Bruce Springsteen Hates America

August 10th, 2004

Current Listening: REM – “Ignoreland” (Automatic For the People)

These bastards stole the power from the victims of the Us v. Them years / Wrecking all things virtuous and true / The undermining social democratic downhill slide into abysmal / Lost lamb off the precipice into the trickle down runoff pool

So Bruce Springsteen, once renowned for his extreme Patriotism (he recorded the pro-America anthem “Born in the USA”) is embarking on a tour with a string of Kerry Supporters and bleeding-hearts such as John Mellencamp, REM, and the Dixie Chicks. I never thought I’d see the day when the Boss would cross over and embrace such obviously anti-American politics.

I never understood why celebrities think they know anything about politics. The only people who should be involved in politics are the politicians. We don’t want every celebrity idiot (and there are lots of non-celebrities who do this too) giving us his two cents about peace, love, and all that unrealistic hippie bullshit.

No Sign of the Flathead Lake Monster

July 18th, 2004

Current Listening: Bad Religion – “Hooray For Me” (Stranger Than Fiction)

When I slept with stony faces on the riverbank, / My angeldevil reveller shook me desperately in dying, / I don’t exactly want to apologize for anything, and now / We’re all mad and tangled in secret rooms with roman candles, / On an endless graveyard train



















It’s been a while since an update. Oh, well.

So here are the photos from camping with Carrie. The weather was beautiful for the first half of the trip, but turned sour the last half. We got some swimming in, though, but did not get a chance to use the raft I brought. That’s okay, though, because we’re planning a rafting trip down the Bitterroot for the end of July.

The campsite was beautiful. There were only four spots, and when we got there all were available. A few people came and went, but they seemed to be only roadtrippers, stopping over for the night. There was a beach (albeit a rocky one), a boat launch and dock, flushing toilets, and… could it be??? Showers!!! There was, sadly, no campfire, so we had to cook our s’mores over the grille. We ate well, too. I brought these fajita Gardenburgers which were excellent, as well as hot dogs. We even got some Count Chocula™ cereal, which was dee-lish!

On Tuesday when the weather turned sour we went into Bigfork and did some shopping. There was one store there that apparently had a ‘4th of July Sale’ where everything was half off. Unfortunately, everything was triple what someone would rationally pay. So we theorize that the store always has a sale — the next one would be a ‘Dog Days of Summer Sale.’ We had some yummy ice cream, and spent the rest of the day inside the tent because it was rainy and generally crummy.

I couldn’t sleep very well because I kept worrying about bears. This is what spending four years camping in an RV will do to you. Obviously, we were not attacked by any bears.

The next day we went to Polson, and hung around town. I went to John’s music store, but it was strangely closed, with a sign saying it would re-open June 23. Uh-oh. We saw Spider-Man 2 (my second time) and ate at a Chinese place (which gave Carrie food poisoning and me gas).

The drive back was beautiful. I love that area.

Back From Camping

July 8th, 2004

Current Listening: Armchair Martian – “Jessica’s Sucide” (Armchair Martian)

I might broadcast your dull eyes / Breathless like you, I’m despised / And understand I just can’t / Help but stand up to the old lies / This time she’ll do it / Too late my bus is leaving / But I don’t care what you have planned

Great fun, good weather (mostly), food poisoning, riding in an Ambulance’s wake. Expect fotos (or pix — either one works) and stories soon. But I’m still recovering from said food poisoning.

Here’s my arrangement of the National Anthem: National Anthem (1.1 MB)

Review: Spider-Man 2

July 3rd, 2004

Current Listening: REM – “Drive” (Automatic For the People)

Smack, crack, bushwhacked. / Tie another one to the racks, baby. / Hey kids, rock and roll. / Nobody tells you where to go, baby. / What if I ride? What if you walk? / What if you rock around the clock?


The Good: More humor, more conflict, and Aunt May has a bigger role, too.

The Bad: Do you love me? Waaah. Sob. Sob. Kiss. Waaah.

The Ugly: Stan Lee’s cameo was barely recognizable — “Watch out!”



I’ve got a soft place in my heart for Spidey. While not professing to be an extreme fan, I have about sixty comic books, a few of them bought at comic book stores and maybe worth a little bit. So I couldn’t understand when some of my friends, including my girlfriend, said they didn’t really like the first movie. I chalked it up to naïvety — how could they know the greatest superhero in the world?

Then it occured to me that they didn’t have the comic books. They didn’t know about Spidey’s inner struggle. They couldn’t see that his world was as much the world of jobs, homework, and trouble with friends as it was the world of web-slinging.

Well now they can. Call me brash, but Spider-Man 2 makes the original Spider-Man flick look like Batman Forever. It’s bigger, swetter, more dramatic, and the villain is cooler.

That villain would be Otto Octavius, also known as Doctor Octopus. For those who say that a superhero is defined by his villains, Doc Ock is the perfect example. Alfred Molina does a great job playing the altruistic scientist-turned-raging-madman. In this Spider-Man universe (as opposed to the comic books), the arms take over the scientist, turning him into a bystander-killing, Spidey-hating machine. You can still see the struggle in his eyes, though, and at the end we see that Octopus is just as tortured as our favorite webslinger.

Spidey, by the way, has plenty to fret about. He’s losing jobs, his grades are slipping, and Mary Jane, though still interested, is moving on the bigger and better things — namely, J. Jonah Jameson’s astronaut son. A temporary loss of his power — and subsequent tumble from twenty stories up — convinces the webslinger to retire the webs. And thus we are exposed to the internal conflict of the movie — how much should a hero give up for the good of mankind?

But no hero can call it quits for good, can he?

This installment was much truer to the comic books than its predecessor. It even managed to capture the teenage angst of the early Spidey books. My only problem with this angst is that some of it was unnecessary. For example, Peter Parker has a money-hungry landlord with a teenage daughter who obviously has a thing for Pete. One scene, in which he eats chocolate cake with her after hanging up his webs, was extraneous baggage.

Sam Raimi did a great job directing, and even managed to throw in some of his trademarks — namely, Bruce Campbell and a scene with Doc Ock’s living metallic arms that could have been straight out of Evil Dead. Raimi always manages to make humor and action work well together, and this film was no exception. Laughs came during the height of the action and were intersperced with the drama, lightening what otherwise might have been a heavy-handed movie. I wish Spidey had some acidic one-liners for Doc Ock and the other criminals he battles (a comic book trademark), though.

My only other quibble with the film was its ending. I don’t want to give it away, so let’s just say that it had some closure (yet we all know there will be at least two more sequels), but also left us hanging and me worried that the next villain would be Harry Osbourne as the Green Goblin. Sure, the comic book fans might like that, but moviegoers would have to sit through another movie of the Green Goblin’s crappy costume.

And I’d like to see Spidey fly off the handle at some villain and really wail on him. You know? He got some punches thrown at Doc Ock, but I wanna see Spidey kick the crap outta somebody. The villains get to do it to him, but turnabout is fair play, right?

Your Punk Rock Friends

July 2nd, 2004

Current Listening: Swingin’ Udders — “Next in Line” (Fat Music Vol. 3: Physical Fatness)
freedom’s the only thing you need but the truth is something few understand and an unwelcome reality now it’s dark and black and sad and gone you express and repress the thing gone wrong

I just got an e-mail about my article on the Nerds With Instruments website, Dave’s Ten Punk Tips. This letter was of course filled with hatred because they thought I ‘didn’t get it.’ If the person had actually read the essay, he might have found that I was being sarcastic. So far, I’ve gotten about 15 hate-mails, and 1 message from someone who ‘got it.’

So, being the punk expert I am, I have decided to create a guide to punk rockers. As always, send comments to nirvanasongs @ yahoo.com!

The Old-School Punker

hardcoahicuh imbelisus

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.

The Hot Topic Punk

gothicus lame

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.

Whereas Goths are generally sincere, this species really couldn’t give a damn. They listen to AFI, in an effort to look cool. When asked why they like that type of music, they generally reply, ‘because it’s so deep.’

The Skinhead

docmartenicus humongicus

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.

The Emo Brat

cryingabouteverything withtheirstupidglassesola

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.

Whereas the Hot Topic Punk at least is willing to pierce himself to get laid, the Emo Brat only puts on stupid, thick-framed emo glasses. Their haircuts, moussed and sometimes spike, are vestiges of their jock heritage. They spend most of their time on weblogs, writing about how their (often) imaginary girlfriend just dumped them and writing stupid, stupid poetry about it. They like to wear workshirts too and bray about how they’re ‘so totally individual’, despite the fact that every one of them listens to Thursday, Thrice, and other such bands with stupid names.

These punks often keep journals about their suffering, and whine about never getting jobs, despite the fact that they refuse to work a day in their lives. Most are in college, and try to justify their bad grades with excuses ‘depression.’ But they’re not fooling anybody.

High School Punks

punkrockus knowitallis

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.

Fortunately, this is a short-lived species. After about two years, they realize how stupid and idealistic they were, and either give up music for real work or turn into a crusty Old-School Punk.

Remember, nobody is as punk as me, nobody.

Questions, comments, disagree? E-mail: nirvanasongs@yahoo.com.

Me The Woman

June 30th, 2004

Current Listening NOFX – “The Decline” (The Decline)

I wish I had a schilling, / For every senseless killing, I’d buy a government. / America’s for sale / And you can get a good deal on it / And make a healthy profit

Somebody mistook me for a woman today. Someone called, asking for my dad, “Steve Short.” I said he wasn’t home, and they asked if I were “Mrs. Short.” Now, last time I checked, I had gone through puberty and my voice sounds like a man’s, at least enough like a man’s for the raging sissy-boy I am.

Of course, this isn’t the first time this has happened:

It all adds up…we feel 16% certain that you are…
A Woman!
Compared to others…


70% more male than you6% like you24% more female than you

TheSpark tells me that I’m a woman; in fact, there are only 24% of people who’ve taken this test who are more womanly than me. This means that either 1. an army of short-haired, boot-wearing, man-hating she-males has taken the test or 2. I am a nancy boy. I tend to agree with the second conclusion, mainly because I’m sure that valley girl, makeup-ensconsed, prissy teen queens use TheSpark. And me.

So, in order to combat my unmanliness, I have come up with this six-point plan to combat my sissiness:

1. Watch More Sporting Events

Since I was a child, I have been horribly deficient in the watching-other-people-have-fun category. To my knowledge, there 156070 x108 activities I would rather do than watching sports. Call me crazy, but I find nothing entertaining about a bunch of grown men running around in tight clothes and tackling each other. Sexy, maybe, but not entertaining.

2. Stop Asking Directions

I know this is a stereotype, but I’m not taking any chances. From now on, I will pick a direction and keep driving that way, never giving up or admitting I’m wrong or lost, no matter what, even if I’m going to New Mexico and I can see penguins out the window.

3. Start Eating Meat

I’ll level with you all. I stopped eating meat to get chicks. It’s a great conversation starter! But it’s just not manly. especially here in Montana, where everybody, even the girls, hunt and kill deer.

4. Start Working on Cars

This might be difficult, because I don’t have a car of my own and I’m terrified to touch my parents’ cars. So I figure I can start working on other peoples’ cars — people I don’t evne know. I’ll be like the car fairy, flitting from hood to hood, initially damaging the cars I tinker with but eventually being able to do some sort of repair, until I get shot.

5. Start using the word ‘fag’

Nothing shows how manly I am more than throwing hateful phrases at others because of my own deeply-hidden homosexual tendencies!

6. Start grabbing the breasts of random women

I’m really looking forward to this one.

7. Build Things

The only things I’ve ever built involve Legos. I want to be able to create monstrocities, things that can destroy major metropolitan areas.

And, most important of all:

8. Stop Writing in a Blog

I mean, c’,mon!!! It’s basically a diary, right?

PS — Dear diary! Today I ran into Judy Armstrong, and she is SOOOOO HAWT!!!1!!!onehundredeleven!1!!1 I hope she asks me out, but I just can’t wait… I’m sooo sad!!! LOLOLOLOL!!!

Crossword

June 30th, 2004

A pattern of explosions, like Zeus doing his laundry,
and a festive drop of a thick-again, thin-again hat:
these, and a million more. When shutters pull
apart to reveal a pearly white something, or
when a mop of fine silk is contained,
I am content.

Stars explode across the sky,
until they are outmaneuvered by the sun,
casting back the cold emptiness from whence it came.
Shadows crawl to life, and a din of dark-damped sounds
emerges from nowhere.
The earth pirouettes in an intricate
number with her partners, choreographed by a madman
with an eye for numbers but not logic.
Somewhere across the globe all manner of
creatures peer at one another before rushing to
(and through) their days, until they retire.
Shadows cry out as their souls stretch to infinity,
and crickets chirp a symphony of questions.

All that remains of our scurrying brothers
is a series of headlamps, foolishly mimicking
their parents – the stars.

Foolish. It’s all so foolish when you
and I are here, and the rest
equates to a crossword best left
unfinished.

Camping Galore

June 29th, 2004

Current Listening: The Queers — “Surf Goddess” (Surf Goddess)
There’s no doubt that you’re just about / The prettiest girl that I’ve seen / You look so cool hanging by the pool / You’re the only girl for me / Surf goddess, I’m in love with you”

I just finished up the website for my family’s reunion at Priest Lake, which can be viewed at www.shortfamily.net. I had a program that did most of the stuff, but — me being the perfectionist that I am — I went through and changed the style a little bit, using a handy little relative expression technology called grep, so it only took me a couple of hours instead of a couple of days.

Carrie called last night and said that she has three days off next week, on Monday through Wednesday, which is perfect! We were planning on going camping, and the perfect time off for her would have been three days off early in the week.

My solo album, Pick Your Poison, is finished. I will make up some copies sometime, then offer to sell them right from this very website! I’d give them away, but it costs money to print and ship, so there you go. In the meanwhile, you can listen to the three MP3s in the litle bar to the left.

I watched Adaptation last night. It was pretty good, I thought; and the irony at the end was very fitting. The whole Nicholas-Cage-playing-his-own-twin-brother thing threw me at first (it was, after all, a Charlie Kaufman film), but I managed to adjust. Expect a review soon!

Calling All Sperm Donors

June 28th, 2004

Current Listening: Bad Religion – “Billy” (No Control)
“But Billy was a lunatic just barking at the moon / and his brain was totally wasted / He then exchanged his friends for a needle and a spoon / And threw his future away”

Someone has got to tell the people that this whole cellphone thing has gone too far. Someone besides me, because this blog routinely gets fewer readers than can be counted on two eyes. It’s intolerable! Everywhere I go, you see some boneheads yacking to their bonehead friends on the bonephone. Never about intelligent or particularly pertinent stuff, either. The only conversations I hear on cell phones I hear involve drinking or the actual act of talking on the cellphone. One time I was crossing the Oval at UM and I saw a girl talking to her friend on the phone. “I’m right over here, Stacy,” she said (I assume her name is Stacy), “can you see me waving?”

And these people play games on these damn things, and take pictures. They take pictures. With a phone. And some of them play MP3’s! Then there are the ringtones. I tell you what, nothing’s cooler than telling the world how downright emo you are when your girlfriend calls you to break up and your cellphone’s ringtone is set to play a song by Thursday or Thrice or Story of the Year.


The spermetozoa: Its only known enemy: the ten-minute “Goodbye, I wuv you! No I wuv you!” Boyfriend/Girlfriend valediction.”

But something soon might take care of these people. According to some study or other, cellphone use can cut a man’s sperm count up to 30%. Of course, all the phones the scientists looked at were Plutonium, but that’s beside the point. The point is that, finally, the gene responsible for the need to always have a phone on you may be weeded from the gene pool.

And I can finally be spared the indignity of telling someone I don’t have a cellphone and getting ‘that look.’ For years now I’ve felt like the kid in elemetary school whose family doesn’t ‘believe in’ TV. You know, the kid who ate worms and now is probably a running for Congress on a sinister party ticket, like the Green Party? That’s how I’ve felt. But not anymore! Now I can look down on cellphone-using males: “No, I don’t have a cellphone, but at least I can knock somebody up in the old-fashioned sense.”

Of course, this could be a good thing. Cellphones could be used as contraceptives! This is a double boon — the guy doesn’t get a girl pregnant, and if somebody calls at the right time and the ringer is set to vibrate, the guy won’t have to do as much work!

Shit. Looks like not having a cellphone has screwed me over. Again.

Review: Bad Religion – The Empire Strikes First

June 27th, 2004


The Good: Everything Bad Religion is known for: catchy, thoughful, fast songs, plus a little bit of musical experimentation.

The Bad: Too many tom-tom breaks in the bridges.

The Ugly: Ewww — black, white and red for the cover? Since when did Bad Religion have to knock off the White Stripes for a color scheme?



Bad Religion’s got a strike against them.That strike, of course, is the fact that they’ve been around for over two decades. With this longevity comes a stigma: of course, the old stuff is better. Ask any crusty punk who was at a show in ’88, and he’ll tell you that How Could Hell Be Any Worse was better than anything Bad Religion is putting out now.

But I say screw that. Why give a band demerits for having longevity. AC/DC’s been around forever, as well as the Rolling Stones… well, maybe they deserve a few. Anyway, Bad Religion should not be docked because they’ve been on this earth longer than I have. If a band gets docked, it should be for writing shitty songs or not showing the least bit of change.

Thankfully, Bad Religion has evolved artistically. The Empire Strikes First has its share of warp-speed songs under two minutes, but it also has a few slower number that give you a pensive respite from the breakneck tempos. The first song — if we really can call it a song — is a slow, vaugely regggae (the extra ‘g’ is for great!)-ish intro to the album’s first song proper, “Sinister Rouge.” This track demonstrates what BR does best — soaring vocal harmonies (there’s even an opera singer adding heft to them), high-octance but tasteful guitar solos, and pissed-off-but-still-melodic vocals that actually have something to say — in this case, a rant against the Catholic church, “Comin’ back for more / To even the score.”

The record maintains its pace until thingsd slow down a bit with the first single, “Los Angeles is Burning.” The single must be making some sort of impact, because my friend Patrick, who only listens to the radio, mentioned it to me. It’s catchy and in a major key, which is a rare occurance for Bad Religion. It’s also pretty straightforward for a song written by Brett. I think it’s actually about fires in Los Angeles. Anyway, I can’t help but singing along.

Next up on the list of artistic changes is rap. Yes, rap, thanks to Sage Francis, another Epitaph artist. I’m sure some punx (notice kewl ‘x’ in spelling) screamed ‘Sellouts!’ upon first hearing this, but I like it. I’m not a fan of rap, but it fits the song somehow. There’s some nice interplay between Graffin and Francis, and it shows BR branching out. Hmmm… maybe next time, an album of polka music? Anyway, the rap comes on top of a little tom-tom riff courtesy of Brooks Wackerman, which would be okay but the next song, “God’s Love,” has the same damn thing in its bridge. C’mon, guys, couldn’t you put one song in between these two?

The First really slow song is “To Another Abyss.” This song’s got some great vocal harmonies — when Greg and Brett (maybe?) sing “purity” together it gives me goosebumps. The song’s 4 minutes long, but doesn’t really drag. The only problem I have with it is that the little lead guitar line (it sounds vaugely like a slide guitar, but it’s just a ghost bend) that comes in at the end of the chorus and ends the song sounds just like the lead guitar line from “Superheroes” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Every time I hear it, I think “I’ve done a lot / God knows I’ve tried / To find the truth / I’ve even lied.” I love the way this song ends — just the fading chord with feedback rising, a little groove on the ride cymbal, and then the guitar hook — God bless it — again.

The title track is another slow one, but what a damn-catchy chorus. Like Aretha Franklin, Bad Religion knows that when you spell something out in a song (in this case, E-M-P-I-R-E), people will sing along. This song, like “Let Them Eat War,” is an attack on America’s policy in Iraq. Bad Religion rarely is so blatant in its politics, so this is a nice change. Unfortunately, this song also has a tom-tom break in its bridge. Gettin’ a little old, guys. The album ends strongly, with a slow, introspective song that has some neat poetic devices (one rhyme sound, “said”), some poetry that I’m guessing was written by Gurewitz (“Beyond Electric Dreams”), which dissolves into feedback and overlapping-vocal madness, and the last song — “Live Again (The Fall of Man)”, which is a great way to end the record — Fast, bouncy, catchy, and with a serious message — if you could give it all up for heaven, would you?

Except for my stupid little quibbles, this is a great album. I think it’s better than pretty much anything they’ve put out. True, it’s not montonously fast and there are some artistic experiments, but they lean in the right direction. This is one of Bad Religion’s top two or three records ever.