff they can't afford, but now maybe, one day they can have it. It's here and it's new, and it's all these wonderful trinkets from the outside world, long since seen on television as the stuff the good life is made of. The future promised at the end of all that hard work of becoming a real developed nation. Enough emotional abuse and extra school classes will allow your children to grow up and actually shop at these malls, and then everybody will experience this phenomenon of being developed. We all will be received in the kingdom of heaven on earth and eat KFC and buy flatscreen televisions. It must be, because foreigners shop there, they who tried to subjugate us a generation ago, now shop and buy things, things that we can have too. These malls are filled with capacity with spectators from the hovels in the countryside, just trying to catch a glimpse and dream.

The parking lot of the Schuykill Valley Mall, because it was built on reclaimed strip mines, is starting to settle back into the very mountaintop it was built on, the course of empires will return it to the land from whence it came in that haze, the kind that has gratuitous slow motion montages as Jim Morrison wails away in the alcohol induced middle sections of every performance of The End.

No, I long for going to the mall means listening to the old guy and the security guard discuss when the "hosey is gonna hav da nexd raffl night".

In Search of Space

2009-03-04T02:17:00.000+07:00

The new apartment has something akin to "a view". Sure it's a dirty lake and the uninspired heap that is the Hanoi Sofitel, but a view is a view especially when Joy Behar or Whoopi Goldberg isn't involved.

A few posts I ranted and raved about Space. I'll capitalize it well, because it's a specific thing. I even posted the cover of the first Boston record to get you in the mood. But I'll put up a link for the real thing for lack of a better turn of phrase:

Space Art

These are the works of the late Mr. Chesley Bonestell and this is what I was getting at I think. I like Bonestell's view of space, because as I was rattling on about, this is what I thought the future was going to be. I hoped to have a color coded space suit and be building FM tuned rail guns on Cygnus 9 or some shit, or at least living out an Analog cover from the early 80s. In the era between 1950 and 1990, the year 2000 looked like it was going to kick ass, but then it came and was exactly the same or even mildly, discomfortingly, worse with the illusion of being the same. The President talked the talk of going to Mars, but you knew this was a man that was on the losing end of that last battle at the Monolith, not one to be the stuff that Bonestell's paintings would require.

In keeping with the theme, here's another nugget from 06-07. The angst hangs on this one like a low pressure front late in a Northeast winter. The ones where the weatherman cringes as he puts that big L on the board. Back in the Reagan years, when a dollar was $5.50, Voltron was expensive by anybody's standards. For a few years in my early childhood, it was THE toy to win the kind of friends who would show up at your house just to play with such toys.

Not one person knows everything, just pieces of the puzzle. Perhaps more like Voltron. I ran into this girl, man she was barely 18, sketching a pile of toys. Which happened to consist of Voltron. Now Voltron as a child, helped me to realize the widening gap between the rich and the poor. My parents could not afford Voltron and attempted to explain "affording" to a 5 year old. Needless to say Voltron lingers in my mind for all that was good and all that was bad about my childhood. Did Voltron steer me to more Marxist/Socialist tendencies? He surely put me in my place when it came to my peers at the fancy elementary school not far from my neighborhood. The girl didn't know who Voltron was. I suppose not many people do know who Voltron is/was. The other interesting aspect of this is, that a kid I used to play with whose parents were friends with my parents, had the deluxe Voltron, the one I couldn't have because of this "affording it" business. The one that assembled like in the cartoon, the most important aspect. I had the junior Voltron that was plastic and did not disassemble like in the cartoon. My parents were however hip enough (something that took me longer to understand than being able to "afford it") and had plastic version of the other Voltron character that consisted of cars, not Transformers mind you, but a separate character from the Voltron series. This kid however would not let me play with "real" Voltron, and so with my parents blessing, after three different occasions of being denied the right to play with "real" Voltron, I hit the kid. I guess Che Guevara would be proud. Do I have a better understanding of the disparage(butchering probably both meaning and spelling) of wealth that exists in the world today? Can I understand the use of violence, and perhaps that tipping point when non-violent conflict resolution appears to fail? Did Voltron do all of this and instill an early meaning of the structure of class?

I felt it a blasphemy that mighty Voltron would be reduced to a handful of his original glory, in pieces, laid bare for the studio art department to sketch at will. I was broken hearted to say the least. Thoughs of helping Voltron to defect danced through my mind, but were quickly lost in the visual noise.

I had a thing against Art Studio people at University, I thought they were directionless dilettantes who had a peculiar amnesia of 20th century Art History. Students couldn't connect the dots about cross cultural phenomena or even visual art movements. I guess to me, it just looked like a lot of junior Jackson Pollacks who managed to spend more time drinking and less time producing than he did (not an easy feat if one believes the Ed Harris version of the story). I'm upset that my childhood has become kitsch before I even finished "outgrowing" them. Or maybe that's the clever Age of Irony way of still being able to have one's cake and eat it too. You can still "play" with G.I. Joe if it's Ironic art in your living room. I'm sure that's why the Cobra TerrorDome is where the coffee table should be.

On that day I dreamed though of helping what was left of Voltron in that studio defect like Jewish radicals in 1939 Germany. Secret, fog shrouded border crossings and fake passports. Sadly it would have been more like that episode in season 2 of The Sopranos where Paulie steals crap from the cappuccino chain store. In 2009 it's a lot of being in search of space instead of Bonestell's or anybody's vision. The appropriate way to read this post would be to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey on mute as Hawkwind's In Search of Space or Warrior On The Edge of Time plays in the background.

The No Uniting Thread Post

2009-02-26T15:03:00.000+07:00

I'm reading Vice online at the moment, and I really don't like reading things online. For one thing, it's difficult to poop with a laptop instead of a magazine. I lamented this to an email I sent to Vice complaining about their lack of a Southeast Asia office, a niche that really needs to be filled by the way, and they wrote back suggesting that I print out each issue in order facilitate the reading/pooping experience. I have yet to do this, but the recent issue of Vice online had two neat articles that I thought I'd link to:

http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n2/htdocs/embedded-618.php

and:

http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n2/htdocs/schools-out-forever-625.php

I watched the documentary, Shut Up and Sing, about the Dixie Chicks yesterday. I wish I could come up with an easy 2 paragraph way to describe the America one encounters 200 miles in from the coasts. I'm not sure quite what was "won" back in November except prolonging the inevitable. I've seen it the U.S., China, Australia, and even in a "new" economy like Vietnam. It's more that banging on about the rich getting richer, indeed they are, but it's country versus city. There is a breakdown in the chain of command of government that starts to fray at the "state" level and is completely torn off at the municipal level. There is an even bigger disconnect in communication between rural and urban. Perhaps this is civilization preparing to fall back to a City/State structure.

Winter in Vietnam means near 100% humidity and mid 70s temperature(mid to upper 20s for the metrics) that as the afternoon wains, becomes a fine mist in the air. It doesn't rain, but sprays a fine mist through the air that sometimes falls or gently glides down, almost like snow, but lighter. It penetrates everything, leaving a perpetual state of being damp. Not wet like a shower, but like being steamed damp. You're laundry never dries, your towels are wet before you use them, even the toilet paper becomes saturated. Books become water damaged, paint curls and peels. Anything metal rusts at the slightest provocation. I guess it's all a lot like cereal if you leave it in the milk for too long.

The Sound of Music

2009-02-19T11:38:00.000+07:00

More nuggets from the near past! Today's edition will be thoughts on music. Let's see what can be unearthed...

I really dislike James Blunt. Actually I hate him. If I were a third world dictator who defied his CIA employers and had to be forcibly removed from power, the Army could blast James Blunt's "Beautiful" over and over again and I'd capitulate after 36 hours. I can't stand him. I'm being unreasonably subjected to (probably in violation of my rights under the Geneva Convention) Mr. Blunt as the disc is emanating from the "coffee cafe" next to my computer here. Blunt sings like a duck, or like I would picture a duck singing. Lyrically, James Blunt makes Train seem like Sonic Youth. The kind of crap moms and their 11 year old daughters bond over in their Dodge Grand Caravan on the way home from school. Every so often record labels think they need to have dudes with guitars on their labels, it fills some sort of government regulation or something. I blame the current wave on John Mayer who also sounds like I would imagine a duck crooning like. Label A had Mayer, so label B thought they needed Howie Day, record label C snatched up James Blunt in the mad frenzy to jump on a trend that was cresting. And I'm mired in sucktitude. It's always the civilians who end up collateral damage.

At college, this sort of music was inescapable, it was quite literally everywhere. It's different from the supermarket, I mean it's hard to not feel cool when Baker Street comes on, or not sing along with Young Turks, but the current singer/songwriters all sing the same, have the same Mad Lib'ed lyrics and all convey this general, yet vague sense of sensitivity. Or perhaps I'm just old. I don't think Gerry Rafferty nor Rod Stewart would have record deals today if they were beginning their careers in 2009.

Part of me wishes Radiohead would not have become as famous and high regarded as they are now. I got into them in the lull between The Bends and OK Computer. Their sort of transition right before the critical feeding frenzy. Radiohead works as well as a band should, I think they are a good blueprint of how a musical career should arc. They have progressed and grown with each record, they have a sound that is theirs but are not afraid to challenge that sound. This is the meat of my diatribe: I really don't think they deserved to be as high regarded as they now are. While I defend my appreciation of the band and everything stated previous I hold to be truthful, they are mundane. Or as one phrase I have goes, "the world would be a better place if they were the worst thing on the radio". They certainly do not warrant all the mainstream press, column stories in Time and gushing by Terry Gross. They don't deserve to be the on the cover 13 months a year of Spin and the faux indie press. They are not that remarkable. The 1991 Honda Civic DX w/automatic transmission of the music world. Nothing they are doing hasn't been done before or currently better.

My problem with Radiohead is a multidimensional one that is difficult to explain, as evidenced by the previous text. Part of my frustration with Radiohead stems from my tenure in the institution of College Radio. Radiohead were/are shit hot in College Radio and with anybody in the first year of their Liberal Arts degree. However I feel that if Oasis is the Foreigner of the 1990s then Radiohead is the Pink Floyd of the 1990s, with all the positive and negative connotations of that metaphor. People who work in College Radio used to use Radiohead as an adjective to describe new bands, until I told them I'd literally throw out as trash any disc they tried to sell me along those lines. Nothing Radiohead has done, is doing, or will do (barring an album produced by Philip Glass and forsaking the history of pop music) is original and has not been done by somebody before more thoroughly. The biggest issue I have is the total middle of the roadness of Radiohead. They are Al Gore as a band.

Mired in a quicksand of mediocrity and boredom. I watched this two hour thing about Jimi Hendrix on VH1 Classics last night. I have to say, I am a Hendrix fan now. Not that I wasn't before, but maybe more sure of it, more convinced of his ability as a performer. I guess I sort of liked him in the same way that some people say they like french fries. Nothing is really wagered when you say that, lots of folks like french fries. I liked Hendrix like french fries for the longest time, because I hated Hendrix fans, absolutely couldn't stand the bastards. In signing the contract that says one plays guitar, you have to automatically like Hendrix. Especially when you are 15 and taking lessons and take the shitty guitar magazines seriously. I never took lessons and don't really know or care where all the notes are. My heroes were all the guys who could play one or two notes a song and build a 20 year career out of it. Hendrix fans were not in this camp and consequently real shitbags about it, with maybe two exceptions. So anyway, each time one of these assclowns would extol the virtues of Jimi, I'd just tune out. La la la la. In watching this special I was mesmerized by the way Hendrix performed. I finally understood the guitar smashing. I got the sound of Marshall stacks and wrongly strung late 60s Stratocaster. The cult of celebrity is still bullshit, but I'm going to look for a Hendrix record this weekend. And I still feel at liberty to hate Hendrix fans, but then I hate most of humanity anyway, and still manage to enjoy french fries...

It took a while to come around to Hendrix because of my peers and their parents. It's hard to become a fan of something organically these days, especially with the internet in this new hyper capitalist world. I guess that's what this was about, being able to tune out the noise and enjoy a biography as such. VH1 Classics had a number of hour long specials where they broke down "classic" records and analyzed them from every angle inside out. I'm not a Hendrix cheerleader, but maybe I understand the record more, and I did go and buy, not download, Electric Ladyland.

Irony has become a force to be reckoned with in the Post-World that we all find ourselves in. In 1994 I found myself all alone as 14 year old who enjoyed the band Boston. I seriously saw them as musical innovators of their time, perhaps it was the bitchin' solos or my exposure to the Tom Schotz "Rockman" device. Who knows... Point is I liked this band seriously in the paleo-irony age. Now in 2006 I find myself enjoying the dulcet tones of Journey, a band that I hated in 1994 while still forming a critical argument for the canonization of Boston. See the problem here? I sincerely liked and still do enjoy the first Boston record, but just recently began to appreciate Journey. Do I ironically like Journey, or do I sincerely like Journey? Does my sincere enjoyment past and present of Boston help me to sincerely appreciate Journey despite liking Journey's obvious ironic undertones given current '06 popular culture? Can I like and take Dada seriously despite hating Picasso yet sincerely enjoying Warhol?

This was brought on by a Dada exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I didn't understand much about the Dada movement, and really still don't, but it reminded me of the Irony movement of the double 00's here. It's a difficult question of sincerity in this insincere times. We fall back on irony to be more flexible, to hide sincerity and gain acceptance. Irony allows us to have our cake and eat it too in a sense. Maybe it's because Boston never launched a full scale comeback (Tom Schotz believes they never went away) and fired the lead singer (who was the only original member besides Tom Schotz until he died) that I was able to take them more seriously over the years. Or maybe it was like my intense dislike of McDonalds but my fondness for Wendys. Really they are pretty much the same anyway.

That about wraps it up for music, I passed on beating up Green Day more, an activity I did quite often, at any chance between 06 and o7, and I missed out on my side career of making sure Local H doesn't get forgotten, but thats about the long and short of it for the moment.

Tax Man

2009-02-17T16:47:00.000+07:00

I dislike breaking continuity, but I have to share this nugget that now affects us and some friends.

Vietnam, for whatever sorts of reasons, decided in the 3rd quarter of last year to fix their income tax system. Most of the personal income tax was being paid by foreigners and those unlucky enough to have the local equivalent of H.R. Block on their side. This worked out to less than 25% of the population, mostly foreigners, paying the majority of personal income tax.

It was decided that this change was going to be drafted, proposed, ratified and enacted before the new year of 2009. Vietnam as of the moment I write this, has no computerized tax records of anything. Anything. All the records are typed or hand written. Contemplate that for a minute.

Good. Now trying implement a reform of tax law in the span of 5 months give or take.

At this point, nobody, and it's a quite a large number of nobodys, knows what to pay or if to pay. The government declared a "6 month tax holiday", meaning they are not going to even start thinking about the problem until June. It is unclear if this tax holiday is going to be a gift or will have to be repaid at a later date. Remember when I mentioned that none of the revenue departments records are computerized. The Vietnamese government is actually calling this tax free period an "economic stimulus" which good because frankly, my economy always needs a good stimulation.

Use Your Illusion II

2009-02-17T01:37:00.000+07:00

Here is some old shit that I found kicking around a data disc I had burned before I left the U.S. Most of these bon mots come from the nebulous realm between 06- 07, heady days to say the least. I'm going to post them here in a semi organized fashion, today we'll start with the epiphany group. Some of these are hacked down and need a back story which will be filled in. Let's continue -

The Dukes of Columbia County

A number of years ago I had a nefarious plan to acquire a Dodge Charger, orange and paint it up like the General Lee. With one minor alteration. It would be the General Stalin. The Sickle and Hammer would be on the roof instead of the Stars and Bars. The number on the door would be 1917 and the horn would play the first few lines of the Soviet anthem. Like many of my great ideas this one has yet to come to fruition.

Perhaps it would be Boris and Leonid Duke with Uncle Josef. They would be running a collective farm and Boss Market Captialist would always try and swindle the farm from the Dukes, with the help of his industrial stooges, Enos and Roscoe.

This was an old idea probably conceived from watching the Dukes of Hazzard at age 3.

Neal Schon of The Dead

Starring: Wallace Shawn, Sean Young, Sean Connery, and Green Day as Journey.

A film idea of course! I'm not sure what inspired it, but I remember being obsessed with idea that Green Day is the new Journey and not in an ironic or literally amusing way. My intense dislike of Green Day seethes to this day. However there is another in the film category-

I had this idea on the walk over here about a movie with Scott Bakula. I had posed a mind teaser to myself, what is Scott Bakula doing at this instant? I picture him in a modest ranch house with a 1997 Toyota Camry in the driveway. The movie would be about how Scott Bakula lives, how he walks his dog, drives his kids to school, argues with the neighbors over leaves in his yard, goes to the grocery store, store brand or national brand? Because I'm thinking that Scott Bakula doesn't go on drunken anti-sematic rants or does piles of blow off of trannies' asses. He doesn't go on Oprah and make an ass of himself, nor does he whore himself out to schlocky charites. I picture him in a rumpled button down shirt debating whether or not to mow the lawn. And that would be the crux of this film, Scott Bakula discussing with his wife what would be a better day to mow, while watching the weather. After www.imdb.com Quantum Leap, I found that Mr. Bakula has worked rather steady throughout the 90s, although Mr. and Mrs. Smith didn't last one season. I'm sure he has enough for a ranch house with Ikea furniture and expensive nick-nacks. Maybe a prop or two from Quantum Leap on a shelf.

One would hope that Scott Bakula had such riches as to own a Toyota Camry. I had also thought of a scene with him reading USA Today and talking to his wife about one of those wacky crime stories where the perpetrator accidently punches himself in the balls and is apprehended by the authorities who can't stop laughing. In another, unrelated theme, I had this to offer-

Having my designated driver kicked out of a bar in Montgomery PA was one of those rare zenith/nadir points that does not manefest itself all that often. Moral of the story: There is hell to pay if you don't have the right camos.

This holds true for most of Pennsylvania I reckon. One needs completely different camo for either deer or turkey season. This next one was an idea for a career change. I always get the feeling that I'm in the wrong line of work and that other people are having more fun and making more money than myself.

Style Wars is a fine documentary about graffiti artists in NYC in the early 1980s. Back in 2001, when I was unemployed and my mother worked at Bucknell University, I had free all access to the university's library, which is a kick ass library at that. Being unemployed I had plenty time on my hands to forsake the card catalogue and just try and find whatever interested me with only the building maps to guide me. I happened on a book by Henry Chalfant that was pictures he'd taken of graffiti art on NYC subways. It was fucking awesome. After checking this book out and throwing on some Mantronix and Whodini, I was eager to go out and "bomb" my own trains. I wanted to "tag" all of the 'LBG. Alas, this never came to fruition. There are no trains to speak of in Lewisburg and the logistics of "tagging" proved to be great, especially after I got a job. Such is the way the world works.

Lewisburg has no trains at all, not even tourist attraction trains. This plan was also mired down in my inability to complete the most important task of being a 'graf artist': come up with a tag name. This last one is in sort of in the same vein, an idea born of the same time period. I wanted to be Grandmaster Flash in addition to being a 'graf artist'. This actually came to something though by way of another bastion of American subcultures: College Radio-

Friday's @ TropiCal:

Sir Scratch A Lot and The Knights of The Turntable

8pm- 1am

1$ Schaefer cans

No cover charge

I am fascinated with large groups of musicians, Genesis, Wu Tang Clan, King Crimson, the collected members of everybody that was ever in Journey and subsequently fired. My large group was going to be Sir Scratch A Lot and The Knights of The Turntable. We'd have matching track suits and somebody would always have a pair of sunglasses on. Basically this was my flyer for pre- drinking with the intention of going to local bars of Lewisburg. Frankie Knuckles and the Limelight were safe however from any competition, although Claude the bassett hound was a regular fixture at these events.

What's more, is that there is a whole host of these musings that cover broadly Music, politics, and University. All of such delicious varying quality as well

The Dead Heart

2009-02-11T16:06:00.000+07:00

I should weigh in on the bushfires now burning brightly in my adopted upside down Maryland. It's surreal, as we camped in Healsville, just over the mountain from Marysville, which is now pretty much burned to the ground like something out of The Road. Two things to help understand this event are; it IS that hot in Australia, and they do have THAT little water.

It regularly breaks 100 in a country that most regions measure their annual rainfall in millimeters. Victoria has days of total fire bans, which mean no burning anything, camp fires, trash, citronella candles, Weber grills, anything. The plant life dries out to the degree that even mowing it can cause it to ignite.

Despite flooding in Queensland, which is a rain forest region, most of Australia is in a drought, some parts for up to 10 years. This is how a small fire can get wildly out of control in minutes. It doesn't help that some of the fires may have been initially deliberately set, a really sick thing to do in a situation like most of Australia finds itself, most of the year.

Australia is one of the most fragile places I've been. So much of it hangs in a precarious balance constantly. It is a land of extremes and an extreme place to live. Every drop of water is needed by every living thing and every piece of shade a refuge for every animal. It has been running at human capacity almost since the day it was claimed for England. Every new person takes precious resources. Every animal, every single one takes something too. Everything has needs, but there is nowhere near enough for all, never was and probably never will be. Australia was never an easy land and it will never be an easy land.

The people and government of Australia are charged with the task of constantly looking into the future, trying to make it last that much longer, trying to make it sustain. Most of the time it works, and this Road Warrior future drifts to the back of the mind, and then sometimes it all explodes, like the fires raging across Victoria. It's not just the high profile ones that have the death tolls, it's many many more, and every month of summer, every year.

An article appeared in Vice that elaboraties: http://www.viceland.com/int/v16n1/htdocs/dusty-round-dying-koala-505.php

The pictures from last time feature a Holden Camira and the Chevy Cavalier, the exact same car almost. One of the many double takes I did in Australia.

Australia Part 1.5

2009-02-09T15:33:00.000+07:00

We are back in Hanoi and it sucks just as much as before. We seemed to have dropped back in at the tail end of Tet, the new year/spring festival. One of the wrap up celebrations involves burning copious amounts of paper money (US $100 bills, it is all about the benjamin's afterall) and shitting on the sidewalks. I've maintained the family dog before, but never in my live have I seen so much poop scattered about. Big and small, smelly and baked in the sun. Turds all over the place.

I got lazy in Australia, or perhaps it was something more subtle. It was so familiar and so easy to slip into. It was exactly like the state of Maryland, if Californians lived there. I've never been to California, but I've meet plenty of people from Cali, enough to know that California is the lost territory of Australia.

Australia and Victoria in general is the Sliders version of America. If you look at the state of Victoria it even looks like the state of New York, but turned around. Australia is on the upside down part of the world and they drive on the other side of the road, but yet they are some much like me. It's hot there when it's cold in America, beer is cheap in America, but expensive in Australia. Wine is exactly the reverse.

I'll see if I can't flesh it out in further posts, but Australia left me be. I kept waiting for somebody to call me out as a foreigner(they did on two occasions, both times mistaking me for a Canadian).

I guess we could start with the city of Melbourne. Melbourne was like most east coast U.S.A cities, except with sunshine, and without the Rust Belt baggage of white flight, unemployment, neglect, gentrification, and intact infrastructure. The same as, but not quite and that is what gets you about all of Australia. You think, it's so familiar, but then things start popping up. Like this:

which looks suspiciously like this:

And then you start thinking you are in that upside down Maryland.

Stranger In Town

2009-01-16T11:37:00.000+07:00

Pictures from Malaysia are all up. Not many, because we were only there about 50 hours total. The Australia ones will start coming up soon, but there are so many now. A few hundred at least. I should be posting more, but the wireless internet only works well in the kitchen. In fact, my desk is two empty boxes of wine and an Ikea bar chair.

There was a study conducted recently that judged Australians as "rude" when doing business as compared to the Americans and the British. I don't know if I agree with this. Australia is a very informal country. They don't wear shoes in the grocery store, use slang on the evening news and place a heavy emphasis on sports (not necessarily playing them, more watching). I imagine their approach to business would be much the same. Besides American, British, and Asian business types all walk around with stick up their asses anyway.

I can't say that I like Vegemite(sp), but I've chosen a side in the Holden/Ford debate, learned to put an egg on just about everything and become a "stubby holder"(can cosy) connoisseur. I think cricket is fucking as dumb as baseball and am not sure about this driving on the other side of the road business.

At The Moment

2009-01-07T15:09:00.000+07:00

Pictures are slowly being posted to Myspace (myspace.com/yourfavouritexpat). So far just the Saigon batch. Malaysia will come soon and then Australia. I'm just being lazy, soaking up all the tap water I can handle I suppose.

I've been thinking on how to begin talking about Australia. For the American readers, I'll say it's a lot like Maryland. Not just one part, but the whole. Victoria is like Maryland. It's got it's differences, the coast, the desert, road trains (actually not quite in Victoria, but nothing is more badass than Kenworth with a kangaroo bar on it or a VW Microbus with a kangaroo bar). I guess it's like the Sliders version of America.

However I am finding a bit of a language problem and culture shock.

Malaysia

2009-01-01T08:12:00.000+07:00

To fill in some of the lag time between posts, let's go back to Saigon.

The day after the Reunification Palace, we went out to the Cu Chi tunnels(with endless giggling over the name) and saw the compound of the Cao Dai religion. The Cao Dai's are an odd group of folks who hold Victor Hugo in deity status, along with Sun Yatsen(the man who broke China's monarchy) and some early 20th century Vietnamese poet. I'm not exactly sure what they stand for, but they seem to have combined the kitschiest elements of Eastern and Western religions and put them under one roof.

The Cu Chi Tunnels were the high technology of the North Vietnamese army during the war so naturally they wanted to show them off to all the world with poor research and badly translated information. The upside was I got to squeeze off a few rounds from an M16 for $20. I don't think I could say more.

Malaysia on the other hand was like a shimmering oasis in the stench of underdevelopment that is Southeast Asia. I'm sure it's just as bad as the rest, but Kuala Lumpur is one hell of a distraction. And, rumour has it, one can even drink the tap water there. Malaysia is somehow doing it right. They are largely an islamic country, but mostly get along with the non halal members of society. They are Asian, yet manage to have clean and efficient cites with grounded electricity, parking tickets, and the ability to switch between Malay, Mandarin, and English AND furthermore, not take a cultural superiority because of it. I had to get over emo teens in headscarves and $12 pints of beer (and the little issue of the searing heat from being 2 degrees from the Equator) but Malaysia is a pretty rocking place. Next post I'll get into Australia and possibly post pictures.

The South Shall Rise Again

2008-12-15T16:11:00.000+07:00

What do you get when you cross Chinese buffet decor with 1960s institutional architecture?

The Presidential Palace of the Republic of South Vietnam.

I am a huge fan of 1950s design and architecture, but by 1965 this period of design had run out of gas and no where is that more clear (than the Australian embassy in Thailand or any state government building the U.S.) that this place, now known as the Reunification Palace. The basement was even better. It was as if Hitler's bunker had been furnished by a budget Frank Lloyd Wright. I'll get the pictures up on Myspace as quickly as possible. In the meantime, for the exact same effect, go to the most rank China King Buffet(or other similarly named facility) and then immediately go to the nearest Department of Motor Vehicles.

I also had the misfortune of having the choice beer of the American Forces here, 333. If I had to fight in this country, suffer this climate and drink that swill, I'd be fragging my CO as soon as I finished the first case. It's the worst qualities of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Coors Lite with no redeeming flavour. 333 should have been enough to sue for peace alone.

Otherwise the south of Vietnam is almost exactly the same as the north. Everything is in a constant struggle to keep from returning to the jungle. The people are slightly nicer, and things are markedly cheaper, but same same.

Time Isn't Holding Us

2008-12-11T11:59:00.000+07:00

My wife and I are watching this BBC series called, Life On Mars. It's about a contemporary detective who is struck by a car. He then finds himself in 1973, having to live and do police work in 1973. There is an American version of this series, but I can't testify to the quality of it. The original production however is pretty good. The minutiae of 1973 is great. Details like period trucks and everyday cars, and a convincing soundtrack.

Television usually just pisses me off or at best is a time filler, Life On Mars touches me in the same way as The Sopranos did. I've never been to 1973 Manchester, but I'd bet it's similar to how 2000 New Jersey was portrayed. The setting is probably the most important aspect of making fiction believable. Without the detail, it becomes annoying.

I like the cover of the first Boston record for a number of reasons. It's great mid 20th century Sci Fi "end of the world" stuff, and humanity is fleeing Earth on guitar shaped space ships. I'll bet the other ones in the picture are named "Chicago" and "Kansas" and I'll bet it's the future, like 2112 or something. They all have lambchop sideburns and dress in space togas. They worship Neal Schon and Neil Pert as deities and fly around in hovercars shaped like Dodge Chargers. Everything has murals of wizards, Native Americans and unicorns in jean jackets. The angsty "teens" leave Earth as it explodes, backed by a double space phaser delay of Tom Schotz guitar solo from More Than A Feeling.

I love this one anime from the 80s called The Venus Wars. It's about human cities on Venus descending into civil war with Earth humans sending military forces to aid the police states. Kinda reminds me of Iraq in contemporary times. Anyway, the best part is these scrappy, feathered mullet, tight pants, Menudo "teens" launch a rebellion. The only that really lost it for me is that their revolution didn't somehow involve hair metal or 70s Rock. I guess the moral of the story is that more movies like Heavy Metal need to be made.

That said, I really enjoyed Wall-E, the Disney/Pixar tour de force. Actually that's what had me dig out Boston again. I don't want the End of The World to be endless product placement and A-List hardbodies. I want retro hippie "Age of Aquarius" tinfoil space togas, intergalactic spacecraft shaped like Gibson Explorers, feather mulleted "Teens". I want to be Captain Grooverider on the USS Tommy Shaw that's shaped like a Ford Torino landing on planets that look like a Hawkwind album cover.

Mostly I'm just looking forward to going to Australia for a while. Maybe I can even get to meet Peter Garrett.

Do They Know It's Christmas?

2008-12-08T14:30:00.000+07:00

Vietnam knows it's Christmas. I'm not sure why or even if this is a good thing. I blame it on the French. I'm not going to be here for Christmas nor Tet (spring festival, Asian "New Year"). I feel incredibly awesome about this actually.

Nothing new, but making the necessary arrangements to leave Vietnam for 2 months. I'll leave you all with one of my favourite images and a good description of how I feel (about a lot of things).

Some Assembly Required

2008-12-03T14:09:00.001+07:00

Since it's the holiday season, it must be official I'm hearing noise about banning carols and nativity scenes from public schools, I'd like to make a statement.

I am saddened by the decline of the action figure. The fully pose-able, 4- 8 inch, accessories included Action Figure. They've virtually disappeared for children and the ones by Accoutrements or Todd McFarlane (the Spawn twit) are not action figures in the strictest definition. My Mad Max action figure doesn't even cut it (one of the prerequisites is bendable knees). I could probably blame this on the usual suspects: the arc of the Political Correct Movement of the 1990s, the internet, terrorism, working single parents, gay marriage, global warming. However it started, I'd like the trend to reverse by the time I have kids.

G.I. Joe and Transformers constitute the ideal action figure and both still have a clinging presence at Toys R Us, but I'd like to take it a step further than extra- terrestrial robots with fluent command of English and shadowy non state para-military organisations.

Remember, all will be fully pose-able, and have appropriate accessories that can be interchanged with different figures. Lets go with some traditional ones first:

Police Officer/ Firefighter. These positions in society never really fall out of style and as per action figure criteria, have lots of possible accessories. They can be men and women( so you have to collect them all).

Union Ironworker. Not really a traditional one, but what kind of person wouldn't want to be seen not supporting Blue Collar people. Perhaps a limited edition mail order Joe The Plumber could be offered here too.

Fighter Pilot. Harkening back to the G.I. Joe legacy, but yet still topical. Since most of the combat carried out by the developed world is done with aircraft, it seems fitting. Besides the Fighter Pilot opens the door for vehicles to sell later (or introduce just before the holiday season).

Burt Reynolds. Moving to the non-traditional now, the Burt Reynolds would be based on his character from Smokey And The Bandit (perhaps allowing for the even more annoying to kids special edition with the vehicle, the black Pontiac Trans Am of course).

Ian MacKaye. The patriarch of Post Hardcore/Alternative/Indie Rock as an action figure. Something that is long overdue. Just image the father of Straight Edge Hardcore with Burt Reynolds and the Firefighter policing the streets for Truth, Justice and the planet Cybertron.

The Wu Tang Clan. Yes the entire Wu Tang, all 9 members with accessories. Perhaps another holiday special edition.

Christiane Anampour. The CNN correspondent always seems to be on the scene with a level head, perfect to lead a team of world saving action figures.

Ted Nugent. The Nuge! Between Rocking and Hunting, the man offers a large array of possible accessories.

Bill O'Reilly. Every evil world domination bent force needs the smarter, better behaved second in command henchman.

Herbie Hancock. Behold the evil fighting abilities of Fusion Jazz. Keyboards and synths make for great accessories. Fits the Jazz/Roadblock "black" action figure role too.

Reese Witherspoon. All Action Figures require the perky female. Perhaps accessorized for the Legally Blonde films.

All these and more. And this leads to the necessity of difficult to assemble Battle Playsets. Complicated, transforming, engineering degree required for assembly, fortresses. The Firehouse, the Police Station, CNN Headquarters, Secret Mountain Base. With all the Good and Evil in the world today, the Action Figure is what is needed to wrangle in these trying times and dispense frontier style justice.

Blah!

2008-12-02T15:59:00.000+07:00

Ah December. It isn't quite the same in the tropics, without snow, without cold. The lighting however is the same, but more unusual without cold and snow. Perhaps the winter light is more intense since I'm so close to the middle. The weather is beautiful though. It's a shame it's no fun to be out and about in Vietnam. Getting there would be impossible even if there was someplace to go.

More of the same, except packing for the 2 months in Australia. What stays and what goes. As I'm wondering what Australia will be like, I remember the new feelings of something slightly less impressive. Pittsburgh was a shock the first time I went there. It felt like so far away. The endless mountains, two lane highway, the forgotten towns with names like Nanty Glo and Portage. The Cheese House and the only drive thru strip club on the East Coast. And then there is a big city. Somehow I thought that the people in Pittsburgh would be amazingly odd. After all that travel and they still even have the same license plates. So alien and so familiar. Perhaps this is what Australia will be like.

Or not. I'm not going to ramble on about the introspection of packing and moving and shit like that. Others have done it. Besides, much like all the other moves in the last ten years, it's not permanent.

Regression

2008-11-26T15:54:00.000+07:00

The more things change the more they stay the same. I had put the console away, but 2003 had me dusting off all of my Gulf War themed Super Nintendo games again for another go around. 9/11 made Golan & Globus' The Delta Force relevant again. Often I feel like I am living a period over and over again.

Being here in Vietnam and unemployed, I feel like I am between 15 and 18 again. I can't drive, I can't shop for records, and the whole rest of the world is out of my reach. I have never harboured any wanton nostalgia for my teenage years and being under the same circumstances yet again reminds me of how little fun they were. I suppose I should be thankful that I don't have to go to high school, but the expat community does a fine job of reinstating the regimented caste system that existed in my high school. There are the cool kids, the old heads, the geeks and freaks, and then there's me. I'm still in the forgotten end of town, out on the same rotational orbit as the former planet Pluto.

What's different is that I can see the outside world, and it doesn't seem to moving in any direction either. No good albums are being released, films suck, and the major news outlets can't seem to get to the good stories. I don't care to see the same "headline" 5 times in an hour and teased by the better shit that seems to be on the ticker, forever out of reach of being elaborated on. How many times can New Order's back catalogue be rearranged, remastered, or reconstituted into a "Hits" package? Why do people tolerate films by Michael Bay?

It Takes a Million James Brown breaks To Make A Rap Record

2008-11-24T16:14:00.000+07:00

I put this under fluff, but perhaps it's not. I'm reading this book, Freakonomics and the essence of it is data. How data is examined and what it means, or what the absence of data means and such. The one author contends that economics is just data and data interpretations.

I've also been thinking about sampling, as in musicians using samples of other musicians to create new material. This was inspired from a book I read about modern copyright law.

So I went to www.the-breaks.com, a new favourite spot of mine. The Breaks has entertaining commentary, and more importantly, an engine to search and identify samples in music (mostly hip hop and electronic). I looked up "contemporary" rappers and they show a marked decrease in samples. Akon and T.I. sampled less than Method Man who sampled less than Public Enemy. This is one of the reasons that "contemporary" hip hop doesn't appeal to me. Some of this is part of a generational decline in creativity, but it is also because of the constrictive nature of contemporary copyright law. Which begat which?

It's interesting the amount of times a single recording has been sampled in the past, Mountain's "Long Red" being the one that has surfaced in my small explorations. The other thing is the sheer number of times that Art of Noise has been sampled.

Freakonomics is an interesting read, but it's only one of three I'm working on at the moment.

The Revolution Will Not Be Cartridge Based

2008-11-22T17:18:00.000+07:00

I've mentioned it on Myspace, and even face to face, but I really enjoy the Grand Theft Auto series of games. GTA San Andreas has held my attention for almost a year now. Packing heat and moral relativism are part of the appeal, but going off task and wandering is what appeals to me. The game is geared towards the way the generation just ahead of me likes to play, and I don't always like that. The ability to wander off and just drive or fly has gone far to hold my attention.

I've been involved in video games since the late 1980s. They've gone from repetitive tasks to involved problem solving. In this transformation they've lost their original fan base, it has shrunk. It is now a rather lucrative niche market. Nintendo's aim with the Wii system is to bring more people back into video games, but I think the GTA series does this better based on one thing. Movies in 2008 suck hard. There is little to no plot, film is a vehicle for CGI based material, or in the case of Pixar, the very film itself.

Grand Theft Auto 4, the latest installment gained reviews in the unlikely pages of the movie review sections. Rolling Stone's film critic treated it as such and gave it a high ranking. This is a column that usually savages films (and rightly so) for lack of content. Movies are boring. They are made by stupid people with an elitist contempt for their equally stupid audience. We demand nothing from Hollywood and they consistently give us nothing.

GTA has borrowed cinematic timing and story arch from Hollywood. Not the high art, but the lost art of the B-Grade action flick. The Lethal Weapon series of films (1,2,3 atleast) treated the audience with a hint of respect. There was plot to link the action scenes, they were predictable but fun. GTA San Andreas, it's predecessor Vice City and I'm sure the latest installment all have these elements back in them. In Vice City there is a side plot where you have to chauffeur a 1985 solo Phil Collins to a venue and then you are treated to a performance of In The Air Tonight.

The Anti-Hero element is also alive and well in GTA. The lead role, you, is often a morally gray character in a world with no clear rights and wrongs. Corrupt authority figures dominate, but yet the hero still has a perception of right and wrong. Clint Eastwood built a career on this stuff, but there is no such challenge from film today (Hancock doesn't count).

There are numerous slow motion shoot outs and perspective changing car jumps (The Dukes of Hazzard effect) also cast off by film and now find a new home in GTA.

And like I said, the best part is you can fuck off the story line and drive around, gamble, hike in the woods or eat fast food until you puke. We spend our days doing tasks and following rules and video games were suppose to be an escape from this. With GTA it's nice to see that it still can be.

Needless to say, GTA has it's flaws. Personally, I'd love to have a game that involved driving trucks on the highway. Senseless gun play. Drinking beer, and finding stuff like New Order 12 inch singles and other ancient relics. I guess that's sort of like the episode of the American version of The Office where Dwight Schrute's character in Second Life is an assistant regional manager at a paper company, but with the ability to fly. I just wish movies still had the ability to fly.

Cult of Irony

2008-11-19T11:59:00.000+07:00

The title is sung to the tune of Living Colour's "Cult of Personality".

In a recent post on my friend Eric's blog, the issue of irony came up. Irony not as a comedic device nor a literary tool, but Irony as a social movement. We are (we as 35 and unders) are living in the Irony Age (sung to the tune of The Misfits' "Static Age", but visualized as the anthropological Iron Age). Its a dualism that allows us to like things we dislike and to reverse this in order to better conform to a social group or gathering. Genuine opinion or taking a point of view aren't necessary, as both can be correct depending on the context.

The Irony Age relieves the burden of having an ideal, opinion, or defining personal tastes. It allows for good and bad, as they are both equal and are interchangeable. The serious can be changed to lighthearted or vice versa.

The whole concept of having an opinion and basing that opinion on evidence or proofs is not necessary.

Lost the train of thought. I'm tired of people not having opinions, and not having any base for them or not having any commitment to them.

2 Fast 2 Furious

2008-11-18T13:44:00.000+07:00

Something that has been bothering me in the last few weeks is the U.S. Auto Industry. Specifically the Big Three. They are pleading poverty and rightly so, but as the U.S. is a firm and vigorous practitioner of Lassez Faire Capitalism, I think it's time to let the market work it out.

Correct. I am against helping the U.S. Auto Industry. It runs counter to separate beliefs I have, but I am appalled that they are begging the government for help and more than likely going to get that help in the form of taxpayer money. I thoroughly disagree with this and here's an idea why:

It's true that the auto industry is huge and will affect more than just the employees of the industry. When a factory closes a town dies. It's the directly the employees right on down to the minutiae level of the people who stock the candy machines in the factory. It's sad when the factory closes and people lose work.

However the U.S. Auto industry has been systematically closing and relocating factories since the early 1980s. This practice upset nobody then, so really we can't use it as an argument now. We should have been arguing it then.

The U.S. Auto Industry has failed to maintain competition. They, out of greed, sloth, and carelessness have allowed other companies (or even overseas subsidiaries) to build better cars. 2 of the Big Three have made statements about this idea, Ford admitted a few years ago that, "They need to start building cars America wants to drive". No shit. They rode (poorly in the case of everybody but Ford) the SUV pony until it was well beyond time to put it out to pasture. One of the tenets of capitalism is this competition that puts the weak out of business. Honda, Toyota and Nissan all build better cars, that apparently Americas want to drive. And all of those three build most of their cars in America, with American labour.

The U.S. Auto Industry complains and blames Labour for all of their troubles. Unions and employees are actually the forces ruining the companies and forcing them to close factories and slide into bankruptcy. Again this is a problem that has been a problem since the 1980s and now for some reason is a dire issue. Should this have been something that was long term planned for? In fact prior to the 1980s it was. A number of the auto companies cooked the books and took cash from R/D departments and pension funds to inflate profits on other occasions when the spectre of bankruptcy loomed large. I'm not going to touch on inflated managerial and top officer salaries and bonuses, this is all old hat by now.

I have never really endorsed market capitalism as a great system of economy, it just doesn't work when you take it out of the textbook or the university lecture hall. I don't want to see more people thrown out of work, and more towns decimated, but lets put the blame where it belongs on this one, namely ourselves and the industry themselves. I don't have an alternative plan to a bailout, except maybe a heady dose of nationalisation, but that wouldn't really be the capitalist thing to do then, would it?

Myths and Legends

2008-11-15T12:16:00.000+07:00

I guess I should take some time to explain the name. Mostly I just slap names on things and let it go. Nearly everything I name or create works on atleast two levels. I like multiple layers. You can go for the obvious or the subtle. Working in the circles that I have in the past, one had to be prepared to do some serious intellectual gear jamming. The guys digging the hole aren't going to know Chaucer, but if I draw Chaucerian parallels to Smokey and The Bandit it's the same. As Burt Reynolds had remarked in Smokey and The Bandit, "It depends on what part of the country you're standing in, as to how stupid you are".

Obviously the title is a reference to Mad Max, a series of films I hold dear. I identify with The Road Warrior on many levels, but who I identify with changes. I started as an angsty teen, being keen on Max. Then I thought of myself more as the Gyro Captain. I think now, I identify with the truck itself. Go figure. Perhaps this is a result of the amount of time I've spent on roads both out of the pleasure of driving and the necessity or education or paycheck. In both Mad Max and The Road Warrior, this police car is given significance mostly by being the last of it's kind, perhaps like the man Max himself. Although, I think the car is given more background and thought about this being the last than the people.

Also I tend to be raw with blogging. There are going to be plenty of typo errors, grammatical impossibilities and perhaps my trademark, long rants with no coherence or conclusion.

In The Beginning...

2008-11-13T15:54:00.000+07:00

If this is moving up, then I'm moving out. Here is the first post of the new site, not a whole lot to say just yet. Last of the V8 Interceptors was the name of my first blog foray, it has such a nice ring to it that I decided to revive it. Like the Batman franchise, or the Ford Fiesta, or such.