Friday Night (Bracing Myself For An Exciting Tomorrow)

 

The Elephant In The Room (A Bad Choice Of Words?)

A TMR Monday Musical Update: Unembarrassing Rap

Christian Rap is only going to get you in trouble at an atheist's convention. (I mean, why anyone would want all this jargon taking up space in their heads is beyond us. Then again, why anyone would want all this jargon taking up space in their heads - so they can knowledgeably comment on it - is also a pickle we'd be better off tackling at another time.) Anywhere else, I guarantee you, this Q + A will get you pats on the back - no problem.

People listen to bad messages in music because they lack imagination. It's not their fault. They don't live in a stimulating environment (Even animals prefer being hit to no stimulation at all). Crate Diggers are driven by a desire for understanding the world of music's contours. Being exposed to everything destroys the hype. There's only two kinds of music - good and bad. The subject matter is up to you.

This isn't an unembarrassing Rap record, but Elvis Costello hooking up with The Roots' (and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon's) ?uest Love - who seems as determined as Elvis to hook up with everybody. Together they came up with this threadbare, oh I don't know, authentic fake I Am The Walrus rebellion, from Jamaica, for the masses. Or something. It's hard to tell because it just kinda lays there. I poked it with a stick and found it's not a bad song, if a bit under-produced. In the suburbs, on decks across the country, it has a shot at defining cool for a while. Everywhere else, it will be put out of it's misery quickly, except for the memory it happened. And that, too, will go soon enough. I can see why these two might share long phone calls, but not this.

Both this Rap and it's beat are throwbacks to the 70's tribal style of Gil Scott Heron and The Last Poets. Let's call it the sound of Rap's Community Organizer Contingent. The place where Obama feels deep, NewAgers start dancing (but not listening) and unarmed conservatives nervously start eyeing each other, remembering tales of cannibalism and old Tarzan movies. Not to fear. It's just a beat. Plus Democrats feed on themselves, which is why this guy's talking. You want to hear a message of self-reliance? Well here it is, twisted, on a Monday morning:

"Let's build,..."

Spiritual Warfare: Everybody's Feeling Mahdi Big

Oh goodie - the End Times Christians are watching the End Times Islamists, and guess what? The End Times are coming!:

New evidence has emerged that the Iranian government sees the current unrest in the Middle East as a signal that the Mahdi--or Islamic messiah--is about to appear.

CBN News has obtained a never-before-seen video produced by the Iranian regime that says all the signs are moving into place -- and that Iran will soon help usher in the end times.

While the revolutionary movements gripping the Middle East have created uncertainty throughout the region, the video shows that the Iranian regime believes the chaos is divine proof that their ultimate victory is at hand.

As Elvis Costello said in the song Waiting For The End Of The World, "Dear Lord, I sincerely hope you're comin' 'cause ya done really started something!"

It's A Fact, People: You Are The Accident

Hat Tip: Althouse

It's Destructive Fantasies That Are Melting

"After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama's US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world."

-- Christopher Booker, claiming "2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved," in the Telegraph.UK.

All Bitches Ain't Women

It's time for some Democratic Cult fair play:

I just read Robin Morgan's "Goodbye To All That (#2)" which Chelsea Clinton is supposedly sending to everyone she knows, and, rather than replying myself (because I'm "a man") I'd like to offer two choice quotes - both from women - in response. Maybe then, Robin Morgan, Chelsea Clinton, and Hillary, will understand why a feminist smokescreen, projected against my gender, is just another example of why Hillary shouldn't be allowed to get anywhere near our collective seat of power:


"I would give just about anything to be able - in good conscience - to vote for a woman for President. Just not this particular woman. She doesn't even know who she is anymore. How could she possibly know who we are? She thinks we are the means to her end. That's all her idea of "sisterhood" has ever been."

- Kyle-Anne Shiver

"Surely [Hillary] has loved, laughed and suffered in the usual human ways, but what we are left with is a sleek, well-funded, power-seeking machine encased in a gleaming carapace of self-righteousness. She's already enjoyed considerable power, both as a Senator and a "co-president," and in the ways that counted, she blew it. What Americans need most, after fifteen years of presidential crimes high and low, is to wash their hands of all the sleaze, blood, and other bodily fluids, and find themselves a President who is neither a Clinton nor a Bush."

- Barbara Ehrenreich