Tantalizing The Brain Tic Sensitive

Green Machine Theory (my band's name). What makes people like the music they do? There is no wrong or right answer, but here is my theory, and I've yet to find one better. There is something that touches us all personally and differently about music. I think, and I'm pretty sure I'm correct, music is a physical force, just like the wind, just like color, just like gravity. It is not tangible to our sense of touch, but to the receptors in our Conscience, Spirit, Soul, or whatever you call yourself. Just like we all look differently, our Sense feels the music differently. Now, I like certain things, and my friend likes certain things, my son likes certain things, and so on. Why do I like 'weird' and my friend likes 'country'? Because we are all wired differently. Some of us pick up on sensations others may not. How does that count for mass followings of any type of music? At the risk of sounding condescending or snobby, there may be only a few truly appreciative listeners of music while the lesser masses try to appreciate that music in order to reach some kind of ideal or enlightenment they perceive in the few appreciative listeners. Make sense? A lengthy theory of nothing...

Goth According To Goobers

Previously my 11 year old son tried to explain Goth as defined nowadays to me; here is a snippet of that conversation: "Son, what is Goth?" "Goth is like, black,..." "So Kanye West is Goth?" "Noooooo..." (I start to sing Golddigga at this point...). Goobers likes the Goth look and his girl-friend was Goth but I think she undyed her hair. Goth according to Goobers, Part 2:

Me (old, don't understand, clueless dad): Goobers, what is Goth?
Goobers (knows everything about current fashion trends): Not talking to you (whine, whine).
Me: What current bands typify the Goth look, or statement?
Goobers: Green Day, because they wear black with a red tie and paint their fingernails black.
Me: What other bands?
Goobers: Evanescence
Me: Why did you say Evancescence?
Goobers: Because you won't leave me alone until you embarrass me.
Me: How am I embarrassing you?
Goobers: By living (how goth-dad's statement).
Me: Is Cure Goth?
Goobers: He wears lipstick...no...not black
Me: So, because the Cure is not black, they aren't Goth? So you just reaffirmed to me Kanye West is actually Goth (She took my money...Girl I'm in need...)
Goobers: The Cure is not goth and you're trying to be cool like, me...uh, no, goth people.
Me: Is Mercury Rev goth?
Goobers: They sing about clouds and flying frogs with colors.
Me: Black colors?
Goobers: Colorful colors, like Green.
Me: So Green Day is not actually Goth because their name starts with Green.
Goobers: Wow, so clever, Green Day don't walk around with Green clothes and sing about butterflys.
Me: So Goth is just clothes and fashion then...Is K goth?
Goobers: Yes.
Me: What makes K goth?
Goobers: You're just jealous.
Me: Of what?
Goobers: Hmmp (prissy snort)
Me: Who else is Goth? Was I Goth when I wore black pants as a bartender at Pappasitos?
Goobers: no...no...no
Me: What other bands you like are Goth? I want to get a clear picture of what Goth is because the Goth I know is different from what you call Goth.
Goobers: Panic! At the Disco...(looks at mother) aren't they Goth? They wear black eyeliner. I'm sorry that back when you were a kid you had to wear overalls. (I'm laughing) Not funny...don't put that!
Me: Do you know there is a painting titled American Gothic with the man wearing overalls. Is he really Goth? Where is his eyeliner?
Goobers: There are other definitions...duhhrrrp!
Me: Like what?
Goobers: Why don't you look it up in the dictionary, wahhhhh...
Me: Name some bands and quit being goofy.
Goobers: I can't think of anymore you've asked me like five times, and if you're such an expert, don't you know? I don't know...
Me: Well, I think if anything, Green Day is as Goth as Britney Spears and Madonna, and I don't like the term 'Goth' but Mercury Rev fits the true definition and so does Alien Sex Fiend. And definitely old Cure.
Goobers: B. Spears walks around in newspaper, Madonna is like 60 years old, and Mercury Rev sings about meeting people on Spanish Stairs. What's that about? And, A. S. Fiend, you can't even understand one word because he is screaming, "Annnh". Hmmmmp (prissy snort)
Me: So why isn't the Cure Goth?
Goobers: Name some of their songs; they sing about-
Me: All cats are grey, the Forest, Faith...
Goobers: All the trees are green, we've been past this subject...

There you have it. Green Day is Goth, Alien Sex Fiend is not, the Cure is not, M. Rev is not, Bauhaus is not. Evanescence is Goth?...ugh, Evanescence is friends with Linkin Park so there is no credibility in my book for them. Evanescence sucks eggs, Green Day eggs...

Wake Up!

My soon-to-be 12 year old has to wake up around 5a.m. everyday to catch the bus to school. Well, he throws a tantrum every morning and stomps around upstairs, and it sucks for him to wake the other two younger brothers for no need. So, I told him to grow up, I expect more from him, and then while he was crying, I told him I loved him, I know he can do better, and if he wants, I can enroll him in Lord Of The Dance classes to facilitate his need for stomping, and then I did the best Irish LOTD imitation I could do.

Thursday Evening And My Mind Is At Ease

Here comes the sun king, here comes the sun king
Everybody's laughing, everybody's happy
Here comes the sun king
Quando para mucho mi amore de feliche caravon
Mundo paparazzi mi amore chicafele de farason
Cresto abrigado tanta mucho de canete carason

I love the Beatles...

Anti-Ward Picnic

April 8th is the ward picnic; however, due to the experiences of our past ward activities, we, the $^&%!@# family will not attend. Therefore, in order to celebrate the ward picnic our own way, we will hold our first Anti-Ward Picnic. No one in our ward is invited. Only family and friends not of our ward. There will be no self-righteousness, no high priest police to run from, no Mormon mafia to patrol the kids and belittle them in the name of the Lord. Only good feelings, love, and good bar-b-que in my newly acquired grill. Then, when Houston is no longer bathed in the sunlight and the kids are in bed or tv'ed, the hot tub will be blazin'! Yeah, yeah...yeah...

I heard the new Flaming Lips album, and to tell the truth, I'm kind of disappointed. They still have their own sound, they're still creative, but I just didn't like it. Hear it here, click on Audio, and play. The W.A.N.D. is good, and maybe two other songs. This is big for me, because for the past 13 years there has been the Lips and nothing else. Is this what age does to a band? Hmmmm...

Smiling Infidel Loves Billy Corgan Forever

Yeah, you know it's true. I'm going to do it. I'm going to buy some kind of Midi-complex, a drum machine, a synthesizer with sampling capabilites, and WHAM! my brand of techno-rave-trance-ambient-trip away music will grow into reality. I was watching my 'friends' play cover songs at a St Patrick's day party and I was thinking guitar is really really overplayed. Rock is dead and the corpse grows rotten! Isn't that why bands like Jet and Buck Cherry are just flash in the pan bands? What more can one do with a guitar that hasn't been done? Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth, they can use the guitar. Experiment, dammit! So, in order to fight off the droning of stupid whiny poser alternative bands and gay country music, I will create in the fashion of Richard James or Skinny Puppy. The possibilites are endless...
Actually, I hate hip-hop, but if you take away the lyrics and the voice, some of the sequences are really cool. I might start creating sequences and sell them to the hip-hop scene here in Houston since Houston is having a major impact on the country's Hip-hop movement right now. Psychic Dead productions...LLLcoolG...I could sample Queersryche! Hahahahhaha...Has anyone ever heard of Alien Sex Fiend? My wife likes the same music as Smirking Infidel...

Psychic Dead

Parents suck, and then some. Strange Pulse opened a can of worms for me and I will vent. Death to those who disagree. Here is my family: my mom and dad have six kids, with me as the oldest. My dad impregnated my mom when they were 16 and 15, and they decided to get married; they both come from ucked-fup families themselves. They did the 'honorable' thing I guess, and stayed together to have a family. So, here we are growing up, no money because my parents didn't have time to go to school, and that was ok, but my parents didn't like it. My dad was strict Mormon, you can't do anything wrong, but he was also very very abusive and stern on the kids, mostly me (of course I feel that way, but the sibs may disagree with that; our experiences are subjective). My mom hated everybody, still hates everybody, and was physically and emotionally abusive as well. She did stuff like pinch my leg with wire cutters ("I was just playing around" she says), she would beat my younger siblings, I saw her repeatedly slam one of my younger brothers' head into a door in a fit of temper, to which I intervened by holding her down so he can get out of the house, which earned my personal stuff getting destroyed and me getting kicked out of the house one of the many times. In my junior year of hs I left home unannounced and they came to find me. Then they repeatedly kicked me out. What? I'm confused on that still. So I left home as soon as I could. You know what's funny? Everyone at Church said, "Your dad is a good man." He wasn't your dad, futhermucker, was he? Shut your mouth. So now, one brother left to Louisiana to get his life straight. One sister lives at my parents house with her two kids from when she was 15 (ironic isn't it?). Another brother is going to prison for possibly ever for larceny r/t drugs. Another brother is doing ok, living at home at 21, which isn't so bad, he is doing good in college, but he is also a heroin addict. That's with you your whole life. Now, the other sister I haven't written about, she built a house, teaches school, and struggles in her own way. She isn't a drug addict, but she drinks heavily, or used to. None of my family talk except for when they need something. My mom and the girls go out and then ask my wife to babysit for them w/out asking my wife to join them. It's very hurtful for her. My parents complain that their life is not how they envisioned it when they would reach their fifties, with their kids on drugs, still living at home with their children...What were they thinking ten, twenty years ago when they were raising us? You reap what you sow...


Now, I'm trying to break this cycle of dark family dynamics. I have sometimes acted like my dad, but I think I am also very loving. I constantly tell the kids I love them, I praise them, I spend time with them...but it is still a struggle. I don't want to be like my dad or mom. My mom the other day said my kids are overly destructive, and little heathens, but I stated they are just normal, growing kids. She replied, "no, they are more destructive than normal." In Church we sing a song called Families Can Be Together Forever. Don't remind me! Now here is a question: Does Family mean biological furthering of DNA, or is Family what you make with whomever? Just because one is not blood related, does that mean they are not family?

Temple?

http://www.feministmormonhousewives.org/?p=523

I couldn't have said it any other way. Disregard the comments...

My Love Affair With Madness and Dark Waters

What were you doing 9 a.m. today? Working? Driving through traffic? I was sitting in my hot tub sipping on some Diet Coke over ice listening to a mix C.D. I made of all kinds of trance and ambient techno music. Hah! Then it hit me...I reviewed my life, because I'm in this opulent new house with these crazy riches and amenities I never pictured myself in (you may say to yourself, this is not my beautiful wife, and you may say to yourself, this is not my beautiful house...and the days go by...), and I thought of the past...I didn't go on a mission, which is a cultural fugue in the Mormon Church. I feel neither regret or happy about not going; it's just an experience. At that time in my life I went inactive and partied and carried on. As a little kid I was bombarded with all of this anti-drug literature and it described LSD as a horrible experience that made people do crazy things like jumping in front of a train and killing people and jumping off of buildings and stuff like that...So anyway, I was curious for a long time about LSD and one day I decided to try it. The first few times it felt like a weird kind of alternate reality; I noticed common everday things I usually overlooked and took great interest in them and wondered why I never appreciated them before (i.e. individual blades of grass, houseflies, etc...). After the newness of these experiences wore off, the drug started inward reflections, and that is where it turned hairy. It became very depressing to trip and so I quit. I didn't do it that many times, but like all drugs, it gets old. So there I was this morning in the hot tub, listening to music, and I felt that weird lonliness I felt when I tripped. The sky was grey today, there was a chill in the air, but it was humid also, so it felt like a warm chill (?!?), and the music was playing, and the whole thing together reminded me of the big Lonliness. There is something pure in being lonely; when I describe lonely I don't mean I feel a need to be with someboday, but it is a clean feeling of no heaviness or nagging thoughts of whatever, I see the world for what it is (my perception) . There is a side-effect of sadness, but it accentuates the lonliness. Do you understand what I'm saying? Imagine yourself standing on a towering cliff overlooking these crashing waves, but you know there is nobody else on the planet; it's just you. The ocean you see is black, pure black, but you hear the crashing of the waves. Behind you is a vast desert of nothing. That is the lonliness I'm describing. It's not a bad thing:)...

I Wish I Was A Pharmacist!

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-pwalgreens08mar08,0,7108212.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines