Stump Lane
in the dirt since history began

The I’ve Got Vacationitis, But Also Feel Guilty About Not Having Done One of These in a While Edition

WHEREBY Your Montag traverses the myspace music scene, follows the trail of comments from one page to the next and picks out the song I like best from each artist. If you take the blue pill [i.e. hold out for a blue hyperlink to click on, though you won't find any here] — the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. If you take the red pill [i.e. click on the red text] — you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes… all the way to the artist’s myspace music page, that is.

This week the list is mini.

1. Fog — Krahn (Barrington, RI) — Self-described as “Electronica/Funk/Reggae,” but don’t let the funk/reggae part fool you.
2. Lose ya Voice — (Frank and his) Skunk Allstars (Mülheim Ruhr/Los Angeles, Germany, whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean.) — Write this on a piece of paper: Ska-ish, swing-ish, at times with a reggae rythm, from Germany via LA. Now crumple it up and try to make sense of it while imagining the voice of that Barenaked Ladies guy. Unique. —ish.
3. Hot In That — Undercut (Bristol, UK) — Just good indie/alternative rock, or whatever the kids are calling it these days.
4. Cherry Lips — archie bronson outfit (UK) — Cool stuff. Would have been right at home with the music on the psychedelic version of semi-random music we churned out last time around.
5. AUTO MUNCH — die munch machine (UK) — YEAH!! “We are keyboard and rhythm only.” Experimental. Guy likes!

Your Montag’s top two, for others like me who just want to get started on the holiday and don’t have time for this shit: I’d say 4 and 5; but the delicately eardrummed, and those who don’t ‘get’ experimental music, should go with 4 and 3. In fact, most should probably avoid #5. Yeah, I enjoyed it, but my “desert island” selection is Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II for the sake of goodness. I’m just sayin’ you might not feel the same way. Have I covered my ass enough yet?

Suggestions? If you know of, (or are,) a myspace music artist that might value the exposure that a glancing mention on a D-list blog can bring, leave a comment here or correspond with me via electronic mail.

[Image of Larry Bird grabbing Ralph Sampson by the throat here.]

(Previous edition of this feature here.) Don’t feel so sanctimonious, The Left, people hate me, The Right, too…

1. On a global level the Right has foundered. The debacle in Iraq speaks for itself; the refusal by the advanced industrial countries to deal with climate change is frightening; the war on terror increasingly results in the demonisation of all Muslims and the revival of religious and race based hatred. — If fighting for the cause of Freedom, avoiding costly flights of fancy, and hating evil is “foundering” then I don’t want to— what does foundering mean?

2. The right has a crush on Fred Thompson, but his own papers suggest he is less conservative than they think. — My own papers speak for themselves. I’m a true-blue conservative and I think Fred Thompson is dreamy! Who’s “they”?

3. [T]he Right has already built [him]sel[f] a house of myths, distortions and foundation-less extrapolations in order to pump up a serious crime plot into yet another grave threat to all of mankind and our way of life. — Just because a group of evildoers poses “no imminent threat” and has not yet “obtained explosives” for a plot involving exploding something, doesn’t mean they don’t want to destroy everything America stands for. Preemption is the best form of prevention.

4. Let me restate this. The right has failed. [His] policies are bankrupt. [His] political project has collapsed. [He] still dominate[s] the Republican Party, but [is] well on [his] way to turning it into a minority, regional party of white exclusion. — The points taken in order: No I haven’t; no they aren’t; no it hasn’t; and of course I do; but don’t be absurd, we welcome all whites.

5. The right has become particularly skilled at using labels as weapons, as they redefine liberalism to be something derogatory and define conservativism to mean something quite different from what has been practiced when conservatives have been in power. — Dumb liberals with their run-on sentences.

Well, that’s almost enough to make me renounce my 700 Club membership, and Jesus, and sell my soul to the devil to excel at the blues! I may visit this feature again in the future, so long as the Third Seal remains unopened; but Vegas has the odds of that at 5:4, thanks to my super-secret alliance with Skull and Bones, PNAC, AIPAC, the Trilateral Commission, and the starting five of the 1986 Boston Celtics.

National Review Online is waging a war on grammars with the title and subtitle combination “Winning the Iraq Wars: All of its many fronts.” in which Victor Davis Hanson reminds US why we continue to occupy Iraq.

[Emphasis added in all cases below.]

The present fighting is part of a fourth war for Iraq: Gulf War I, the twelve years of no-fly zones, the three-week war in 2003, and now the three-year-old insurrection that followed the removal of Saddam Hussein.

All this war numbering reeks of padding the stats. I remember reading that the War on Terror™— which we’ll later learn either encompasses or is interchangeable with Iraq —is actually World War 4. (We won WW3, the cold war.) At least if we lose in Iraq this time we’ll still be 3-1 in wars on Iraq.

But this last and most desperate struggle, unlike the others, is being waged on several fronts.

First, of course, is the fighting itself to preserve the elected democracy of Iraq. Twenty-five-hundred Americans have died for that idea — the chance of freedom for 26 million Iraqis, and the more long-term notion that the Arab Middle East’s first democracy will end the false dichotomy of Islamic theocracy or dictatorship. That non-choice was the embryo for the events of September 11.

After reading that last paragraph twenty five times, I think I understand what it says.

Don’t ask.

As for that embryo? We should have aborted it back in the eighties when we realized that Bin Laden was the daddy, rather then nourishing his hell spawn as it gestated in the womb of Soviet occupied Afghanistan. But then vitriolic Western Lefties like me wouldn’t have understood the moral complexities of that conflict any more than we do the current one…

Although it is not the sort of conventional war that Westerners excel at — the enemy has no uniforms, state organization, or real army — our military has performed brilliantly. Past mistakes made were largely political, such as not quickly turning over control to an interim Iraqi government in summer 2003 while allowing the Iraqis sole public exposure.

But these were tactical and procedural, not moral, errors. They have only delayed, but not aborted, the emergence of a stable democratic Iraqi government. For all the propaganda of al Jazeera, the wounded pride of the Arab Street, or the vitriol of the Western Left, years from now the truth will remain that our soldiers did not come to plunder or colonize, but were willing to die for others’ freedom when few others would. Neither Michael Moore nor Noam Chomsky can change that, because it is not opinion, but truth — something that the Greeks rightly defined as “not forgetting” or “something that cannot be forgotten” (alêtheia).

Clever. All philosophical truth statements should be phrased so that to disagree with them is to impugn the earnestness of our military servicemen and women. Of course “our soldiers did not come to plunder or colonize.” They came because they were ordered to Iraq by a civilian administration in the service of myriad institutions and interests, with myriad motives, many of which include, quite apparently, plundering.

Presented as it is, Hanson implies without saying it outright that: Our leaders didn’t develop an Iraq policy of preemptive military action and indefinite occupation because it would enable selected institutions to “plunder or colonize” Iraq; but to Protect Freedom.

I’m not sure that statements of The Other’s motives count as philosophical truth statements, (unknowable!) but to put forth the above sentiment as a true answer to the question “Why is there an Iraq War?” seems less than serious and obfuscates the real truth of the matter, whatever that may be.

It would almost seem pointless to continue with what follows from this ridiculous thesis, but…

(more…)

This place is not dead yet. But for now there is only new content over at I Miss Fafblog, Spot!

[Friday music below.]

Apparently the tabloids in New York are on the case of their LOSER baseball team’s most effective weapon, Alex Rodriguez, (19 HR + 45 RBI = pretty incredible numbers for this time of year,) over his private life. The big news today in the legitimate sports press (i.e.: not tabloid) is that “A-Rod” has a new tabloid nickname.

My tabloid nickname for him is “A-Hole.”

Your Montag started calling him that after his ’04 ALCS game 6 interference play and crybaby performance. Though I might have given him a little slack ’cause of the chip on his shoulder over getting pwn3d by V-tek earlier that season, I didn’t.

Now, damn you, New York tabloids and legitimate sports press reporting on the tabloids, for making me defend A-Hole.

I say get off “A-Rod’s” case. Even I don’t want to see him slumping, especially because of personal off-field distractions. Because, to be honest, I’d rather see him shatter the single season home run record and eclipse whatever it is Barry Bonds is going to do this year.

But let’s get right down to the real crux of that Rodriguez article — the really important bitty-gritty:

The Yankees began the day at 21-29 and 14 1/2 games behind Boston in the AL East. [Yahoo! Sports - Associated Press: A-Rod acquires new tabloid nickname: 'Stray-Rod']

LOLZ.

Yankees—Red Sox tonight.

Technorati Tags:
Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees

This is Your [truncated] Semi-Random Friday Music

WHEREBY Your Montag traverses the myspace music scene, follows the trail of comments from one page to the next and picks out the song I like best from each artist. Clicking the red text will cause a psychotropic substance to be added to your beverage, and you will be cognizant of a traveling, as if in flight, through space and time, yet without moving. You will enter another dimension where you will experience the artist’s myspace music page.

1. People Are Tearing at the Seams — Sex Education (Liverpool, UK) — “Glam / New Wave / Electro.” Non-sucky, updated Joy Division/New Order type stylings. Based on the photos they’ve posted, this band may contain sensitive men… — And with Sex Education, I seemed to have encountered a void: a sort of black hole in myspace music. For there seemed to be no escape from this page that would lead me to another musical artist’s page. Attempts early in the week led to error messages, extremely long page loads and timed-out connections, other clicks seemed to lead nowhere but to another of the band’s or band members’ sites in a seemingly ‘closed loop’ of some inbred marketing/promotional scheme. Later escape attempts were confounded by low disk space problems at the Montag homestead that likely contributed to songs not fully loading and playing properly. Then, finally, at the eleventieth hour… ESCAPE!
2. She Made Me a Robot — Aeris Presley (Liverpool, UK) — I would describe this as ‘punk’ only to the extent that it is proper to call something that can also be described as “yawn inducing,” ‘punk’. Which is to say, not at all. So I’ll call it ‘attempted punk.’
3. Lusitania — The Cromagnon Band (London, UK) — Latter-day prog rock. They also claim for themselves the labels ‘Funk’ and ‘Psychedelic’. I’ll go along and say “funky”; but, based on what I’ve learned about psychedelic from listening to Land of the Lost, the jury’s still out on whether I’d give them “Psychedelic-y.” Nonetheless, this band is the gem Your Montag hopes to find each time I do this exercise. All of the songs here are worth listening to.
4. Pact pt 1 — DIAGONAL (Brighton, UK) — More latter-day prog rock.
5. Follow Me — Czar (UK) — The British progledelic invasion continues! But wait. These guys aren’t trying to sound old-school. They are old school. This one’s from ’70.
6. Fist Noise — LITHIUM (France) — I’ve already typed in: “OK, this shit is getting old,” but I take it back. Lithium has done something different here and Montag likes! Beyond ‘garage,’ I’ll call it psychedonkulic. Another gem.
7. Ballad of Tommy Forrester — USAforLSD (California) — Ambient stuff, and a nice come-down from all the psychedelkicals. If you’re one who can cope with ambient music about some dude’s really bad acid trip, that is.

Your Montag’s top four, for those who have to work the next day: 3, 6, 4 and 7. Screw #1 for the blame I place on them for the cut-shortedness and the almost ruining altogether of this edition of Semi Random Music!

Suggestions? If you know of, (or are,) a myspace music artist that might value the exposure that a glancing mention on a D-list blog can bring, leave a comment here or correspond with me via electronic mail.