Haiku Frenzy!

Haikus about recent recorded works

Jay-Z Kingdom Come

Not Sublimely Wack
Stunningly Mediocre
Half-Assed Beats, Bad Rhymes


The Clipse Hell Hath No Fury

Coke Rhymes,Neptunes Prime
One Word Motherfuckers,Trill
Well Worth the Long Wait



Joanna Newsom Ys

Harp and Orchestra
Verbose,She Says Inchoate
Really Fucking Good.

Potato Memoirs

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving. It's a holidy that has been stripped of it's original meaning (Genocide? The opressed becomming the opressors? Thanking a vindictive god for not flooding the world. Again.) It's a hollow holiday, and that's fine. It's hollow but fun.

I spent Thanksgiving this year in Pocatello, a city that I still consider my "hometown". I still know the city intimately, know the subtle way the lanes merge into each other, still know the quickest route.

Whenever I go there I get a vague sense of accomplishment. That I've gone "somewhere", done "something" with my life. I find it odd to still see the same people, working at the same place they had when I was growing up.

I drive by the house I grew up in. It was sold a few years ago, and It breaks my heart to see it now, yard overrun with weeds, elms growing where once they would be carefully pruned.

The thing is I find myself thinking that I could go back there when I'm old. To start my barber shop and probably die. I think it would be a nice bookend to my life. My youth and my old age in one place. That way if my memory ever fails me, it would still be familiar. Maybe.

Steal this Blog!

In the past few weeks several prominant albums have found their way onto the internet filesharing channels. Theses albums have release dates ranging from next Tuesday to early next year.

Still, almost every Tuesday I venture to the record store to pick up the latest new releases and any thing else that might interest me.

Don't think I'm some angel, preaching about the evils of file-sharing. I'm no finger-shaking, tsk-tsking seraphin admonishing the youth for loading thier ipods with free music. I 'm no crusader for the artist. Honestly, I get as excited as the next dude, queing up on soulseek, when I find out something great has leaked early. But I'll still show up at the store on the release date to get it.

Not because I fell I owe the store, the artist or the label. I enjoy the tactile sensation, unwrapping the record, leafing through the liner notes, reading the lyrics, etc. etc. The wall of CD's in my room is a testament to it.

I do have a problem with the rash of file-sharing that has come upon the internet, as if it had spent an evening with a unclean woman. It's too easy. Gone are days of going to record stores, leafing through the shelves, impusle buying because something looks cool.

You can become an instant expert on any genre or band in a single night. And I'm guilty of this myself. Downloadng the influences and similar bands to those that I've just recently discovered.
It seems inauthentic, the possibility of becomming instantly familiar with any genre or band overnight. It takes away from the sense of community that music had in the past. We can talk about the internet community, but is the rash of Myspace-trend-hopping copycat bands really the same as the New York punk scene of '77?

By the way. Jay-Z should have stayed retired.

This Title Should Include Some Reference to Video Games (Preferably Zelda)

The last two times I played a video game was, 1: Last Christmas playing Halo with my brothers, they killed me 8 times because I kept going backwards and getting lost in the 3-D rendered terrain, and 2: When I was drunk I played Smash Brothers for a minute, that's how long it took me to lose.

See, I'm not very good. In fact I doubt if I've even beaten a video game in my entire life.

Growing up we had a Sega Genesis in our house. My brothers and I were allowed one hour each day to play on the Genesis. Maybe more on Sundays or when they went shopping. I used my time and had fun. But as I got older, my interest in playing video games waned. By the time I started college I didn't touch them anymore.

Why? I do think they are a waste of time, that I could do much better things with my time. But the things I do with my time are no more productive than playing a video game. I would love say that the time I spend not playing video game is put to good use, but It's probably not. I waste a lot of time on the internet, watching TV, videos, etc.etc. At the end of the day I can't look down on gamers for wasting their time, when I myself waste plenty of time. So at the end I have no highbrow intellectual reason to dislike video games, just a complete lack of interest in them.

Too Close to Call (Probably Irrelevant)

My internet connection was being a bitch so I couldn't post this last night.

Happy Election Day!

I hope you voted. I did.

I meant to post this last night, so it might not seem as timely as it would have yesterday.

I was watching CNN on Sunday at my mom's house, and it hit me. It's happening again. The same thing that happened in the '04 election. No matter what other more pressing issues could influence voters, gay marriage gets pulled out and slammed down on the table. We're mired in a war that more and more begins to resemble Vietnam. Economy, environment, etc. etc. You get the point. But the thing that seems to energize people is same sex marriages, This baffles me, it should be a non issue. Of course this is me being naïve, bigotry is still alive and well. Especially when it is religiously sanctioned.

I've heard all the reasons for wanting to deny same-sex marriage. It’s against god(if so why are there gay animals?), it’s a choice(science again proves this wrong), “the gays” only want political power(this is as stupid as is sounds).

If any one reading this lives in a state with gay-marriage bans on the ballot, I urge you to vote them down.

If Yr a Scared Motherfucker Go to Church

Ah, Election season is upon us again. Politics here at MR have always skewed left, but I've always lived in red states under the thumb of the religious right. Here its Mormons, most other places its Evangelicals. While Mormons tend to be harmlessly quirky in their influence on politics, its downright horrfying what the evangelicals do. One need only perform aquick google search on Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell to see what basards these folks are.

Speaking of Evangelicals, did you hear about Ted Haggard. Who's Ted Haggard, you ask. Why just the head of the National Association of Evangelicals. So whay did he do? He just resigned the other day because apparently he's been paying for sex from one person for three years. Oh yeah and that person was a dude.

Now MR fully supports people fucking whoever they feel like. Funny thing is Ted haggard doesn't.He's openly condemned homosexuality. Taste that. That's irony it's delicious. Ted Haggard is a prick, apparently a deeply closeted prick, but a prick nonetheless. It reeks of American Beauty Dad self repression.

Two Links:

Article about the scandal

Haggard being a jerk to Richard Dawkins, noted evolutionary biologist and athiest. He disapproves.

So with election day looming on the horizon, one can't help but wonder how the republicans will
react to this ( Fun Fact: Haggard is a big supporter of Bush, like you hadn't guessed that already). They've already elevated playing dirty to an artform.

So we wait and see. But I hope the Ted remembers the lessons from the Hell House

Killer Bees!

I used to hate hip-hop/rap, whatever you want to call it. I used to loath it. It wasn't music, It was all macho-gangser posturing(which admittedly a lot of it is, but a discussion of hip-hop and masculinity could and should be reserved for another time). Yet, deep down, I liked many of the songs. I would hear a single by Eminem or Jay-Z and begrudgingly admit to myself that, yes this is good. But I couldn't bring myself to immerse even a toe into the lagoon of rap like so many wiggers before. What would my punk rock constituents say?

So what changed my mind?

Well, besides a descent into music aestheticism.

The Wu-Tang Clan.

Nine versitile emcees combining into one mighty voltron-like force. Steeped in kung-fu movie esoteria and Five Percent mythology. And it doesn't hurt that they are some of the best rappers in the game today.

I think I can pinpoint the exact moment when my opinion changed. It was the first track on Ghostface Killah's (my current favorite emcee) solo album Supreme Clientele. Nutmeg is four minutes of surreal, abstract, stream of consciousness wordplay that doesn''t follow any conventional song structures. It was what I wanted rap to be. It, and I say this fully aware that is sounds very much like th ekind of hyperbole I'm known for, blew my mind.

I became a convert, not just to The Wu-Tang Clan, but to hip-hop in general. It has begun to integrate inself into my record collection, and I find myself eagerly anticipating new releases by Nas and Mos Def as much as releases by punk and indie bands.

If you were to listen 36 Chambers or Supreme Clientele (if you haven't already) I think you might too.