Somebody Needs a New Brain!

I’m amazed by some of the letters to the editor I see in the newspaper. I know there are always weird letters to the editor in every paper, but at least some of them look like they were written by someone intelligent. You may not agree with the writer and think he’s kind of out there, but you don’t finish the letter and shake your head.

This letter, on the other hand is just odd. This was sent after the paper published stories about a guy getting charged with vandalism after spray-painting messages on bridges and buildings downtown. So, take it away, ditzy!

Spray-painting sparks discussion in the city

ANDREA K. BENNETT

(Aug 8, 2006)

Dear Editor – Re: ‘Local activist accused of spray-painting downtown wall’
(Guelph Mercury, Aug. 3).

Shock, shock, horror, horror. Free speech finds its avenue via spray paint.

When the newspaper persists in writing these irresponsible articles, linking local activists both implicitly and explicitly — without real cause — to serious crimes that have been committed in the area, it’s no wonder that some folks take to more direct forms of expression.

In context, the two stencils make perfect satirical sense. I like the stencils and spray-painting that show up around town; they spark discussion and they’re often esthetically pleasing. This in marked contrast to the grey- and blue-striped wall now located at the top of Northumberland Street.

In short: living in this town with our overstaffed police force and undernewsed daily newspaper gets more restrictive and frustrating day to day.

Andrea K. Bennett

Guelph

Ok, I think I can pick my jaw up off the floor. Irresponsible articles? They were, um, printing the news. A guy got charged with vandalism, they wrote about it. That’s what a *newspaper* is supposed to do. They didn’t dream up his name and theorize about what he might have done. They said, “Hey folks, here’s the guy who police have charged with spray-painting those messages downtown.”

Next, there’s this whole bullshit about linking activists to serious crimes around the city. I don’t think the author of the article had to say one word. Our friendly neighbourhood graphic artist did it all himself. He wrote the words “eco-terrorist” which had also been written by other people who, months before, had set fire to some stuff. Isn’t it amazing how good the mind is at playing connect the dots?

And who gives a rat’s ass whether she thinks it’s asthetically pleasing? Those walls aren’t her property to spray-paint! If she likes the stensils so much, she can paint them on her own door. Then, and only then, would she have a right to cry if they arrested her for it.

Finally, she thinks this town is restrictive? I dare her to go to Singapore and spice up their downtown with beautiful stensils and see what kind of response she’d get. I know that’s extreme, but I doubt she’d find a city that’s cool with people vandalizing property. There are few places that have grafiti walls available for people’s messages. The city’s downtown isn’t a big grafiti wall. He put grafiti on it, so he was wrong. That’s the whole story, and all these people’s whining and moaning about the newspaper’s coverage is making it into a bigger story than the paper did.

Warriors Of The World

Good Morning, Friends

So it’s been a while since I’ve had to rant on these losers – but here it is. I’m sooo tired of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I believe I said on this very site like year fucking years ago that it was time for these guys to hang it up, but here we, subjected to another round of playing the latest single in to the ground. Dani California was on 3 different stations on my way to work this morning – it’s only a 20 minute drive. Figures it would be on the one day I forget my iPod. But it’s a bad song. As I said back then, they haven’t had a good one since whenever Californication came out. I don’t know what rule it is in radio that just because a band used to rule, we need to play everything they put out until the day they die. And we’ve already begun with bashing the new single in to the ground. So this isn’t going away anytime soon.

On a similar note – the new Tom Petty song. It doesn’t annoy me as much and isn’t terrible – but is a song released in 2006 really classic Rock just because the guy is old? No. It’s not. So it’s either good enough to make it on main stream rock stations – or it’s not but it has no business on Q107 or stations like it.

On a positive note – the song “Warriors of the World United” by Manowar is pretty fun. It’s kind of an old school metal balid. The band will never ammount to anything and the song itself is a few years old, but I’ve just rediscovered it. It’s worth a listen.

Also anything by Tsunami Bomb who I found on Warped Tour a few years ago. They’ve put some good stuff lately if you’re in to chick punk – or at least a chick lead singer.

Enjoy

The Poster Hunt Continues

So here’s an update on the most boring of topics – but don’t worry – there’s a reason for it.

Steve’s suggestion of InterPunk was a bit of a bust. They had some alright stuff – but not enough. So I went to A-F Records website (Anti-Flag’s label, and we all know how I feel about Anti-Flag) and checked their merch section. You could get 5 posters, plus a tube to save them from crinkling in the USPS for about 15 bucks. So I did that. I got some cool ones. I’m going to check out Epitaph’s website next. If I can get my walls covered with only 2 shipping/handling charges, I’ll consider my mission a successful one. And Epitaph is loaded with good bands – we’ll just have to see if their loaded with posters for those bands. Anywho…

On the A-F website there was some pretty neat ones and one that disturbed my cousin and I pretty badly.

Not many are farmiliar with the band Pipedown I’m sure – but they’re a pretty solid punk band that sing about all kinds of politics and religion and peace and such things and actually have some pretty good tunes. I’d definitely recommend them. But this poster was pretty out there. It takes you a second to figure out exactly what you’re looking at. But as your eyes begin to focus, you realize you’re staring at a cross. As your continue to be able to focus on this you realize you’re staring at a cross built up of… corpses. That’s right. Just a huge stack of dead bodies forming up the Holy Cross.

Now I’m not one to get offended by this kinda stuff, and to be honest, I totally dig the symbolism – but the brutality of this thing was absolutely crazy. While I like the band, and thought the concept was neat, I didn’t buy the poster. Not that I have that many hardcore Christian friends (go figure eh?) but I do have enough respect for people who worship in their own way to not be hanging this in a room where I may be entertaining at some point.

Still, though, I thought it worth mentioning. The stuff people can come up with. Crazy.

It’s Just So Pink

Good Sunday Afternoon Kids,

Before we start. Regarding what Steve posted about my e-mail not working on the comment board. I e-mailed you asking for you to send me something to see if it had been rectified and have received nothing. So either my outgoing e-mail isn’t working either or you did and my account is still fucked up. There is the off chance that you’re a record sized douche and chose not to help a guy out – but I’m hoping that one’s not the case.

Onwards!

I’m 2 weeks away from moving in to my new house with some friends. I’m pretty excited. They’ve already lived there for a year and 2 people moved out at the end of last school year opening two rooms. One was not a real bedroom. It used to be the dining room (but let’s face it, we’re not going to use that) so it was turned in to a bedroom with a little drywall closing off the opening from it to the living room. So it’s not a true wall and keeps NO sound out at all when the party is in the living room. So I passed on that one and took the other, slightly smaller room. Dilemma. It’s walls are pink.

It’s not like a bright florescent pink that glows or anything – but pink nonetheless. Jokes all around I’m sure, but it beats not being able to sleep while people are watching TV and such.

So I plan to absolutely paste this room with posters. It won’t hide all the pink, but may at least draw some attention away from it – and if nothing else – keep me sane.

So I already have a few posters of bands that I like that either were handed out at concerts or came in the CD’s or that I saw when out and about. But I’m in to alot of underground stuff and it’s very hard to find posters for the bands I like.

My friend went nuts with posters in his room and recommended AllPosters.com. It’s not terrible for sports and mainstream music and stuff. But very little punk. Unless you consider Good Charlotte and the like to be punk. Unfortunately, I don’t.

So there is the option of going to each individual band’s websites and ordering them individually and paying out the ass for shipping and stuff – but that’s not a great option.

So I figured I’d throw this up on the off chance that someone here knows of a good site for punk rock posters. Stuff like Anti-Flag, Rancid, Pennywise, Bad Religion and things like that.

This is almost certainly a futile attempt – but one that had to made. It’s pink people. Help me out here.

Snakes on a Plane

You’ve gotta be kidding me. We’ve sunk to this level? This is all we can come up with to scare people these days? Absolutely brutal. And what an original title. “Hey what’s your new movie about, Mr Jackson?” “some snakes on a plane.” “Wow sounds interesting – what’s it called?” “Snakes on a Plane”. Just wonderful.

But we all know how Hollywood works and for the next year w’ll be getting variations on this if it makes any money.

Like this Fall’s blockbuster “Bee in my Car”. And we all know Samuel L Jackson’s enjoyment of over-acting and his tendency to over-use the term “motherfucker”. “There’s a motherfucking bee – in my mother fucking car! How am I supposed to drive?” “There’s a mother fucking possom in the bank. These mother fucking possom’s ain’t even pretending to be asleep – they ain’t playing mother fucking possom!”

“There’s a mother fucking ‘coon in the mother fucking prison”. Wait. I guess that’s not so obsurd. Maybe “There’s mother fucking ‘coons in the mother fucking library!” Ya that’s better.

And look out for next summer’s big money maker, starring Mel Gibson “there’s mother fucking Jews – in my mother fucking country!”

Man Do I Ever Hate The Media

So yesterday the news networks were in full vulture mode over more terror related flight news. Sort of.

Round the clock coverage with BREAKING NEWS updates and all kinds of shit to scare the hell out of the world.

At some point yesterday somehow news broke that a plane from England bound for Washington DC was being diverted because of an emergency to Boston. And here is what was reported NATION WIDE as the story.

The plane was sitting on the runway in Boston. All the passengers were unloaded from the plane and hurded in to one area still on the runway. These potential terrorists couldn’t even be taken up to the terminal.

The reason? Somehow someone had gotten on the plane with a tube of vascoline, a screw driver, some matches and 2 notes, one of which was written in Arabic and mentioned El Quada. After everything that happened last week, if this was the case then there was every reason for panic.

HOWEVER!

This turned out to NOT, in fact, be the case. The REAL story turned out to be that an ELDERLY WOMAN was having a panic attack in the plane! The flight staff could not calm the woman down and felt it was safer for her and everyone else to land the plane to get the situation under control.

That tidbit came out this morning. Now you would assume that all these honest and honourable news stations would rush to clarify everything today and tell us what really happened. Unfortunately, that’s not part of the agenda of these organizations.

There has been NEXT TO KNOW mention of this situation. This after it being all that was talked about on the 24 hour news stations yesterday afternoon. The only acknowledgement came from a 20 second clip making it sound like a completely different incident, basically mentioned in passing when listing off headlines.

You would think that after having it on all day yesterday, it would warrant more of a clear up than that. But hey. What do I know about the news – all I know is being honest, I guess. Maybe I’ll never make it in the media.

Douche bags

This Big Ramsey Murder Thing

So John Karr has been arrested in Thailand for the murder of a young girl. He’s also been accused of sexually abusing the young girl in Boulder, Colorado. He was formerly a 2nd Grade Teacher there but was relieved of his teaching duties when his computer was found full of child pornography. My question is, why wasn’t he arrested at that time instead of just relieved of his teaching duties?

More importantly. How did he get out of the country? Especially to Thailand because all know what’s in Thailand.

I mean should he not have been stopped at the airport on the way out when they saw where his ticket was taking him and in his luggage was only 2 laptop’s and a bag of lollypop’s?