Quiet stormwater My generation Uppers and downers Either way blood flows..>>
The nature and format of this blog will be changing somewhat. It's getting a little crowded out there, and instead of the lions,tiger and bears, it's just dickheads and ass-monkeys of various sizes and pretensions. It'll be a slow death, but the old girl is slowly winding down. I'd say late June is the end date.
I've been contemplating moving to my own website and perhaps having mutiple blogs for which I can control access. Given my relatively modest technical ability this is a little scary, but I've managed to get MySQL, Apache and PHP running off my notebook and have installed MediaWiki for experimental purposes. I plan to start messing around with some sort of blogging tool and then make a decision. I'm stating the obvious, but this Open Source, free software business really is rather cool.
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I've been listening to old school blues. Lots of BB King, Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf on the playlist; with the whole of Exile on Mainstreet thrown in. I'm not used to feeling as emotional as I have been without anger or despair driving my feelings and it's a little disorientating. My normal angst rock, metal, emo. music doesn't seem appropriate but the blues are just right. Hell the blues are always right - they're the fountainhead from which all good things spring. Or good things about bad things. Either way...
When I'm not listening to the blues, I'm listening to songs from Quadrophenia and Tommy. 5.15 is one of my favourite songs and the first time I saw the Quadrophenia movie, one of my most treasured memories. It was a typical drunken, rowdy night in England with the boys and then Mk. put on Quadrophenia video and an awed hush descended. Up 'til then, I had mainly known The Who as the guys who sang My Generation, so the movie and the soundtrack were a real eye-opener. Actually that moment probably launched me into exploring classic rock further so it was doubly significant.
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I've been watching two TV shows a lot recently: Dog the Bounty Hunter and American Chopper. Sidestepping their value as entertainment, I've been more interested about the insight they provide into the American condition. The protagonists are very much from the "These colours don't run" school; or so I assume from the pics. of GWB on their office walls.
The things is, despite their references to God, these aren't bible belt fundamentalists. And they aren't representitives of the military-industrial complex either. These guys are, respectively, a fucking bounty hunter and a guy who builds bloody choppers. Yeah I know, according to the fashionably, bloodlessly liberal who constitute what passes for much of the media, they're ignorant rednecks. It's just not that simple though. There's something about the way these men have invented, created, re-moulded who they are that is not just admirable but special in a very American way.
