Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

The End Of The World: Why It Didn't Happen.

An important announcement about the coming end of the world and my poetry blog.

Leap Year. Leap Year fucked us up. The Mayans had no way of knowing about that. All those extra days, the calculation has to be to corrected to take account for it. Leap Year was instituted in 45 B.C. by Julius Caesar. In retrospect, it's unclear whether he intended to thwart or hinder the attempted predicted cataclysm of the Mayans, but one thing is clear: he succeeded. Because of Leap Year, we have 2,012 plus 45 (there was no Year Zero), divided by four (1 extra day every fourth "Leap" year) extra days. That makes 514 extra days.

The new, Leap Year adjusted Mayan Doomsday is Friday, May 23, 2014. All because of Leap Year.

Also, because 2012 was itself a Leap Year, this year's "Drive For 365" on my poem-a-day(-on-average) blog Pocketful Of Poesy should actually be corrected to a "Drive For 366."

My thanks go out to reader Mel, who made me aware of the phenomenon. I now pass the awareness on to you. Stay close by me as I race to complete his year's Drive For 366, and over the next couple of years of what time we have left, stick close to loved ones, treasure the things that matter most, and - maybe? Just maybe. Give some belated thanks to Julius Caesar, for giving us all those extra days.

Please note: don't expect a second reprieve from Daylight Savings Time either, because every year they add an hour to the clock, the next spring they take one off. It's a net gain of no extra time for humankind, sadly.

Monday, December 24, 2012

Is it worth it? Let me work it

"It's your frimmy nippa fwemn nyep, nubu! It's your frimmy nippa fwemn nyep!"

Tegan & Sara: "Please Say Yes (Please Don't Cry)"



I have to admit, if I met and was introduced to Tegan & Sara, like, at a social informal function (somebody's huge haute loft) after a prestige gig of some kind (for them) maybe, and if we hit it off with a bit of swapped banter, I'd totally hit on them. And if they responded, I'd totally see how far that would go along those paths! And if it got right down to it, I'd proceed even to the point of propositioning them BOTH - at the same time

Then if they were down with it, I gotta admit I would follow all the way through. "Seal the deal." Not like I'm really really super emotionally in love with either or both of them, but they're just SO hot right now, and I'm a lover with star-crossed eyes, if you get me. A full-on major mutual fangirling society, or devoutly wished mutual at any rate! But it's got to be somebody pretty dang indie, for me. 

For me to be interested? Yeah. Also, there's got to be two of them. How impressive is it to brag that you bagged Rilo but not Kiley?

I mean, in mainstream rock sure, it's fine to shtup the drummer. But in indie? For authenticity's sake, bag the whole band. Or you might as well keep your mouth shut about it!

Now by "indie," trust me, I mean more like "Classic Indie." Like, indie from five-ten years ago indie, except still in business. I'm not going rubbing up on some nube on the scene who may or may not pan out, flash-wise! Somebody with some damn laurels for us to rest on, in the afterglow - that's what's wanted. 'Cause man, that is so sweet. Fussing and mussing on f*cking laurels, man. It sounds like it would be uncomfortable! Maybe a little prickly or scratchy, but far from it! That's why dudes rest on those. Comfy resting satisfaction like you wouldn't believe. F*cking laurels, man, that's my hot tip m.o. for sure. 

I think Tegan & Sara would probably give me the brush off, though. If I tried that? It's not super-couth, for one thing. Probably also, a look of mingled hurt and disappointment, too - because they'd just met me! But yet even on such bare acquaintance, they sure wouldn't have thought I was...that I would...they just...

...I let them down. They were really pleased to meet me, and the whole interaction had been so, and then...! I can tell now, I can just tell it ruined their night. Which had been blooming with the hope of such promise!

Anyway. 

Maybe they'll write a song about it. Cope that way.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

Paging David Ford! You're About To Lose Your Label, Dave

David Ford! You are about to lose your label!

I put up a really sweet cool video you put together a few years ago a few years ago, and nothing since. I'm not saying you haven't done nothing since, but it's not my job for you to catch my eye, okay? I can't have you sitting there in the sidebar - an individual artist with only one (1) tag to his name for something like two years straight! I could have gone with just "songwriter," or "musician" if I thought you were going to be one and done, man. No, I put that David Ford tag on there. It was a token of hope, in suspension, a benefit of doubt expectation of "hey, maybe we might could see some great things from this lad?"

Well?

Anyway. I'm sure you've been up to great things, but if you don't personally reach out of Pop Culture Itself and grab me by the lapels, they're no good to me sir. As I said, it's not my job to go chasing after you. If I don't end up with at least one other additional David Ford tag by end of January, to ratchet it up to at least a respectable-enough two (2), I'm going to have to revoke the tag. I'm sorry, but they cap you at something like fifteen hundred unique label tags. I don't want you to be the first casualty, but the bloodletting's got to start somewhere.

Okay, Add Akron, OH To The List.

Dogimo Explains Everything.

The full, official title of this feature is: Dogimo Explains Everything WITH LIES. However, I need to leave room in the head-bar for each installment's subtitle / topic.

Hi folks! Been a while since we here at Consider Your Ass Kicked! launched a brand-new, regular recurring feature - and this one's RIPE for takeoff! Without further ado, we're all familiar with that superstition, "third person to light their smoke off the same match dies," and we've all heard how that was spread by some Ye Olde-ish English "Strike Once! John Bull, Never Fails" match company back during the old World War I days. Naturally, they didn't want twenty blokes lighting a fag off one match, the box would last forever! The financial survival of the company would plummet.

Kids, some historical context: I know the above sounds totally made-up. You have to understand, this was before paper matches - where you can barely get the second cig lit off one! And that's if you're lucky. Well, in the time of your great great grrrrrrrrrreat grandmutherfucka, MATCHES used to come in a box of wooden matches. And were very much less prone to sucking. Remember that time on a corner in Philly it took five matches to light two smokes? Somebody does. And I guarantee you I'm not the only one, because: common phenomenon in this day and age, but not back then! Because - get this - people would buy the other brand, if you made your matches all crappy like that. Nowadays, giving them out for free all the time, we have no practical recourse, no leverage to bear, no way to bring competition to heel to yield a superior product. Instead you just have to give in to the ever creeping bullshit of technological progress, and make the leap to lighters. Bottom line:

We've all heard that story. But how many of us know the kernel of truth to it? Hint: it's the part where I say "World War I." Because the other story is, the origin came out because if you hold a lit match up long enough for the third person to get a light off it, some Kraut sniper's going to put a bullet in your multi-purpose soup-bowl hat, and you won't be using it for soup anymore after that let me tell you. Because you'll be dead. In World War I, a lot of people used those domed helmets as a soup bowl too, to cut down on stuff you have to schlep around from trench to trench.

So that's the basic idea, on this feature! We all know the "third light curse" stories, but in Dogimo Explains Everything WITH LIES, I will take on - in every installment - some kind of thing or phenomenon (or both), and explain it using a story or two. Preferably one that is all cynical (like the profit-motive Match Co. tale) and one that is the grim / morbid "real" reason. Both of course will be made up! Fresh off the top of my head. I don't do research. This is A BLOG, folks.

Hell, for all I know, both those old match stories I retell above so plausible are in reality, hoax legends. Who cares, they sound great! And the world needs more explanations like these.

Well who better to provide them.

Update on my Huge Problem With Everything

Hey folks! Just put in another post on A Huge Problem With Everything, the blog where it's amazing how worked up I can get over something so minor.

This one's called "For Governance of Humans at the Level of Nations, Democracy Is Best!"

Poetry update: the drive for three six five, two zero one two edition.

Like I said about a month ago - not posting much in here, but WHOOOO is it cookin' over on my 365-a-Year-Poem-Blog, A Pocketful Of Poesy!

344 with a bullet. Hel-lo.

Sunday, December 09, 2012

Thought of the day: Lost Dog

A good name for a band would be Lost Dog. You could put those fliers up everywhere, and they wouldn't take them down!

Wednesday, December 05, 2012

Harry Potter Wizards Don't Do Enough To Solve Real-World Problems.

See, I feel like in the Harry Potter world, way more wizards would have become involved in things like nuclear physics. I mean, just because you have access to special areas and energies and sciences the muggle folks don't, that's no reason to so thoroughly spurn their sciences! If only for self-defense and study. Imagine a corps of wizards with special training who could just slip around highly-secured areas unofficially decommissioning bombs, using specially-designed spells researched and developed for the express purpose.

I mean, heck. Wizards are kind of fucked too, if the world goes boom.