On cliche

Oh yes, I'm going to explore a cliche because I goddamn well feel like it..

The eponymous "free falling."

Often used by musicians or other famous types prone to excess; drugs, booze, sex and all manner of genuinely interesting things. In many cases, there is a massive nose dive in their career, which they may or may not recover from. It can also be used to describe many depressing states that normal civilians have as well; loss of jobs, breakups, sickness, death and onwards.

Why is it falling, though? Because, through a hard period, it's not the fall that kills you, it's the rocks at the bottom.

Now, I wouldn't call my situation anywhere NEAR that bad; however, with that said, I'm afraid of heights. I know that the ground will hurt me, so the fall is unpleasant. Call me realistic.

So...

That's it, I guess.

As the old saying goes: "all good things must come to an end."

While I could be wrong, I seriously doubt I am. Now to allow the feelings of being helpless and confused to set in.




The worst part, damnit, is that I know it could have been avoided.

Yay, me.

Torsion

Is a rather neat concept, but most technical descriptions involving complex physics calculations. Depressingly cold.

It's a way of twisting things using ropes or lines. You need two securely held ropes, the bigger the better. Insert a device between the lines meant to be twisted with massive force, and twist them around until they are ludicrously tight.

Really awkward way of making a catapult.



Random knowledge of the day. Watching movies on the T.V. is not to be practiced unless prepared for anything. Not prepared tonight.

Kind of a distraction from life at large.

Revolve

So, at some point, we humans thought that the universe revolved around our pitiful little planet. At least most of us now accept that as full-on horse shit, which it fully is.

That said, everybody has their own universe their own tiny monkey sphere, of Friends, Family, Lovers and the inevitable Hate-Driven Cocksuckers that congregate just as vultures. Every one of these people are motivated by something; Friends by mutual associations; Family by requirement and sometimes even because they actually have fondness for you; Lovers out of genuine love, or plain lust, whether for money or for cock (or the other appropriate organ); and, finally, the Hate-Mongering Dick-Choking Fuckers with nothing better to do with their lives. Somehow, their worthless little universe revolves around making you miserable, usually with little to no reason.

So, I propose a solution.

First, you'll need to find a lead pipe or a steel bar. Next, you should crack one of them on the back of the head. After that, I figure it's up to your discretion.




With all this in mind, lets take a look at the United States' mortgage lenders, the ones giving entirely unqualified families and individuals mortgages that they will never be able to pay off. The did it for profit, lots and lots of profit. Their universe revolved around making cash on the misery and lack-of-cash of the Average Joe.

Looking for that lead pipe yet?

For the second time:

Fuck it.

The electoriat

According to some people, the government is the ultimate form of control, keeping its people downtrodden at the end of a whip. Not entirely true, as they are in office for one reason and one reason only. They seem to forget it far too often.

If we voted them in, why are we afraid of them? Why should we be afraid? According to the democratic process, they are supposed to represent us and our values.

As a very well informed, though fictional, man once said: "A people should not fear its government, a government should fear its people."

So lets strike up a little fear.

The America

So, instead of helping the entire country wrest itself from a possible depression, congress decided that it would be an awesome idea to whore themselves out for votes. The 700 billion dollar plan that would work got voted no, mostly thanks to the Republican side, which voted two third against, while two thirds of the Democrat side voted for the bill.

Why did they vote it down? They said that it doesn't help the average American. Well, the odd fact is that if this buy out does not go through, the country is like facing a second depression, so I don't think stopping the bill really helps anyway. Also, this isn't quite a "buy out," it's more of a "buy in" to the market as a whole, which means that this money could actually grow and be taken back by the government and spend on something directly helping Americans. Thanks for reading that memo, jackasses, instead of helping your people, you're just appealing to them for more votes, so you can pad your retirement package by staying in office a little longer.

So, once again, American congress drops the ball. In fact, they did worse than that, they just gave the entire world the collective middle finger. The way I see it, all those Republicans who voted it down wee thinking something like this:

"Hey, we know you're screwed too, but we're going to sit on our asses and futz around trying to keep ours seats in office, because we're power hungry and can't go on withot having enough capital to fund our third home in the Bahamas."

Oh, and if the American market goes down, then the whole world is screwed. Thanks Republicans!

Philanthropy

So, Paul Newman died, and now everybody is lauding him as a great philanthropist. That's all fine and dandy, but was it not the man himself who once said "I don't think there's anything exceptional or noble in being philanthropic. It's the other attitude that confuses me."

Ironic, yes, that he was quite a giver, throughout his career. I find the bigger irony is that many people are calling him a hero of giving. Maybe I'm missing something, but I think it's a little silly to elevate someone who obviously didn't believe in such elevations.

Just my two cents.

Politik

Stephen Harper is probably not the best human being on the planet, this much is for sure; he's a politician, after all, but while he might have been able to secure my vote, he certainly lost it now.

Somehow, through his advisorial staff, somebody told him that working class Canadians don't care about culture. Last I had checked, "culture," such as theatre, music and movies, were mostly designed for the working class as a type of escape from the rigors of a badly governed life. (Thank you History 106.)

So, instead of distracting your people from your failures by spending cash on movies, television and other escapes, Harper finds it useful to cut funding.

For the first time in a while, I'm finding it difficult to come up with words strong enough to condemn something along these lines. Almost once a week, I attend a poetry reading (shut up, I'm a writer) which includes featured readers. These readers come from all over Canada to perform at this event, and their travel costs are partially subsidised by the Canadian Council for the Arts, which draws its money from government subsidies. If this service had less available money, then where would my own small corner of poetic solace go? And before anybody says that poetry readings are a small part of this, chew on the fact that the cafe where these readings takes place is standing room only, every week.

Somehow, I doubt that this kind of event would go anywhere but down the shitter, thanks entirely to Harper.

Kind of nice to be able to blame something so grand on one person. Gives you something to imagine on your toilet paper when you're wiping your ass.

On second thought, I don't think Harper is good enough to wipe my ass.

New-school Metallica

As luck would have it, I was given the new Metallica album (Death Magnetic) by my girlfriend for my birthday this past week. The first thing I noticed was how the cover was arranged, especially the rear, with the whole thing laid out the same way as Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning and etc. This gave me hope. It was not entirely dashed, either.

Say about 80% of the songs on it are pretty good, with both guitars sounding the best they have since the black album. Hetfield's lyrics can get a little bit contrived at times; in The Day That Never Comes, saying that "love is a four letter word" is a little childish and just not the kind of thing I'd would expect to see on any well produced artist's album. That said, the riffage is good times throughout, coming to a very nicely riff-led instrumental, Suicide and Redeption, near the end of the disc. It's far from Orion or Call of Cuthulu, but I like it.

Sadly, Lars has not really become a better drummer in the past 20 years, and seems to be falling on the same patterns, overall. There's a few cool little steady, mid song beat changes and at least one neat fill, but it's mostly same old Lars.

That said, Kirk seems to have a bit of issue breaking out of his old habits, which end up sounding exactly the same over time; you can dress up a chromatic scale, but it's still a chromatic scale. Of course, he has some brilliant moments: Suicide and Redemption has a couple really good solo moments, but most of us know that Hetfield probably wrote those.

Trujillo is a fairly good bassist, as far as I've seen, and it comes across a few times in the album, wherein he can be found riffing away and not doing a bad job, either.

I would summarize it as a well written record that could be a tiny bit better, but, on the whole, is worth the time of any vague Metalica fan. Definitely nothing to get any newbies hooked on the band, it seems, but I could be wrong.