It’s been awhile, and life is changing considerably. Last I wrote was regarding living in a self-sufficient manner on a bit of acreage. Since then, my mom came closer than pretty much ever to meeting eternity (septic shock, recurring cdiff infections, congestive heart failure, and other stuff, all at once). As in was down to 68 lbs (though she is technically a homunculus at 4’9″). We took the first half of her inheritance from her aunt passing, got all of the debt except the mortgage paid off, and figuring this was probably the last time for it, splurged on a summer for myself, my sister, and my nieces to remember while mom is still mobile and, well, alive. I am also moving back to Austin, TX, at the end of this month. The fiancee is graduating in some kind of bio-chem/genetics voodoo Frankensteinian field. The second half of the inheritance goes to fixing both houses so that we can sell them, so my sister can buy a house outright in town, or wherever she wants to.
We rented a beach house for 3 weeks on Tops’l Island (the property we own is just south of Pinehurst, NC, and borders the SW corner of Ft Bragg, so that is our favorite beach to visit) for an obscene amount of money (worth it). We also spent a REALLY obscene amount of money on 5 tickets for the Waters show, as we are all huge Pink Floyd freaks.
Waters is very hit and miss in the post-Floyd days (1985 in ATX on the Pros and Cons Of Hitchhiking tour, the guitarist was not able to do either Gilmour or Clapton, it was out of place for the music), so I researched on YouTube his shows from recent years. I went back to the last stages of the recent Wall tour, and the early shows from this one. He sounded good, the show looked good (as opposed to a few years ago; see the embarrassing performance on YT with Eric Clapton, ’05 or ’06), the production looked like old Floyd Wall-era goodness. I pulled the trigger at $200/ticket. This was the 12-y/o and 8 y/o nieces’ first concert. We were 2/3 of the way back on the first row of arena seats, and I could see directly into the front of house sound/light console area. This being my main focus after the TBI residuals from Iraq finally killed off 30+ years of second-nature guitar playing, which is now like trying to learn Chinese for me.
We got to the show fully aware that we were in a very liberal college town at the center of the BS transgender bathroom wars, and that Waters is pretty much a far left, racist, authoritarian ass. He did a full 3 hour show, with a 15 minute intermission and only 3 songs from his solo album, so about 2.5 hours of Pink Floyd stuff.
Me, the minions, and my sister at intermission…
Light show was top notch, merging in digital effects in camera from the digital video cameras around the stadium with the projected animations from Gerald Scarfe going back all the way to the Dark Side of the Moon tours. The updated pig from the ’77 Animals tour flew around. New footage for Dogs and Sheep of Battersea with a whole mess of pro-Palestinian, pro-BLM, anti-Trump footage projected in for the appropriate songs…
As a side note, though there was the predictable frothing cheering from the proggie contingent on his strangely out-of-place proggie excursions, there was the almost audible sound of eyeballs rolling back into heads during those parts. A lot of it.
I got into conversations with people several rows around me, including the libertarian-ish thread of what exactly his message was. I didn’t even start it. What exactly was his message, when he’s calling out Trump but not Clinton, Obama, et al? How are you going to crack on capitalism while charging $200 per ticket anywhere below nosebleed, and starting at $40 for a t-shirt? The phrase transparent hypocrisy was used more than once.
He even brought out local black kids (wearing orange GITMO jumpsuits) to dance (which they then ripped off for the solo to reveal RESIST! shirts), and then lip-sync the second verse of Another Brick In The Wall Pt 2. There was very much a Victorian “White Man’s Burden” feel to that whole bit (Oh look at the noble savages) that came off as pretty damned awkward.
So, enough of that. Musically, it was as good as any show I have ever seen. Rush, The Firm, Van Halen in ”79, the first show I saw him in (in his prime), this was as good if not better. He finally got a guitarist who did credit to Gilmour, the backup singers killed it on all of their parts and did great service to Claire Torry’s vocals on DSOTM for The Great Gig In The Sky. His backup guitarist handled Gilmour’s lead vocals, different and a bit less strong than DG, but it really worked well. Waters’ voice was in better shape than the Animals tour in ’77. He seemed “trained not to spit on a fan,” unlike one show on that tour. The energy was fantastic, and most of the audience was my age to mom’s generation (Boomers) and there for the Floyd show.
The light show was completely Pink Floyd from their Animals/Wall heyday, and then some. He had a metallic sphere drone (helium-filled?) that was covered in GoPro cameras, which tooled around trough the show. I surveilled it back of course. The pyramid of lasers with the rainbow of lasers was perfect for Eclipse/Brain Damage, and Comfortably Numb was VERY well done as the finale.*
The proggie political stuff was expected and annoying, but in no way diminished one of if not the best show I’ve been to.
*I still want to see Gilmour though, as it is his fault that I started playing guitar, and now have a self-custom built FrankenStrat and pedalboard with boutique and self-built EFX pedals covering the Meddle through Final Cut periods, and why I went into seriously studying sound/recording engineering once the brain/eye/hand communications issues got bad.
Glad it was a good show. nothing better than going out with family.
Sometimes I wish musicians and actors would just stfu about some stuff.
I get that music can be political. but I’ve found a bunch of libertarian themes from artists that are definitely not libertarians.
True. It was all anti-Reagan/Thatcher in ’85, so I expected this. His interviews show him assigning different meanings and motivations (Shine On first wasn’t then was, about Syd Barret for example). Great show for the nieces’ first, we got a room at the Proximity Hotel (swanky) for after.
nothing better than going out with family.
Sadly, it depends on the family. Family gatherings have always been stressful for me.
Did he do any of his
anti-Semiticpro-Palestinian preening?And I don’t remember Greensboro being an overly liberal college town, but then again I graduated (from UNCG) nearly two decades ago.
Yes he did, but it was mainly in the form of what was projected on the screens. He had a lot of redacted-style (like the new album cover) verbiage on a couple of the songs, where he mixed in the BLM stuff as well. It isn’t overwhelmingly liberal, but I’d say half of the audience were liberally screeching and cheering at the correct moments. The other half seemed more like me and the family (libertarian, or libertarian-ish) who just wanted to see the Floyd stuff.
Two thoughts:
(1) I went to a big blues festival in Dallas maybe ten years ago. It was just awesome, but one moment stood out.
Carlos Santana was playing, and between songs he made your standard-issue rock star statement opposing the war in the mideast. You could tell he was used to it being a big applause line. In Dallas, it met with an icy silence. I doubt I’m alone in remembering that, and very little else, from his set. Way to step on your own dick, Carlos.
(2) An orphan fight club really sound more like something a Glibertarian would do, doesn’t it?
1: Entertainers need to remember what their job title is. My response to them getting political is always “Shut up and play”.
“People who pay for your tickets, I don’t think they want to hear who you’re going to vote for and how you think they should vote.”
-Billy Joel
That man. He can’t do a choreographed dance for crap, but that right there is part of the reason Uptown Girl, Movin’ Out, and The Longest Time are “but this goes to 11” radio songs.
And it sounds like Santana really didn’t know his audience at all, there. Yikes.
You May be Right.
*snort-laugh, scared the cats. Well done, the both of you!
crazy imo
I think it’s part of group think: they just assume that everyone who likes their music agrees with them about everything else.
I’ve been finding the same with a number of s-f mags I subscribe to: I’m way behind on my reading but it’s interesting how many editorial pages, book review pages, movie review pages from December and January issues rag on Trump. OR, they express how depressed they are and encourage their readers to not let politics get them down. I assume that they assume that everyone who reads their mags agrees with them – or they don’t give a shit about anyone who doesn’t. Given that most s-f publications barely make money you’d think they would shut up about politics. I imagine even a 10% reduction in subscriptions would hurt them.
They figure anyone who’d ditch them over progressive politics would have done that ages ago, but they need to signal to keep proggies on board (and vent their feelings into the bargain)?
IMHO it’s because lefties are consumed by politics. If an artist is not lefty enough, they will refuse to buy their music or go to concert. Non-lefties however just do like what PBB did; roll your eyes and just enjoy the music. I.e. no self respecting SJW would be caught dead at a Ted Nugent concert, but a right wing rock fan wouldn’t miss seeing Bruce Springsteen.
Short version: Lefty artists assume that if you are in the crowd, you agree with them politically because they wouldn’t even consider paying money to see someone with whom they disagreed politically with.
Or…maybe it’s just because the entertainment industry is just a big, proggy bubble.
“IMHO it’s because lefties are consumed by politics.”
Yeah, that’s definitely part of it.
But group identity is important too. I know lots of conservative Christians who have a hard time wrapping their mind around a leftist being a Christian.
Whats s-f? Sadism and ???
There seemed to be clusters of what he expected in a college town, but definitely not the reaction he was looking for. I know some folks that walked out and got ticket refunds when Santana did that a few years ago…
We need to have a Florida man /Beach bum crossover episode
The Glibertarian Cinematic Universe™.
Culminating in Hatfinity War?
A bunch of people with Professor Farnsworth Avatars. We could have our very own clown crisis.
Oh my, just no. Well, maybe, is there to be rum?
I hate crossovers. I always DVR one but not the other.
For the last decade or so, there’s been something just sad about Roger Waters. It’s like he knows his time has passed, he knows going out there and playing the young revolutionary vanguard is rank hypocrisy, but he’s willing to sacrifice being a hypocritical fool for that one last chance of getting his glory back. I mean acts like the Stones, or even current Pink Floyd, don’t really make a pretense that they’re anything other than rich older guys who can make a lot of additional money continuing to tour and appealing to Boomer nostalgia. And it’s not really a problem. With Waters, its’ a little different. It’s like he’s desperately trying to evade the knowledge.
I’m surprised to hear he still puts on a good show, the political nonsense notwithstanding, because I honestly thought he was long dead. Good for him.
I studied the hell out of his recent shows. He was terrible (both sound and production) in the early-mid 2000s, but then he rehabbed his voice and broke out the old gear for The Wall shows a few years ago through last year, got some band members who could actually play the Pink Floyd stuff, and really did a great comeback in his music and the show. It was completely worth it.
I saw him in 2000 when he had Snowy White, Andy Fairweather-Low, and Doyle Bramhall on guitars. I thought that was a pretty good one.
Would have loved to have seen those guys. Snowy did all of the lead guitar work on Have A Cigar for the whole ’77 Animals tour.
This. This was exactly what it felt like, I was almost embarrassed for him. I think it works for him in some venues, and he definitely puts on a more memorable show than the actual young rev. vanguard people do. I kind of tuned out during the songs from the current album since it was basically Floyd-sounding gibberish protest songs.
Yeah, look at the last full PF show at the Live8 thing where they did a few songs in 2005 or so. The body language was priceless, with with Gilmour, Mason, and Wright being laid back and standoffish to Waters, while Waters was pumped up like it was his heyday. He was completely clueless.
I saw Dunkirk last night. Excellent movie, on par with Nolan’s other offerings.
When the little ships showed up at Dunkirk I was expecting this to play at full volume, and I would have stood and cheered if it had.
Saw it on Saturday. I really liked it. What really struck me was how matter of fact, how stoic, the movie was. There were a couple of “play for the emotion” scenes at the end (I’m thinking of the guy burning his plane after it crashed). But, aside from that, there was very little dialogue and very little judgment on the characters’ actions, right wrong or indifferent. When the little ships show up, you don’t get to much cheering until after the moment is already arrived. And the arrival is signaled by a slight smile on the part of the lead naval officer there. Later, the same officer says he’s going to stay behind and help some of the French get out and you could easily miss it. It’s said just matter of factly with no fanfare. Frankly, in our era of vilification and virtue signaling the story was absolutely refreshing.
I’m looking forward to seeing it.
And fuck the SJW trying to turn this into a thing. There were plenty of things to hate in the 1930s/40s British Empire, but those civilians who pulled troops off the beach don’t need to have their story hijacked.
Jeesh! How about a spoiler alert!
WHAT?! THE NAZIS LOST?! THANKS FOR RUINING THE ENDING!
The twist is, when they get back to England, the Island has already been taken over by the Russians!
I think if Hitler could see the state of Europe right now he would be having the last laugh.
It is astonishing how after the first two times Germany tried to take over the rest of Europe in the twentieth century, they fell for such a simple trick on time number three.
*(Yes, I know, technically Wilhelm wasn’t trying to take over Europe)
*Conquer Europe with this one weird trick!*
Meh, get rid of the non-white immigrants, the Jews and the Slavs (Hitler didn’t have a problem with Islam) and it’s basically what he wanted. Swedish state and corporate economics function suspiciously like a quasi-fascist state.
Hitler didn’t have a problem with Islam
Well, that was just because of the shared enemy, wasn’t it? I mean if Hitler had entirely gotten his way, there’d be no room in the Third Reich for Islam, either.
Nope, Nazis fetishized the shit out of Islam. Hitler thought Islam was more compatible with national socialism than Christianity was (makes sense when you think about it really, Dar al-Islam effectively being an early nationalist concept).
My understanding was that hitler and the nazi top brass in general were big fans of islam and would probably have lived side by side with them.
Huh. Did not know that. Thanks guys
Two totalitarian ideologies cannot share the same space. Sooner or later, the Nazis would have gone after the Islamists (or vice versa).
I’ll spoil From Here to Eternity for you by pointing out the Japanese attack at the end. 😉
The thing that struck me is you never actually see any nazis. You see their bullets, you see their bombs, their torpedos, their planes, but you never see a single German soldier or hear a word of German spoke in the entire movie. It really helps to dehumanize them in the context of the film and make them into an almost supernatural killing force.
Good point. I honestly don’t know, do you see the enemy in combat?
In our current conflicts, sometimes. Swiss could tell more about Afghanistan, but in Iraq, especially near Najef in 2003, yes unless it was outside the city at night.
Thanks for the explanation.
The Germans famously called a halt on their advance and pretty much went to artillery and airstrikes during the evacuation, is my understanding. A major error, but I think the troops who weren’t in the rearguard probably didn’t see any (or at least many) Germans in the flesh.
Planning to see it this weekend (if I can get good enough tickets), at the local burger, brew and movie joint – Roadhouse Cinemas. Won’t go anywhere else for movies.
It’s pretty obvious that there are no Nazi soldiers shown on purpose. At the very beginning you see several soldiers mowed down by gunfire in a narrow city street, but you never see who (or what) fired the shots nor do you hear them say anything. You don’t see any pilots in their planes or sailors in their subs (hell you don’t even see the subs at all). It’s very deliberate that the only ‘people’ are the Allies. You could literally claim they were fighting cylons or ghosts and it wouldn’t change the movie one bit.
The little ships have their own association:
http://www.adls.org.uk/t1/
Fun fact: 12 of the little ships shown in the movie actually took part in the Dunkirk evacuation.
That’s very cool. Apparently most of them are not cheap. On that website there are ads for authentic little ships. Here’s one for $45k:
http://motorboats.apolloduck.com/boat.phtml?id=525645
That doesn’t really surprise me. Think about it. Even if a boat was brand new then, it’s 77 years old. A boat older than 30 is considered an antique. And you can see, the one you link has been kept in very, very good condition.
That’s really cool.
On a related note, I think I am going to change my handle to “HRH Prince Michael of Glib”
I plan on seeing it next week in Austin. You have cemented that decision.
Excellent. I want to see that movie more than any other this summer.
My wife and I saw it, too, and really liked it.
I hesitate to say it, but it was almost a let-down for me because it has been hyped so much — maybe because it was understated in a British sort of way. Especially since we just saw Baby Driver recently (which I also would recommend). Both movies made great use of music (in Baby Driver it was up front, in Dunkirk it was much more subtle, but still very effective).
I don’t like kids, but Thing 2 is friggin’ adorable, dude.
All teef and curly hair. Pretty cute.
She’s the autistic one (albeit high-functioning). Everyone around said they loved how much she got into the show. She has been bugging us about when the next concert is…
Well, when is it?!
Don’t leave us hanging!
(Seriously, what a cutie. What egould310 said + such a winning smile)
I’m going to hijack them both for summers if they want to come to Texas, so probably next summer. Unless Rush or ZZ Top go on tour, then all bets are off.
You people and your Rush (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Different strokes, I guess!
^This chick gets it^
*Or more accurately, doesn‘t get it
You don’t get to come here and try and change our deeply rooted traditional libertarian culture! Rush was one of the catalysts for libertarian thought in nerdy weirdo teenagers.
Rush 2112 & Black Sabbath Paranoid were my first two cassette tapes.
Now there’s a storage medium that needs to never return. Along with VHS.
Rush makes up for Triumph, but the Canuckians are still on the negative side for Celine Dion and Bieber.
Them and their secret Canadian mole, Ted Cruz.
Every time you make a dumb joke about Canadians, we prep another memetic PSYOPs celebrity to drop on you.
Triumph was great. Did you forget their brilliant US Festival appearance?
But yes, Rush is superior. Of course April Wine trumps them all. And I should know. I like to rock.
Tundra confirmed for Ricky.
Ok, that was hilarious.
Saw April Wine and Triumph in Austin (early ’80s), but I was never that much of a Triumph fan. Good show though. Loved April wine, but I was starting down the blues and metal path by then. I had a bootleg cassette of Kill ‘Em All (with “Am I Evil?”) in 1984
And Anne Murray.
You people?!?
How can this not warm the cold cockles of your heart?
Bonus awesome YT comment:
I just… his voice, guys. How can you listen to that?
I recognize that Neil Peart is Cthulhu’s gift to drumming, though.
Riven has a vagina, and therefore Geddy Lee’s voice triggers some primitive and backward response in her brain, like all females.
They have me up until Geddy Lee starts singing
Ahem
That’s a winner right there!
Same here. I can’t stand Rush because of Geddy’s incredibly grating voice. He’s right up there with Michael Stipe, anything auto-tuned, and Fran Dresher.
He sounds like the REO Speedwagon dude.
Outside of Ed Begley Jr. I don’t know a single celebrity who comes even close to practicing what they preach.
I don’t know a single celebrity
/literal-minded.
DiCaprio does a good job of backing up his pro global warming position I think.
Wait, anti? Nevermind.
DICaprio is about 3 years away from becoming a real life version of Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Kingsman The Secret Service.
Hitler? Sean Penn? Seriously though, it was all mixed messages and hypocrisy to the point that I and the strangers around me were discussing it through the entire intermission. We also laughed it off, though hiring those kids for Another Brick 2 was pretty bad. I’d like to see some of these twit celebs actually go to the ME and spout their BS, but then again I don’t really wish death on anyone.
Ed Begley’s vehicle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvUItaradGE
Randy Quaid?
Ted Nugent?
Waters was here last week I think. I saw Floyd’s Dogs of War concert in Cleveland in the 80s. I’m pretty sure it was good. Don’t remember much.
Yeah, I was seeing tracers during the 85 show, but I at least remember it. Not sure how. As you can see in the first pic, my sister and I (and mom) had the munchies pretty bad, I blame age and not liking crowds for mellowing these days. I think trying to party like my 20’s would likely kill me now.
Yeah, I couldn’t do it either. I’d be seriously hurting for a week after 🙂
http://imgur.com/WsN3wHP
Photo of the 2017 Minneapolis Police Academy graduating class.
Uniform standards have gotten lax.
we really need to cut down on the military surplus guns going to our police.
This brought up visions of pirate hunting safaris. Buy a nice yacht, crew it with combat veterans in case anything gets out of hand, charter 20 or so slots, and cruise just outside of Somali waters…
http://www.somalicruises.com
Exactly. That is some funny stuff.
Military mindset going down to police is real problem. Cols act like they’re in Fallujah.
Cops
If only the military mindset (and ROE) were going down to the police.
I’m pretty sure any US soldier who had done what Noor did would be in the stockade awaiting court-martial, with a very high likelihood of doing time.
Nice article Beach Bum, glad you and your family had a good time.
I live relatively close to Greensboro and haven’t found it too bad though there is some liberal screeching. My biggest issue is remembering signs that ban firearms on doors have force of law in NC which doesn’t fly in VA.
Thanks. It’s a little weird here close to Pinehurst, lots of open carry from the military/retired military mixed with quite a few ultra liberals mixed in. I found the confusion surrounding a military mom with her young kids shopping while strapped amusing. She had a SIG P320 on her hip and three energetic pre-teens (one was a toddler) getting into everything. I’m looking at the Texas laws and all now, as I haven’t lived there since 1997.
Looked like a great show (and a +1 on the cute kids). Thanks for the review.
As to Texas firearms laws, with the legalization of open carry of handguns, we now have two signs to look out for when entering a building. They are dealt with in Texas Penal Code Sections 30.06 and 30.07, which deal with Trespass by a License to Carry holder with either a concealed weapon (.06) or while open carrying a weapon (.07). (.PDF of Texas Penal Code Section 30 here.
Briefly, notice of the statute is an element of the crime, and therefore the signs are both required and strictly interpreted as to their construction and content. IOW, ordinary gunbuster signs may as well not even exist as far as the license holder is concerned. Many businesses have a valid .07 sign up, but don’t have an .06 sign. A lot of out of state-based businesses have both, like Whole Foods. Violation of an .06 sign is usually a C misdemeanor, which won’t yank your license, unless you get told to GTFO by the property owner, or you are carrying in some place like a courthouse or bar (defined as “the business derives 51 percent or more of its income from the sale or service of alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption, as determined by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.” Don’t worry, the bar will have large “51% signs” easily visible with big red numbers.) Then the penalty is greater. See Texas Penal Code Section 46 for more.
What does all this mean? Concealed means concealed, usually. Don’t get caught carrying in bars. If you’re told by an employee to get out of a store, leave. It’s not that hard.
TX Department of Public Safety has on their website a handy .pdf, named something like Texas Handgun laws or similar, that goes through all of this.
Cool, thank you GG!
This post reminds me of part of the reason I love Guttermouth so much:
Mark Atkins has always been a top shelf troll.
I will be checking them out, thanks!
Honestly, they’re nothing special as far as music goes – pretty standard Orange County punk rock. Their gleeful offensiveness is what drew me to them.
That’s why I want to check them out
Some of my favorites:
Asshole
Chicken Box
Disneyland
Just a Fuck
Lucky the Donkey
Trinket Trading, Tick Toting, Toothless Tired Tramps, the greatest hippie-hating song ever recorded
well, shit, I forgot about the moderation of links > 2
Actually it’s if links >1
I remember how massively disgusted I was to see MTV openly fellating Al Gore when he was running against G Dub. This was the same asshole who lead the congressional hearings against music lyrics just a few years previously with his dipsy wife as head of the PMRC. If anyone here has never seen the video of Dee Snyder in front of that congressional panel telling Al that his wife was probably into S&M for the way she interpreted his lyrics I highly recommend it. Classic.
Gore and his Southern drawl (with the ever slightest tinge of stroke victim) has been making the media rounds lately. He’s adopted the concern troll position and is flogging it to death.
Well, he does have his apocalyse sequel out so that may be why. He is up near the top of my list of terrible politicians/shucksters.
My favorite testimony during the PMRC hearings wasFrank Zappa’s.
You sonofabitch
I’m sure your mom is a classy lady as well. 🙂
Honestly, I was a kid at the time of the hearings, but I still remember the Bloom County strips mocking the music makes children evil. Including the one with the cat being forced to listen to Pat Boone.
Deathtöngue rules!
As a German speaker, I hate the affectation umlauts.
I love Zappa.
Frank indeed was a first rate wordsmith.
He was a brilliant man and a very persuasive one. The tone that those fuckos took at the end of the testimony was infuriating.
Wow, you weren’t kidding.
“Do you make a profit from selling rock records?”
What a smarmy twit.
Hawkins was a moral busybody who couldn’t distinguish between her own abuse as a child and everyone else’s experiences. I find it fitting that she was “duped” into a multi-level marketing company.
“Do you make a profit from selling rock records?”
“Yeah, but probably not as much as you make from selling influence and favors.”
Dee Sniders was good. I love how he came in looking like he had been drinking all night, then unfolding a greasy piece of paper from his back pocket with a brilliant speech on it.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=S0Vyr1TylTE
I *really* need to read the whole thread first before posting.
Zappa was much more low-key in his testimony, but awesome nonetheless
But hey, Tipper Gore made Warrant tolerable for about 10 seconds with their “Ode to Tipper Gore”
She spawned a few good songs. Shelter Me by Cinderella and We’re Not Going to Take It by Twisted Sister jump to mind
I’ve tripped to too many Pink Floyd songs. There is a local band(Stir) who named their Floyd tribute band El Monstero that do a great job of covering Floyd here in St. Louis. I’d rather see them now then Floyd for much cheaper.
I hear you. There is a Norwegian guy named Bjorn Riis who is a Gilmour freak (runs a website called gilmourish.com) who is just fantastic. And his site is all kinds of technical about the equipment Gilmour used and uses now, to testing of pedals to get the DG tone. My kind of stuff now that the actual plying has left the brain and hands for me.
I tripped mushrooms at a rob zombie concert about 10 years ago. That was something I’ll never be able to replicate. When the intro for living dead girl started it was almost spiritual.
Yeah, that would be sweet.
How’bout some Dub Side of the Moon
Um…no. I used acid to get my altered music. My brain was a huge remixer.
Thanks for the review, P-double-B! Lovely family, too, although your oldest must be about 14 with that camera shyness!
Thanks Tundra, 12, but yeah. She’s the one who will go out in the ocean until a shark bumps her, then come 2 feet closer to shore for 5 minutes. I’m glad my sister inflicted them both on the world.
Alright, which one of you was this?
I wouldn’t have narced on the guy.
Of course not – it’s customary to blow the passenger after the driver, isn’t it?
no witnesses
Aw hell, the hooker was just paying for her ride in a little different manner than Manuel. Also, if you take an Uber in Chicago at 3am, well shit might happen.
It’s the music playing that makes the video.
RC mentioned above about Santana injecting his politics into a show. I enjoy his music, but he is truly an absolute ejit politically. It was at the Gammy”s I believe that he wore a Che shirt a few years back. I guess his Pol Pot and Stalin shirts were in the wash that day.
Greece about to try to increase their national debt via bond offering before bailout expires. Financial and political institutions call this “progress”.
I don’t know, how about you try – ya know – living within your means?
So progress is defined as the ability to sucker another investor? How Trumpian.
Who do I root for?
Or should I just hope and pray that it comes to fisticuffs, and that someone videotapes it?
Fisticuffs? Slap fight would be generous.
In AI discussions I am always on the side of the person not projecting their emotions and human bias onto machines. In this case that’s Zuckerberg.
But that’s only because he has no emotions or human bias to project!
Maybe they can fight like the JCVD vs. Tong Po fight in Kickboxer with the broken glass on their hands.
Obligatory
with the broken glass on their hands
80’s trope or actual match type? Big fan of Best of the Best, which I think did the same thing in it.
Supposedly old time bare-knuckle boxers would rub their fists in finely ground glass in order to abrade their knuckles and possibly scrape up the other guy’s face so that there’d be more blood to entertain the crowd.
I’m still convinced Musk wants to be in on the regulations around the technology.
also, he wants the regulations. because he’s a piece of shit crony.
I’m no Zuckerburg fan but doesn’t he have actual programmer street cred where Elon is basically just an entrepreneur?
Musk is a carnival barker.
Is Zukerberg really a “super-intelligent tech geek?” I don’t know a lot about the guy, but I’ve always gotten the vibe that he was a guy with above-average intelligence who had the right idea at the right time.
Perfect score on the SAT, so I think it’s safe to assume that he’s a little better that just above average. It wasn’t his idea, though. He took the idea from the guys who hired him to build HarvardConnection. So maybe stealing their idea was the right idea at the right time?
The way he got fleeced for $100mm by the New Jersey schools makes me wonder how he hasn’t been skinned of his Facebook holdings yet. He’s obviously pretty naive in some ways.
Bill Gates approved. / CP/M
No love for Jobs piggybacking on the genius of The Woz?
So visiting the site on my phone shows “Certified Family Friendly” logo. Whycum I can’t see it in Firefox?! :'(
Aha! Turning off AdBlock shows the certification in all its glory!
The final indignity: Charlie Gard’s parents beg court to let them take him home tomorrow to die on Monday but judge warns hospice seems to be ‘the only option’
Will his parents be allowed to determine the disposition of his remains? Or is that too much to ask for? Fucking. Motherfuckers.
It’s just so fucking cruel. God damn every single person who had a hand in this.
We must avoid risk something going wrong at home.
You mean, like, the baby dying or something?
Exactly – what the hell does “something going wrong” mean in regards to a baby who is going to be dead in a few days??
Live by the State, die by the State.
The sheer evil of those words is breathtaking. YOU WON, YOU ASSHOLE! You beat them, they surrendered, can you not let them have a shred of dignity left?
But no, they must be ground into the dust pour encourager les autres. They blasphemed against the Holiest of Holies, Beloved Virgin NHS, and their destruction must be complete.
We are finally seeing the full flowering of “We’re the experts here, not you” thinking that progs always push.
Reading about this really hits me deep. Everytime I see a pic of that poor baby or his family I want to drive home and grab hold of my 11 month old. Either that or cry like a baby.
I know what you mean. Few news stories has gotten under my skin like this one. And in a way the worst part are all the people defending the decisions of the NHS, accusing the parents of just looking for a payday, or saying shit like they can always just have another kid.
If those are your genes, how terrified would you be of having to go through the same nightmare?
We must avoid risk something going wrong at home
Like what, the kid dies?
This is sheer, unmitigated cruelty by small-minded people who think it makes them big and important. Much as hope there is no punishment in the afterlife, there are times when I really hope there is an angry God, Who will be greatly pleased to get His meathooks on people like this.
That’s exactly what I thought. You’re pulling the plug on a child who is absolutely unable to breathe on his own. This child is going to die.
What could possibly go more wrong than the kid dying?!
Christ.
This is not about the NHS. This is about the state. You will obey the state. There is no other option but to obey the state.
(after reading about it on another site because I won’t click on a link to the S*n)
Woodchippers are too good for every lawyer, doctor, judge, and whoever else is involved in doing this. They’ve already tortured these parents enough, and it almost seems like they’re taking perverse pleasure into doing it more.
(after reading about it on another site because I won’t click on a link to the S*n)
Liverpool fan?
Yep.
I agree but would also add every single lowly person who supports the NHS and socialized medicine. The supporters of the system are no different than the actual cogs in it.
I’ve been reading comments from British citizens and am just floored at the slave worship mentality. Most every comment is along the lines of “Heartbreaking but this just shows why parents can’t be trusted to make the right decisions in difficult times for their children.:
To paraphrase Alexander Dolgun:
People love infinite power in the hope that it will love them back.
That is one of my favorite books
I have read it a half dozen times. Great story
I had never heard of him before. What a fucked up story.
Just ordered the book.
Not just British people. Half the Americans I’ve exposed to this story had similar responses.
Like “well I can’t comment because I don’t know enough about British law.”
What. The. Fuck.
This is not about the NHS. This is about the state.
They are one and the same.
That should destroy any illusion that this was about the child’s welfare.
From seeing Dunkirk yesterday to reading this today I have to wonder how a country fell so far in 70 years. Maybe we should have let hitler have Europe. This shit is incomprehensible.
“”There’s one thing about power. It can flow only from the top down. When there are little surges of resistance at the middle levels, it merely calls for more power to be directed downward, to burn it out.””
The naked + the dead
The Brits are a lost culture.
Yup, he might develop lung cancer in the next couple days from that second hand smoke. That could kill him.
Fuck, these people are ejits.
I think second hand smoke is the least of that kids worries…i mean, besides maybe AGW.
Don’t forget toxic masculinity.
Every former colony should be thanking every iteration of god that they got out when they did.
I think the best of the British Isles either left for the colonies or died in the wars of the 20th century. What’s left are the absolute dregs. Hell with Syria, we should be accepting refugees from the UK.
This is absolutely disgusting. You would have to kill me to stop me from taking my child out of that place, and you can rest assured I would take as many of these monsters with me as I possibly could.
‘Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past, in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?’
Dude, that was like 30 years ago. And wasn’t that written by a white guy?
FUCKING WHITE MALE!
Wow. Just . . . wow.
Never forget: the purpose of the NHS is not not not to provide healthcare to people. It is a “public health” program whose core mission is running studies and experiments on British subjects. That’s why they have no say whatsoever in the health care they receive – they are not patients, they are experimental subjects. I know people who have worked for them, and they are quite overt about this. When doctors who came up in the NHS come to the States, they require extensive re-orientation to the notion of “informed consent” and are shocked to learn that providing medical care to someone without their consent is assault under US law. I almost came to blows with one doctor who wanted to pull the plug on a patient without consent from the family – I think I told him I would see him in the ground before I would let him make me an accessory to murder.
Of course. In a nationalized system, patients are livestock to be managed, not customers who should be served.
Here we have Amanda Marcotte’s musings on the Gard case:
A dying baby and his parents have been exploited by conservatives who want to strip Americans of health care
The story is sad enough by itself, but has been made exponentially worse by the right wing vultures in the United States who exploited this tragedy in order to push for legislation to strip health care away from millions of Americans — including disabled children.
The conservatives who want to help the family are “exploiting” them. The real problem isn’t that a baby is dying without care and his parents are suffering needlessly at the hands of petty bureaucrats. No, the real problem is that this creates some bad news cycles for the Wrong People in the US. What a foul, disgusting person she is.
Maybe ol’ Mandy should ask the parents if they feel exploited, and by whom. And then go and play with a plastic bag.
Curses! Foiled again!
The link may not work, but the text definitely goes with the avatar pic.
Oh, bloody hell.
https://www.wired.com/story/smart-gun-fire-magnets/
Magnets how do they work?
I’m still lost on why you’d want a gun like that.
If I had it, got shot and died, and a friend or relative needed to use it, it wouldn’t work. now we have more deaths.
Why, Doom? Technology works every time, under every condition. I, for one, can’t wait to trust my life to technology every chance I get.
This is backdoor gun control, plain and simple. They want all guns to have these bullshit electronics so that the gov can then mandate kill switches in all of them.
New Jersey, I think, has already passed a law that once smart guns are available for purchase in that state, then all FFL’s are required to keep them in stock
It’s not the state, its anywhere in the country, which is why pro rights people have been vehemently shutting down anyone that tries to sell a smart gun.
And it’s not simply keep them in stock, they are required to sell only smart guns.
I would be very interested in a challenge to these kinds of regulations under the 2A.
As in, a storekeeper’s right to stock the guns he wishes to sell, and not be forced to stock other or prohibited from stocking what he wants, is a violation of the right to keep arms. SCOTUS has already taken the position that some rights aren’t available to business owners (such as the 1A), but I would like to see them forced to admit out loud that regardless of what the Constitution says, the BOR does not apply.
Considering there is a case out of Illinois where a city (higland park) instantiated their own assault weapons ban and the Supreme court would not even touch it, I would not be very optimistic.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-supreme-court-highland-park-assault-weapons-ban-20151207-story.html
I wish the Trump Solicitor General would take a page from the Obama playbook, and refuse to defend challenges to federal firearms laws, on the grounds that he cannot in good conscience argue that a law is Constitutional when, in his judgment, the law is plainly unconstitutional.
+1 onstar shutting your car down.
The proof of the pudding’s in the eating, as they say, and it’s telling that not a single police department, law enforcement agency, security firm, or military has begun using these things.
Cops essentially have an infinitely greater risk than I do of their weapons being taken from them and used upon them. They go hands on with people, and seek out the opportunity to do so. I don’t.
So, when they adopt this technology, when they feel it’s sufficiently error-free and environment-tested, then I might consider it. Not until then.
Rand Paul on healthcare vote
Good news they’re holding that second vote on the actual partial repeal.
Fuck that rabid ant-Semite piece of dog shit.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/roger-waters/an-open-letter-from-roger-waters/688037331210720/
‘Resist’.
Resist what exactly? Fricken insufferable rubbish.
This is why I don’t dare pay to go see concerts anymore. Who needs that shit and aggravation? I can’t handle faux-righteous hypocrisy anymore.