Some spread fear, some just follow

Ravings from repressed homophobic religious zealot

This is Donald Mullins' Facebook profile page.

Today, at about 4:30 pm pacific time, he made a status update.

The aforementioned status update:
What the homosexual activists seek is not the much ballyhooed "redefinition of marriage." It can't be, since the activists have offered up no replacement definition for the institution's traditional understanding. Indeed, they can't offer one.
Then, not one minute later, made this comment on his own status update:
The moment homosexual activists define marriage (in other words, place parameters defining what constitutes marriage and what does not), they would be guilty of the very act of moral exclusion they condemn in others.

For instance, if they se ek to redefine marriage to mean the union of two human beings (regardless of gender), they have excluded from their definition those whose preferred sexual expression is polyamory or polygamy. At that point, the very arguments they have leveled against proponents of "traditional marriage" get turned around on them. They become the bigots, the haters, the narrow-minded. Therefore, they will offer no new definition for marriage...thus "un-defining" it.

But un-defining the nucleus of the family is tantamount to saying the family is insignificant and unimportant in the preservation of society. Reason and experience both tell us otherwise.


Though I do like the word ballyhooed ...

He's using a logic argument to say that homosexuals don't want exactly what they say they want. Classic. No, Donald, they want what they say they want: a redefinition of marriage to include them. And if they get it, no one is going to feel left out.

They just don't feel they need to spell it out for you millimeter by millimeter since it's not that difficult a concept to understand. In a nutshell, if I may, my homosexual bretheren: Let Them Marry.

Donald was my 10th grade English teacher.


Are we now worried about those who practice polygamy and polyamory? Have we heard any polyamorists or polygamists trying to defend their right to marry legally within the U.S.? Polyamorists don't want to have necessarily marital relationships--just a lot of them. And polygamy in the U.S. is relegated mostly to fundamental Mormonism, and they can practice that within their own religion, so they're covered. Neither group has anything to lose from a redefinition of marriage to mean the same boring legal union between two individuals, regardless of gender, the same one that breeders currently get to enjoy.



Mind you, I've been with my partner now for over seven years, we have a lovely family together, and marriage is not a looming weight on us. 

It's only a minor one.

It certainly was not going to be what kept us together. It was love. Marriage is indeed about love, and also the nice tax breaks involved. Our gay brothers and sisters want to be able to share in that love. And tax reduction. And if we breeders truly loved ourselves, we would let them. Because they're not going to hurt it. When they are able to marry, only then will I feel good enough about marriage in this country that I would want to marry my love. We feel the same way about this. People keep referring to Megan as my wife anyway, so it's practically like she is my wife.


Isn't homosexuals' struggle to gain the right to legal marriage in the U.S. related less to morals, than to simple legality? I guess it is both a moral and a legal issue. The moral majority in this country does have more muscle than the moral minority, so homosexuals do face an uphill battle. It's a battle akin to that of women and blacks. You know who they had to fight every time? White men. I'm amazed some white men (DONALD) *ahem still put up a fuss about it to this day.

You know, some of those blacks and women were (gasp) gay. You've already helped gay people. Help the rest.

It's not about "un-defining the nucleus of the family." In no way does the right of homosexuals to legally marry in the U.S. threaten anyone's family life, married or otherwise. Go ahead--name one way. Easily debunk-able, I'm sure, but go ahead with your petty argument.

It's about giving homosexuals equal rights. They're not lesser than heterosexuals, yet they are treated as such. It's shameful. I'm embarrassed on the part of my fellow straight men who make these arguments. I want the old racist generations to lose their grasp on power to make room for accepting new ones.

Please don't ask me "What's next? Marrying animals?" Don't be juvenile. That's insulting. And yes, apparently that argument has been expressed in popular media as of late. And again. And again. To insinuate that homosexuality is remotely tied to bestiality is beyond wrong and your maker will hold you accountable.

ARE YOU INSANE PAT ROBERTSON? YOUR SOUL IS FORFEIT

Deftones -- I like them

I have a sort of love/dislike relationship with Deftones.

The music from the new album Diamond Eyes is pretty awesome. So are the videos for the two singles. Watch them on YouTube:
Rocket Skates
Diamond Eyes
I've got no problems with these songs--really cool stuff. I'd rate them both a nine out of ten. It's not totally amazing stuff, but it's right up there with their best material.

I'd argue there are two eras of Deftones, with a clear dividing line between: Pre-White Pony (PWP), and Post-White Pony (PWP). That album was their most experimental and most amazing effort. It was their third. The first two albums were really heavy, emo-hardcore-metal-hiphop stuff, which I'm not totally sold on.

I feel this band has gotten better with age. Their newer material shows a greater maturity over their previous, and I feel it's much more listenable, and even somehow relatable.

...not to say that I don't like their earlier work. Do I really need to put the video for My Own Summer (Shove It) up here? I think not. If you've read this far, you probably like Deftones. Therefore, you must know that song. Their best ever for me. We need not say much more about it other than COME SHOVE THE SUN ASIDE SHOVE IT SHOVE IT SHOVE IT

Deftones bring funk and flava into metal. They make it downright danceable. Case in point: Mein (YouTube link) from the last album, "Saturday Night Wrist." It sounds more pop-y than other metals with more screaming and guitar solos and generally more buttrock influence, but Deftones differ from other bad rap-metal acts because they avoid the misdoings that pop often do--stealing the beat of hiphop and dance music & inserting shitty singing and T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E runofthemill, yesterday's news, annoy me to death and put me to sleep instrumentation.

Deftones, true Californians that they are, blend all that stuff together--metal, hiphop, pop singing--into one cohesive mix. They're doing what Incubus should have kept doing--staying real. Their style is tight, they pull no punches, and they make you want to dance and love and get cathartic all at once.

Chino's vocal lines, I would say, are the most defining aspect of Deftones' sound. The band itself is tight. The drummer's style really adds to the funk, while Stephen, on guitar, brings the metal.

Speaking of Stephen, I'm given the impression he really took Chi's coma personally. His guitar sounds on Diamond Eyes, especially, are angry and sad. There's a hopelessness to his verse riff to that song, but then it gets really beautiful while still staying heavy. He wants to make a big sound for his friend. He probably worked closest with Chi, being the counterpoint counterpart to his bass. My sympathies, Stephen. I feel for you. Chi had an awesome mane of black hair and a brutal style and the body of a behemoth. His loss is a great one.

Dig this--Black Diamond Skye--Alice in Chains, Deftones, and Mastodon touring together. The tour name is taken from the titles of the newest albums from all three bands, "Black Gives Way to Blue," "Diamond Eyes," and "Crack the Skye."

That is surely a show that will sell big. You'll be getting HARDCORE fans of all three of those bands who will sell their left nut to see the show. I'd love to go... I should check for Seattle dates.

...though, I'd give my right nut to see the Tim and Eric Awesome Tour stop in Seattle. I'd see that instead.

Wait, what am I talking about? I have child! Good thing she makes me happy..... little brat.

Bullshit

Bullshit

Bullshit

Bullshit

Bullshit is when people use the word "gay" to mean some synonym of "disfavorable." FUCKING REDNECKS!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH 
KILL KILL KILL KILL

Plumbers

Today thru to one and one-half weeks, the family and I will experience... 


Plumbers.


Coming in and out. 


Luckily, most of the work is going to be downstairs and ... jeez you will not believe the daydream I just had.


Anyway, they're also being pretty good about doing the work in here only when Lucy and I are out of the house. Just today, during the regular park trip Lucy and I take, they came up and moved our coats and shoes and all the stuff in the bathroom around, and drilled two sizable holes in two walls, and knocked what must have been a shotty caulk job on the bottom of the pipe leading from the bathroom sink. There was a fine white dust on the floor, too. They probably used our broom to sweep up most of it, but they missed a bunch. So I went at it again, cleaning up after them.


It's good that they're polite, middle-aged (read: mature and calm) plumbers that are being as accommodating as they can. I hear them now, drilling into who knows what downstairs. Lucy's room is above one of the bedrooms downstairs, so the noise won't wake her. Another bonus.


The last plumber we had was this total jerk slob of a guy who left slightly severe messes for us to clean up, and weirded us out every time by just saying this really ... what's the word ... stupid shit.


One hundred years -- that's how old this house is. And with that age comes rot. But also--archaic, problematic plumbing practices. I talked to the main plumber today. Nice guy. He told me that our landlord wants them to "snake the pipe leading to the main sink," he said. Then he smiled a little.


"Uh-uh. It goes down, turns sharply to the right, then goes uphill." The only answer with a problem like that, he said, is to replace the pipes. This is going to be more expensive than our landlord had anticipated, I'm guessing.


I hope rats or any other assorted critters don't come out of the holes in the walls.

Family trip in the rain turns fun

Mom and dad protest technology by walking

So it's pissing rain in Seattle, and what do we decide to do? Walk to Green Lake to get to Spud so we can eat the fish and the chips. Then on to Basking Robbins for a corporate ice cream fun experience before heading home.

Lucy took her first bites of waffle cone there! There was Cherry ChumChum Chunk ice cream in there. Thanks Basking Robbins. She had to stick her fingers in it first to see just what was going on in there, and then she dove right in! It's good to let her come to terms with new foods and other things on her own, at her own pace, cause then she's all about it!

Oh, and at Spud she had her first fried fish. She liked the fish, and not the crispy fried batter. And of course she liked the fries. O Fries! You wonderful invention! Sweet tates....

I guess the rain wasn't so bad until we were on the tail end of our journey. Mama and Dada got pretty wet, but Lucy stayed mostly dry in her stroller with hat on. But Seattle has been raining really hard last night and tonight, which actually I kinda like. We haven't had rain that hard in quite a while. Maybe it's the pretense to the upcoming winter.

Lucy has been staying up later this past week. She's able to stay awake for longer stretches between naps and nights. Sometimes it means shorter naps, other times it just means she sleeps later. It might be because she's done with growth spurts for the moment, and doesn't need to fuel her body with so much sleep and food.

Her half birthday is Sept. 11. She turned 18 months old that day. One and one half years. Where has the time gone? I look at bigger kids and think Lucy will be cooler than them. But who knows? Megan and I are some eccentric Luddites. The reality I have to face is that I will, most likely, pass a fair share of those down to my Lucybeans.

She will always be my special little girl, until she's my special lady, and even when she's my special middle aged lady. And I'm bending the rules of the definition of a special lady here--no romance involved this time. Just the connection between a guy who loves his daughter, and the daughter Herself.

And I love my partner more because of all this. Things are sort of cyclical like that. Hell, I love myself more for it too.

Mirror's Edge Trailer

tHIS... looks... pretty awesome. I don't even know what system it'll be for. Looks like PC.

Black metal recording samples

Okay, so I've been working on a critique of the show Dexter for a while now. It will be a long one. It still needs work. And right now, while I have the time, I need to play guitar. Recording takes precedence at the moment.

Here's some evidence of my new recording habit:
Slicing Snakes
Black Metal Advice Column (In Yr Local Paper)

These are links to WAV files via DropBox.

These "songs" are very barebones. Basic. Guitar only. Slicing Snakes is not even half finished--the song is five minutes long. Both still need lead guitar, then bass. Then drums. Then guitar over again.

And there's only so much time in one day!

I've had a lot of trouble troubleshooting with my new equipment, working around the kinks and limitations and such. The metronome has been the hardest to nail down. Anyway, I'm off now to practice. That Slicing Snakes song is fucking fast and takes work to be able to play well.

Burn a Quran Day--the world takes notice

You've gotta hand it to the Rev. Terry Jones--he's got the world in the palm of his hand.

With four days left to decide whether to make good on his already shaky promise to hold "Burn a Koran Day" on Sept. 11, the minister's eventual choice will have a far-reaching impact that could trigger a proverbial, or literal, firestorm.

Have we not, as a species, learned our lesson about what comes from burning books? I guess that doesn't apply to Jones, who has said he believes God itself wants him to burn Qurans.

People worldwide are warning against this action. Even David Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander, said "Burn a Koran Day" will undoubtedly make extremists worldwide even angrier, according to an Associated Press piece via Yahoo! News.

The question running thru everyone's mind: what if the tables turned and some extremist religious group decided to burn Bibles? Well, something close to it happened last Monday, when citizens in Kabul burned Jones' effigy along with an American flag whilst calling for President Obama's death, according to The Washington Times.

It's evidence of the truth behind Petraeus' warning. If he follows through, Jones' act will be a new low to stoop to for American Christianity, a religion with forgiveness as its foundation. Doesn't forgiveness involve not doing something so drastic as burning a Bible equivalent? Doesn't Jones see that he may as well be burning Bibles?

CNN's American Morning show today put online this video of a group of about 13 American soldiers in Afghanistan, talking to Jason Carroll about what they've been doing over there lately. One of them said they don't go on the offensive--they just defend themselves, in addition to trying to get the local civilians to come together as one people.

Our troops are constantly under attack. The violence there is barely containable, which should come as a surprise to no one. The soldiers' revelation lead me to believe Petraeus' warning all the more.

I can't help but draw a similarity between what happened to South Park. Making an episode on television is not exactly the same as holding a book-burning, but the result will be similar: millions of people will witness the creation. Jones' cry for attention has worked, and now the world bites its fingernails in anticipation.

The reason Jones is doing this in the first place is to protest a mosque building project at Ground Zero, but his message has been totally overwhelmed by intentions. It's not cool to burn books as protest. It sets society back, and it makes Christianity seem accepting to extremists who would use its teachings for violence.

But if we look back just a wee bit in history, we'd see that it wouldn't be the first time a religion has been used as a front for persecution and intolerance.

bad taste

Just finished watching Dexter season four. I can't stop thinking about it. I am disturbed. It left a bad taste in my mouth. More to follow.

The melodramatic in music

Whatever the style, it can be good or bad. There's good and bad everything--from country to rap to rock to metal to blues and to all the spinoffs of those genres. Melodrama ruins every one.

It's repulsive, right? You know what I'm talking about. Melodrama has its natural place in soap opera and pop music--leave it out of our underground musics you traitors!

Okay, I admit I'm acting the hypocrite here cause ppl can make whatever kinda music they goddam well wish and blah blah blah...e t c . . . .

But new metal sucks! Since when did metal get corny? I mean, mainstream pop music is the worst, but that's to be expected. Lately, melodrama seems to have seeped into the veins of what the cool people used to do. It just goes to show--any cool new thing catches on, something that the cool folks are into, it eventually becomes a contemporary, compromised version of itself, and the cool folks have to pony up and abandon it and move onto the next new, cool thing, all the while, hearing in the background, the forced, egocentric drone  version of the beauty they once made.

And lately I'm pissed at Dexter for continuing to be so overly melodramtic well into its fourth season! It's a show about a serial killer for christ sakes. WHO WRITES THIS GARBAGE?!!! It's like my partner says--the Dexter scenes are good, and all the rest of the characters' scenes are terrible and annoying and awful. Deb is the weakest link in that show.

Anyway!

I will now attempt to make you a believer. Of what? That melodramatic music is annoying. Here, just watch one minute of this band's song.

It starts when you're young, doesn't it? Sigh...

This video also reveals what is wrong with live dramatic metal-punk-indie-bastardization-spinoff (screamo, hardcore, teenage boy demographic) music -- it sounds like shit. The drums are too loud, that or the guitars are too quiet, the vocalist sounds like shit because he's screaming as hard as he possibly can, and all the band performs with reckless abandon. Sloppy.

Take this popular melodramatic metal band for example.

Annoying, right? They're well-produced, and the music is executed perfectly, but it's still melodramatic. The major-minor dual guitar melodies and the screamer screaming...

I've never liked this type of music. Give me Megadeth or Metallica or Sepultura or Pantera (even with that racist fuck singer Phil) and I'm a happy boy. As I Lay Dying has good musicians, but the rhythms are predictable and unoriginal. The vocalist is really.... just, really into it. And that annoys me more than it pumps me up. It's easy metal. Low fruit.

Sadly, it has long ago seeped into country, as well.

Actually, this video gets kind of funny. But it does remind me a lot of what Dexter is doing, with the whole twins thing--the women throw themselves at the men. It's unrealistic and helps keep women looking dependent. But he does get his ass kicked and then the medical worker whose ass he grabs knocks him out. That's funny. Hell of a budget with this one. Got fucking REPUBLICAN splattered all over it. now I have a bad taste in my mouth.

Eh maintenant, pour le coup de grâce, try and take this young lady at her word:


I rest my case. Melodrama is annoying.