Song Saturday- Hows it Gonna End?

Some of you may know it was announced that Tom Waits will be inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame along with Alice Cooper and some other people I don't care about that much. And while I'm on the topic of Alice Cooper why oh why do we only get to hear the same three songs from media outlets when they are talking about him.  Can we have a song besides School's out, I'm 18 or Welcome to my Nightmare?  Seriously.


Back to the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame...Who cares really, after all places like this basically mean you are the musical equivalent of a dinosaur and need to be preserved so uninformed children can learn about your life. I wonder how many musicians are actually lying about it being a "big honor" or more importantly how many are being honest? I mean if they are really just doing it all for the accolades then what is the point? Where is the art?


Anyway I love Tom Waits, there is dark truth in all of his music and his voice, well it just makes you have to listen. Even if you don't like his style, the gravel and grain and life ground into his voice makes you stop and say what's this all about?



So How's it Gonna End?

Movie Picks for the beginning of March

Somebody asked me about movie suggestions so you all get subjected to hear about my picks.

At  House Rhuad we are in early spring, what that means is one can never really tell from one day to the next unless they have psychic barometric abilities if it is going to be kick-ass picnic weather or you need to run out in the early morning hours and turn off the sprinklers. So we have had some really nice days for strolling and working in the garden and generally kicking back taking in the clouds.  We have also in the same week had some cozy up to the fire days which posed a bit of a problem as my Cthulhu sweatshirt keeps getting stuck to the glass I now have a permanent imprint of the Dark Lord on my fireplace which is in a way ...kewl, and starts plenty of conversation.  It looks like this only a lot melty-er

Anyway here's my two must see movie picks of the week.  They were both surprises to me as nobody had recommended them and I had heard nothing about them

1. In Bruges- with Colin Farrell, Ralph Fiennes and a really under appreciated and excellent performance by Brenden Gleeson, a character actor best known for playing Mad Eye Moody in the Harry Potter franchise and a bunch of other supporting roles in which you probably didn't know who he was.   I say under appreciated because Colin Farrell received a BAFTA award for his performance in this which all things considered, he deserved but Brenden was the heart of the movie in my opinion.

Basic synopsis- Hit men hiding out in Bruges awaiting next assignment.  The story is dark comedy and a British to boot, so don't expect Fargo, but it has quite funny moments, watching hit-men site see in Bruges made me think of trying to get teens excited about visiting missions and haunted lighthouses.

2.  My second recommendation is from Canada and is called One Week.  If you're looking more along the lines of a feel-good movie without all the gooeyness this is it.  It is about a young man who finds he has stage 4 cancer and his decision to re-write his life on a road trip.  What I loved was it was realistic, no crazy love stories, no big-time glamour and glitz, just maybe what would happen to us if we decided to travel our countryside.  While I'm on that topic I loved seeing the Canadian countryside and his stops at roadside attractions just made me smile, that's my big thing too.

 It also raises the age old question "What would you do if you knew you were going to die."  Which is always a good conversation starter so if it's date night, pop this in, have the convo and decide now whether or not to move on, no sense in wasting time because here is the secret: You are absolutely going to die, we all are. 

Anyway I sincerely hope you have amazing outside time this weekend, but if you're on the fence about movies and haven't seen these give them a go and let me know what you think. 

P.S. no idea why I can't get the highlighting off of Cthulhu, the Dark Lord must need recongnition

Movie Picks for the beginning of March

Somebody asked me about movie suggestions so you all get subjected to hear about my picks.

See more here: http://grainnerhuad.blogspot.com/2011/03/movie-picks-for-beginning-of-march.html

Music Monday- The Unwelcome Guest

So yes, I decided to stay home this weekend.  And while I'm looking at pictures this morning of well groomed crowds out at state-capitols and large cities around the country in solidarity today I'm glad I did.  We have a short attention span in America and really it looks like everyone wanted in on this latest photo op.  I'm beginning to believe the words "The revolution will not be televised"  are truer than ever because anyone doing anything to change in one direction or the other will be too busy to be on t.v. or any other sort of a camera.  Busy, thinking, changing and doing.  It's the changing part I think that people are missing though, we're getting pretty good at doing.



Anyhoo, anyone heard anything about Arizona lately?  We have at Subversify. There was this article this week discussing Arizona House Bill 2582 http://subversify.com/2011/02/24/karma-arizonas-republitards/  come by and take a look. There's still work to be done and people are continuing to be marginalized.  

It has me thinking, a revolution of any sort in our country is going to be a dicey and difficult thing to accomplish, our country is just too bloody big.  There are too many states that can and will do too many different things.  And just like any other county our military which the federal government relies upon to "keep the peace."  is made up of citizens.  The problem is they come from all over the country and their real, heartfelt allegiance is hard to figure.  We saw this problem in the civil war when brother was pitted against brother and Union soldiers defected to the Confederacy and vice versa.  How much bigger we have become since then. And how many different loyalties and separations are being born in the hearts of each person.  It's hard to account for.  

I don't think we'll see a revolution of the sort that we saw in Tunisia or Egypt which is why I think headlines like "Is Wisconsin our Egypt?" are just stupid. No it's not, it's our Wisconsin.

But it may be time to think about our country being smaller.  Just maybe....

In anycase I spent Saturday walking the streets of my town, just getting out and seeing how people were feeling here.  It had snowed a couple of days before and Saturday it was sunny if crisp, but the sun in the early spring always brings people out.  Usually it brings smiles too.  However not this Saturday.  People were on-guard.  There were glares, suspicious glances at street peddlers.  Off handed cussing with families in the car by overworked and aggravated fathers.  In our own neighborhood there has been a rash of burglaries and down the street there is a rumor that some guy in some car keeps trying to pick up kids from around the school.  No real description is given, which to me is indicative of just fear.  Fear produced by the ongoing parade of media and the very real problems around job loss and poverty. 

Anyway when thinking about the unrest we have here, the inability to help our own, to elect officials who want to be helpful or even to recognise the good from the bad, I thought of this song, penned by Woody Guthrie and put to music by Billy Bragg and Wilco. 

The Unwelcome Guest.  -It may be that we need some outlaws just now, and not the kind from t.v., the real ones-




To the rich man's bright lodges



I ride in this wind


On my good horse, I call you


My shiny black Bess


To the playhouse of fortune


To take the bright silver


And gold you have taken


From somebody else

And as we go riding


In the damp foggy midnight


You snort, my good pony


And you give me your best


For you know and I know


Good horse 'mongst the rich ones


How oftimes we go there


An unwelcome guest


I never took food


From the widows and orphans


And never a hardworking man I oppressed


So take your pace easy


For home soon like lightning


We soon will be riding


My shiny black Bess


No fat rich man's pony


Can ever overtake you


And there's not a rider


From the east to the west


Could hold you a light


In this dark mist and midnight


When the potbellied thieves


Chase the unwelcome guest


I don't know, good horse


As we trot in this dark here


That robbing the rich


Is for worse or for best


They take it by stealing


And lying and gambling


And I take it my way


My shiny Black Bess

I treat horses good


And I'm friendly to strangers


I ride and your running


Makes my guns talk the best

And the rangers and deputies


Are hired by the rich man


To catch me and hang me


My shining black Bess

Yes, they'll catch me napping one day


And they'll kill me


And then I'll be gone


But that won't be my end

For my guns and my saddle


Will always be filled


By unwelcome travelers


And other brave men


And they'll take the money


And spread it out equal


Just like the Bible


And the prophets suggest


But men that go riding


To help these poor workers


The rich will cut down


Like an unwelcome guest

Planning for the Revolution

One of the biggest blocks I am blaming for my lack of writing lately is overload.  I know in some ways it's a cop-out  I could after all be focusing on my ongoing and dust collecting collection of fantasy which actually screams at me from time to time. 

And if your fantasy characters have never screamed at you, you must be a more focused writer than me,  mine tend to knock me awake in the middle of the night and bid me to get out of my cocoon of warmth in order to tend to their stories.  Honestly they are contributing to their own neglect by keeping me up at weird hours shivering at my desk, but that is besides the point.  I COULD be writing them, they have not much to do with overload, but I'm not.

Much.

Instead I'm blaming overload.  And I think it's a solid scape goat.  Take for example the article I submitted last week on Bradley Manning.  I thought I would do a quick update on what the fuck is going on with his case and quickly found myself down a swivving rabbit hole with no end in sight.  There was just SO MUCH to cover.  And that's just one story.  Never mind that it led to me posting an erroneous picture of him that I had to retract.  (Thank you very much couragetochange.org- and I'm not being snide, I mean it.  Thank you.)  It also brought to my attention numerous organizations that are trying to do good works and working against the tide like couragetochange.org. which if I had time I would love to ask more questions of.  Especially given they had their Paypal acct. frozen, then unfrozen all within a 24hour period due to their diligence in getting the word out about abuses and the buckling behavior of Paypal. 

Paypal is another place that deserves some investigation.  Those online bankers who when they started seemed so Internet friendly but buckle so quickly to government pressures as well as other special interests.  Who the hell is Paypal and what are they going to do with everyone's banking info...have you thought about that? 

Then there's Wisconsin.  I'm intrigued and confused and conflicted about the whole thing.  I need to know more.  And so do you really.  We all do.  Edward-Yemil Rosario did a nice little write up this week comparing the situation to bad porn at Subversify you should come by and read it.  But lately I  have not been impressed with unions.  Nobody else I know is either.  This stems from the fact that unions in California are doing exactly nothing that I can tell other than collecting undeserved money and giving out slightly discounted tickets to Disneyland.  In fact when I asked someone if they wanted to go with me to Sacramento to cover the "let's show allegiance to Wisconsin demonstration" (I made name up, I'm sure there's an official name but I'm feeling lazy) I was told, "Hell no, fuck the unions, they have not answered any of my letters from the past 5 years." 

I tried to explain this had nothing to do with unions here, but rather the fact that Wisconsin's governor is an ass. And maybe we should be supporting unions that DO want to do the right thing.  Anyway I'm terribly unclear about the union involvement altogether, which in part is why I wanted to go.  We'll see. I spent the last two weekends in Sacramento and I'm not sure I want to go down there again this weekend.  And no it was nothing as exciting as covering or writing about anything.  It was all about service.  Community and individual. 

Which I think is another hold up.

There is too much to do.   Too many people need help just with fecking food.  Hell, I carried 500lbs of beans back from the state capitol to feed the hungry.  Are these hungry people going to be stopping work to support something in Wisconsin?  Should they be?  I don't know the answer to that.  I really don't.  I just feel grateful to not have to worry about where my meals are coming from and have an opportunity to give to others.  I can't imagine what it's like to have to chose, do I strike now?  Or hang on because my family is hungry. 

And all this is just my little corner or the world.  The bigger picture is we have growing unrest across the globe which is the harvest of the seeds we have planted.  Really, we shouldn't be shocked, but we like a show so we get lots of shots of shocked and crying people.  But why aren't we prepared for this? 

Which in a way helps me with my dilemma...Maybe instead of marching on the state capitol of California,my time would be better spent at home, heading out to farmer's market with my $50 which is what gas would cost to get down there and making some soup and planning my garden.  Because when all these marchers come home, whether they win the fight or not, they're going to need to eat.  And someone has to plan for that.  Might as well be me.