Alt-J - Every Other Freckle

Dicky Betts playing Jessica

J.J. Cale, (1938 - 2013)

Homeless

Cocaine (Written and Performed by J.J. Cale); Cocaine Blues - (Written by T.J. Arnal - Performed by Jackson Browne and the Rev. Gary Davis)

It's no accident that J.J. Cale has invited a fiddle player to contribute to this performance.

"Don't confront me with my failures,

I have not forgotten them."

Earth First

Deter

The ninth month calls the tomatoes in and starts colorin' the sumacs a blood red.  The frost flowers are bunched up beside the house patiently awaiting their cue from a clear and cold night sky impending. Life is plural, and divided into increments of unique shades that my enemies don't seem to either notice or appreciate.  The earth is teaming with spectacular complexity, creating a beautiful broth right before their eyes and beneath their feet.  They should be drowned in it and their soaked silhouettes displayed against a September sky to deter their kind from fucking around with our Mother Earth.

It has been said that horse thieves are not hanged for stealing horses -- they're hanged so that other horses don't get stolen.

It's past time to Deter. It's getting late.

PGSW

George Harrison

Alvvays - Adult Diversion; Archie, Marry Me

A Beautiful Definition of Materialism by George Thomas White Patrick, Ph.D.

I have a very old textbook, entitled Introduction to Philosophy (Rev. ed. copyright 1935), by George Thomas White Patrick, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Philosophy in the University of Iowa.  The following paragraph is an elegant and apt condensation of Materialism.  On page 247, within chapter 18, entitled "What is the Mind?," is the following excerpt, which Dr. Patrick authored, and which nails down Materialism better than any other I've read.  It's simple to understand, which means one doesn't have to wade through the ego-driven abstractions that many academics create in order to elevate themselves above the masses.  According to Dr. Patrick,

 Materialism in its older form affirmed that there is no other reality than matter, or mass particles in motion; that mind is in no way a distinct or different form of being, but is itself either a form or function of matter.  Man is an adaptive mechanism, wholly explicable in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry.  Consciousness arises in the transformation of energy in the highly complex mechanism of the nervous system, but is not itself a distinct form of energy nor distinct form of being of any kind.

My Favorite Thing About the Rest of the World

My favorite thing about the rest of the world is that it doesn't have a Texas.

                                                                                  Paul Whetstone

Norweigan Fiddle Music

Classical Gas, Performed by Tommy Emmanuel - Originally Written and Performed by Mason Williams

Tommy Emmanuel possesses a neurological masterwork inside his head.

Hannah Georges - Enemies (Directed by John Patton Ford)

Duke Dumont - Won't Look Back

Brocker Way - Man With a Broom (Make Us a Show)

Brocker Way – Man with a Broom (Make Us a Show)

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Coco Rosie - What's God's Name

Alt-J - Hunger of the Pines, Left Hand Free

Kristen Hersh - Echo

Cazzette - Sleepless

Timber Timbre - Demon Host, Magic Arrow

 

Throwing Muses - Two Step

Kristen Hersh and Belly - Slow Dog

"See-through skin
The kind of skin you can see through."

Cern

Kristen Hersh and Tanya Donelly and Throwing Muses

From So Human An Animal, by Rene Dubos

"Environmental ugliness and the rape of nature can be forgiven when they result from poverty, but not when they occur in the midst of plenty and indeed are produced by wealth."

Dire Straits - Water of Love

Beatles - For No One

Frida Kahlo's Last Words

"I hope never to return."

Modest Mouse - Dashboard

Sylvia Plath on Utilitarianism



"I stared through the Russian girl in her double-breasted gray suit, rattling off idiom after idiom in her unknowable tongue . . . and I wished with all my heart I could crawl into her and spend the rest of my life barking out one idiom after another.  It mightn't make me any happier, but it would be one more little pebble of efficiency among all the other pebbles."  The Bell Jar

Laibach - Whistleblowers Video

Pixies - Snakes

Arcade Fire - We Exist (Warning - May Produce Tingling and Chills)

(Compliments of WHETTONES)

Air Review. Young

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Newt Gingrich, The Lillelid Murders, and Appalachian American Ennui

NPR did a piece called "This I Believe" a few years back.  Listeners were invited to recite their core beliefs about anything they chose; love, life, children, work, recovery, and the like.  The encapsulations were recorded for all of posterity.   I remember posting my own account, which dealt with my recovery, as they say, from the ravages of drugs and alcohol.  I wrote that "I believe that there was hope in the passing air of a free fall."  I was wrong.  There isn't.

Anyway, selected entries were broadcast by NPR.  I had heard a range of "beliefs" during the programmings.  All were positive and full of "hope" of some kind of another.  However, Newt Gingrich was invited to recite his core feelings.  I was startled to hear his opening statement:  "I believe the world is a dangerous place."  Newt, who is dangerous in and of himself, then expounded well upon his radical thesis.  It got my attention.  It was the truth.  From the God-damnedest people of all we oftentimes hear the truth.  I've learned this the hard way.

April 6 is the anniversary of the Lillelid murders. 

The world is a very dangerous place indeed.  Apparently Vidar Lillelid either did not know this, consciously chose to ignore it, or, more likely, had fallen under the influence of a very recent indoctrination from the Jehovah's Witness Church.  Vidar and his wife, Delfina, and their two children Tabatha and Peter, were en route from a Jehovah's Witness convention in upper east Tennessee when they opted to stop at the rest area,  accessible from the southbound lane of Interstate 81, near Exit 36.

Vidar was inebriated with the dogma that had been broadcast to and absorbed by the sheepish congregants at the Jehoviah Witness convention.  So, when he saw a group of teenagers, who appeared "lost" in their Gothic appearances and sullen countenances, he foolishly opted to "witness to them," and in so doing put his family in mortal danger.  He ignored the safety of his family by approaching six strangers who appeared, as Newt Gingrich would agree, to be "dangerous."  His sense of judgment had been impaired through the dangerous amalgam created when the weak minded, sheepish congregants are drawn into the vortex of  a powerful cult, such as Jehoviah's Witness.

These possible converts ended up kidnapping Vidar Lillelid and his family in order to steal their van so they could continue on their ill-conceived exodus from Appalachia to Mexico.

 The six youths fled from eastern Kentucky, where they had been indoctrinated with fatuous Biblical chapter and verse from time immemorial.  Which was, in fact, the enabling force-field behind their flight from Appalachian Ennui.

Little blond Tabitha was shot behind the ear.  Peter was shot in the face.  Delfina was shot multiple times after witnessing the murders of her husband and daughter, and assassination attempt of her baby boy, and then run over with an automobile.

This may seem sexist, even misogynistic, but I hold firm to the belief that the man is primarily responsible for the safety of his family.  Vidar Lillelid failed in his duty to protect his family.  His sense of discretion had been fatally retarded by the cult of religious fanaticism at a coalition of Jehovah's Witness followers.  "The world is a dangerous place."  It is indeed.

This is Appalachian American Ennui.

A Savior of the Snakes: Tomi Ungerer

Thank you, Tomi Ungerer, for de-vilifying the world's most elegant reptile.  There's no telling how many of these beautiful animals you saved through your art.

TuneYards Water Fountain

Painted: An Adventure in Stop Motion Body Art

A - Z of Dance

To Geoff

when one side quits pulling at you
you must immediately dig in and stand your ground,
lest you allow the other side to pull you completely over
and consume what's left of you after you're weakened by the epic struggle.
This will be the test that will carve the contours of your relic.

Alela Diane - To Be Still

The Deep Dark Woods - River in the Pines

Sarah Jarosz: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

The Ting Tings - Shut Up And Let Me Go (Instrumental) [We Started Nothing]

Aphex Twin - Avril 14th (Extended) (+playlist)

Robin Elliott - Little Soldier

Robin Elliot, Beastie Boys,

Ana Harel Film - Bombay Beach (Trailer)

Alma Harel Film Fjogur Piano Sigur Ros

Elvis Perkins - While You Were Sleeping

Courtesy of WhetTones

Lily & Madeline - Goodbye to Anyone

Two extraordinary talented heartbreakers

Borrowed from WhetTones

James Joyce

"Our lust is brief.  We are means to those small creatures within us, and nature has other ends than we."

I believe that Joyce was referring to the brevity of life and the whole of nature and the existence of a consciousness related to that whole.  Humans are only a part of the whole of the fauna and flora.  We're not the purpose of nature.  Nature is not an entity that exists outside of us for our exploitation.  We are a small, but exceptional part of it.  But, that is all.  In the end, we rarely get to see what got us.  These creatures are just too small.

Hakensaw Boys

Restaurant Girl
https://play.spotify.com/track/0unKIM83iTUvOw9hfd3DV4

Dawn to Midnight
https://play.spotify.com/track/2qRlt93GrM1TRm1jbo5NV4

River in the Pines

A Mother's Love

Steely Dan - Aja (Full Album)

The Beatles - Revolver Album

Chrissy Hyndes

An anthem to the power of a photograph.  It "hijacked her world that night."  I praise the poetry and pedal steel."  One of the greatest piece ever put together.

Caravan Palace - Clash

 

Thanks, Em'.

Little Dragon - Crystalfilm, Little Man

 

Martin Scorsese Causes Cancer

 

Well, there may not be a direct, causal connection, but there certainly is an indirect path from his financial exploitation of Italian-Americans to an eventual socio-cultural malignancy that  destroys the brain cells of his suffering fan base.  Martin Scorsese is vulgar and relatively short on imagination.  He gets away with saying the word, "nigger," by inserting it into his films, beginning with his own cameo appearance in the back of a cab in Taxi Driver, where he tells the taxi driver how he going to kill a "nigger."  I suppose he justifies his blatant "artistic racism" by claiming the office of authenticity as impetus.  Bowel movements are authentic, too, but that's an insufficient reason to preserve the act for millions to consciously absorb while chomping on popcorn.  Or Milk Duds.  Anna Paquin took a shit in the film, Margaret, but it added nothing but a disgusting, reality t.v. element that cheapened the otherwise very good film.  I mean, you could actually hear the goddamn thing hit the water!  Plop.  Artistically it was probably intended to represent the purging of her secret in the film.  But still . . . .

The "nigger" thing isn't Scorsese's only problem, but it's a good place to target with the first round of chemotherapy.  They say chemotherapy destroys unintended, collateral areas in its process.  Here, that may actually be beneficial to the cultural health of the crowd. 

Scorsese feeds that part of us that should be starved.  To death.  No, that part should be drawn and quartered and fed through a hamburger shredder with fake blood splashing all over  a team of exploited and fat Italian-Americans as they again push the word, "nigger" further into accepted vernacular.

And, by the way, the darker dogs of my nature absolutely loved Goodfellas, though the draw of the film was heavily influenced on the use of a musical score, which was so good it would have made a Ted Nuget documentary damn near worth watching, or, more to the point, listening to.

How many quarts of fake blood you think Marty goes through in a single week of filming. "More blood, goddammit!  We're killing Stacks Edwards, for God's sake!"  Since Stacks black as molasses Scorsese splashes blood everywhere else.

Nobody's insisting that Scorsese should be blacklisted.  The point here is that a MFA dropout with enough money, fake blood, "authenticity" and borrowed collection of albums can make a good gangster film.  Gene Simmons and his band, Kiss is a fitting parallel with Scorsese; the lack of talent is absorbed in the flashy coxcombs, which divert attention away from what's tonally lacking.  At least you can listen to Kiss without looking at it, if that's how you choose to spend your time. 

The Godfather is the gold standard for gangster films, with its brilliant musical score, which wasn't knocked off from somebody's CD collection.  Scorsese hasn't come close to Francis Ford-Coppola's masterpiece, which, though artfully presented, unfortunately glorifies the continuation Italian-American thievery, extortion and serial murder as top-drawer human entertainment. 

We're screwed.



   

Beck - Blue Moon

Hackensaw Boys - Restaurant Girl

The dictionary says that if you pine for someone you desperately want to see them, be with them, or perhaps smother them with kisses.

In the evenings I've started playing this song while I pine about our mother.

"The hardest thing is leaving her behind."

"I wanna call you, I wanna call you, yes I do."

Taj Mahal - Clara

Sublime - What I Got

My Wallet's Gone

Jane's Addiction - Jane Says, Mountain Song, Just Because

Beck - [My Sun-Eyed] Girl

Oxytocin, Pheramones, Seratonin, Dopamine, Value, Urination, etc.

Oxytocin:  A neurotransmitter known as "the bonding hormone."

Pheraamones:  Olfactory signals that are exchanged between people.

Seratonin:  A neurotransmitter that contributes to well-being and happiness.

Dopamine:  Motor control, motivation, reward neurotransmitter.

While I was watching a quasi-documentary, I saw a computer pose the following question to a programmer:  "What is the highest value?"  Dude typed in "infinity," first.  Then "love," and then "life."  About then I had to pee, and on the way to the bathroom I came up with the answer:  The highest value is the next highest value plus one.  In my world then value is relative. 

Fleetwood Mac - Dreams Extended by Psychemagik

Cervantes' Commentary on the Golden Age of Nature

"[T]he heavy curve of the plowshare had not yet dared to open or violate the merciful womb of our first mother, for she, without being forced, offered up, everywhere across her broad and fertile bosom,whatever would satisfy, sustain, and delight the children who then possessed her."

                                                                                                          Don Quixote

Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter - KEXP

The Un-Blessed. Does Jesus Love Them, Too?

Say:  Jesus Loves Me,

   This I Know,

   For the Bible

  Tells Me So.

By His Hands

We All are Fed,

Thank Him for

Our Daily Bread.

Now say, "Amen."

Now utter this mantra every day of your life, before every meal, so you'll blur image above. 

These are cheap, meaningless, and completely dishonest words that are recited so that we can fall under the sectarian spell and its corrupt illusion that would have us duped in to believing that we live in a just world.

We Do Not.

Without each other, and a whole lot of luck, we are completely on our own.

Tune Yards - Bizness

Beirut - Elephant Gun, Santa Fe