Chinese Democracy Blog
Chinese Democracy
Guns N’ Roses has finally released its first album since 1991 -- CHINESE DEMOCRACY. Most of those holding their breath waiting for it have since either passed on, or lapsed into unconsciousness from oxygen deprivation.
Critical response has been mixed, but it mainly seems to consider the CD bombastic, over-thought, and over-produced. Many reviews I’ve read also claimed that it was probably the end of a breed- the last lumbering dinosaur called “the album.”
These days, it seems, listeners prefer to be their own producers, kind of. Maybe their own deejays. Listeners put their iPods on random, and listen to Dock Boggs one minute, Ukrainian klezmer the next, some emo guy the next, some quavery singing’ songwritn’gal the next, etc., until the batteries run out.
I can understand the loss of love for the album format, certainly. I remember buying a SIMPLY RED album back in the day, because I’d heard the band’s cover version of “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” and was knocked out by it. But the rest of the album sucked. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve bought an album since, unless it was a CD re-issue of some vinyl I already had.
Calling this a Guns N’Roses album, by the way, is not exactly accurate. It’s Axl Rose’s album. The other guys are gone. And I’ll bet they weren’t holding their breath waiting for CHINESE DEMOCRACY.
Speaking of dinosaurs, kind of….
From the New York Times’ op-ed page:
“There is little doubt that it would be fun to see a living, breathing woolly mammoth — a shaggy, elephantine creature with long curved tusks who reminds us more of a very large, cuddly stuffed animal than of a T. rex. We’re just not sure that it would be all that much fun for the mammoth.”
There’s another downside of cloning right there. What kind of recreational activities will be provided for the cloned? Do mammoths play pinochle?
Morning in America!
Is anybody besides me getting kind of tired of feature stories on how hard it’s going to be for comedians to make fun of Barack Obama? Poor comedians! What will they do? Where will they turn?
Morning in America II
Michelle Malkin:
“Before Election Day, national media handwringers forged a wildly popular narrative: The right was, in the words of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, gripped by ‘insane rage.’ Outbreaks of incivility (some real, but mostly imagined) were proof positive of the extremist takeover of the Republican Party. The cluck-cluckers and tut-tutters shook with fear.
“But when the GOP took a beating on Nov. 4, no mass protests ensued; no nationwide boycotts erupted. Conservatives took their lumps and began the peaceful post-defeat process of self-flagellation, self-analysis and self-autopsy.
“In fact, in the wake of campaign 2008 there's only one angry mob gripped by ‘insane rage’: left-wing same-sex marriage activists incensed at their defeat in California. Voters there approved Proposition 8, a traditional marriage initiative, by 52 percent to 48 percent.”
Ms Malkin cites: “A Los Angeles restaurant whose manager made a small donation to the Prop. 8 campaign has been besieged nightly by hordes of protesters who have disrupted business, intimidated patrons and brought employees to tears. Out of fear for their jobs and their lives, workers at El Coyote Mexican Cafe pooled together $500 to pay off the bullies.”
Homosexual extortion! Yikes! There’s more, but you get the idea:
“Corporate honchos, church leaders and small donors alike are in the same-sex marriage mob's crosshairs, all unfairly demonized as hate-filled bigots by bona fide hate-filled bigots who have abandoned decency in pursuit of ‘equal rights.’”
Michelle Malkin is on the job!
In another column, she wrote: “Congratulations, tolerance mau-mauers: Your shakedown of a Christian-targeted dating website worked. Homosexuals will no longer be denied the inalienable ‘right’ to hook up with same-sex partners on eHarmony. What a landmark triumph for social progress, eh?”
She writes, “Neil Warren, eHarmony's founder, is a gentle, grandfatherly businessman who launched his popular dating site to support heterosexual marriage. A ‘Focus on the Family’ author with a divinity degree, Warren encourages healthy, lasting unions between men and women of all faiths, mixed faiths or no faith at all.”
Well, apparently, the gentle grandfatherly Neil Warren has folded: eHarmony will now feature and promote same sex matching services. Damn those homosexuals!
Morning in America III
Christian Science Monitor: “The election of America's first black president has triggered more than 200 hate-related incidents, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center – a record in modern presidential elections. Moreover, the white nationalist movement, bemoaning an election that confirmed voters' comfort with a multiracial demography, expects Mr. Obama's election to be a potent recruiting tool – one that watchdog groups warn could give new impetus to a mostly defanged fringe element.”
eHarmony?
From a review site: “eHarmony offers a managed, personality inventory based approach to online dating. You may learn more about yourself than you ever thought possible and have the opportunity to share the information with matches selected for you by eHarmony.”
Now, gay or straight, you can all be a part of that process, and allow eHarmony to choose the partner that’s right for you. I hate us.
I heart Gitmo!
Some outfit from Brazil wants to turn Guantanamo Bay into a theme park.
From the zer0group web site:
--Cuba is a major destination for sex tourism.
--Cuba is located in the middle of American springbreakers ultimate spots.
--Cuba is the attractive ‘illegal’ destination for American tourists that love to try to sneak in.
--Cuba is ‘the’ place of fake cigars, fake rum and other black markets.
--Cuba is nowadays surrounded by countries rivalizing in casinos, and used to be the major destination for gambling and alcohol in the 50’s when those were illegal in the States.
This bullet point demo concludes: “Guantanamo is the perfect location for a combination of political systems in one place where all vices could simultaneously coexist!”
This is a hoax, I believe, but who the hell knows any more? I'm just glad that "rivalizing" is now a verb.
Irony rises from the dead, only to have another stake in its black heart….
NYT: “The week after the election, in a talk at the New York Public Library, Ms. (Joan, of course) Didion lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an ‘irony-free zone,’ a vast Kool-Aid tank where ‘naïveté, translated into “hope,” was now in’ and where ‘innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized.’”
Oh shut up and enjoy the Kool-Aid.
Guns N’ Roses has finally released its first album since 1991 -- CHINESE DEMOCRACY. Most of those holding their breath waiting for it have since either passed on, or lapsed into unconsciousness from oxygen deprivation.
Critical response has been mixed, but it mainly seems to consider the CD bombastic, over-thought, and over-produced. Many reviews I’ve read also claimed that it was probably the end of a breed- the last lumbering dinosaur called “the album.”
These days, it seems, listeners prefer to be their own producers, kind of. Maybe their own deejays. Listeners put their iPods on random, and listen to Dock Boggs one minute, Ukrainian klezmer the next, some emo guy the next, some quavery singing’ songwritn’gal the next, etc., until the batteries run out.
I can understand the loss of love for the album format, certainly. I remember buying a SIMPLY RED album back in the day, because I’d heard the band’s cover version of “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” and was knocked out by it. But the rest of the album sucked. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve bought an album since, unless it was a CD re-issue of some vinyl I already had.
Calling this a Guns N’Roses album, by the way, is not exactly accurate. It’s Axl Rose’s album. The other guys are gone. And I’ll bet they weren’t holding their breath waiting for CHINESE DEMOCRACY.
Speaking of dinosaurs, kind of….
From the New York Times’ op-ed page:
“There is little doubt that it would be fun to see a living, breathing woolly mammoth — a shaggy, elephantine creature with long curved tusks who reminds us more of a very large, cuddly stuffed animal than of a T. rex. We’re just not sure that it would be all that much fun for the mammoth.”
There’s another downside of cloning right there. What kind of recreational activities will be provided for the cloned? Do mammoths play pinochle?
Morning in America!
Is anybody besides me getting kind of tired of feature stories on how hard it’s going to be for comedians to make fun of Barack Obama? Poor comedians! What will they do? Where will they turn?
Morning in America II
Michelle Malkin:
“Before Election Day, national media handwringers forged a wildly popular narrative: The right was, in the words of New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, gripped by ‘insane rage.’ Outbreaks of incivility (some real, but mostly imagined) were proof positive of the extremist takeover of the Republican Party. The cluck-cluckers and tut-tutters shook with fear.
“But when the GOP took a beating on Nov. 4, no mass protests ensued; no nationwide boycotts erupted. Conservatives took their lumps and began the peaceful post-defeat process of self-flagellation, self-analysis and self-autopsy.
“In fact, in the wake of campaign 2008 there's only one angry mob gripped by ‘insane rage’: left-wing same-sex marriage activists incensed at their defeat in California. Voters there approved Proposition 8, a traditional marriage initiative, by 52 percent to 48 percent.”
Ms Malkin cites: “A Los Angeles restaurant whose manager made a small donation to the Prop. 8 campaign has been besieged nightly by hordes of protesters who have disrupted business, intimidated patrons and brought employees to tears. Out of fear for their jobs and their lives, workers at El Coyote Mexican Cafe pooled together $500 to pay off the bullies.”
Homosexual extortion! Yikes! There’s more, but you get the idea:
“Corporate honchos, church leaders and small donors alike are in the same-sex marriage mob's crosshairs, all unfairly demonized as hate-filled bigots by bona fide hate-filled bigots who have abandoned decency in pursuit of ‘equal rights.’”
Michelle Malkin is on the job!
In another column, she wrote: “Congratulations, tolerance mau-mauers: Your shakedown of a Christian-targeted dating website worked. Homosexuals will no longer be denied the inalienable ‘right’ to hook up with same-sex partners on eHarmony. What a landmark triumph for social progress, eh?”
She writes, “Neil Warren, eHarmony's founder, is a gentle, grandfatherly businessman who launched his popular dating site to support heterosexual marriage. A ‘Focus on the Family’ author with a divinity degree, Warren encourages healthy, lasting unions between men and women of all faiths, mixed faiths or no faith at all.”
Well, apparently, the gentle grandfatherly Neil Warren has folded: eHarmony will now feature and promote same sex matching services. Damn those homosexuals!
Morning in America III
Christian Science Monitor: “The election of America's first black president has triggered more than 200 hate-related incidents, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center – a record in modern presidential elections. Moreover, the white nationalist movement, bemoaning an election that confirmed voters' comfort with a multiracial demography, expects Mr. Obama's election to be a potent recruiting tool – one that watchdog groups warn could give new impetus to a mostly defanged fringe element.”
eHarmony?
From a review site: “eHarmony offers a managed, personality inventory based approach to online dating. You may learn more about yourself than you ever thought possible and have the opportunity to share the information with matches selected for you by eHarmony.”
Now, gay or straight, you can all be a part of that process, and allow eHarmony to choose the partner that’s right for you. I hate us.
I heart Gitmo!
Some outfit from Brazil wants to turn Guantanamo Bay into a theme park.
From the zer0group web site:
--Cuba is a major destination for sex tourism.
--Cuba is located in the middle of American springbreakers ultimate spots.
--Cuba is the attractive ‘illegal’ destination for American tourists that love to try to sneak in.
--Cuba is ‘the’ place of fake cigars, fake rum and other black markets.
--Cuba is nowadays surrounded by countries rivalizing in casinos, and used to be the major destination for gambling and alcohol in the 50’s when those were illegal in the States.
This bullet point demo concludes: “Guantanamo is the perfect location for a combination of political systems in one place where all vices could simultaneously coexist!”
This is a hoax, I believe, but who the hell knows any more? I'm just glad that "rivalizing" is now a verb.
Irony rises from the dead, only to have another stake in its black heart….
NYT: “The week after the election, in a talk at the New York Public Library, Ms. (Joan, of course) Didion lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an ‘irony-free zone,’ a vast Kool-Aid tank where ‘naïveté, translated into “hope,” was now in’ and where ‘innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized.’”
Oh shut up and enjoy the Kool-Aid.
posted by Merle Kessler at 4:29 PM
6 Comments:
I'm down in Santa Cruz, about to go out and rivalize some stuff. Wanna join me? We could totally rivalize the hell out of this two-bit burg.
Oh, you rivalizing kids with your haircuts and your mischief. Get out of my pumpkin patch! Don't make me come down there.
*imagines you shaking your fist and shouting "whippersnappers!"*
Snortle.
Merle Kessler wrote:
Now, gay or straight, you can all be a part of that process, and allow eHarmony to choose the partner that’s right for you. I hate us.
Don't worry, there's a downside! Consider the possibility that it might tell you your current partner is wrong for you.
-D.E. ;-)
How can anyone make a passing reference to a giant tank of Kool-Aid and claim to be living in an irony-free zone?
And isn't odd that "drinking the Kool-Aid," once a reference to mass suicide, now seems to mean either the equivalent of biting the bullet, or looking at the world through rose-colored glasses - some self-sacrificing or delusional behavior you need to perform in order to survive?
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