Let's all get screwed over JUST A LITTLE BIT LESS

This... in it's entirety. Not one single word said here is incorrect in any way.

This is not a left, right, or libertarian issue... it's an EVERYONE GETTING SCREWED MORE issue.

Let's all try to get screwed JUST A LITTLE BIT LESS people.

We Are A Musical People

I am basically Ron Swanson...

In an earlier post, I linked to a video talk with actor and professional fine woodworker, cabinetmaker, and finish carpenter, Nick Offerman.

For those who don't know, Nick Offerman, in real life, is basically a more "sane" and slightly less sociopathic version of his character Ron Swanson (who is based on Offermans own personality, interests, hobbies etc... just taken to ridiculous extremes)... only with a cooler job, and still married to "Tammy" (one of his ex-wives in the show, and played by his actual wife, Meghan Mullally).

Swanson (and largely Offerman), is a burly, blunt, confident, sometimes aggressive, plain spoken, mostly unfiltered (though able to filter and moderate when he chooses to, he just generally chooses not to), libertarian, disgruntled catholic, gun owner, meat lover, stupidity and ignorance hater, history lover, bad science debunker and skeptic, lover of fine spirits, wood and metalworker, believer in personal responsibility and self reliance etc...

For those who don't know me personally (or those who do but don't know the character)...

...I am basically Ron Swanson; except that I sport a vandyke and a high and tight (one of Ron's 3 "approved" haircuts), instead of an epic moustache and mane (though my hair does that exact thing when I let it grow), and I'm not technology hater.

...Well... and I'm slightly more sane, and less sociopathic.

... and I like fruit, as well as meat.

We even have the same red-brown wavy hair and red beard...

Hell we even wear the same clothes.

Seriously, I have a bunch of those same long sleeved collared knit shirts, rugby jerseys, golf/polo shirts, jeans, slacks, casual/dress shoes, and boots, that Ron wears. They're basically what I normally wear, every single day of the year (I never wear sneakers unless I'm working out, never sandals unless I'm at the beach; and never shorts or a shirt without a collar in public, unless I'm working out or at the beach).

...And when I say "the same", I mean not just a similar style... I mean the same shirts, in the same colors and patterns, probably from the same stores (Sadly, they most definitely did not cost him just $40 for ten years of his wardrobe... In fact they're actually damn expensive). We even wear the same styles of watch (... maybe even some of the same watches. We both wear divers and pilots chronometers and chronographs).


...And then theres these:



















... and then theres this 34 minutes and 15 seconds of concentrated Swanson... the vast majority of which strikes me as entirely reasonable, and full of good ideas:


...Yeah... I'm basically Ron Swanson... ... and I'm entirely OK with that...

Two completely different things...

...only connected by both being talks@google, that if you like my blog, you MUST watch:

The first is a google talk by Joe Hall, chief technologist for the Center for Democracy and Technology, basically about how they work with regulators to stop bad laws (sorry, embedding was disabled):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4KQPsrVNv4&feature=share

The second is a talk with man I consider a true genius of common sense and basic wisdom, Nick Offerman:


Trust me on the second... it starts slow, but it's entirely worth it.

Try signing up in Icelandic?

Removed the embed due to un-disablable autoplay, but the link is worth watching: SNL Parody of Kathleen Sebelius discussing Obamacare website

Yes... this is EXACTLY right, totally true and correct

Yes... this is EXACTLY right....

http://youtu.be/QCCUCVAosJU?t=4m45s

The source for the current "it's OK I speak Irish" meme.

Oh thank you for this...

A Random Favorite Song

From a random favorite artist, Christy Moore (yeah, I know he's a commie. I don't care):

Frikken great song

This Woman is a Genius

I was just subjected to the sublime awfulness of this "song" while on hold

... and I just had to share the misery

Ahh the great gift of the gods that is caffeine

Some bad assumptions....

A couple more songs to make a grown man cry

First up, Brett Eldredge - Raymond

Unfortunately embedding is disabled, but you should listen to it. As a son whose mother is in a terminal care facility, and has periods of adult dementia; and also as someone who has worked in a terminal care facility...

Well, let's just say I wasn't kidding with the title.

Next, is Trace Adkins with "Just Fishin":

This. Yes. Exactly.

I still think he never should have been allowed back in the league, never mind this...

Comin'atcha straight from the top of 1999....

Actually, there was a lot of great music releases in '99... this certainly wasn't some of it, but I heard it in passing and felt a little nostalgic.

Of course there was a lot of BAD music released in '99 too. Never mind Sturgeons law, '99 saw the debuts of Britney Spears, Westlife, Christina Aguilera (who, to be fair, is actually a great singer... she just choses to sing crap), Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Lopez, Lil Wayne, Linkin Park, and Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit actually hitting the charts (they debuted in '97, but didnt chart til '99 with their cover of "Faith"), plus "Mambo no 5", "livin la vida loca", Mobys "play", and the Will Smith album "Willenium"...

Oh and Dusty SPringfield, Al Hirt, Rick Danko, and Curtis Mayfield all died.

Yeah...

It was the year napster went mainstream, for good and ill.

But, it WAS a really great year for underground hip-hop, and for metal (Black LAbel Society, DragonForce and Avenged Sevenfold not the least of which); so I can't complain too much.

To erase the memory of the crap finnish electrodance hiphop I opened with, how about my favorite cut from what is generally considered the best album of the year, Santanas "Supernatural":

Holy Crap... When did that happen... damn I'm getting old...

Henry Rollins turned 50 a month ago...

Re-enacting scenes from my childhood

Growing up, I was always 2-6 inches taller, 50-100 lbs heavier, and a lot stronger than the other kids my age.... plus I got into Jiu Jitsu at age 5.

So, this looked very familiar to me... in fact I had EXACTLY this happen when I was 13, and I did exactly the same thing to the kid, only harder (he ended up in the hospital):

No-one was ever stupid enough to try to bully me; but there were a lot of little punks who thought they would prove something by starting a fight.

They certainly proved something... just not what they were hoping to prove.

update: Youtube pulled the vid so I'm sourcing it from LiveLeak now.

Geekuendo

Not quite as good as "Fuck Me Ray Bradbury", but I think more fun...

The Irrelevant TV shows top 10 metal videos of the year...

This is probably surprising to most folks out there, but amazingly enough, "headbangers ball" is still around.

Yeah, I know. Why bother at this point.

But what the hell... they were doing their "top ten metal videos of the year" and I figured, "why not".

Complete waste of time.

Some emo crap from Slipknot, a little Sevendust... not bad, but nothing spectacular. Ozzies latest without Zakk Wylde? utter shite, though John G can certainly play. The Deftones newest, ok, not great but ok...

Disturbed with "Another way to die" pushing the AGW fraud... Yeah, Disturbed is one of those bands where I just have to shut their politics out so I can listen. In the case of "Another way to die" the politics are the entire song... and it's not even a good song. Actually it's a pretty good video (made up of news footage), but a bad song.

The biggest disappointment to me is actually Fear Factories reunion. I was expecting more out of them. "Fear Campaign" is just another anti-american screed, with poor vocals and a muddy undefined sound.

Their number one video was Avenged Sevenfold, with "nightmare"... Frankly, it was just another Avenged Sevenfold song. Same riffs, same sound, same vocal sound... Ok video, but not particularly original or interesting. Not a bad song, not a bad video, but certainly not best of the year.

As far as I'm concerned, the best metal video of the year has to be Black Label Society with the directors cut of "Overlord".

There were a total of two decent songs in the countdown:

Alice in Chains "Your Decision", which isn't really metal so much, but they do kick ass and it's a good song and a decent video:

On the one hand, I have a problem with calling it Alice in Chains without Layne Staley; but I appreciate that rather than try to find a replacement singer, Jerry does the singing, and he does a pretty good job with it, making great music still so... OK.

The other song was 'Bullet for my Valentine' with "Your Betrayal", which was a mediocre video, but is a pretty good song:

BFMV aren't exactly a 'new" band, having been formed in 1998; but they only released their second full length album "Fever" in the U.S. this year (they're a Welsh band); and they've really been doing well all year. They're a great band, heavily influenced by classic metal, speed metal, thrash metal, and power metal (all my favorite genres); and both aggressive and melodic. I recommend checking them out.