It actually came on Tuesday, but it’s been a busy week. Tomorrow, I’ll do my best to get a couple of Missoula vendors to sell copies for me. I might even look into a PayPal arrangement for ordering them online.
It looks great — type is readable, colors are vibrant, and the whole package looks pretty professional. I’m psyched. As I was staring in awe at my one-year-in-the-making baby, I noticed that I come across pretty negative on the record. But that’s NOT the case! I swear. So, here is my not-so-expert opinion.
Where I Stand
I got my George W. Bush ‘LIAR’ shirt in the mail today. I was prepared to engage at least one Bush supporter in a less-than-intelligent conversation about it, but all I got was ‘Cool shirt.’ Silly liberal campus. Anyway, I had a response prepared for what I thought was inevitable: well, my “Kerry LIAR” shirt is in the wash. There is no shirt that I’m aware of. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that, given the choice, I would wear one. After all, it’s sort of a prerequisite to being a politician (or a human being). Everybody hurts (sorry Michael), and everybody lies.
And that bothers me. The basic stance of Pick Your Poison is that you’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t. Vote for Bush, four more years of stupidity. Kerry doesn’t look any better. But the problem I see goes way beyond the candidates; it’s the parties themselves, and the two-party system, that’s to blame. We’ve becomed trapped in a mindset and it’s a very destructive one: black and white, left and right, one and zero, Kramer and Kramer. Things just aren’t that simple. But the American people have grown up all their lives being told that only two choices are viable, so they have to round off their views and go with the lesser of two evils.
Which is exactly wrong. Why would you vote for a candidate who only supports 60% of your own views? Fear isn’t an answer. To vote Kerry just to keep Bush winning is spiteful, cowardly, and wrong. If you don’t believe in somebody, you don’t vote for them. It’s that simple. It’s time we stopped turning elections into exhibits of fear and started turning them toward the issues.
As I said, our current method of choosing our representatives is outdated. We need a more representative system, one where the winner does not claim everything. The majority is not right all the time. That’s a simple fact. Politics has been stagnating for as long as I can remember. You’d think that with Internet and TV, people would be more informed, but the opposite is true. The Internet is binary by its very nature, ones and zeros, and that binarism filters down, or up, to its information. Every blogger’s either a militant Republican or a smarmy, smart-ass Democrat. Where’s the middle ground? Or the area outside the middle? TV is no better.
We’re heading down a dangerous road. Right now, the two parties in control have made it so that no other parties can possibly be able to challenge them or change things. Thanks to our advances in technology and culture, we’ve accelerated the fall-of-empire syndrome. What took Rome hundreds of years may take us only a few. And that sucks, because America is great, and it still can be. What we need to do is get off our asses and scream, We’ve had enough!. It’s time to stop shouting down others’ views and time to listen, it’s time to make things right. Not the way each of us wants them, but right.
It’s a long road, but it’s possible. Back in 1776, I’m sure that a nation that chooses its leader peacefully was as much a pipe dream as my wish. Anything’s possible, given the power of change.
Current Listening: REM – “Ignoreland” (Automatic For the People)
Current Listening: REM – “Drive” (Automatic For the People)
Current Listening: Swingin’ Udders — “Next in Line” (Fat Music Vol. 3: Physical Fatness)
The epitome of punk rock. No job, no respect for authority, can barely speak without drooling over everything. These guys hate everything. Unemployment, employment, the government, anarchy, everything. The only discernable skills they have are the ability to sneer for hours on end. They only go to shows to say how terrible punk rock has become. They don’t own any records released after 1985. If a band signs to a label that most people have never heard of (i.e., Epitaph, Fat Wreck Chords, Hopeless), then they immediately hate the band, even if they were its bigger fan before.
Covered in tattoos, piercings, and eye shadow, these punks live a twisted, troubled life. Mainly from the ass-whoopings they receive at the hands of the Old-School Punkers. These punks have a lot in common with typical goths, except that their self-hatred is only feigned. See, some goth found out a long time ago that girls with low self-esteem and scars on their wrists would sleep with him if he acted depressed and deep, too. Now, goths really feel that way, but the Hot Topic Punk only feels that way when he sleeps with one of the said goth girls and finds out that he got some new, interesting, collectible venereal disease.
Never weighing less than 300 pounds (all muscle), these punks are the behemoths of their class. Contrary to popular belief, not all skinheads are white power idiots – most of them are just idiots. They bray on and on about being working class, despite the fact that the bands they listen to generally stay in four-star hotels and only interact with the working class when they want a Big Mac. These guys don’t consider a mosh pit to be cool unless bones are breaking and blood is flowing.
This species orginated when the thin, whiny kids who used to hang out with the jocks realized they couldn’t get any because they did not run around like big idiots and try to ‘score’ with big, muscular men. So they decided that they would become introverts and cry about everything.
The worst of the lot. These kids are whiny, know-it-alls, and trendy as hell. Their lyrics are sophomoric, trite, and often about girls. They play shows with their screaming high school friends and record demos with money that their mommies and daddies gave them. They often get expensive guitars and Marshall stacks as birthday presents, and if not they can afford to buy them because they don’t have real expenses, like rent/car payments.
Current Listening: The Queers — “Surf Goddess” (Surf Goddess)
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