33 or so music faves of '09

Anchor & Braille – Felt
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
Austin Lucas – Somebody Loves You
Ben Harper and the Relentless 7 – White Lies for Dark Times
Bouncing Souls – Ghosts on the Boardwalk
Buddy and Julie Miller – Written in Chalk
Butch Walker – Sycamore Meadows (late ’08)
Chuck Ragan – Gold Country
Converge – Axe to Fail
Cracker – Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey
The Dear Hunter – Act III : Life and Death
The Felice Brothers – Yonder is the Clock
Frank Turner – Poetry of the Deed
Gallows – Grey Britain
Gasoline Heart – Cucumber Riot
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Ian Brown – My Way
Joe Henry – Blood from Stars
The Lemonheads – Varshons
Lucero – 1372 Overton Park
Manic Street Preachers – Journal for Plague Lovers
Morrissey – Years of Refusal
P.O.S. – Never Better
Pearl Jam – Backspacer
Placebo – Battle for the Sun
Relient K – Forget and Not Slow Down
Riverboat Gamblers – Underneath the Owl
Steve Earle – Townes
Strike Anywhere – Iron Front
The Thermals – Now We Can See
Thrice – Beggars
U2 – No Line on the Horizon
The Vaselines – Enter the Vaselines (Compilation)

Kambei. The K-man. The leaper. The explorer. The go-getter. The swimmer. The Tri-athlete. You’ve left a hole in all of our hearts. A hole that won’t be filled. But there is a reason for that. It’s because you were loved, a lot, especially by your human and doggeh mamas. As the U2 song goes, “only love can leave such a mark, only love can leave such a scar.” We watched you grow up from the day you were born. Oh how we all worried about you because of your heart condition. We didn’t need to. You gave that heart condition the finger from the day you were born. Your energy knew no bounds. I called you the K-man, because you were indeed the man of the house. You made sure to show your brother and sisters how everything was done. You made us smile, laugh and at the end, cry. M and VG were very lucky to have got to meet you in person. The rest of us didn’t have that chance. Not here anyway. Any reunions we have on earth will be missing something. A very important something. You. But I am confident we will have a reunion with you across the Rainbow Bridge, and that you will be the first one there to meet us and show us all the new tricks you’ve learned. So with a few more words from Bono I will leave you buddy, confident that “I will see you again when the stars fall from the sky”…because “I know that this is not good-bye”.

gack!

Another month of nothing. Though when you are without the net at your main residence and have no netbook...it can cause some issues, lol. Someday...here. But really, why bother writing?

Hey, I tried

I wrote about moving forward in January. I tried, but with all the bullshit from this congress and the current leader of the country, it can't be done. No, don't start telling me about Bush. I hated Bush. Still do. But that doesn't mean I have to appreciate the current person in office, who has accomplished nothing outside of apologizing for all things American. Bush and a Republican congress set the ball rolling on spending and debt and the current administration just picked it up and ran. Oh well. What can ya do, right?

Life...

sucks...yes, it does...

Someday...

Oh to write again. Though I often ask myself, "Why bother?" I'll think of something here in a few days, even though I'm pretty sure that no one is actually reading this. But when everyone else is boring you to hell, then you kind of feel like writing something yourself. Do people really read reviews after 2-3 paragraphs? Can anyone answer that? I mean, unless your also someone that has no expertise in brevity? Anyway, back in a few, if for nothing more than to amuse myself. Oh, that last post? Bang up job Barry, lol.

So...about today...and tomorrow

To use an empty phrase of rhetoric myself, all I can do is hope today. Yes, hope. I know, odd word coming from me right? But at this point I have no other choice. I've put aside my disagreements with our new president and "hope" that he can lead this nation in the right direction.

We can all sit here and debate whether Obama's proposed programs are good or bad, socialist, liberal, conservative, whatever for days. We can sit here and bitch and moan about it and how the country is now in the pit of hell, blah, blah, blah. Like it wasn't already? Obama supporters can sit here and tell us how Bush is responsible for it all in the end and its all on him. We can see the people watching the inauguration who are so ready to "move on" do nothing but boo Bush and Cheney whenever they were on the screen today and show us how they aren't really ready to do that. We could concentrate on any number of these things, but we shouldn't.

If we really believe in a higher being (I'm assuming that many of you I went to high school or college with do), then its a matter of accepting that God has put the man in charge that he wants there at this time, just like the previous 8 years (for you Bush haters or the last 16 for you die-hard GOP nuts). We can "if, but, or what about that", but we shouldn't. We can continue to point out everything with which we disagree in regards to our new president and we can continue to point out everything that was a supposed fault of the previous one, but we shouldn't. Life is seldom black and white. Republicans ruled congress for the majority of Clinton's 8 years, and for the majority of Bush's as well. Good times, bad times. The economy tends to be a cyclical thing, and one that the president actually doesn't have a whole lot to do with, there are simply too many factors in this country and around the world.

But it's time to forget about that. It is. I did not vote for Bush in either of his elections for for Obama or McCain this time around. I voted for 3rd-party candidates who I felt were more in line with my supposed values or thinking. I feel fine with having voted for them. And in disagreement with many, I did not "waste" my vote by voting for the person I was most in line with. But those elections are over, especially the previous one. Unless I want to actually change the way things so and enter the realm of politics in one way or another (and believe me, after thinking about it way too much, I really don't), it's time to shut up and look elsewhere for a way to make this country and the world a better place. I don't know exactly what that is yet, but I know that it is time. Once again, we can concentrate on all of the negatives, but we shouldn't. Instead its time to embrace the countless positives that we have in this country, regardless of how we feel about who is in office and to forget about the whole country being in hell thing. I hope you will join me in moving forward.