Monday, April 30, 2007

Internet Radio...RIAA Style


Radio's Tangled Web

April 30, 2007 - As you read these words on your monitor, there is a decent chance that you’re also streaming a little online radio. After all, with an estimated listenership of approximately 50 million Americans per month, Internet radio has become a go-to destination for a fuller spectrum of music, an alternative to FM’s mind-numbing monotony. And if you are one of those listeners, mark May 15 on your calendar: it might well be the day that the music dies.

The RIAA NAZIs are at it again. I reported a story on this a few months ago. Well, it looks like they are going to go and turn the music off. The average person running a web station will not be able to pay the HUGE fees that are being leved aginst them. A lot of people just stream music on the internet from their houses and if this happens, This will block many people from music that they would have never have listened to otherwise.

"Last month the trio of Library of Congress judges that oversees copyright law’s statutory licenses decided that May 15 will be the date royalty fees owed by Web radio operators will be recalibrated. The Copyright Royalty Board changed rates from a percentage of revenue to a per-song, per-listener fee—effectively hiking the rates between 300 and 1,200 percent, according to a lawyer representing a group of Webcasters. "If this rate does not change, it will wipe out the vast majority of Web radio," Tim Westergren, founder of the music discovery service Pandora, tells NEWSWEEK. "If this stays, we’re done. Back to the stone age again." (Royalty Board Chief Justice James Sledge declined to comment on the case, which lawyers say they intend to appeal.)

What is your opinion?

Today, this afternoon.

Well, I was on my way to work and I was on Old Hundred Road going East towards Hull Street when I had to slam on my breaks. A driver in front of me stopped to let some one turn, I did the same, but the driver behind hit my bumper!! It only scratched my bumper as he hit my receiver hitch and right side bumper, but his car was really messed up!! The police came and all that jazz. What a way to start the new week!! Oh well, I will get it fixed as I my truck is new and I want it to look good.



What is your opinion?

Sunday, April 29, 2007

A New Better Way...another insight into me.

cor·ol·lar·y (kôr'ə-lĕr'ē, kŏr'-) n., pl. -ies.
-A proposition that follows with little or no proof required from one already proven.
-A deduction or an inference.
-A natural consequence or effect; a result.

adj.
Consequent; resultant.
[Middle English corolarie, from Latin corōllārium,
money paid for a garland, gratuity, from corōlla, small garland. See corolla.]

***************************************************************


Perhaps what I intend with opening up myself about my life is to give a few suffering people our there HOPE!! Perhaps the corollary to all of this is a new better way to live. The Big Book talks about in great detail. If you were like me, I had better living thru chemistry for over 1/2 of my life. At some point you, if you are/were like me, need to try it! Is it easy?? HELL NO!! One point that I would like to make is that when I was out drugging, I had some "good times" but were they real and was I living on life's terms? NO! I was living on my terms that every once and a while came into accordance with "normal" life. I did not like living life on its own terms. It was and still is a hard lesson to learn. I still try to "buck the system" but life will push back. I know better now than to try to live any other way by trying to implement some of what I have talked about in the last several Recovery Posts. Were not done with the 12 Steps or my series, we still have a long journey to traverse.

Living life in its terms for me is a journey. I would say that I have had some really crappy days in doing that. But I would also say that in this time, some of my worst days in sobriety have no been as bad as my "best" days of living polluted. Sometimes, I relive those days, remember the sensations and experiences. Some were scary that involved very bad places where I could have been killed. So I can say that in sobriety, I have not had to go there again. So even if my day has gone all to hell, I can say that I will not be in that bad spot again. I mean don’t get me wrong, some of my polluted days were times that some people dream about but would never do!

I lived very hard in that 1/2 life and I think that if I had to do it over and was given a second chance, I really can’t say that I would have done it differently. The reason why is all of those experiences make me who I am today. A person is the sum of his experiences and if I had not lived like that and gone thru some of that stuff, then I could not sit here and try to give some suffering people reading this little page a glimmer of hope. I do not know if anyone reading this get anything out of it, but I can hope.

During my "Spiritual Awakening" that I had in LAHA, I was told some very powerful things. It happened with my counselor and me during a one on one secession. I will not go in to all the specifics, but one I will say is that I was told that I will reach and help people that only I can talk to. An addendum to this is one day in church, many months after this, I was told the same things, that I will/am supposed to help people that only I can reach. It scared the hell out of me that day and I shook for several hours after that event, but I had a different understand of life after that fact. We all have something to contribute to the greater scheme of things; we just need to find it. It is by The Grace Of God that I did not end up in jail or Dead, I truly and whole heartedly believe that because there were many situations where that could have happened.

So I just felt like giving more information to you my readers. Please do not think that I have the answers as I am still finding them out my self. Life is a journey and not a destination, we are here but a small time compared to the grand scheme of things. I was given a second chance by God, by my wonderful wife Sondra with her, none of this would have been possible. I love her dearly and I still screw up royally, but all I can do is ask for forgiveness and try to live better…
What is your opinion?

Saturday, April 28, 2007

Part 4...Steps 4-7

It would be hard to write about just one of these Steps, so i put Step 4-7 in this part as they are all together.

Step 4 - Made a Searching and Fearless Moral Inventory of Ourselves.

DO what? A searching and FEARLESS MORAL INVENTORY?? Ok this is going to suck I said. During this step we have to look at ourselves and that is not fun at all. We have to look at all the things that we have done bad and things that we had done to hurt other people and also things that other people had done to us that we did not like or had resentment over. Because, as they say, An addict having a resentment is like tacking poison and wanting the other person to die. To people like us, resentments are not a good thing. They lead to fear, anger and then an excuse to go out and use again.

Take for instance, one might say me and the girlfriend had a fight, I am going to go out and get messed up to show her!! No your not!! That is just an excuse. In this step, you have to look at your part in the events. You might say that I am resentful at _______ because they did this to me. But what was your part in that event. Did or have you treated them like you should have? And how does this affect you? In your relationship with that person? Does it hurt your Pride? Make you Fearful? Does it hurt your Self-Esteem? All of these questions will have to be answered during this step.

My 4ht step was about 2-3 pages front and back on a legal size pad. It was very emotional time writing this because me and my sponsor had to do this. It is part of the healing process. See the problem is that if you don't be truthful on this, sleeping Demons will come back to get you at a later date. If you have done something that you think is so shameful and that you don't want anyone to know about it; get it out!! For the most part they have done the exact same thing or even worse! Not being truthful in this step can be setting yourself up for some hard times and even perhaps a relapse…

In doing this we had to learn a new way to deal with ANGE and FEAR! Most of my troubles came from me. I tried to control everything and everyone and when things did not go my way, I pitched a fit! I was the director and they were my puppets only that was not the case. I that it was, but it was not and I had to place my Fears on a list as well to go over with a fine toothed comb. See, we are fearful of things that we can’t control. I became fearful of doing drugs, even though that is what I knew I had to do to get to feeling better (Spiritual Malady) but the guilt was a killer as well after the fact!

This step is also a very personal one that you, me, I, have to do alone. My sponsor helped me, but I had to do it and take a long, hard look at what made me tick and I did not like what I found. I will not go into some of the things that I did, but suffice to say, they were not pretty. This is a most important step because in doing this, you clean your steps and try to get a grasp of what the hell you have done in your life. The next Step 5, Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. You have to open up and tell someone else like your sponsor, a minister, a total stranger, just what you have done in your life and how you have wronged people and your part as well as what people have done to you and what your part was in that as well.

I cried my eyes out during this because of a lifetime of hate, anger, resentment, wrongs to me and from me came out!! It was very painful but very healing at the same time…

The paper that you made during Step 4 is a guide during Step 5. I used it to help me remember the things that I had written down, but also new things emerged from my subconscious, stuff that I had so tucked away that I had forgotten about came out and when it was all over after a good cry, I felt better than I had in many years. Getting out the quilt and remorse, resentments, fears was very liberating.

Next step is Step 6 Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. After Step 5, I was totally ready to get all that crap out and give it up to God to take away from me. This is where the Serenity Prayer comes in:

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can;and wisdom to know the difference.”

Just knowing this and using this well help you in everyday life. Because, remember that you cannot control everything that is and will happen to you.

I had to do Step 7 Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. This was the last part in from the last several Steps. It is also a necessary Step to be taken in this cleansing process. Another good prayer I forgot was in the 3rd step. It is as follows:

God, I offer myself to Thee--to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life. May I do Thy will always! Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 63

So you see, the Step 4-7 is basically a continuous step and they all need to be done in secession. One cannot be done with out the other. Next time, we will move to Step 8.


What is your opinion?

Type-O-Negative Interview...Decibel Magizine

Thanks to Decidel Magizine and my brother for sending me this article, you get some insight into the band...

Peter Steele and Type O Negative come back from the dead—or at least jail and rehab—to unveil their latest album with a little help from Rasputin...

The Wallace Civic Center, Fitchburg, MA, December 2, 1994. Type O Negative are riding bitch on a bill with Godflesh and Danzig. Six-foot-eight vocalist/bassist Peter Steele swills red wine from a bottle onstage. Instead of a guitar strap, he’s got a thick steel chain slung over his shoulder. He’s muscular, confident, and supporting 1993’s Bloody Kisses and its goth-skewering breakthrough hit “Black No. 1,” he’s arguably at the top of his game. Up near the front, just out of hearing range, an impatient and possibly shitfaced Danzig fan yells something between songs. “I’ll be walking around in the audience during Danzig’s set,” Steele replies. “If any of you have anything you’d like to say to me, I have a mouthful of hot cum for you.”


Fast forward 12 years, and at first you might be inclined to think that not much has changed. On the sixth floor of the Bel Age Hotel in West Hollywood, Steele drinks merlot from a long-stemmed glass. Type O have just completed a string of shows at the House of Blues in Anaheim, and Steele and keyboardist/producer Josh Silver are sticking around a few extra days, doing interviews to promote Type O Negative’s latest album, Dead Again. But Pete doesn’t look so good. For one, the muscles have gone soft. He seems vaguely uneasy, his wry sense of humor tempered by the distinct strains of regret. He’s wearing an ancient New York Jets football jersey with ill-fitting forest green sweatpants, white socks and nondescript black athletic shoes. As he talks about Dead Again—with its photograph of Rasputin on the cover, its songs about drug addiction and despair—it quickly becomes clear why the album took four years to make. “To be honest with you, there were some personal problems within the band,” he says. “Josh lost his father, I lost my mother… then there was rehab, jail, hospitals, getting divorced… You have to work around these things.”


Steele declines to say who got divorced, but he readily admits that the rehab/jail/hospital part of Type O’s misery spree was all him: Rehab for cocaine and alcohol addiction. Preceded by a stint in the psych ward at Kings County Hospital. And culminating in a 30-day sabbatical in a not-so-deluxe suite at Rikers Island for, well … it’s probably better if Steele explains. “I did something violent,” he says. “It was, of course, concerning a woman—someone I was with for a while chose to be unfaithful and I settled it like a Neanderthal. And I had to suffer the consequences for it, so that was a setback.”


As was rehab, the explanation for which comes out in one lengthy stream-of-consciousness-style jag: “I was never really into drugs, but I started to use cocaine when I was about 35,” Steele explains. “I’m 45 now, so that’s pretty embarrassing. I should’ve known better, but I get offered things from time to time and people think because, you know, my line of work, that it’s dangerous for me to be out there touring. But listen, I have 10 phone numbers memorized that when I’m home, I can get coke in 10 fuckin’ minutes. When I’m on tour, I don’t know who the fuck I’m buying from, and you know, I don’t wanna chase this white devil for the rest of my life. I’m not gonna say that I’m totally recovered, and that’s what the song ‘Dead Again’ happens to be about. It’s about fucking up. As you see, I still drink. The other stuff is pretty much a part of my past, but you get three or four months under your belt and then, you know, somebody breaks out a line or what-the-fuck-have-you, and it’s like, ‘OK, just one line.’ Yeah, right. Then you’re gone for a week. And I feel like I’m killing myself every time I do it. But I’m trying to learn from my mistakes, and I wrote that song hoping that our fans would get something out of it, because I feel it’s better to learn from someone else’s mistakes than your own. It’s like you’re getting a free ticket, man—use it. I fucked up, and I don’t want you to go through it. There’s no rehabilitation going on in jail, either—it’s just all the animals in the fuckin’ zoo thrown together. It’s true what they say about institutions—hospitals, jail—the last stop is the morgue. And I’m really not ready for that.”


THE BOOK OF STEELE
Born Peter Ratajczyk on January 4, 1962, Steele is a veteran among veterans. After playing in a small-time Brooklyn metal band called Fallout as a teenager with childhood friend and future Type O keyboardist/producer Josh Silver, he spent the ’80s hauling trash for the New York City Parks Department and slugging it out with recently reformed thrash bashers Carnivore before erecting the storied goth/doom quadrangle that would eventually become Type O Negative with Silver, guitarist Kenny Hickey and future Life of Agony drummer Sal Abruscato. The band was originally called Subzero, and then, believe it or not, Repulsion. “We actually played a show as Repulsion,” Silver recalls. “I have a bunch of cassettes at home—green ones—that say ‘Repulsion’ on them that contain the material that eventually became [Type O’s 1991 full-length debut] Slow, Deep and Hard. This little label called Earache said they had a band called Repulsion and told us, ‘Change your name or we’ll sue you.’ We told them not to bother.” After a brief stint as Nu Minority, they finally—and mercifully—settled on Type O Negative. “When we break up, I’m putting those tapes on eBay,” Silver laughs. “Gotta make a living, you know?”


In 1992, Steele famously spread his ass cheeks for the cover of Type O’s fake live album, The Origin of the Feces: Not Live at Brighton Beach (“That photographer deserves a medal,” Silver says, “and a scuba mask”) and then, even more famously, appeared in a nine-page Playgirl spread in 1995, cock in hand, with a come-hither look that probably beckoned more dudes than ladies, however unintentionally. “I really exploited myself,” Steele says today. “I don’t like pornography for the same reason I don’t like sports—they both involve balls, and I’d rather be doing it than watching it. The whole Playgirl thing was just an attention-getter for the band. I didn’t realize I was gonna get nine pages and a centerfold and a cover. All of a sudden it was like, ‘Great—what am I gonna tell my mother?’ And I don’t like the fact that people think that I think I’m beautiful or that I have to show it off because it’s big or it’s fuckin’ great. It was a joke, you know? I even asked if it could be scratch ‘n’ sniff or if they could make it pop up like a Hallmark card. You know, ‘Can you throw 3-D glasses in there?’ But it was a challenge. They sent me previous issues of the magazine, and after thumbing through kinda quickly, I noticed that all these guys posed flaccid. I agreed to do it on the condition that I would be hard. They were like, ‘You really think you can do that?’ I said, ‘Just send the check. You keep your end up and I’ll keep my end up.’”

PROFITS OF DOOM
Top-loaded for speed and continuing a trend that began with 2003’s Life Is Killing Me, the first three tracks on Dead Again might strike longtime Type O fans as some of the fastest songs the band has ever recorded. “I wouldn’t say that, but maybe this album is a little different because we used [drummer] Johnny [Kelly] live as opposed to a drum machine,” Silver offers. “Had we used a drum machine, I think Peter would’ve made the stuff a lot slower, but when you’re playing with a real drummer, you tend to speed up, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

Despite the band’s history of heavily detuned covers (Seals & Crofts’ “Summer Breeze,” Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl,” a Beatles medley, “Angry Inch” from the Broadway rock opera Hedwig and the Angry Inch), Dead Again is the first all-originals Type O album since Slow, Deep and Hard. “We tried a cover, but it just wasn’t working,” Silver admits, though he declines to name the song. “When we do a cover, we make it Type O. Our covers sound nothing like the originals, and even though this one didn’t sound like the original, it just wasn’t happening. Besides, the album was already 77 minutes long, so it probably wouldn’t have fit, anyway.”

Dead Again’s original title was Profits of Doom, which is also the name of the album’s third track. “I didn’t love that title,” Silver admits. “I thought it was a little Manowar-ish. Not that we don’t belong with Manowar—but even for us, that’s a little much. It just bugged me. I’m not saying Dead Again is a piece of genius, but it’s appropriate. In this business, you die a thousand deaths, and that’s where the Rasputin imagery comes in—they say he couldn’t be killed. And Peter is a big Rasputin fan.”


Born in Siberia on January 10 of the Julian Calendar, 1869, Grigory Rasputin was a charismatic, highly controversial, self-proclaimed “starets” or holy man, who wielded a considerable degree of influence over the last czar and empress of Russia (the Romanovs) in the years leading up to the October Revolution. He also had his way with many of St. Petersburg’s society matrons, even bringing three women home to meet his wife after fucking at least one of them China-sideways on the train back to Siberia. London Sunday Times correspondent Brian Moynahan sums the starets up thusly in his excellent 1997 biography, Rasputin: The Saint Who Sinned: “Grigory Efimovich Rasputin—drinker, thief, womanizer—arrived in St. Petersburg in 1903 as if from the medieval past… tattered, black-clad, muttering. By the time of his sensational murder 13 years later, the peasant had become the ‘beloved friend’ of Czar Nicholas and Empress Alexandra, with a seemingly supernatural power to stop the bleeding attacks of their hemophiliac son, Alexis. How could it have happened? As one society lady of the time asked, ‘How could so pitiful a wretch throw so vast a shadow?’”


“Rasputin is one of my heroes,” Steele enthuses. “What I like about Rasputin is the fact that he was a mad monk, a womanizer, a drunk, a drug addict, a glutton, but he was able to cure the Romanov boy and he was taken care of by the [czar’s] family. And rumor has it he had a really big dick. I don’t have penis envy, but I guess that’s kind of where I differ from him. I am a big dick; he had a big dick.

“I also like the fact that they couldn’t kill him,” he continues. “The Communists tried to shoot him, poison him, stab him, and I believe that he ultimately froze to death. They fed him all these poison pastries and then they stabbed him, shot him and dumped him in the river. [Author’s note: The exact details of Rasputin’s death—particularly the alleged poisoning—remain disputed, but it is generally accepted that he was shot and stabbed several times before his body was thrown into the Neva River sometime in mid-to-late December of 1916.] Plus, he actually looks like a Type O Negative member.”


Dead Again also happens to be the band’s first album on SPV/Steamhammer and, consequently, the first not released by Roadrunner. “I think we were one of two bands that lived through the term [of the contract],” Silver chuckles. “We weren’t looking to leave necessarily, but [Roadrunner] came up with an offer that fell short of our last offer, and it was kind of a shock. And it wasn’t even a lot different, that’s what was annoying about it. It was kind of a fuck-you, was what it was. To not even match the offer for the previous album—especially when you’re really desperate to maintain control over a tremendous back catalogue, which to this day sells well—was a stupid move, if you ask me. It’s too bad, really, because I enjoyed a lot of the people there; I had a good relationship with the president and the owner. I’m not gonna say I don’t miss ’em, but if that’s what was gonna go down, we just needed to move on.”


Reached for comment at his New York office, Roadrunner Senior VP of A&R Monte Conner opted for diplomacy, saying only this: “We appreciate everything that Type O Negative has represented for Roadrunner over the years and we wish everyone in the band nothing but success in the future.”

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE
The blocaine, the rehab, the prison time—all this we can believe. It’s a familiar story, after all, in the minefield of treachery and temptation loosely corralled into what is affectionately known as “the rock ‘n’ roll business.” It’s what Steele says next that seems fucking weird, given his decades-long history of strident atheism.
“Believe it or not, I go to church.”
Huh?


“I’m a devout Roman Catholic, actually,” he insists. “There are no atheists in foxholes, they say, and I was a foxhole atheist for a long time. But after going through a midlife crisis and having many things change very quickly, it made me realize my mortality. And when you start to think about death, you start to think about what’s after it. And then you start hoping there is a god. For me, it’s a frightening thought to go nowhere. I also can’t believe that people like Stalin and Hitler are gonna go to the same place as Mother Teresa.”

All this is a recent development, apparently—Steele says he’s only been riding pews for a few years. He admits that this might be somewhat of a Dave Mustaine move, although certainly not to that bizarre level of born-again extremism. “Church is kind of a substitute, yeah, because if I wasn’t going to church, what else would I be doing, you know? I walk to church, and it’s like a half an hour away, so altogether I’m gone for like two hours, which takes a nice little chunk out of the day and it really clears my mind because I really pay attention when I’m in church. I don’t think about the other bullshit.”


As part of his ongoing effort to stay busy and keep his nose out of Tony Montana’s stash, Steele has also resurrected Carnivore with Joey Z. from Life of Agony and Paul Bento and Steve Tobin from Brooklyn’s Metal Health Association. “My enemy is boredom,” he says. “I must have ADD—I know I have OCD. I’m bipolar; I’m actually bi-Polack, because I’m Polish too, so I need to be constantly occupied, pretty much. These days, I pretty much never have a dull moment. I’m working with Carnivore or I’m working with Type O, ’cause I gotta get out of the house. I mean, how much Law & Order can you watch?”


Neither Steele nor Silver make a secret of the fact that they’re often at each other’s throats in the studio (“We’ve come close to breaking up twice a week for the last 10 years,” Silver laughs), and though Silver says Steele’s renewed involvement with Carnivore doesn’t necessarily make him uneasy, he obviously has some reservations. “I think it makes a multiple-agenda situation, which isn’t good for Type O in my opinion—I think it dilutes the focus, which I don’t need. I don’t have anything on the side, and that’s by choice. For me, Type O is full-time because I’m the guy who sits there for the whole recording process regardless of who’s laying the tracks. I’m there for every fucking second of it, so to me, it’s super-full-time. I’m not saying [having a side project] is bad, though—I understand that people wanna go out and create other stuff. But I do think it dilutes the focus and makes multiple agendas that would probably be easier not to have.”


Silver views Kelly and Hickey’s recent enlistment in Danzig somewhat differently. “I think it is different, because you’re not putting in the passion—it’s more of a cover band,” he explains. “But even that takes away time, obviously. With drummers, you know, you do the drums and it’s done, so the drummer has more free time than most. At the same time, I would’ve liked to have more time with Kenny in the studio, sure, but he’s extremely busy. So, again, multiple agendas suck, but they’re also part of life, so you deal with it.”


Steele, on the other hand, says he has his multiple agendas strictly prioritized. “When I resurrected Carnivore, I told Type O, ‘You have my word—Type O comes first,’” he insists. “And Glenn [Danzig] is a friend of mine, so he knows Kenny and Johnny have to work around Type O. When I’m playing with Carnivore or Johnny and Kenny are playing with Danzig, I think it gives us a greater appreciation for Type O Negative. But what I’d really like to see is Johnny and Kenny’s other band, Seventh Void, Carnivore, Type O and Danzig all play together so we all get like five paychecks.”


According to the Book of Steele, the happy ending reads like this: “We’re just four dicks from Brooklyn, and I’m just grateful that my occupation pays my bills. A lot of people drive themselves to work and hate every fuckin’ minute they’re there, so I have nothing to complain about. The band has existed for 17 years, you know? It’s amazing. I’m not bragging—I’m just looking at it from a statistical point of view. Most bands don’t last 17 months or 17 weeks. Actually, on August 28 of this year, we’ll be together 18 years, and I think that’s something special about Type O Negative because we were friends before we were a band. We played hockey in the street and we got in trouble together, so it’s been a growing process. It’s like four menstruating women living together, and the cap is always off the toothpaste.”




What is your opinion?

Friday, April 27, 2007

Google stuff...

I appears that Google is having some problems with their framework.  At this moment, i am unable to access my Blog from work. I tried to access it, but was not able to login to the account!! I just read about it on Slashdot.  I will post the 4th step this weekend as well..  Lots of things have changed here, so i will update them as i can.

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

WOW, WHAT A WAKE UP!

 

 

 

 

 

 

WOW, WHAT A WAKE UP!

Dear God:


Why didn't you save the school children at ?.


Bath , Michigan1927

Houston , TX 1959

MosesLake , Washington 2/2/96
Bethel , Alaska 2/19/97
Pearl , Mississippi 10/1/97
West Paducah , Kentucky 12/1/97
Stamp, Arkansas 12/15/97
Jonesboro , Arkansas 3/24/98
Edinboro , Pennsylvania 4/24/98
Fayetteville , Tennessee 5/19/98
Springfield , Oregon 5/21/98
Richmond , Virginia 6/15/98

Littleton , Colorado 4/20/99
Taber , Alberta , Canada 5/28/99
Conyers , Georgia 5/20/99
Deming , New Mexico 11/19/99
Fort Gibson , Oklahoma 12/6/99
Santee , California 3/ 5/01
El Cajon , California 3/22/01?
and

Blacksburg , Virginia 4/16/07?



Sincerely,

Concerned Student


-----------------------------------------------------

Reply:

Dear Concerned Student:

I am not allowed in schools.

Sincerely,

God


----------------------------------------------------------

How did this get started?...


-----------------

Let's see,
I think it started when Madeline Murray O'Hare complained
she didn't want any prayer in our schools.

And we said, OK..

She got what she deserved in the end…
------------------

Then,
someone said you better not read the Bible in school,
the Bible that says
"thou shalt not kill,
thou shalt not steal,
and love your neighbors as yourself,"

And we said, OK...


-----------------
Dr. Benjamin Spock said
we shouldn't spank our children
when they misbehaved
because their little personalities
would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem.

And we said,
an expert should know what he's talking about
so we won't spank them anymore..


------------------

Then someone said
teachers and principals better not
discipline our children when they misbehave.
And the school administrators said
no faculty member in this school
better touch a student when they misbehave
because we don't want any bad publicity,
and we surely don't want to be sued.

And we accepted their reasoning...


------------------

Then someone said,
let's let our daughters have abortions if they want,
and they won't even have to tell their parents.

And we said, that's a grand idea...


------------------

Then some wise school board member said,
since boys will be boys
and they're going to do it anyway,
let's give our sons all the condoms they want,
so they can have all the fun they desire,
and we won't have to tell their parents they got them at school.

And we said, that's another great idea...

------------------

Then some of our top elected officials said
it doesn't matter what we do in private as long as we do our jobs.

And we said,
it doesn't matter what anybody,
including the President,
does in private as long as we have jobs and the economy is good....


------------------

And someone else took that appreciation a step further
and published pictures of nude children
and then stepped further still by
making them available on the Internet.

And we said, everyone's entitled to free speech....


----------- -------

And the entertainment industry said,
let's make TV shows and movies that promote
profanity, violence and illicit sex...
And let's record music that encourages
rape, drugs, murder, suicide, and satanic themes...

And we said,
it's just entertainment
and it has no adverse effect
and nobody takes it seriously anyway,
so go right ahead.


------------------

Now we're asking ourselves
why our children have no conscience,
why they don't know right from wrong,
and why it doesn't bother them to
kill strangers, classmates or even themselves.


------------------

Undoubtedly,
if we thought about it long and hard enough,
we could figure it out.
I'm sure it has a great deal to do with...


"WE REAP WHAT WE SOW,"


------------------

Pass it on
if you think it has merit!
If not then just discard it...
but if you discard this thought process,
then don't you dare sit back and complain about
what bad shape this country is in

 

In God We Trust

 

 

 

Dominion Tests...

Well, I went and took the tests today. They were what I expected!  I have had 2 of the tests before with different companies.  I should find out by Monday if I will be recommended to go to the next level which will be the interview process.  I will let everyone know when and if that happens.  I think that this evening, Mark and I are going for a little ride!!

 

******************

"Seduction is thus a central, indeed in certain respects, the central idea, in political life.

It signifies a course of action deliberately designed by one or more interested

agents to undermine and replace some established loyalty."

Kenneth Minogue (November issue of The New Criterion)

 

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Tomorrow...


Well, tomorrow is going to be a very BIG day!! I am going to go and test with Dominion Power for an Instrument Tech position at the Chesterfield Power Plant. SO everyone needs to wish me LUCK. The tests are going to be hard, but some of them i have had before in other tests for jobs that i have applied for. I am very optimistic about the outcome and i am going to hope for the best. IT would be very nice to be only 23 miles from my house!


Like the old Russian Proverb says: "You cannot hope for the best with our preparing for the worst"
I will let everyone know how this turns out...


What is your opinion?

Me again.


What is your opinion?

Very Big Bomb!!

I saw this on Monday as I was reading on http://www.fark.com/. It was an interesting story. I thought that some of my readers might like it. This just illustrates how disastrous an "All Out Nuclear War" Could have been.

Tsar Bomba
Russian: Царь-бомба, literally "Emperor Bomb" is the Western name for the largest, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. Developed by the Soviet Union, the bomb of about 50 megatons was codenamed Ivan by its developers.

The bomb was tested on October 30, 1961, in Novaya Zemlya, an archipelago in the Arctic Sea. The device was scaled down from its original design of 100 megatons to reduce the resulting nuclear fallout.

The Tsar Bomba was a three-stage hydrogen bomb with a yield of about 50 megatons. A three-stage H-bomb uses a fission bomb primary to compress a thermonuclear secondary, as in most H-bombs, and then uses energy from the resulting explosion to compress a much larger additional thermonuclear stage. The initial three-stage design was capable of approximately 100 Mt, but at a cost of too much radioactive fallout. To limit fallout, the third stage, and possibly the second stage, had a lead tamper instead of a uranium-238 fusion tamper (which greatly amplifies the reaction by fissioning uranium atoms with fast neutrons from the fusion reaction). This eliminated fast fission by the fusion-stage neutrons, so that approximately 97% of the total energy resulted from fusion alone (as such, it was one of the "cleanest" nuclear bombs ever created, generating a very low amount of fallout relative to its yield). There was a strong incentive for this modification since most of the fallout from a test of the bomb would fall on populated Soviet territory.

Have a look at this comparison of nuclear bombs, starting with the "microscopic" Hiroshima bomb:





Please Tell Me What You Think...

Sunday, April 22, 2007

Powhite Park...This Evening


My friend Mark got off of work this evening around 6.00pm He wanted to go for a ride at Powhite Park and i said ok! He wanted to show me some new trails and obstacles that he had found a few weeks ago. They were very SWEET!! I took my worst bike wreck that i have ever HAD, EVER!!

The trick was some big rocks that were like a set of steps. The first drop off was about 1.5 feet to the next rock that had about a 3 foot flat area and then a drop off of about 1.5 feet again. I went down the first rock no problem, but when i went down the next one, i did not pull up and did a total FACTPLANT!! I busted my lip, scratched my legs, and ATE DIRT!! I had to have mark get the bike off of me!! I am 35 years old and in all of my life, i have never had as bad a wreck on a bike, EVER!! Oh well, it is a badge that i will have from now on in that park...

I am gonna be sore tomorrow, but it was all in fun!! WE always use protection that includes our helmets, gloves, and bike shorts with extra padding and good bike shoes. We have to be careful at our ages.


Tell Me What You Think...

House PLants...

split-leaf philodendron

"ZZ" plant

The Ming aralia

Mother-in-Law's Tongue

Variegated Ficus



I have been saying for a while that i am going to post some pics of houseplants that i have. Well, here they are, or at least some of them with pic goodness!! I have grown plants for most of my life. I have some other plants, but i did not include them in this set. I get my "Green-Thumb" from one of my Grandmothers and one of my Aunts. My parents always encouraged me to grow plants as a Hobie.

My Wife Sondra says that I have too many plants. I say that you can never get too many! It is just a pain in the butt when it comes Winter Time to bring and place them around in the house. Some of the plants that i have came with us from Texas. Literally, they have traveled from Austin Texas to Colorado, Massachusetts, and then to Virginia. I have a lot of time invested in some of them. I hope that you enjoy the pics.


Tell Me What You Think...

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Today at home...

It was a good day today. The weather was very nice and i wished that i was out ridding. But, you know, house stuff has to be done. I went outside and i cut the grass and used the Weed Eater to trim the edges. I also put our fertilizer on the grass for the nest rain that we are supposed to get on Wednesday.

I am a nut when it comes to my yard. I love to have a green lawn and have it nicely trimmed. IT always makes the house look better when the yard is looking good. Our home Owner's Association are Nazis. We cannot have Crab Grass in our yard or we can get fined by them. Last summer they mailed out letters to everyone that had a problem with their lawn. We got a letter from them and i was PISSED!! IT was the hottest part of the summer and we were on water restrictions due to lack of rain. i have a sprinkler system, but it can only do so much.

Well, i reseeded and aerated during the fall and i have new grass that is coming up this spring. I hope that we get good rain this year and that i am able to put a sprinkler system in the back or a zone as they call it. We will see...

Tell Me What You Think...

GPS MAP on Google Earth Overlay


Well, here it is. my friend Jeff got me the GPS data for the last 2 trips that we have taken to Pocahontas State Park.




Tell Me What You Think...

Friday, April 20, 2007

Friday Bike Ride...

Well we went to Pocahontas Park today. The weather was very nice, about 70deg f with a little wind and some clouds. It was just a perfect day to ride. We went to the Blue trails and then Red. Once we were on the Red Trails, we went to the Double Red Diamonds!! That was the hardest trail that i have ever done. It is the hardest in the park for that matter!!

There would be rocks, trees, and stuff like that to go over. WE had some trails that went downhill and at the bottom would make a 90deg right turn in a bunch of trees and then straight back to the top with more obstacles and rock, roots and trees to go over. This weekend my friend Jeff is going to get the GPS data to me so I can overlay it on Google Earth. We did a total of 7.2 miles with 790 feet of Elevation Changes today. I am tired and my knees are very sore, but it was all worth it!!


Tell Me What You Think...

Thursday, April 19, 2007

This week...


I am on my last day of shift rotation this week. I get 3 days off after today. We are supposed to go ridding tomorrow, weather permitting. It has been a blur here at work. So much goes on during the day it is incredible.

I wet to Chipotle to eat last night. I got my usual Barbacoa, rice, cheese, and sour cream. They ran out of the meat. The owner asked to me wait for about 5 minutes and she would give me extra. I did and in the end, she comped the whole meal!! I was really impressed!! That is the way to take care of customers!! I love their food as it is all natural, no steroids in the meat. Very Tasty!! If you have one near you go and try their food. You will not be disappointed!!


I just wanted to get out a quick post. everyone have a good day...


Tell Me What You Think...

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

This Blog...

For all who read this blog and for all who make comments on this blog know this. This is my BLOG and my personal thoughts. I know that some will not agree with them and that is your prerogative. IF you choose to attack about my comments, then do so via email. it is on the "badge" section on the left hand side of the blog.

The shooter was a "resident alien" Not a resident of america. He and his family do not have "citizen" status. They live here as guests so to speak and in my opinion, should not be allowed to purchase firearms.


Amendment II

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Where does it say "resident alien" bare arms?? The "people" to me, refers to legal citizens of the USA whether they be nautral ot immigrants.

In U.S. law, an alien is a person who is owing political allegiance to another country or government and not a native or naturalized citizen of the land where they are found.[1] Types of "alien" persons are:

An alien who is legally permitted to remain in a country (which is foreign to him/her) on specified terms may be called a "legal alien" of that country.

An alien who has temporary or permanent residence in a country (which is foreign to him/her) may be called a "resident alien" of that country.

A visitor with the legal right to visit a country (which is foreign to him/her) may be called a "nonresident alien" of that country.

The term illegal alien describes a foreign national who resides in another country unlawfully, either by entering that country at a place other than a designated port-of-entry or as result of the expiration of a non-immigrant visa. (See illegal immigration)

An enemy alien is an alien who is designated as an enemy.


I am entitled to my opinion because The Bill OF Rights grants me that privaldge.


Tell Me What You Think...

Welcome to Innsbrook After Hours 2007

It looks like another good season at Innsbrook After Hours. The 2007 season has some good acts comming and most tickets are very reasonable. We saw some good shows there last Spring and Summer.


Featured Upcoming Concerts
->
Wed May 2nd: "Weird Al" Yankovic
->
Wed May 9th: The Derek Trucks and the Aquarium Rescue Unit
->
Wed May 16th: Elliott Yamin
->
Wed May 23rd: Dark Star Orchestra
->
Wed May 30th: Huey Lewis and The News
->
Wed June 6th: LIVE
->
Wed June 13th: Gin Blossoms
->
Wed June 20th: Doobie Brothers and Little Feat


Tell Me What You Think...

Virginia Tech...


I normally try to stay away from current topics like this, but this hits very close to home as it is. We in America have been too lax in our immigration policy for too many years!! Bush says that he is trying to protect America by fighting a way on foreign lands all the while leaving our borders, Canada and Mexico, OPEN to both of those countries. WE do not know who or what is crossing these borders.

We need to close the border for good and then deport all foreign nationals that are in here without passports. The ones that have the proper papers will have to be subjected to a RIGOROUS background check. They need to be sent home and then they will have to reapply for a new visa status. Any mark on their records and they would not be admitted to the USA. I am all for people wanting to better themselves and come here legally. All of the crossing the borders illegally has GOT TO STOP!! All foreign persons that live here shall go through the proper channels to stay here and if they get in trouble, DEPORT THEIR ASSES!! 1 STRIKE AND OUR ARE OUT!! NO EXCEPTIONS!! NO IMMUNITY!!

Sure, this might piss off a few countries for a while, but we get no such treatment like we give people here and look what has happened. A Korean National on a Student Visa has killed 32 people for WHAT?? To prove a point that he was pissed at a teacher or a girlfriend?? What a WASTE OF LIFE! This would have never happened if more stringent immigration policies were in place! Their needs to be beater back ground checks on people coming into our country, much like other countries do to us.

What the most sick part of this whole situation is that the killer is applauded in other countries for killing Americans. Other places do not value life as we do. I am beginning to wonder how much value we place on it with the body count adding up in the War??


MSN.com =
Thirty-three people were confirmed dead after the bloodbath Monday, including the gunman, whom police identified as Cho Seung-Hui (pronounced Choh Suhng-whee), of Centreville, Va., a senior in the English Department. Cho was a resident alien who immigrated to the United States from South Korea in 1992.

This just PISSES me OFF to no END!! WHAT A TOTALLY WASTE OF LIFE!

Tell Me What You Think...

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Step 3, Its is a very hard one: My story Part 3

Part 3…

So where was I? I had to believe in a power that was bigger than my self. Ok, I decided to believe that God was my power and that he could help me and heal me. It took faith. That was the hard part because that lead to Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and out lives over to the care God as WE understood him. This also took a leap of faith. I mean, we had to believe that someone, not us, could help us and then we had to turn our Will over to him. That would mean that we were not in control anymore. That was very scary!! Much of the addicted person’s attitude stems from FEAR!

This sounded like what we should have been doing all of our lives. But it was the other way around. I did not do what God wanted; I did what I wanted to do. I was afraid to succeed in life and I was content with where I was at. Like my old Sponsor says, It is a “Self Will Run Riot” I did what I wanted to do with no regard to who I hurt in the process and to how many times I did it to them. SO in order to be able to do this, I had to shut the little voice down inside of me and try to pray and listen to what someone else, God, wanted me to do. This was and is still very hard to do.

So a prayer would be like if it is Your will, let it be done, not what I want but what you want for me because everything I wanted got me to rehab and miserable. I was trying to control everything around me and I could not control anything. I was totally powerless and no matter how hard I tried to be in control, I was not. So I had to let someone else be in control. But Free Will is a Bitch and I can and do take back control of my life. It is a constant struggle with this step. I want things my way NOW! Most addicts are very self centered individuals and want instant gratification, drugs do that…

I had to remember that I was going to try a different way and let someone else take care of me. The faith thing comes in here. I have to believe that God had a plane for me and that things will unfold as they should. That whenever I take control back, that plane gets messed up.

This step is very hard to put down on paper. It is a very faith based step and it is not a hard fact concept, it is very ethereal. Because you have to believe in a higher power and also that he/she/it is concerned for your well being. I said He/She/It because remember, the “Higher Power” aspect is as you understand, not what I think it should be. This is a key aspect to this whole “recovery” program. If you can’t say God, it can be tree, doorknob, floor mat, ANTYHING, as long as you believe.

SO I guess that in this portion of the program, God was taking care of me at LAHA. By 2.5 weeks, my cravings were gone, I guess because I had a grain of faith and I wanted to get my life better. I saw some pitiful sights that and also some true miracles being preformed. We learned that every day was a miracle because we were not dead or in jail and that we were or at least had the opportunity to “recover” At LAHA, you could feel the energy, and it is a very spiritual place. There was lots of healing that occurred. There were lots of other places that I could have gone; I am eternally grateful that was able to go there and to get my life in order. I would have been dead or in jail at the rate I was going…
This always reminds me of a poem by Max Ehrmann titled “Desiderata”
Here it is:
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrenderbe on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.
Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.
Keep interested in your own career,
however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.
Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantmentit is as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.Beyond a wholesome discipline,be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.
With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

This poem is a good set of principals to live by, very spiritual based as well. When you let some one else take control, wonderful things start to occur. You will and have started the process to “recover” But there are many other steps that need to happen and even if you “recover” they should be practiced in you life. I am sorry that I can’t put down more thoughts on this, but we will go to Step 4 – Made a Searching and Fearless Moral Inventory of Ourselves. This one is a doosey!!! Very hard and very emotional, you get to the core of your bull that you have carried and spewed for all those years. You will have to look at yourself and be very critical and analyze your very core. It sounds daunting and it was and is… SO more on this at another time.


Tell Me What You Think...

Saturday, April 14, 2007

The Death of Windows XP :-(

Well, we all knew that this was going to happen. Microsoft announced that as of January 31, 2008 No more copies of Windows Xp Pro or Home edition will be sold in any store.

According to an article that I read:

"Microsoft has confirmed that from 31 January 2008 large PC makers, such as Dell, HP and Toshiba, will no longer be able to buy licenses for the software so they can install it on new machines.

However, a poll released in early April suggests that Vista has yet to win over significant numbers of potential customers. The study of 2,223 web-using Americans found that although 87% had heard of the operating system only 12% of those who knew of it were planning to install it.


Microsoft is keen for consumers to start using Vista While the survey did find that some people waited for Vista before buying a PC, 60% said its appearance had no effect on their spending plans. It also found that 79% of those questioned were using Windows XP on their home PC."

According the article, Microsoft will support XP for several years longer. This comes as no surprise to me. Microsoft is trying to force the consumer and Industry to migrate to the new Vista Operating system. The main problem is that many will not want to have to upgrade their hardware to meet Vista’s minimum requirements that are much higher that those of Xp’s.


To compare the system requirements:

XP Professional:
PC with 300 megahertz or higher processor clock speed recommended; 233 MHz minimum required (single or dual processor system);* Intel Pentium/Celeron family, or AMD K6/Athlon/Duron family, or compatible processor recommended
128 megabytes (MB) of RAM or higher recommended (64 MB minimum supported; may limit performance and some features)
1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available hard disk space*
Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device




Vista Requirements:
Home Premium / Business / Ultimate
1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 GB of system memory
40 GB hard drive with at least 15 GB of available space
Support for DirectX 9 graphics with:
WDDM Driver
128 MB of graphics memory (minimum)
Pixel Shader 2.0 in hardware
32 bits per pixel
DVD-ROM drive
Audio Output
Internet access (fees may apply)
Additional Requirements
Actual requirements and product functionality may vary based on your system configuration. Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor can help you determine which features and edition of Windows Vista will run on your computer.
While all editions of Windows Vista can support multiple core CPUs, only Windows Vista Business, Ultimate, and Enterprise can support dual processors.
Home Premium / Ultimate
TV tuner card required for TV functionality (compatible remote control optional).
Home Premium / Business / Ultimate
Windows Tablet and Touch Technology requires a Tablet PC or a touch screen.
Ultimate
Windows BitLocker Drive Encryption requires a USB Flash Drive and a system with a TPM 1.2 chip.

As you can see, it takes much more of a base computer to run the Vista package as compared to the XP Pro computer.



Tell Me What You Think...

Friday, April 13, 2007

Very busy day...


It has been another very busy day in the Fab. I hope to be able to post soem times this weekend about Step 3 in my 12-Step series that i am doing. I have had a good 2 days off, but that all ended today at work. All i can say is that it is very crazy here. This is the first time today that i have been able to relax, other than lunch.


Well, i gotta go for now.



Tell Me What You Think...

Thursday, April 12, 2007

Type-O-Negative in Concert!!!!









My brother and I are going to see Type-O in CONCERT!!!






The Venu is Sonar, 7:00pm
407 E. Saratoga Street
Baltimore 21202


Tell Me What You Think...

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

DC and Music...




I will have some new pics to post tomorrow our DC trip tomorrow. I will post all the pics on my FlikR page as well.

I am going to do a series on Hooverphonic and their music this week.

Our website is still down at the moment. i have ran into a problem with the hosting company and their customer service line is never answered! So i do not know if i will have the site up any time soon.






Tell Me What You Think...

Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Our Cat...Sugar Ghost


Here is pic of our cat. She has been with us since we lived in Colorado. She is de-clawed and safe for home use!!! She would try to sneak out and sit in the snow in Colorado and Massachusetts... Very strange and i bath her about every month. She does not seem to mind. She has a big attitude for a little house cat!!




Tell Me What You Think...

Days?...


WE are going to DC tomorrow to go and tour The White House and then The Capital. IT should be a very good tour for us to see. The weather is very nice today. I hate to be in the Fab today. I stepped outside and was like WOW, it felt very good. It is amazing how nice it is after we had snow on Saturday morning. It has been a very busy morning here at work…

Last night my right knee was hurting very bad. I hurt it about 20 years ago in a snow skiing accident I had in Winter Park Colorado. I tore my knee up, but I never had it fixed. So from time to time it acts up and hurts me. It started hurting when I got home from work and got worse thru the evening. Around 10pm, I have to put a rap on it and I slept with it on all night. It is a little tinder today. I only got about 4 hours of sleep due to this and the change over to days. It sucks. I am tired today.


DAYS ARE CRAZY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




Tell Me What You Think...

Monday, April 09, 2007

Day Shift...


I am back on day shift. I am not really happy about, but there is nothing that i can do about it at the moment. Perhaps that will change in the future. Also, our website is down at the moment. I am having to deal with getting it xfered to another hosting service and it is a pain in the but to get it done. I hope to have it back up and running by the weekend...



Tell Me What You Think...

Sunday, April 08, 2007

Type-O-Negative – Dead Again: Another Look at the Album.

1. Dead Again

2. Tripping A Blind Man

3. The Profits Of Doom

4. September Sun

5. Halloween in Heaven

6. These Three Things

7. She Burned Me Down

8. Some Stupid Tomorrow

9. An Ode To Locksmiths

10. Hail And Farewell To Britain

  • Peter Steele – Lead vocals, bass guitar, guitar, and keyboards
  • Josh Silver – Keyboards, synth, effects, programming, backing vocals
  • Kenny Hickey – Lead & rhythm guitars, backing vocals
  • Johnny Kelly – Drums, percussion, backing vocals


Upon listening to the album for a while now, I have to say that the best tracks are not the one that is going to be a single. Where as it is good, clocking in at 10:47, it is in my opinion, not the highlight. The 2 tracks that strike me as the top tracks are September Sun (9:47) and Halloween in Heaven (4:50). The production on this album is very clean and crisp as always with plenty of Steel's 4 string bass and Silvers keys. Strangely, the drums are not very heavy. Their off beat splash cymbal that is ever so present in almost all of the last 2 albums is very thin and wispy. The drums are crisp, clean and very crisp as well as being very thin, almost to the point of understated compared to the other albums "rock drums". The most comparable album to this style is October Rust in production. October Rust is comparable by me to Pink Floyd – The Dark Side of The Moon; The pinnacle of production that a band could do.

Dead again is a good album and worthy of purchasing if you are a Type-O fan. Halloween In Heaven is a rocking track where the guitars have a strong attack with a punk influence over 130BPM. This production is more fitted to some of the earlier works, but the addition of a female vocal byTara VanFlower of Lycia adds some interesting twists to the song. Her soulful style is a stark contrast to Steel's powerful vocal style. This song gives details an afterlife in which many late Rock and Roll musicians, such as John Bonham and Bon Scott, play music in Heaven. Here are the lyrics:


The dead they got that morbid beat It goes deo deo

They dance upon decaying feet

With their black toes oh no

Heaven Limbo and Hell Purgatory oh well oh well



Halloween in Heaven It's Christmas in Hell

Halloween in Heaven Oh well oh well



The devil stole a Yule tree Decorated with souls

Jesus trick or treating As Him below

Heaven Limbo and Hell Purgatory oh well oh well



Halloween in Heaven It's Christmas in Hell

Halloween in Heaven Oh well oh well



Bonham on drums Entwistle on bass As guest morticians

Bon Scott on vox Rhoads just for kicks

On guitar Hendrix Lennon sits in

With his friend George But where is Morrison?



Of course I cried When I heard they'd died

And took a part of me Same time gave

From beyond the grave Became what was to be



Elvis ain't dead So he isn't here Party never ends

Demon roadies angel groupies Suicide losers

If only I'd known how cool death is

I'd have killed myself sooner



Of harps and choirs Pumpkin pine pyres

Flames of red and green Orange and black

Years to take me back Christmas or Halloween



Halloween in Heaven It's Christmas in Hell

Halloween in Heaven Oh well oh well

Many of the themes of this album deal with Christianity, Steel is said to have found his Christian Faith in recent interviews. September Sun's intro reminds me of G&R November Rain! The piano is the same chord progression as that song. During the song, if you listen closely, you can hear near the end, Hitler speaking. It seems that he is talking about a lost love in his past. IT has the big gothic intermissions like many of their other songs. They have a good album and these tracks could be good radio tracks if edited properly. Here are the lyrics:

September sun blowing golden hair Now keep in mind son

She was never there October's rust

Bisecting black storm clouds

Only the deaf Hear my silent shouts



Yet in the dark Still he screams your name

Nights living death With witch rhymes insane

Ten years amassed Para toda mi Vida?

Lost man in time Was his name Peter?



September sun rotted Flatbush porch

I would have run then Had I known the cost

Autumnal rays turned your eyes to stone

Did it give you pleasure To steal my soul



Leave her alone Me? – I know why

This was all written and edited using MS Word 2007 to publish this post.


Happy Easter Sunday. Christ Has Risen!!














































Tell Me What You Think...

Saturday, April 07, 2007

Snow in April?? Really??



It snowed last night here. The weather man got it correct for a change at http://www.nbc12.com/. That is our local station. The forested a 60% chance and it was correct!! I woke up around 3am and i saw snow flakes. I got up around 6.30am and there was snow all over the ground here. I have some pics of the weather event...

It is all melted this evening. It kind of reminded us of the snows we would get in Colorado. They would come during the night and be gone before early afternoon.



Tell Me What You Think...

Friday, April 06, 2007

Pocahontas State Park


We went on a big ride today at Pocahontas State Park!! We ended up riding 8.2 miles with about 820feet of elevation changes also. We rode the Red and Blue trails which had lots of trees to go over and also a Half-Pipe to ride in and out of like at Powhite Park. They were great trails to go on and i hope tomorrow to have the GPS data to place over a Google Earth pic of the trip.



Here is a link to a TOPO map of Pocahontas State Park.

Here is a link to other Moutain Biking Trails in Central Virginia.

Here is a link to the TOPO map of Powhite Park.



The trails are not so steep as to where they tire you out after the first run. There are some long open runs where you can get up some speed and also go down hill. Over all, i have a very good ride today and the weather was not bad at all!!


Tell Me What You Think...

Google...The Empire Invades.

We all know that Google is like The Empire in Star Wars. Well, here are the Top 11 Google products that we will never see. I found this on www.BBspot.com. It is a funny site that makes fun of most Tech things. Google even ownes this blog site! What is next? TV??


Google Products We'll Never See

11. Google Hitman Assistant - Find, schedule, and collect on all your assassinations with this suite of products.

10. Googlearchy - Tired of democracy? Install the government that everyone loves without annoying pop-up ads.

9. Google Smite - An extension of Google Earth uses laser beams attached to the satellites to exact revenge or just have some fun for paid subscribers.

8. Google Carnage - Use real-time satellite images to zoom in an see car, train, or plane crashes and other disasters.

7. Google Ogle - The hottest unsecured webcams on the Internet.

6. Googlebator - Used with Google Ogle it's our first attempt at hardware.

5. Google Alibi - Paid service that will provide you with a credible account for your whereabouts.

4. Google Telegraph - Dash-Dot, Dash-Dash-Dash, Dash

3. Google Gaggle - The only search engine for geese.

2. Google Invading Force - Some pesky third world country got you down? Send in the troops with Google's new troop management tool.

1. Gogoel - Search, for dyslexics.


Tell Me What You Think...

An Intimate Celestial Bond

If you want to Purchase any of my music(s), Please go to https://djrenigade.bandcamp.com/ 1st Track For The New Year! #DownTempo #RenigadeCi...