Let me give the floor to SXEPhil, 'cause I'm disgusted by this.
Jun 7, 2007
WTF…
[DISCLAIMER: This was written under duress, frustration and during a not so spectacular moment yesterday. Despite its pathetic tone, I think it’d be quite unlike me to not post it.]
If I had a speech bubble protruding from the right side of my head, those are the letters that would be etched into it.
My chest is thumping, my breathing is broken, my head is throbbing and my eyes sting with the bitter wisps of frustration. Seems trying to make lemonade out of poop simply serves to further aggravate my feelings of utter disdain for my work as of late, since the produced concoction is neither lemony smelling, nor any type of aid. I’m starting to fall into an even more precarious routine of pessimism vicariously expressed via scowls, heavy sighs and more pathetic ‘woe is me’ attitudes than the would-be love child of the lead singer of Staynd and Paris Hilton. I can’t say I’m happy with how I’m taking recent activities, but I can say that after extensive auto analysis, I understand where I’m coming from, or that’s how I insist on kidding myself. I see the computer screen and would rather say I’m sorry for entering the lines I do rather than spitting at it or slamming the screen out of frustration.
This is what commitment sometimes gets you. I can’t say it’s commitment to excellence because I seriously doubt anything of what’s being produced for a certain account is remotely excellent. I can however say that the commitment is to try to at least make the capricious monkey of a client happy by giving it the banana executions it points to, nods and screams to show it’s what they want. Revisions rain down like some crazy science fiction flick where rain turns to hail turns to snow turns to hail turns to snow turns to raining frogs. We get asked for one thing, we deliver what they ask for. We get a revision asking for something totally different, we deliver what they ask for. We get another revision asking for something totally new and an extra bitchfit as to why we’re taking so long to produce one simple layout.
I find myself snapping even harder than I normally do and I can’t say I enjoy showing so clearly how frustrated I am in dealing with a particular brand of incompetence, but there is such a thing as a threshold and I’ve upheld it as much as I can. Cracks show and my resolve begins to splinter below the indecision of people who don’t know what they want and simply blurt out the first thing that their skewed brains can muster. They can’t admit fault of any type and heaven forbid that they notice that they have no clue as to what they want. I’m not saying mildly indecisive, I’m saying shit out of their minds and clueless revisions. More contradictions than a politician’s campaign promises and what actually happens when they get elected.
I feel every major vein in my head thumping to the rhythmic beating of the clicks and clacks on the keyboard. I push myself to write more and more options to try to make the client smile or at least give me a clue as to what they want. Instead I get pursed lips, scrunched eyes, lined foreheads and gems of knowledge such as: “I don’t know, I think it needs something, but I don’t know what it is.” I though, am proud to report that I do know what it needs. It’s very simple actually, this artwork needs to get approved (heaven forbid anyone shaming their mouths by saying this is a concept). You (the client) need to get a clue and I need to get drunk.
I swear I taste metal in my mouth mixed with feces, vaginal flux and semen from the dildo they waft in front of my face expecting me to gag on so I can understand what they’ve been jacking themselves off with all day. But I don’t go that way, it’s not hygienic and having an idiot contradict himself and ask me to buy into what he’s shoveling worries me in that it might all be contagious. My neck is beyond cramped, my hands would slap me if they could revolt against my body and brain yet I find myself wallowing in the afterbirth of a newborn job.
Recent comments to look for a new shop resonate but for different reasons than the ones offered. I wish I were numb and pray that a large wave of apathy would wash over me, but the set never comes and I’m left high and dry in this feeling that though the grass may not be greener on the other side, at least I could deal with it. Or would it all be the same some place else? Would some issues resolve themselves to be replaced by others or would I simply land in a place where the BS is multiplied by the number of clients, divided by the employees that get the crappy accounts and subtracted from the intangible essence explained scientifically as bioelectric synapses organized to a highly elevated level while others insist that it’s a soul and not something scientifically explainable.
Bile mixes with desperation in my mouth and my head continues to elevate the volume of the throbbing in between the temple of my temples. I long for a cigarette but know that it’s the dumbest thing I could reach out for now. I long for a beer and realize it comes at a distant albeit unnecessary second. I wonder about weed and heroin but leave it at hypotheses since I truly don’t wish a life dominated by vices and the material to make a Lifetime movie.
I literally see the nausea bubbling in the look of my creative significant other’s eyes. We try to offer moral support but fail since neither of us wish to kid ourselves that everything is ok. It’ not, we’re not, our work is not and we’re forced to zip it and keep going. That’s what we’ve always done, we’ve sucked it up and truth be told, there might be better artists out there, but I give two damns and would rather make my way through creative purgatory with this fucker than with any Cleo winner because I recognize that the main reason we don’t win awards has nothing to do with talent, but with clients, company cultures, and the bullshit bureaucracy that insists on overlooking any agency that isn’t big enough or trendy enough to mention in an awards ceremony. We’re not gods, but we could be better if they’d allow us to be, by they I mean clients. But we’re good on simply providing the creative service with a smile that gets so many clients bonerlicious since we try and make the idiots happy.
But there’s no making some idiots happy. There will always be a problem and a new take on the same hack execution they should have approved three days ago but which has undergone more facelifts and makeovers than Za Za Gabor, Joan Rivers and Dolly Parton’s tits combined. In a nutshell, I’m tired… and I don’t think I’m old enough to be this tired.
If I had a speech bubble protruding from the right side of my head, those are the letters that would be etched into it.
My chest is thumping, my breathing is broken, my head is throbbing and my eyes sting with the bitter wisps of frustration. Seems trying to make lemonade out of poop simply serves to further aggravate my feelings of utter disdain for my work as of late, since the produced concoction is neither lemony smelling, nor any type of aid. I’m starting to fall into an even more precarious routine of pessimism vicariously expressed via scowls, heavy sighs and more pathetic ‘woe is me’ attitudes than the would-be love child of the lead singer of Staynd and Paris Hilton. I can’t say I’m happy with how I’m taking recent activities, but I can say that after extensive auto analysis, I understand where I’m coming from, or that’s how I insist on kidding myself. I see the computer screen and would rather say I’m sorry for entering the lines I do rather than spitting at it or slamming the screen out of frustration.
This is what commitment sometimes gets you. I can’t say it’s commitment to excellence because I seriously doubt anything of what’s being produced for a certain account is remotely excellent. I can however say that the commitment is to try to at least make the capricious monkey of a client happy by giving it the banana executions it points to, nods and screams to show it’s what they want. Revisions rain down like some crazy science fiction flick where rain turns to hail turns to snow turns to hail turns to snow turns to raining frogs. We get asked for one thing, we deliver what they ask for. We get a revision asking for something totally different, we deliver what they ask for. We get another revision asking for something totally new and an extra bitchfit as to why we’re taking so long to produce one simple layout.
I find myself snapping even harder than I normally do and I can’t say I enjoy showing so clearly how frustrated I am in dealing with a particular brand of incompetence, but there is such a thing as a threshold and I’ve upheld it as much as I can. Cracks show and my resolve begins to splinter below the indecision of people who don’t know what they want and simply blurt out the first thing that their skewed brains can muster. They can’t admit fault of any type and heaven forbid that they notice that they have no clue as to what they want. I’m not saying mildly indecisive, I’m saying shit out of their minds and clueless revisions. More contradictions than a politician’s campaign promises and what actually happens when they get elected.
I feel every major vein in my head thumping to the rhythmic beating of the clicks and clacks on the keyboard. I push myself to write more and more options to try to make the client smile or at least give me a clue as to what they want. Instead I get pursed lips, scrunched eyes, lined foreheads and gems of knowledge such as: “I don’t know, I think it needs something, but I don’t know what it is.” I though, am proud to report that I do know what it needs. It’s very simple actually, this artwork needs to get approved (heaven forbid anyone shaming their mouths by saying this is a concept). You (the client) need to get a clue and I need to get drunk.
I swear I taste metal in my mouth mixed with feces, vaginal flux and semen from the dildo they waft in front of my face expecting me to gag on so I can understand what they’ve been jacking themselves off with all day. But I don’t go that way, it’s not hygienic and having an idiot contradict himself and ask me to buy into what he’s shoveling worries me in that it might all be contagious. My neck is beyond cramped, my hands would slap me if they could revolt against my body and brain yet I find myself wallowing in the afterbirth of a newborn job.
Recent comments to look for a new shop resonate but for different reasons than the ones offered. I wish I were numb and pray that a large wave of apathy would wash over me, but the set never comes and I’m left high and dry in this feeling that though the grass may not be greener on the other side, at least I could deal with it. Or would it all be the same some place else? Would some issues resolve themselves to be replaced by others or would I simply land in a place where the BS is multiplied by the number of clients, divided by the employees that get the crappy accounts and subtracted from the intangible essence explained scientifically as bioelectric synapses organized to a highly elevated level while others insist that it’s a soul and not something scientifically explainable.
Bile mixes with desperation in my mouth and my head continues to elevate the volume of the throbbing in between the temple of my temples. I long for a cigarette but know that it’s the dumbest thing I could reach out for now. I long for a beer and realize it comes at a distant albeit unnecessary second. I wonder about weed and heroin but leave it at hypotheses since I truly don’t wish a life dominated by vices and the material to make a Lifetime movie.
I literally see the nausea bubbling in the look of my creative significant other’s eyes. We try to offer moral support but fail since neither of us wish to kid ourselves that everything is ok. It’ not, we’re not, our work is not and we’re forced to zip it and keep going. That’s what we’ve always done, we’ve sucked it up and truth be told, there might be better artists out there, but I give two damns and would rather make my way through creative purgatory with this fucker than with any Cleo winner because I recognize that the main reason we don’t win awards has nothing to do with talent, but with clients, company cultures, and the bullshit bureaucracy that insists on overlooking any agency that isn’t big enough or trendy enough to mention in an awards ceremony. We’re not gods, but we could be better if they’d allow us to be, by they I mean clients. But we’re good on simply providing the creative service with a smile that gets so many clients bonerlicious since we try and make the idiots happy.
But there’s no making some idiots happy. There will always be a problem and a new take on the same hack execution they should have approved three days ago but which has undergone more facelifts and makeovers than Za Za Gabor, Joan Rivers and Dolly Parton’s tits combined. In a nutshell, I’m tired… and I don’t think I’m old enough to be this tired.
Ten bands that have changed my life
In giving thanks we often cite influences that have come and gone from our lives. True, inspiration comes from everywhere, but sometimes there are things that just make you realize something, little details that touch your soul as nothing you could ever fully communicate and only you can understand for it being so extremely personal in your scope of reality. There are millions of cogs, snippets of information and seconds of experience that form up your collective and in there, there’s music, film, literature, and individuals that have touched you and not in the Father McCarthy kind of way. Here is a list of ten bands that I’m blessed to have heard and who have touched my life. It’s my way of saying thanks and burning some idle time I could be using to finish something supposedly productive.
Pearl Jam
What would I be without this band? Probably a gangsta rappa. Truth be told, my first couple of purchased CD’s were rap and I still really like rap, but when I first listened to Pearl Jam, something inside me clicked, snapped, cracked, and rewired itself. Something became utterly clear and it is mainly that I love music more than a hell of a lot of other things. I’ve been able to learn from life thanks to their at times straightforward and other times cryptic lyrics. I’m able to say I’ve been one of those who have cried upon hearing a song I’ve identified with on varying levels. I am constantly admitting I am a Pearl Jam mark and that this band means the world to me, hence me seeing them live three times and being hungry for more. I could ramble on and on about PJ but I’ll leave each artist with a list of tracks that though far from their entire collection, mean something to me and are definitely worth a listen. For Pearl Jam, in no particular order, feel free to check out, “Indifference”, “All or None”, “Given to Fly”, “Immortality”, “Deep”, “Smile”, “My Tree”, “You are”, “Yellow Ledbetter”, and “Wishlist”.
Nine Inch Nails
One of the harbingers of darkness in my life, if anything, Trent Reznor has taught me to embrace the messed up things in my life and try to make something memorable and beautiful out of that grey matter rather than denying its entire existence. It’s messed up to identify with such tracks some might say, but admitting that there is a dark side to your psyche and persona is part of understanding the beasts within. Check out “The Great Below”, “Hurt”, “Closer”, “March of the Pigs”, “Where is Everybody”, “Burn”, “Beside you in time”, “Right where it belongs”, “My Violent Heart”, and “Head Like a Hole”.
Tool
The other dark pole of my psyche resides within the time shifting grandeur known as Tool. If you’ve ever wondered what a fallen angel probably sounds like, just listen to Maynard James Keenan. Beautiful, destructive, mesmerizing, complex. Truly no one word does them justice and the largest lesson I’ve taken from them is that anger is constructive while hate is empty. Use anger to fuel your fire and you will accomplish great things. Use hate instead, and you’ll just be another idiot hypocrite. Check out “Aenema”, “Push It”, “Swamp song”, “Sober”, “Part of Me”, “Vicarious”, “Wings for Mary (Pts 1 and 2)”, “Right in Two”, “The Grudge” and “Schism”.
Pink Floyd
What is a list of my top ten bands without the Floyd… I don’t know how many times I was able to hear The Wall back to back but I know that I became a huge Pink Floyd fan and found myself starving to save my lunch money to buy more and more Pink Floyd albums. It was almost a sickness but since it helped me on other levels, maybe it was just me paying for a cure. Regardless, this is one of the bands that has allowed me to travel the cosmos without the need of using psychedelics ever. If you need a list of tracks I pity you for not having discovered them yet but here’s a list: “Comfortably Numb”, “Goodbye Blue Sky”, “Is There Anybody Out There”, “The Great Gig in the Sky”, “Breathe”, “Money”, “Echoes”, “Astronomy Domine”, “Matilda Mother”, and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”.
Radiohead
We all have bouts with sadness, despair, and other types of mopey pain. Truth be told, we’re almost designed to feel bad every so often due to empathy, self analysis, chocolate depravation or sheer frustration at the limitations of our humanity. So in comes Radiohead and helps you go inward, above and beyond pain to learn from it and show you that sadness is truly something that can be extremely beautiful. Such is the nature of vulnerability and such is the nature of Radiohead. While they rewrite the rules of musical engagement, they craft some of the most memorable tunes their side of the Atlantic and I’ve been lucky enough to have been hearing them since Pablo Honey. Feel free to listen to “Bulletproof”, “Street Spirit”, “Fake Plastic Trees”, “Paranoid Android”, “No Alarms”, “Everything in its Right Place”, “Motion Picture Soundtrack”, “Pyramid Song”, “You”, and “There, there”.
Explosions in the Sky
This is a relatively recent acquisition in my life and I would have never thought it would have such a profound impact on me, mainly because this is music without lyrics. But the effect was dramatic, real, palpable and I can’t help but love the places one can even think about from simply hearing their music. Though most albums are concept albums in a sense, you can feel free to check these individual sonic journeys: “The Birth and Death of a Day”, “Welcome Ghosts”, “It’s Natural to be Afraid”, “First Breath After Coma”, “The only moment we were alone”, and “The Rescue Day 1”.
Sigur Ros
Possibly fittingly accused of being Psych Ward Music, this band also touched a sensitive nerve in me and has helped me sort out some interesting feelings and emotions in my life. True, you can’t understand what they’re saying unless you speak Icelandic or have a dictionary of the language they made up, but it’s still music for the senses that rattles the emotions and serves to prove you don’t need to know what’s being said to have music mean something to you. Check out “Svefn-g-englar”, “Stalarur”, “NY Batteri”, “Untitled #1”, “Untitled #3”, “Untitled #8”, “Glossoli”, and “Saeglopur”, whatever the hell any of those titles mean.
Blind Melon
This might be a big surprise to people, but I didn’t mourn Kurt Cobain’s death half as much as I did that of Shannon Hoon. This band is one of the happy bands in my list and it’s a band that was cut WAY too short from coming full circle. Two full-length albums and a third collection of rarities shows that they had a hell of a lot of potential and could have been epic if not for Hoon’s overdose. Some people need to chill and have a good time and trust me that Blind Melon is one of those bands that shall always make me smile. Check out “Vernie”, “Galaxy”, “The Duke’, “Mouthful of Cavities”, “Time”, “Change”, “Sleepyhouse”, “Soul one”, “Soup” and “The Pusher”.
Led Zeppelin
Another musical behemoth comes in the way of Zeppelin. You can’t like a guitar and not like Zeppelin, period. True, Stairway to Heaven might be one of the most overplayed songs in history, but such an attribute does the song and the band justice. “Stairway to Heaven”. “The Rain Song”, “Over the Hills and Far Away”, “Dazed and Confused”, “Immigrant Song”, “Babe I’m gonna leave you”, “D’yer Maker”, “Tangerines”, “In The light”, “Kashmir”, and “When the Levees Break”. Kneel before greatness.
Jack Johnson
Jack is to mellow what Christ is to Christianity. Never will you see a more laid back nice guy on stage and he’s the type of guy you want to hug while you surf, even if that sounds massively gay. He plays guitar, is a world-class surfer, did surf videos and jams with the likes of Eddie Vedder and Ben Harper because they like him so damn much. Check “Constellations”, “Banana Pancakes”, “Middle Man”, “Inaudible Melodies”, “Bubble Toes”, “Times Like These”, “Taylor”, “The horizon has been defeated”, “Sitting Wishing Waiting”, and “Belle”.
Very notable mentions:
Ani Difranco
Few people write better than Ani. She’s shown me the importance of equality and that being a feminist should mean you’re a humanist instead of being an inverted chauvinist.
Soundgarden
Epic in scale, grand in execution and a sonic blast of half-step-down chords to make you headbang in a quite groovy way.
Eels
Low key band with a hardcore following, and with good reason. This is one of the bands I pride myself on owning most of their material because people normally ask me who the hell are they when it’s playing in the car.
Incubus
So the last album had a few bombs that really stank up the CD enough for me not to want to buy it, who cares? This band has enough great material to be forgiven, including on the aforementioned last album. Brandon Boyd’s vocals are incredible and when he gets his shit together, which is nine times out of ten if you’re counting, great things happen in a young band that still seems to want to grow.
Mars Volta
The Sonic Mayhem which is Mars Volta dares you to send pre conceived notions of rock music to another place. Their first two albums are masterpieces even if Frances the Mute has about twenty minutes worth of white noise in the album. The third album, although slightly disappointing, does have Asilos Magdalena and trust me, it’s a great track. Let’s see what else these crazy fuckers come up with.
The Who
An incredible band, with an incredible history who has lost two of its founding members yet still insists on plodding on even after having lost quite possibly the best drummer and best bassist of pretty much any rock band ever. I actually bought my first CD of them as an accident because I was looking for a Guess Who album, lucky for me I found this band instead. Guess who won… me.
Tori Amos
Her body of work is a testament to her immense talent and her commitment to provide either cryptic what the fuck bliss or brutal honesty (trust me, some of the old lyrics will have you scratching your head at best). Her piano work is quite impressive, powerful yet beautiful, or is it the other way around. Oh and she’s a bit crazy, all ingredients for brilliance. I’m still pining to see her live even if her fans scare me a bit.
These are just a few of the bands that mean something special to me for different reasons
Pearl Jam
What would I be without this band? Probably a gangsta rappa. Truth be told, my first couple of purchased CD’s were rap and I still really like rap, but when I first listened to Pearl Jam, something inside me clicked, snapped, cracked, and rewired itself. Something became utterly clear and it is mainly that I love music more than a hell of a lot of other things. I’ve been able to learn from life thanks to their at times straightforward and other times cryptic lyrics. I’m able to say I’ve been one of those who have cried upon hearing a song I’ve identified with on varying levels. I am constantly admitting I am a Pearl Jam mark and that this band means the world to me, hence me seeing them live three times and being hungry for more. I could ramble on and on about PJ but I’ll leave each artist with a list of tracks that though far from their entire collection, mean something to me and are definitely worth a listen. For Pearl Jam, in no particular order, feel free to check out, “Indifference”, “All or None”, “Given to Fly”, “Immortality”, “Deep”, “Smile”, “My Tree”, “You are”, “Yellow Ledbetter”, and “Wishlist”.
Nine Inch Nails
One of the harbingers of darkness in my life, if anything, Trent Reznor has taught me to embrace the messed up things in my life and try to make something memorable and beautiful out of that grey matter rather than denying its entire existence. It’s messed up to identify with such tracks some might say, but admitting that there is a dark side to your psyche and persona is part of understanding the beasts within. Check out “The Great Below”, “Hurt”, “Closer”, “March of the Pigs”, “Where is Everybody”, “Burn”, “Beside you in time”, “Right where it belongs”, “My Violent Heart”, and “Head Like a Hole”.
Tool
The other dark pole of my psyche resides within the time shifting grandeur known as Tool. If you’ve ever wondered what a fallen angel probably sounds like, just listen to Maynard James Keenan. Beautiful, destructive, mesmerizing, complex. Truly no one word does them justice and the largest lesson I’ve taken from them is that anger is constructive while hate is empty. Use anger to fuel your fire and you will accomplish great things. Use hate instead, and you’ll just be another idiot hypocrite. Check out “Aenema”, “Push It”, “Swamp song”, “Sober”, “Part of Me”, “Vicarious”, “Wings for Mary (Pts 1 and 2)”, “Right in Two”, “The Grudge” and “Schism”.
Pink Floyd
What is a list of my top ten bands without the Floyd… I don’t know how many times I was able to hear The Wall back to back but I know that I became a huge Pink Floyd fan and found myself starving to save my lunch money to buy more and more Pink Floyd albums. It was almost a sickness but since it helped me on other levels, maybe it was just me paying for a cure. Regardless, this is one of the bands that has allowed me to travel the cosmos without the need of using psychedelics ever. If you need a list of tracks I pity you for not having discovered them yet but here’s a list: “Comfortably Numb”, “Goodbye Blue Sky”, “Is There Anybody Out There”, “The Great Gig in the Sky”, “Breathe”, “Money”, “Echoes”, “Astronomy Domine”, “Matilda Mother”, and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”.
Radiohead
We all have bouts with sadness, despair, and other types of mopey pain. Truth be told, we’re almost designed to feel bad every so often due to empathy, self analysis, chocolate depravation or sheer frustration at the limitations of our humanity. So in comes Radiohead and helps you go inward, above and beyond pain to learn from it and show you that sadness is truly something that can be extremely beautiful. Such is the nature of vulnerability and such is the nature of Radiohead. While they rewrite the rules of musical engagement, they craft some of the most memorable tunes their side of the Atlantic and I’ve been lucky enough to have been hearing them since Pablo Honey. Feel free to listen to “Bulletproof”, “Street Spirit”, “Fake Plastic Trees”, “Paranoid Android”, “No Alarms”, “Everything in its Right Place”, “Motion Picture Soundtrack”, “Pyramid Song”, “You”, and “There, there”.
Explosions in the Sky
This is a relatively recent acquisition in my life and I would have never thought it would have such a profound impact on me, mainly because this is music without lyrics. But the effect was dramatic, real, palpable and I can’t help but love the places one can even think about from simply hearing their music. Though most albums are concept albums in a sense, you can feel free to check these individual sonic journeys: “The Birth and Death of a Day”, “Welcome Ghosts”, “It’s Natural to be Afraid”, “First Breath After Coma”, “The only moment we were alone”, and “The Rescue Day 1”.
Sigur Ros
Possibly fittingly accused of being Psych Ward Music, this band also touched a sensitive nerve in me and has helped me sort out some interesting feelings and emotions in my life. True, you can’t understand what they’re saying unless you speak Icelandic or have a dictionary of the language they made up, but it’s still music for the senses that rattles the emotions and serves to prove you don’t need to know what’s being said to have music mean something to you. Check out “Svefn-g-englar”, “Stalarur”, “NY Batteri”, “Untitled #1”, “Untitled #3”, “Untitled #8”, “Glossoli”, and “Saeglopur”, whatever the hell any of those titles mean.
Blind Melon
This might be a big surprise to people, but I didn’t mourn Kurt Cobain’s death half as much as I did that of Shannon Hoon. This band is one of the happy bands in my list and it’s a band that was cut WAY too short from coming full circle. Two full-length albums and a third collection of rarities shows that they had a hell of a lot of potential and could have been epic if not for Hoon’s overdose. Some people need to chill and have a good time and trust me that Blind Melon is one of those bands that shall always make me smile. Check out “Vernie”, “Galaxy”, “The Duke’, “Mouthful of Cavities”, “Time”, “Change”, “Sleepyhouse”, “Soul one”, “Soup” and “The Pusher”.
Led Zeppelin
Another musical behemoth comes in the way of Zeppelin. You can’t like a guitar and not like Zeppelin, period. True, Stairway to Heaven might be one of the most overplayed songs in history, but such an attribute does the song and the band justice. “Stairway to Heaven”. “The Rain Song”, “Over the Hills and Far Away”, “Dazed and Confused”, “Immigrant Song”, “Babe I’m gonna leave you”, “D’yer Maker”, “Tangerines”, “In The light”, “Kashmir”, and “When the Levees Break”. Kneel before greatness.
Jack Johnson
Jack is to mellow what Christ is to Christianity. Never will you see a more laid back nice guy on stage and he’s the type of guy you want to hug while you surf, even if that sounds massively gay. He plays guitar, is a world-class surfer, did surf videos and jams with the likes of Eddie Vedder and Ben Harper because they like him so damn much. Check “Constellations”, “Banana Pancakes”, “Middle Man”, “Inaudible Melodies”, “Bubble Toes”, “Times Like These”, “Taylor”, “The horizon has been defeated”, “Sitting Wishing Waiting”, and “Belle”.
Very notable mentions:
Ani Difranco
Few people write better than Ani. She’s shown me the importance of equality and that being a feminist should mean you’re a humanist instead of being an inverted chauvinist.
Soundgarden
Epic in scale, grand in execution and a sonic blast of half-step-down chords to make you headbang in a quite groovy way.
Eels
Low key band with a hardcore following, and with good reason. This is one of the bands I pride myself on owning most of their material because people normally ask me who the hell are they when it’s playing in the car.
Incubus
So the last album had a few bombs that really stank up the CD enough for me not to want to buy it, who cares? This band has enough great material to be forgiven, including on the aforementioned last album. Brandon Boyd’s vocals are incredible and when he gets his shit together, which is nine times out of ten if you’re counting, great things happen in a young band that still seems to want to grow.
Mars Volta
The Sonic Mayhem which is Mars Volta dares you to send pre conceived notions of rock music to another place. Their first two albums are masterpieces even if Frances the Mute has about twenty minutes worth of white noise in the album. The third album, although slightly disappointing, does have Asilos Magdalena and trust me, it’s a great track. Let’s see what else these crazy fuckers come up with.
The Who
An incredible band, with an incredible history who has lost two of its founding members yet still insists on plodding on even after having lost quite possibly the best drummer and best bassist of pretty much any rock band ever. I actually bought my first CD of them as an accident because I was looking for a Guess Who album, lucky for me I found this band instead. Guess who won… me.
Tori Amos
Her body of work is a testament to her immense talent and her commitment to provide either cryptic what the fuck bliss or brutal honesty (trust me, some of the old lyrics will have you scratching your head at best). Her piano work is quite impressive, powerful yet beautiful, or is it the other way around. Oh and she’s a bit crazy, all ingredients for brilliance. I’m still pining to see her live even if her fans scare me a bit.
These are just a few of the bands that mean something special to me for different reasons
Jun 5, 2007
Jun 4, 2007
This Spic loves Niggers, Chinks, Towlies and Crackers
For those who live under a rock, racism still exists. This is no surprise for anyone who has half a brain or who has had the luck of being born within a “minority”. Minority is put within quotation marks because truth be told, nowadays, minorities outnumber the majority in various parts of the world. But racism is an everyday occurrence and although we no longer have separate bathrooms, water fountains or sections to ride within a bus, it still exists. That being established first and foremost, the whole race issue has REALLY come into play in a recent post where a racial slur was used to describe what some people do on a daily basis. It was utilized to try to make a point and a whole debate came out of establishing that the language usage was inappropriate for x or y reason. This slur also happened to be utilized in what I thought was a snippet but what turned out to be a mind altering comment for others.
For the benefit of the people who have never read this blog, I happen to be a Hispanic copywriter that works in advertising and have dedicated hundreds of hours of my time to contribute to this blog writing about pretty much anything that is on my mind at any given moment. Also, since this is our blog (By ‘our’, I mean Me, Travis, Restriction’s and mine), we consider ourselves bearers of the carte blanche known as freedom of expression even though we live in times when such a right is coming under fire thanks to the “necessity of withholding constitutional rights”.
This clarification is established in hopes that anyone reading this understands that I’ve had to face racism head-on for various reasons, though mainly because I’m a Spic. One of the problems I also find is that I enjoy consorting with other minorities and one of our casual lunches might seem like a meeting of the UN for passers by. I enjoy exchanging ideas with people from different backgrounds because it is enriching on various levels. This clarification has also been offered so as to avoid (at least for this post), that anyone think I’m white, not that being white would be a bad thing or a good thing, I’m just not white.
The next thing to take into account within these lines is the words utilized in the title of this post. Maybe I’m ignorant, stupid, insensitive but I find it funny that some people gasp at reading the title of this post and I’m sure someone is going to say I crossed the line. In regards to said hypothetical reaction I ask this, which line have I crossed? The line of bad taste, of bigotry or the one where some people’s sensitivities remain? Whichever line I may have crossed though I can’t say I’m sorry for the title I put forth. When I say I’m a Spic, I’m not simply saying I’m Hispanic or Latino, I’m stating the obvious that at one time or another, I may have been labeled as such and though it bothered me to some point, it didn’t traumatize me. To clear my point of view, the very labels of Hispanic and Latino are in themselves topics of controversy where some people hate being called Latino because we don’t speak Latin while others are offended by Hispanic because it derives from Spanish and they’re not Spaniard. The same goes for the terms Oriental/Asian, and Black/African American but I don’t further elaborate since I’m not a member of any of these groups though I do enjoy spending time with them. These labels are the euphemistic equivalent of Spic, Chink and Nigger and I don’t see why saying that there are people that consider me a Spic, a friend of mine a Nigger and another friend of mine a Chink implies that I promote or support racism or ignorance.
What I have noticed though is the overly sensitive nature of people in regards to language and their lax behavior in regards to action. Trust me, I do not applaud or condone the comments of Michael Richards, Mel Gibson or Don Imus in regards to their individual bigot blowouts from relatively recent news.
In the case of Michael Richards, I think he had a genuine opportunity to make a case of people being overly sensitive of the word nigger. But he’s an idiot and an asshole and instead of coming through for humanity by bringing an elevated debate about slurs versus euphemisms, he just snapped and showed what a bigot asshole he is. That the mere mention of the word nigger is enough of a reason to lynch someone baffles me, but then again I can only attempt to understand what it would feel like to be black and be called a nigger and all the history of oppression that includes. That’s because I’m not black and I can’t fully understand how a black person would react. I can however say that I think Richards came off as an idiot for being insensitive, immature, stupid and bigotrous and his career suicide is a lenient outcome for his behavior.
Then we have Mel Gibson going on a drunken tequila tirade of how the Jews start all the wars and though it was shitty behavior, I find myself forced to stand back and take a few things into consideration: A. he was drunk out of his mind which doesn’t justify his comments but does help understand why he snapped, B. he’s one of many stars to probably practice racism in some way shape or form, but since he said it so overtly, he’s the one to get the shaft. I have a problem with that last bit because if there’s any place where racism runs rampant, it’s in the entertainment business and I can honestly say I’ve felt pride for Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx and Benicio del Toro for having won academy awards where it was once impossible to be admitted into the ceremony if you were a minority unless you had a cocktail suit and were there to serve drinks.
Lastly there is the Don Imus debacle. Did he come off as a huge asshole? Most certainly and I totally agree that he truly screwed up and crossed the line for being sexist, materialistic, and racist in his comments, but that doesn’t mean I think he should have gotten fired for his comments because that would go against constitutional rights. Furthermore, if he got fired then I ask myself how the fuck Rush Limbaugh still keeps his job since a more evidently racist, misogynistic, and evil minded fuck has rarely been seen upon the face of this Earth.
Taking the last two examples into account, (Mel and Don’s), let’s see how the people reacted in both cases. The Jewish community was totally pissed off but instead of tar and feathering Gibson, they offered to meet so Mel could deal with his Jewish issues. This might be a bullshit gesture but it sets an example of how race issues should be dealt with (at least in my opinion). Then we have the Don Imus debacle where he was fired and spat upon for being a racist asshole and yada yada yada. I say yada, yada, yada not to say that what he said wasn’t important though. I say yada, yada, yada because people didn’t for one second take a minute to look beyond his suck-ass comments. His contributions to certain communities, be them exclusively white or not I don’t care, but he did offer money to help some people out even if it was a way of tax evasion. He’s been garnered with numerous prizes and one dumbass comment cost him his career pretty much. This instead of offering a genuine apology to the Black Community and working on his bigot issues by employing hours of community service dealing with “nappy headed niggers” as he might label them. This was an opportunity to chastise and offer forgiveness to attempt to further promote racial understanding, but it was simply discarded as another attack of whitey on the black man and left at that and I can’t say I agree with that type of reaction. Again, maybe I’m just an ignorant guy with optimistic hopes within a pessimistic outlook (I’m contradictory in that way), but I think that instead of learning tolerance and understanding, we’re sending the wrong message. Instead of us getting along, it’s all about fear Mr. Darky Dark because Blacks/African Americans are no longer a minority instead of looking the guy in the face and saying “asshole, why did you say what you said? Why can’t you grow up and come into the new millennium? Why can’t you see how ignorant you are and remedy that?”. Instead we’re offered another dose of “fear the Black man” and I can’t help but feel disappointed in people.
Lastly, I want to re-bring forth Rosie’s Ching Chong fuckup. Out of all the reactions, hers was the most overlooked and easily forgotten for one simple reason, because her slur was against Asians and who gives a shit about them. With the last sentence I’m not saying I don’t give a shit about Asians, QUITE THE CONTRARY. I think they are under-represented in the media, ignored and not taken seriously quite often yet people can handle a Chink comment, better than a Spic comment and heaven forbid…. a N…N.. Nigger comment (there, I said it). Rosie was just as stupid as her bigot consorts yet was let off the hook because she attacked the least important minority as some people would have me believe, and I think that is a shitty attitude especially since her reactions to the Asian community were halfassed at best. She didn’t care about what she’d said and she never once genuinely apologized for her comments. You know why? Because she was clear that there would be no repercussions because she said Chink and didn’t say Nigger so she’s kosher.
So to establish my point of view in regards to language, the usage of racial slurs, racism and the bullshit that ensues, I offer these fictional lines of text to prove a point:
If anything in this life, I can honestly say I love my niggers to death. Their stinky hobo ways and hoochie momma loving goodness brings out my teen impregnating spic self in all it’s promiscuously wife beating glory so I can call up my chinky gook fucking friends to watch some dike porn and laugh at remembering that time we all hung out with hadji and the dots making fun of Jerry and his butt pirate ways. Hell the worst part was deciding what to eat since Tamikashawnajezerrae and Fing Hong Chun Sho Kim Po Lun couldn’t help in us deciding where to eat. I wanted rice and beans, Tami wanted chicken and chili, Fing wanted rice and fish (hold the beans) and lord knows what the fuck Hadji wanted but it probably stinks and makes you shit for seven hours straight. What I do know, is that we all get along, we all abuse of the usage of slurs and we don’t care, because there are more important things in life to obsess over.
After that last bit, here’s my point: are you going to focus on the fictional slur filled paragraph above, or are you going to read the rest of the post? The decision is yours; the discussion though, is ours. May you all have a great day and may we all somehow get along.
Cheers
Joker
For the benefit of the people who have never read this blog, I happen to be a Hispanic copywriter that works in advertising and have dedicated hundreds of hours of my time to contribute to this blog writing about pretty much anything that is on my mind at any given moment. Also, since this is our blog (By ‘our’, I mean Me, Travis, Restriction’s and mine), we consider ourselves bearers of the carte blanche known as freedom of expression even though we live in times when such a right is coming under fire thanks to the “necessity of withholding constitutional rights”.
This clarification is established in hopes that anyone reading this understands that I’ve had to face racism head-on for various reasons, though mainly because I’m a Spic. One of the problems I also find is that I enjoy consorting with other minorities and one of our casual lunches might seem like a meeting of the UN for passers by. I enjoy exchanging ideas with people from different backgrounds because it is enriching on various levels. This clarification has also been offered so as to avoid (at least for this post), that anyone think I’m white, not that being white would be a bad thing or a good thing, I’m just not white.
The next thing to take into account within these lines is the words utilized in the title of this post. Maybe I’m ignorant, stupid, insensitive but I find it funny that some people gasp at reading the title of this post and I’m sure someone is going to say I crossed the line. In regards to said hypothetical reaction I ask this, which line have I crossed? The line of bad taste, of bigotry or the one where some people’s sensitivities remain? Whichever line I may have crossed though I can’t say I’m sorry for the title I put forth. When I say I’m a Spic, I’m not simply saying I’m Hispanic or Latino, I’m stating the obvious that at one time or another, I may have been labeled as such and though it bothered me to some point, it didn’t traumatize me. To clear my point of view, the very labels of Hispanic and Latino are in themselves topics of controversy where some people hate being called Latino because we don’t speak Latin while others are offended by Hispanic because it derives from Spanish and they’re not Spaniard. The same goes for the terms Oriental/Asian, and Black/African American but I don’t further elaborate since I’m not a member of any of these groups though I do enjoy spending time with them. These labels are the euphemistic equivalent of Spic, Chink and Nigger and I don’t see why saying that there are people that consider me a Spic, a friend of mine a Nigger and another friend of mine a Chink implies that I promote or support racism or ignorance.
What I have noticed though is the overly sensitive nature of people in regards to language and their lax behavior in regards to action. Trust me, I do not applaud or condone the comments of Michael Richards, Mel Gibson or Don Imus in regards to their individual bigot blowouts from relatively recent news.
In the case of Michael Richards, I think he had a genuine opportunity to make a case of people being overly sensitive of the word nigger. But he’s an idiot and an asshole and instead of coming through for humanity by bringing an elevated debate about slurs versus euphemisms, he just snapped and showed what a bigot asshole he is. That the mere mention of the word nigger is enough of a reason to lynch someone baffles me, but then again I can only attempt to understand what it would feel like to be black and be called a nigger and all the history of oppression that includes. That’s because I’m not black and I can’t fully understand how a black person would react. I can however say that I think Richards came off as an idiot for being insensitive, immature, stupid and bigotrous and his career suicide is a lenient outcome for his behavior.
Then we have Mel Gibson going on a drunken tequila tirade of how the Jews start all the wars and though it was shitty behavior, I find myself forced to stand back and take a few things into consideration: A. he was drunk out of his mind which doesn’t justify his comments but does help understand why he snapped, B. he’s one of many stars to probably practice racism in some way shape or form, but since he said it so overtly, he’s the one to get the shaft. I have a problem with that last bit because if there’s any place where racism runs rampant, it’s in the entertainment business and I can honestly say I’ve felt pride for Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx and Benicio del Toro for having won academy awards where it was once impossible to be admitted into the ceremony if you were a minority unless you had a cocktail suit and were there to serve drinks.
Lastly there is the Don Imus debacle. Did he come off as a huge asshole? Most certainly and I totally agree that he truly screwed up and crossed the line for being sexist, materialistic, and racist in his comments, but that doesn’t mean I think he should have gotten fired for his comments because that would go against constitutional rights. Furthermore, if he got fired then I ask myself how the fuck Rush Limbaugh still keeps his job since a more evidently racist, misogynistic, and evil minded fuck has rarely been seen upon the face of this Earth.
Taking the last two examples into account, (Mel and Don’s), let’s see how the people reacted in both cases. The Jewish community was totally pissed off but instead of tar and feathering Gibson, they offered to meet so Mel could deal with his Jewish issues. This might be a bullshit gesture but it sets an example of how race issues should be dealt with (at least in my opinion). Then we have the Don Imus debacle where he was fired and spat upon for being a racist asshole and yada yada yada. I say yada, yada, yada not to say that what he said wasn’t important though. I say yada, yada, yada because people didn’t for one second take a minute to look beyond his suck-ass comments. His contributions to certain communities, be them exclusively white or not I don’t care, but he did offer money to help some people out even if it was a way of tax evasion. He’s been garnered with numerous prizes and one dumbass comment cost him his career pretty much. This instead of offering a genuine apology to the Black Community and working on his bigot issues by employing hours of community service dealing with “nappy headed niggers” as he might label them. This was an opportunity to chastise and offer forgiveness to attempt to further promote racial understanding, but it was simply discarded as another attack of whitey on the black man and left at that and I can’t say I agree with that type of reaction. Again, maybe I’m just an ignorant guy with optimistic hopes within a pessimistic outlook (I’m contradictory in that way), but I think that instead of learning tolerance and understanding, we’re sending the wrong message. Instead of us getting along, it’s all about fear Mr. Darky Dark because Blacks/African Americans are no longer a minority instead of looking the guy in the face and saying “asshole, why did you say what you said? Why can’t you grow up and come into the new millennium? Why can’t you see how ignorant you are and remedy that?”. Instead we’re offered another dose of “fear the Black man” and I can’t help but feel disappointed in people.
Lastly, I want to re-bring forth Rosie’s Ching Chong fuckup. Out of all the reactions, hers was the most overlooked and easily forgotten for one simple reason, because her slur was against Asians and who gives a shit about them. With the last sentence I’m not saying I don’t give a shit about Asians, QUITE THE CONTRARY. I think they are under-represented in the media, ignored and not taken seriously quite often yet people can handle a Chink comment, better than a Spic comment and heaven forbid…. a N…N.. Nigger comment (there, I said it). Rosie was just as stupid as her bigot consorts yet was let off the hook because she attacked the least important minority as some people would have me believe, and I think that is a shitty attitude especially since her reactions to the Asian community were halfassed at best. She didn’t care about what she’d said and she never once genuinely apologized for her comments. You know why? Because she was clear that there would be no repercussions because she said Chink and didn’t say Nigger so she’s kosher.
So to establish my point of view in regards to language, the usage of racial slurs, racism and the bullshit that ensues, I offer these fictional lines of text to prove a point:
If anything in this life, I can honestly say I love my niggers to death. Their stinky hobo ways and hoochie momma loving goodness brings out my teen impregnating spic self in all it’s promiscuously wife beating glory so I can call up my chinky gook fucking friends to watch some dike porn and laugh at remembering that time we all hung out with hadji and the dots making fun of Jerry and his butt pirate ways. Hell the worst part was deciding what to eat since Tamikashawnajezerrae and Fing Hong Chun Sho Kim Po Lun couldn’t help in us deciding where to eat. I wanted rice and beans, Tami wanted chicken and chili, Fing wanted rice and fish (hold the beans) and lord knows what the fuck Hadji wanted but it probably stinks and makes you shit for seven hours straight. What I do know, is that we all get along, we all abuse of the usage of slurs and we don’t care, because there are more important things in life to obsess over.
After that last bit, here’s my point: are you going to focus on the fictional slur filled paragraph above, or are you going to read the rest of the post? The decision is yours; the discussion though, is ours. May you all have a great day and may we all somehow get along.
Cheers
Joker
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