Writin' a rap

We’re doing a double dip tomorrow. There’s a party and Quatro Veda plays, then the 6 Foot Poles, then The Bottom 99, then Largebeat. So, Oliver and I will be doing 2 completely disparate sets. At least not back to back.

This is the intro I wrote for one of our darker songs (also shown). When you hear it with the lamenting clarinet with it, it really reminds me of when Klezmer gets sad.


“When I wrote this song in 2003, I had some vague hopes that the upcoming election would help make it irrelevant. It didn’t. First came Katrina, then hard on her heels the Sago Mine Disaster.
So, I’d like to dedicate this to the brave people still struggling for survival down in New Orleans, to those 6 workers dead in the dark at the Crandall Canyon Mine and the people who just died at the Gibson County Coal Mine.”

Pick and Shovel, Fire and Flame

To keep repeating history
Let them eat policy
Let them eat cake
To keep them on their knees
feed them on fallacies
how much will take?
To not acknowledge idiocy
greed and banality
is a mistake
Compounding the insanity
fake christianity
Who’d you forsake?

And still we die
from flames and fire
pick and shovel
wind and rain
Thirst and starvation dog this nation
ragged and driven
bowed in pain
We’ve become
awestricken, dumb
battered and numb
our hands are chained
And still we die
from flames and fire
pick and shovel
wind and rain

Showbiz

AM earworm: Something In The Air - Thunderclap Newman
No big shock as this is our cover du jour for our upcoming show, yep I said upcoming show. Despite the fact that I decided at my last attempt at a small soiree that I apparently can never plan anything ever or I will end up with a 103 fever. (Similar to my HS graduation when I ended up in surgery 3 days later), we have actually scheduled a something. Noon, July 7th at the Liberty Plaza Park opening for Mr. Largebeat. (Southwest corner of Division & Liberty St.’s here in lovely downtown Ann Arbor.) Other than the trepidation about weather I love out door shows. I can smoke at will, very little boozy factor, little doinksters can come and they always dance, it’s just good stuff.
So ya’ll come down cuz as usual it’s a rare, rare spectacle.

"Don't stand so close to me"

“I live off you, you live off me
and the whole world lives off of everyone
ya really gotta be exploited
ya really gotta be exploited
by somebody, by somebody, by somebody,
La la la la”

Poly Styrene


Lately I’ve been infuriated. This is not exactly an unknown condition in my life. I mean I live with roommates. I own a house. I have some really annoying health problems causing me to become somewhat disabled. And the politic shenanigans going on, I can’t even begin to speak about or my head will pop, just freakin’ pop.

But right at this moment I’m on about exploited children. OK, lets face it, I was an exploited child. I’m not going into detail here at this time, I don’t know you well enough yet. I will probably talk more about my own experiences at some point but let me say this, at least my own parents didn’t sell me down the river.

I’m talking about so called child & preteen modeling. This can be some sick ass shit. Don’t think there’s a problem?
http://childsupermodels.com/
(Warning - not work safe and in my eyes, truly obscene.)
Now tell me there’s no problem. A 13 year old is not supposed to be photographed with her/ his ass hanging out and the hand down the pants. Not to mention, I’m told by Mark Maynard, http://markmaynard.com, that one of the ways some pageants make extra money is by selling all day passes to “amateur” photographers.

Where is the parent? Probably behind this 100%. They will say “But they want to do it”. Well they’re children, what do they know from exploitation? What did I know?

Talk about your slippery slopes. And that my friends, is why I’m so incensed, I FULLY realize that there are children who are in stolen into, and sold into, bondage and slavery in brothels and are in the hands of sexual predators at this moment. I am quite aware that small living beings are being bought and sold in this country as we speak. And that compared to little Tiffany or Vanessa up there, their lives are ceaseless torment as sexual slaves. But I defy anyone to tell me that parading children in such a fashion in such a venue as “child supermodels”, is not directly contributing to the per view of children as sexual OBJECTS which is wrong, wrong, wrong.

I don’t actually believe in evil but that is as close to that edge as it gets. The idea that any parent is making one dime off this, is infuriating. Especially in light of the stupid shit people are willing to put their lives on hold to champion or denounce. You can all insert here your own version of something useless, non-constructive or idiotic you’ve seen on TV in the past 6 months or more. I’ll give the example of, furor over Janet Jackson’s (a full grown woman, purported to be in full command of her faculties) nipple. The gianormous red herring factor at the very least.

But lest you think that I, a full grown woman, am in full command of my own faculties, let me state for the record, that I also find NASCAR to be completely obscene.