Time for a general post! Why? Because i haven't done one in quite a while. So my apps are done and out of my hands. All I can do now is pass classes, eat candy, write bizarre stories and nap. Mostly nap, I hope.
On another note, I have decided that pretty much every girl is hot in her own way. Not the most revelatory comment, but true. Despite the cuteness and hotness surrounding me, I don't feel a need to partake. I'd love a relationship, I would, but I don't really feel like putting any effort forth at this point to get myself into one. But with this unseasonably warm weather the window shopping is good.
Well now I feel like a bit of an asshole for the preceding paragraph, so I guess I'll wrap the post up.
Reading:
The Name of War -Jill Lepore
The American Revolution -Gordon Wood
Watching:
random things on netflix
South Park
Munching on:
Cookie Crisp, graham crackers and beer. Wow, that sounds lame.
Listening to:
Tegan and Sara
Alkaline Trio
Oasis
The Distillers
Opeth
Dethklok

Until Later folks

I was thinking the other day about my interests as a history major, and I came to a realization. Where once I looked on American History as depressing and not worth my time, I have become an Americanist. I used to see the hypocrisies in the rhetoric of antebellum politicians, see Manifest Destiny, see general intolerance and I'd get pissed off and read something else. Reading European history and seeing forced movements of people, i.e. the Jews being expelled from Spain in 1492, or rampant genocide or hideously and infuriatingly depressing things and I wouldn't bat an eye. It wasn't until recently that I realized the reason that American history got me riled up is simply because I'm a bloody American. I care about American history, because it shapes who we are as a nation and how we are perceived as well.
I'm not articulating this particularly well, but where I used to get upset and quit, I find the ideas that led to atrocities like Manifest Destiny and explore them. Where Europeans settled with their cultures, new cultures formed from fusions with native peoples and other European nations forming a distinctive set of American cultures from New England to Oaxaca. Yeah, I like Mexico too. But anyhoo, it's nice to have a focus that you like in the subject.

I hate literature. I do. Well, to be specific the way that literature and English are taught have ruined the experience of reading short stories or fiction. With the focus on the underlying themes and reading between the lines, people lose sight of the important question. Is it a good story? Did you enjoy it? Were the characters compelling? Was it a vacation from reality? Not what does the train on page 47 say about conservatives in this country. That's horseshit. Anyone who tells you it isn't is also horseshit. I was taking a test today in some G.E. class and all I could think was this is the most meaningless and arbitrary attempt to invent meaning and I hate it. Literature classes have ruined literature for me.
Perhaps I'm just not appreciating a sophisticated approach, but why does it have to be sophisticated? Reading used to be fun for me, I wouldn't have to think about life and racism and politics or whatever. Reading was a simple pleasure, and higher learning is trying to take that from me. It's upsetting, because I feel that education is extremely important, but I really hate it right now.
Oh, and sophisticated sounds a lot like sophistry. And this whole talk of themes is sophistry, pure and simple. I always thought sophistry was to be avoided in an intellectual setting, but I guess I was misinformed. Thanks literature class, you are skewing me towards the cheap entertainment of eating for fun, not reading. So now I'm going to just get fat and probably diabetic because of this class. Make sense? No. It's sophistry, fallacious reasoning.

Can I have a class where we just read books, don't tear every scrap of invented meaning from them until all that's left is a tattered binding?

A PUNK SYNOPSIS »

By Greg Graffin
Details, 7/96 called it "Anarchy in the 10th Grade"

About two weeks ago I received a letter from a punker who said he used to be a fan of Bad Religion. Used to be, that is, until we let him down by releasing our last two albums which didn't fit his definition of punk. There weren't any songs against the establishment, he claimed (which isn't true by the way), so how can you call it Bad Religion? Indeed how can you guys call yourself punk? He went on to imply that we don't know anything about what punk is because we are so out of it. He was clearly angry, and intolerant of what our recent music actually had to say.He believed that the sanctity of the punk establishment had been infringed on somehow by our last two albums (but he also noted that our previous seven albums weren't guilty of such treason).

The very same day I ran into someone on the street in the town where I live and he recognized me as the singer of Bad Religion. Like the guy who sent me the letter, he too was a punker, but he wasn't angry or judgmental. We talked for a short while and he spoke about how increasingly these days young people in general are hostile to strangers, and don't want to listen to anyone but their own comfortable circle of friends. And about how people seem to be motivated these days by some unseen force to be closed minded. His open desire for opinion, and his focus on relevant issues were refreshing and it made me remember all the great things about the punkers I grew up with and still interact with today: open-minded, inclusive, unpretentious and not presumptuous, and willing to confront the people or institutions that seemed unfair or unjust. Instead of being concerned with establishing an institution within which we could exclude others (which, sadly, is what many punkers really want), we were interested in including people who felt estranged by, or disillusioned with their social surroundings.

In that one day I experienced some of the best things about punk, the traits exhibited by the kid on the street, and the worst things about punk: the negative, self-righteous, dogmatic thinking of the kid who wrote the letter. Both of them were self-acknowledged punkers yet they were from almost opposite ideological poles. For 16 years now I have been a member of this strange sub-culture, and I have come to realize that there are both liberal and conservative wings of it. In that sense it is a microcosm of society in general. It is an inane task to try and define punk universally. Its meaning is fuzzied everywhere by contextual circumstance. A 16 year-old girl from an affluent religious family who consistently shows up to church on Sunday with her green mohawk and Fuck Jesus shirt is punk. But so is a 42 year old biology professor who claims that Charles Darwin's ideas were wrong. Neither person has ever heard of, nor met, one another, nor hung out together at the same underground club. And yet their challenge to established institutions and revulsion to dogmatic thinking links them spiritually. Whether this is genetic or learned is unknown. But I too feel a kinship with everyone who shares these traits. I don't feel allied with those who are exclusive, elitist, and who think that their way of life is a model for how others should live theirs. My philosophy was instilled by the open minded thinking of my parents of course, but also through the turmoil I experienced growing up. While I realize many kids had it harder than me, I have found that a lot of people who call themselves punks had similar experiences.

In 1976, At the age of 11 I moved with my mom and brother to the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles. Like millions of other victims of divorce in the 1970s I had to deal with the fact that my father was now living far away (in Racine, Wisconsin) and I would not get to see him as much as most other kids see theirs. This pain was compounded by the bewildering alienation I felt as a Wisconsin boy at Junior High School in the Los Angeles unified school district. I had entered a landscape unlike anything I experienced in my 11 years of life. I had dark brown fluffy, wavy hair, unfeatherable, impossible to mold into the cool rock-and-roll hairdos of the 1970s that were so popular. I wore velour kids shirts from K-Mart, and corduroys and because they were less expensive than jeans and we didn't have a lot of money. I had cheap shoes, usually also from K-Mart or Payless, always worn out, with goofy logos that emulated the real popular brands that all the other kids wore.

I rode a Sears 10-speed that was heavy, sluggish, and couldn't jump or skid. I had a powder blue, plastic skateboard with noisy, open-bearing wheels, totally unfit for the skateboard parks that were so popular in southern California. I had never been to the beach in my life, and thought of it as a place to go swimming, not as a symbol for a way of life. People asked me dude!.....do you party? I thought of our annual kids new year's parties back home in Racine. We stayed up past midnight and ate ice cream and soda, but other than those I didn't have much experience throwing parties. It took me about six months to realize that party was a synonym of getting high.

I saw fellow 7th graders come to class with squinty eyes and euphoric smiles reeking of pot smoke (at first I didn't know what that smokey odor was). Fellow classmates in shop-class had secretive projects that they brought out only when the teacher, Mr. Feers, took his cigarette break. Their works consisted of salvaged polyurethane cylinders, sealed at the bottom, sanded smooth around the top, and a few 1/4 inch holes quickly forged on the drill-press. I was bewildered when one of them asked me: dude!....check out my bong, isn't it bitchin? Not only did I not know what a bong was....I didn't understand the adjective he used to describe it, nor why he was hiding it.

All I knew was that there was some weird secret about all this, and I was not one of those who were welcome to the information. Kids moved up the social ladder by revealing their knowledge of rock and roll culture and sharing their covert collections of black beauties, Quaaludes, and joints. If you partook in their offers, you were one of them, a trusted confidant. If you were afraid to partake, you were a second-class loser. In other words, if you went along with the flow, unquestioning and complacent, you were accepted and rewarded with social status. If you questioned the norm, or went against the grain in any way, you were in for a rocky ride down the social ladder.

I shriveled under this pressure. Unable to compete yet unwilling to shut down, I came to be friends with a particular class of people who were labeled geeks, nerds, kooks, dorks, wimps, and pussies (or wussies if you combine these last two). We hung out together and did creative things after school, but the greatest alleviation of my suffering came from music. We had an old spinet piano that I would bang on and sing songs I learned by ear. I desired to gain a musical identity just like my peers at school, but I wasn't inspired by the bands that formed the fabric of this burn-out drug culture: Led Zeppelin, Rush, Kiss, Journey, Foreigner, Styx, Ted Nugent, Bad Company, Lynard Skynard among many others.

Luckily, by the time I was 14, I had discovered a radio show on Saturday and Sunday nights that showcased local bands from L.A. I discovered the station because it was the only one in L.A. that played Todd Rundgren from time to time. My friend in Wisconsin and I had grown to love Todd and Utopia because they were melodic rock, but somewhat beneath the mainstream of popular music. Those characteristics still appeal to me today, and often guide my preferences for other bands.

I cannot overstate the importance of that radio show in the development of my musical personality. It was called Rodney on the Roq (on station KROQ) and it proved that there was an entire community of people right there in the same city that used music to share their alienation and confusion about the culture around them. It also proved that you didn't have to be a virtuoso or signed to a major record label in order to be played over the airwaves. The actual recordings were not slick high-budget productions. Often times Rodney would simply play demo tapes, or acetate pressings (limited-use vinyl singles or e.p.s). It was gloriously vulgar, and inspiring in its simplicity.

I wanted to be part of this community of musicians. The music was heartfelt and desperate. It spoke of the suffering that comes from the pressure to conform, and the burden that is placed on us by those in power, and the celebration of belonging to a community of powerless misfits. Yet it was delivered by such a variety of bands, from different backgrounds. I went punk at 15. I cut my wavy hair very short, dyed it pitch black, and made my own t-shirts. I was creative enough and over the years I had experimented with songwriting on the piano along with my friends playing pots and pans and using cheap tape recorders. We were determined to send in a tape to Rodney on the Roq. But before any of that could materialize, I was introduced by a fellow wussie to the guys who would become Bad Religion.

By the end of that same year, 1980, I had made my first record and Rodney played it. Usually this would make anyone a hero at his high school, a veritable recording artist as a classmate! But my high-school peers were violently opposed to this new evolving subculture. It was not the kind of music that glorified sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. It wasn't mellow and it didn't inspire people to get wasted. I was seen as an enemy of their way of life. There were three of us at the school who were punkers. And all three of us at one time or another were physically beaten by people at school who attacked us only because of our musical preference.

This scared me and at the same time made me feel powerful. It made me realize how frail most of the conformists really were, how easily they could be pushed to the point where they lose control. I found great solace in the community of other punkers from different schools, all with similar stories of oppression and abuse. My house became a hang-out and our garage became a rehearsal space (my mom was lenient, but also always at work, so there was no adult intervention). I began to feel like there was a way to deal with the disillusion of my cultural surroundings. But it was through questioning and challenging, not conforming and accepting.

This stance probably made me more insightful about human social interaction, and a better critic; but it also made me more cynical, and less understanding of those close to me who weren't punk, and therefore it definitely retarded my ability to have intimate relationships. We punkers were linked by what we thought was a deeper cause, our desire to overcome societal pressure. It was a tacit assumption that we all had the same feelings, because we were all treated similarly by our society. The emphasis was always on the collective turmoil of our group and not on individual personal issues (there were a lot more songs about us, our, and we than about I, mine, and me). Maybe this is why so many of my friends got hooked on hard drugs, and some killed themselves. My punk friends did not practice understanding, we only exhibited toleration.

This shortcoming naturally extended to the sexes. I just assumed that girls were equals on every level. They dressed similarly, had similar hairstyles, and even slam-danced with us boys. Their suffering was our suffering, it seemed to me. I never thought that maybe they saw the punk scene from a unique perspective. Women's issues were not on our discussion agenda. Both sexes were too busy being stalwart, and tough. It was wonderfully equal, and I was proud of my egalitarian view of the sexes. Unfortunately, it was also an excuse not to address differences between the sexes. To this day, I am great at being tolerant with women's expressions, but bad at understanding their needs. And the time with my male friends is spent talking about mundane issues or worldly problems, not personal desires or feelings. This has interfered with numerous close friendships, and it has undermined my ability to be a good husband.

I decided to go to college. I anticipated that it would be a place where dissenting voices were recognized and applauded. This romantic vision appealed to me. I loved playing in my band and contributing to the challenge of mainstream music, but I also wanted more. I felt an urge to question more of society than just the music scene and people's fashions. I figured that I could play in the band on weekends and vacations, and I could write about the relevant issues I was discussing at the university.

But I realize now, in retrospect, that the university was as replete with the pressure to conform as my high school was.Students were rewarded for thinking like the professor. Only rarely did the professors try to educe original ideas from the students. More often we were rewarded for regurgitating the same rhetoric on tests that they professed in the lectures, which were more like state-of-the-union addresses in any given discipline.


Although I was lucky enough to find three wonderful and inspiring faculty advisors who praised my originality and made me feel smarter than I probably am, I was saddened that there were so few like them. I became acutely aware that the usual university experience for most students was one of indoctrination into the prescriptive thinking of a privileged society. It was a recipe for what was acceptable to society. And nowhere in that socialization process did they provide a troubleshooting guide to deal with alternative ways of thinking.

As a result, my undergraduate G.P.A. was only slightly better than average. But thanks to my advisors strong recommendations and insistence that I had original research ideas, I was able to continue and receive a Master of Science degree in Geology. I went on to a Ph.D. program too. Both of my higher-degree programs have taught me that the way to succeed in our society is to walk that fragile line between understanding the dogma that is inherent in the prevailing ideology and showing the people in power that you have your own ideas too but are not willing to infringe on their tolerance.&Originality has a low tolerance threshold.

Over the last year and one-half I have been privileged enough to travel with more than most people do in a life-time. As I became more worldly, I realized that at every level of society and culture there are teachings that dictate how people are supposed to behave, and that in some way or another control people's freedom to express themselves and live happy lives. I feel that it is the gift of being human to be able to challenge and confront those tenets, and share new ways to evoke originality from others. I'm glad that I'm not an animal.

Today, I have a more sophisticated view of my social surroundings.I have children, I own a house, I have insurance, I make financial decisions. My insight into the world comes from disparate sources: geology, organismic biology, music, travel, and fatherhood. This plurality insures my individuality. And learning to be an individual was the best gift I got from growing up punk. I am conscious of stereotypes, and try not to fit them. No geologist I have met is also knowledgeable about the music business and likewise no musician I know understands earth history like I do. I am proud of this unpredictable uniqueness.

Strangely, punk is quickly becoming mainstream. Last year, more people bought punk rock records, tapes, CDS, t-shirts, stickers, and show tickets, than ever before. As in any capitalistic situation, the punk market is experiencing a focal shift away from the original intent of the art (or product) toward the creation of a credo or indoctrination surrounding the marketing of the product. Why else would entire music labels market themselves as punk labels? Because they are selling fashion and building a sub-cultural retinue instead of promoting honesty and creativity of its artists. This is a sad state of affairs in the music industry that occurs at the independent-label level as well as in the majors. Therefore, it is no wonder that there are a bunch of punk police out there monitoring whether bands like ours fit the stereotype, and match their dogmatic view of acceptability. They exhibit the same behavior as the academic clones who graduate by the thousands each spring, ready to discriminate against others who challenge their learned ideology. The letter I received two weeks ago from that disgruntled fan was sadly reminiscent of the persecution I felt in high school from the stoners.It is also a shining example of how easy it is to follow the party line and advocate unoriginal, thoughtless sentiments, which in turn motivates me all the more to provoke.


Greg Graffin, singer of Bad Religion, and one of my favorite rock stars. I found this on my old Xanga, and liked it again. Good times.

So it has been a while since I've posted on this. Let me see, is there any news? Well I've successfully put off working on my various papers and I have made a stunning discovery.

Blondes are hot and/or attractive.

For years I generally disagreed with this statement, with a preference for doe-eyed brunettes with a saucy mind and a foul mouth. Then I stumbled on a canceled show from the WB, an ex-show if you will, called Veronica Mars. And damn. Kristen Bell has restored my faith in golden locks! But Pam Anderson is still not an attractive lady, all disproportionate and plastic, yeck. Anyhoo, they still should cuss like a sailor, and be able to throw a punch. Good luck me.

Now any blondes that I know should not take this seriously, no I did not find you ugly, and no I am not suddenly smitten with you.

So, moving on to other topics. Um, there's really not much else, been listening to a strange combo of Midnight Oil, Pixies, and Ke$ha (come to think of it, she's pretty hot too). Oh and I've been craving a big juicy bacon cheeseburger. MMMMM Just delicious. Ranks high on the deliciosity scale, with a cold beverage and a milkshake, and a foul mouthed badass hottie. Sounds like a fantastic outing. I should try that sometime.

Well, toodles

Honestly, I'm tired of this. I'm tired of the singing to animals, I'm tired of the work assignments on my few days off, but mostly I'm tired of how she puts me down over and over again. My mother makes me doubt myself so much that it infuriates me, all it takes is a single snide comment in passing and it cuts right to the quick.
I've tried sharing aspects of my life that I enjoy and consider important, but they always seem to be lacking...nothing makes the cut. I came home from school for the summer, and had recently recorded a song that I had written and was proud of- her response: is that you singing? (indeed it was) get a new singer. Ouch. Thanks mom. Wtf. Never mind that I'm already ridiculously self conscious of my voice. That was the last time I'll let her hear a track I've done. It wasn't the first though, and when she heard those she immediately asked why I didn't have any songs about happy well adjusted relationships. Well, there weren't any because a: it was a concept album and b: yet to have one of those well adjusted things. But I've heard her singing....she doesn't get to judge.
Next to be insulted was my job. I know its low paying, entry level first job type stuff, but I take pride in it. I give a damn good tour. Of course there is repetition, but that's true of any job. Every tour is different though, no group is the same. Being a tour guide isn't just about relaying the script, it involves gauging group interest and reactions, entertaining the group, dealing with various issues, etc etc. Suffice to say, knowing the script and reciting it and doing nothing else makes you a shitty guide. So when she dismissed any creative element that tours have by saying that there is no creativity and that its just repetition, that was an insult to me, even if she didn't realize it. The implication is that I put nothing of myself into my job, that I just show up and drone through on autopilot sounding like a combination of Ben Stein's monotonous voice and a nervous second grader speaking in front of a group.
Essentially what I'm saying is that it gets harder and harder to come back home. I honestly don't know if I can do another summer back home. That week of camp will be so nice, not because I'll be away from work, but because I'll be away from her. She's grinding me down, and I hate it. I've been depressed and angry before, I'd really rather it not happen again. That whole thing was bad enough to go through once, but it almost feels like we're heading there again. She doesn't even realize it either. She treats me like I'm 16, old enough to transport myself but young enough to be closely monitored and ordered about. I know that sounds angsty and juvenile, but its just getting to be too frustrating. I need a damn vacation. And a drink (and its 7:30 am).

I have a relatively new acquisition to my collection of way too many instruments- a ukulele. Why did I get it? Well, its not just because I stumbled across Julia Nunes videos on youtube. Well maybe it is. Shh...those videos are great. But in any case, I have a ukulele, and its harder than I thought it would be. Despite only having 4 strings, the way they're tuned is pretty strange. After 3 or 4 weeks I still only know like 6 chords. It's kinda frustrating.
In other news, Left for Dead is a pretty enjoyable game.
But I digress. My ukulele is pretty awesome, and I already wrote and recorded a song with it. It also has a name (thanks for the input Courtney) and Jenny joins Denzel, Freddie, Big Red, Clyde, and the Atomic Wonder-Set in the ranks of my named instruments. Look for more to come from the entertaining pairing of Jenny and myself as I continue to waste time songwriting instead of being productive.

Listening to:
Hall of Mirrors- The Distillers
First Impressions- Julia Nunes
Maybe I Will- Julia Nunes
Little Wild One- That Thing You Do Soundtrack

Reading:
White Teeth- Zadie Smith
Thank You For Smoking- Christopher Buckley
V for Vendetta- Alan Moore
Watchmen- Alan Moore

Watching:
South Park episodes
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Zack and Miri

Playing:
Red Alert 3:Uprising
Medieval II Total War

So the game earlier today coupled with being swept by the Padres kinda destroyed me for a while...but I'm sane again, at least until tomorrow's game. Anyways, time for a real post. So I'm finally on break, but everyone else already had theirs and are once again busy as shit. I was considering a visit to Socal to see people I haven't seen in a while but I didn't really think of this soon enough, and made no plans. Next year, I shall have to try again. In any case, this is going to be a boring and uneventful week.
Well like two years ago I tooted my own horn on this thing about writing, my songs and such, and about having nine of them done-ish. Now its more like 34? Yeah. I think that's right. Well until relatively recently most of my songs weren't inspired by anyone in particular, well a few were. Some people got more than a few, but like 9 songs recently were directly inspired by one person.
Who? I ain't tellin. Suffice to say that she gives good material. At least I think so. In any case, I think I've written some decent stuff. If you want to see/hear, comment or email or im me and I'll get you some.

Listening To:
The Collected Works of The Distillers
Eve 6- Eve 6
Country Grammar- Nelly
Various Blink 182

Reading:
Way too much on Native American Religions for a research paper

Watching:
Star Trek....lots of Trek
South Park
The Giants Losing. (Baseball )

Playing:
Eve
Oblivion

First off let me say this. I am a Giants fan. I've bled black and orange my entire life and hate the Dodgers with nearly every fiber of my sports-related being. But what the hell?
What the hell are the Giants doing? They have what is reputedly one of the best rotations in at least the NL West, with THREE Cy Young winners, yet none of them has pitched well yet this season. The only starter who approaches effectiveness is Cain. We can't hit anymore, and worst of all, we can't seem to play defense. At least we haven't since Martinez took that line drive to the head. The whole team is rattled, understandably, by the incident but we need to move on and play some goddamn baseball. It hurts me to say this but I'm willing to accept losses like the one we took today. But not to the Dodgers. If we play well against anyone, or even just play terrible (as opposed to the abysmal amatuer ball we're currently playing) let it be against them.
I want to hear the crowd chanting "Beat LA!" at games again, and have it happen. I'd like a season over .500! I'd like us to play like it was 1989, 1997, 2002 or any of our other seasons where we won the west or the pennant. I'd like a lot of things.

Mostly I'd like to just see the Giants play good, major league baseball- that's something I haven't really seen in years.