[ berkleebassist ]

Saw this post on Deus Ex Malcontent a few days ago, just now mentioning it. It is, in turn, a link to this article on the Huffington Post. Quite an interesting read, hopefully it signals the end of this damn circus that is this year’s Democratic Party.

So the last week basically flew by; my sister’s graduation last weekend was awesome. Really great to see my family & since it was only the second time I’ve ever been to Salem, I finally got to meet all of my sister’s friends & hit the bar with all of them to celebrate. I’m really excited for my sis to move up to NYC though, it’ll be great to have her close by again for visiting & such.

Work is going as it should; my schedule remains the same which is absolutely amazing. Seriously, my boss is totally the coolest, always willing to work with me regarding hours & days off & such. So I continue to have Friday-Sunday off, the exceptions being weeks I needed Monday or Tuesday off (working on Friday those weeks.)

As for my social life, definitely a rockin’ weekend has already begun. Kicked things off Thursday night with the Video Game Music Club Band, hanging out here in my place drinking & enjoying each other’s company. Sadly, three of our members are leaving to head back to their home countries (Taiwan & Denmark) but we wished them well. Last night I hung with my new friend Emily, who is a totally awesome girl. And tonight I’m going to Lettuce with my buddy John Cooke. In case you don’t know, they’re probably the most ridiculously amazing horn funk band ever, right alongside Tower of Power. Sunday will be spent enjoying the great outdoors with a friend of a friend.

In case it’s not obvious, I’m trying to expand my circle of friends, as my closest ones moved away to pursue opportunities elsewhere. Still keep in touch with them, of course, but having friends here in town is vital.

Found by way of Jenna over at vom dot com, quoting Dan Savage:

When two dudes marry, the marriage-is-between-one-man-and-one-woman brigades crap their collective pants, vomit up ten thousand press releases, and run in circles screaming about all the hurricanes and earthquakes and unattractive haircuts that Our Loving Father™ is gonna rain down on our heads if we don’t pry Adam off Steve right fucking now.

Well, the one-man-and-one-woman crowd has been strangely silent about this polygamist sect in Texas that’s been all over the news. It appears that the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been organizing marriages/statutory rapes between one man and dozens or more women and/or girls. ‘Where’s the outrage?’ writes a reader, which prompted me to go looking for some outrage at the website of Concerned Women for America (www.cwfa.org). There are more anti-gay-marriage press releases packed onto CWFA’s website than there is fudge packed into all the homos in all the Sodoms in all of North America. But there’s not one single word that I could find about these straight men in Texas violating the holy and sacred one-man-and-one-woman rule. What gives?

(Via vom dot com.)

Burger King is never a good idea

A: Why do I sometimes think that Burger King is a good idea?
B: Burger King is never a good idea
A: Well, it has now become a part of me.
A: That’s right: they were filming one of their commercials, and the King raped me.

(Via A Prolific Squalor)

Just stumbled across this while updating my comy of Greased Lightbox, a fanastic GreaseMonkey script (for all you Firefox users out there.) It’s called Smart Image Resizer, and it’s a great piece of PHP that can resize images on the fly without modifying the original. Very very cool.

Seriously, this is amazing. Pants with a built-in keyboard, speakers, and mouse!

(Via Vous Pensez

Trying out blogging from my iPhone; pretty nifty. I’m currently sitting by gate B10 in Logan Airport, waiting to board my 10:30 flight to Roanoke via Philly. My sister’s graduating from college tommorrow, which is just unbelievable to me. Then in June, she moves to NYC! Crazy stuff. Not only that, but my brother is graduating high school on 3 weeks, and a buddy of mine is getting married 2 weeks after that! Momentous occasions this spring, to be sure.

But right now, I’m exhausted from a couple of sleep-deprived nights. Helped my friend Christine with two final projects this week, both followed by early mornings. Currently running on about 4 – 5 hours of sleep. No fun. Hopefully I can catch some z’s on the plane.

On another note, the jazz group Ellie & I are trying to start may finally have the kick in the ass it needs: a gig. Well see how that turns out.

Revenge Is a Dish Best Served Old [totally NSFW]:

(Via Deus Ex Malcontent.)

So while reading my newsfeeds yesterday, I came across this story: Kids Incorporated. I felt it definitely deserved some examination. The initial premise of the article is this:

David Archuleta’s going to win American Idol — you may as well get that through your head right now.

Now, I don’t really know much about American Idol and what’s been going on with it lately, but I’ve always had a deep abiding distaste for the show. The idea is a great one, have a democratic, meritocratic forum that decides who should become a pop star. Unfortunately, if someone whose talents are best described as a “willowy voice convey[ing] all the passion and soul of Muzak” can win this competition, you’ve got to wonder what the hell went wrong. And here, Chez examines something that goes way beyond just American Idol:

It doesn’t matter, because Archuleta has the one thing that matters — tragically, the only thing that matters these days: The unwavering worship of every 13-year-old girl in America.

The ’tweens are legion, they are powerful, and they will see to it that David Archuleta is crowned boy king of the pop culture universe. In a couple of months, they’ll have his face plastered everywhere you look — and only the little girls themselves, and maybe NAMBLA, will have reason to rejoice over it.

Now, I’m not that far removed from my teenage years that I forget what it was like to idolize a media star, but honestly, I was more about admiration than the naked lust that seems to be de rigueur among young girls. Maybe that’s a major difference between boys & girls at that age level, but I remember my girl friends being pretty levelheaded about the celebrities & pop stars they found musically enticing. There is, of course, a very simple solution to this problem:

All adults have to do, is take back the world from their kids.

Chez goes on, describing exactly how we arrived at this place, and it’s true. And while I certainly came from a privileged upbringing, my parents were careful to never let me forget that it is a privilege to have nice things, and is not something that just “happens”. Hard work not only grants you what you desire, either directly or indirectly, but also sweetens the taste. Nothing is ever so valuable as when you’ve worked your ass off for it, and quite so lacking in that quality when it’s merely granted to you. And I’m not talking about gifts, the value of a nice gift is rarely lost on anyone. I mean the constant stream of things so that getting stuff becomes the expectation, not the exception. Chez describes it really well:

Don’t pretend that you don’t know what I’m talking about, because it’s become impossible to ignore: A generation of parents who spoil their children rotten — hubristically buying into the notion that their specific spawn is somehow special and deserving of society’s deference — combined with the technology that gives every computer or text savvy kid a voice, whether he or she deserves one or not, has conspired to hijack a good portion of what we see and hear. It’s a Wiki world, one in which a vocal majority can literally rewrite the rules and twist reality to suit its needs, and right now, the ‘tweens are the most vocal — and what they need, apparently, are crappy, overproduced, Disneyfied Stepford Teens to scream for and sing along to.

This is why Hannah Montana and the Jonas Brothers are all but inescapable right now — and why David Archuleta is next.

Now, I haven’t any children of my own, so I can’t speak to the whole “child takes over your life” thing personally, but I certainly know friends of my parents and other people with children who merely lived for their spawn. That’s the root of this whole thing in my opinion; if you can’t have your own person and opinions anymore, then you’ve ceased to really be a person, no matter how wonderful your child is. As Chez states more eloquently than I:

It’s one thing to let parenthood change you — to rightly make your kids a priority; it’s another thing entirely to completely forfeit your identity and become nothing more than an extension of your child’s tastes. In years past, this kind of sloughing off of the various predilections that make someone an adult didn’t have the far reaching affect that it does today; before the age of viral transmission, YouTubed kingmaking and iRule, prepubescents didn’t really have the ability to inflict their will on the rest of us. But all that’s changed, now that text messaging and the internet have allowed for the creation of a hive mind — and what’s worse, one that’s turned Generation-Y into one big conduit/amplifier for whatever’s been cleverly marketed in its direction. It’s no longer a kid grabbing Mommy’s sleeve and screaming, ‘I want that!’ It’s a kid hooking into the Borg and joining with every other kid in the country, then voting and calling and posting and commenting and asserting power in every way possible until his or her request is no longer a request but a demand, and one that’s been handily brought to fruition. In the chaos theory of popular culture, all it takes anymore is a few butterflies flapping their wings to start a tempest that becomes a juggernaut. The ‘tweens decide what they want, the parents follow, the lapdog media that are always on the lookout for the next big thing trumpet it, and before you know it, it’s unavoidable — on every TV and radio and in every magazine and department store across the nation.

Seriously, that’s one fine piece of writing. Chez goes on from there, but you can click through & read his whole article yourself if you like. Back to the topic at hand, Chez reminds us that we, the adults (young & old) are still in control, and we need to remember that and exercise that greatest of adult privileges: the ability to say “no” to children. As my parents always used to say when I asked why: “Because I know better, and you’ll understand someday when you’re older.”

(Via Deus Ex Malcontent.)

Saw this link to Webleedesign, courtesy of @deanjrobinson, and had to mention myself that it is WAY too cool. Scroll down, and follow the site, then click that top link when you get to the bottom. Transparent PNGs and scripting and CSS oh my!