my careless contagion

In my world, this song always existed. Indeed, it was released in 1977, the year I was born. It was covered numerous times, including by NOFX (about two minutes in length, complete with the expected punk-rock irreverence, and with some vocals by Bad Religion's Greg Graffin). It's a good song and robust, having survived several decades. I guess I could say some of the same about myself since we're the same age. It's one of those songs that builds momentum. It starts fairly quiet and slow but eventually takes off like a jet plane. It has a fairly fast tempo for a classic rock song. The song has so much momentum, it simply fades out at the end, which is the easiest way to end a song like this. The cover art is curious, especially if your eyes are drawn to the dangly bits of the man's outfit. I wonder whose idea that was.  The vocals are perfect. I don't even know how he does some parts. The yelping inflection on "go" and "your" gets me every ti...

Ah, Depeche Mode. I used to listen to this band a lot when traveling. The sound was conducive to flying over pavement of various vibrations through the shifting American landscapes, one moment surrounded by concrete and skyscrapers and the next cornfields and pastures. I could chose several songs by this band, but this one saw a resurgence in popularity because it was featured on HBO's The Last of Us, which I tried to watch but realized it was yet another soap opera masquerading as an adventure in zombie land. The action got less and less and the talking got to be too much and after the gay episode, I had enough and quit watching. It seems all entertainment is a vehicle for agenda now. Needless to say, The Last of Us let me down.  And that's what the song is about. People letting us down. Or not letting us down. Whichever your perspective. I recently tried to get in touch with the parents of one of my best friends growing up. We had been talking through Facebook, but my Faceboo...

You may ask yourself what the heck I'm doing writing about this song. We'll get there. But, first, listen to it so as to familiarize yourself. You've probably heard it. I used the lyric video because I want to talk about the lyrics.  The lyrics are vague, to say the least, but they bring up a few things I'd like to dissect. The lyrics are almost like brushstrokes. They are clumsy but give an idea of what the song is about. First, the mention of a star. The Bible mentions stars, and it often refers to angelic beings, usually fallen angels. So that's interesting.  The lyrics also talk about Atlantis, a supposed antediluvian civilization. I'm not going to say Atlantis didn't exist. I believe it or something similar to our modern-day myth of Atlantis certainly did exist. And it was wicked, otherwise God wouldn't have wiped it out. It is always referred to wistfully because mankind lost so much knowledge when it was destroyed, the same way people talk about t...

Thinking about this space where I spent so much time and expended so much mental and emotional energy, I can't help but liken it to something. I wrote an awful lot about a girl here. I was quite taken with her. I fell in love with her, and that love burst forth on these pages, year after year. I am still in love with her, though I know her differently now.  I wrote, not knowing whether she ever saw a word. I believed she did, and that's why I continued to write for so many years. This was my message in a bottle.  With a message in a bottle, we're never sure if it reaches its intended destination, if the one person in the world we want to read it actually does. I never knew. Did she ever feel those things I felt for her? Did she know how much I truly loved her? Did she read once or a hundred times or not at all? Did it make any difference what I said or didn't say? The hours I spent crafting my words, did it change anything? Did it make her bad days more tolerable? Were ...

The song doesn't matter. It's a good song. A catchy pop song. I don't know if it's a love song. It's a when-something-good-is-about-to-end song, maybe. A good radio song. It's actually quite hard to craft a simple song like this. It's much harder to leave it simple than to embellish it and  adulterate the heart of a song with too much music. A lot of people don't realize that a somewhat narrow band of music is appropriate for radio because of the frequencies used to broadcast. Some sounds don't come over the airwaves very well. When I listen to songs for, say, a post like this, I use my Bose headphones because the sound is better than the iMac speakers. But, I also know I'm listening to a digital reproduction of a performance. If you listen to something such a CD, which almost no one does anymore, you have to realize it's compressed. It's a digital copy of a live event. So it's ones and zeroes. All the quirky, spacey sounds are lopped...

My time has finally come. All these years I wished to live like a real, free man in a country where men are men and women are women. Now I can!  This link explains .  My, how times have changed. It used to be men and women lined up to move to a free country like America or perhaps second to that, Canada. Now the sanest country on the planet is Russia. My dreams have come true. Who's packing with me?  Thank you for reading. And God bless. Christian blog:  a-better-hope.blogspot.com And my other blog, None Dare Call It Treason.  

While this blog may be dead, as I lost my biggest drive for writing here last year, there are still things I ponder and wish to share (even if no one reads them). I believe people can change, but our personalities are mostly set by the age of 8 (and perhaps even as early as age 5). I recently retook a personality test I took years ago. I believe I posted the results here, as well. Today, bored out of my gourd, I took it again to see if anything changed. I know my behaviors and much inside changed over the last four years but was curious if there was an effect on personality, as well. The answer is no. My personality remains the same. However, the percentages used to calculate it changed. No, there probably isn't a way to quantify the amount of internal change I experienced in four years. It's up to me to keep track of what God did. As the test results point out, it's important for me to keep striving for improvement. It's eerie how many things the results get right. It...

There's something about her. I can't always put my finger on it. Sometimes I can name it. Sometimes not. It just melts me. Every time. Listen, I'm a man. Been through hard things. Hard times. Endure hard things every day. Wade through pain and frustrations that would make many crack. Sometimes I feel like cracking, too. Sometimes I have to pray hard and fast through strangled tears just to make it through. I've worked more years than those I work with have been alive. I'm tough. Rough around the edges. Stoic and brutish and sometimes cynical and hard. But there is something about that woman that melts me. Every time. All that shellac and veneer. All that painstaking patina. Gone when she's near. She has no idea, I'm sure. I become soft as a baby around her. My heart beats stronger. My mind is set ablaze. The shrapnel in my flesh doesn't hurt. Tiredness in my bones doesn't intrude. I become gooey in her presence. Like clay in her hands. The best parts...

Yes, I know what you're thinking. I'm off my rocker. (Actually, it's a glider.) But whatever. Here we go with another trip down memory lane. And if you don't remember any of this, you are forgiven. I've scoured the far reaches of the internet to bring these shiny trinkets to your attention. As I sit and write, I'm on three different allergy medicines, so my perception of reality is a little skewed. So, sit back and enjoy yourself as we categorically make fun of yesteryear. From bad puns (like Hare Jordan) to bad taste, it's all here. Some of it may make you angrily emote, as this man did , and say, "What the hell is even that?" To that, I say, "Daddy, chill." And enjoy.  Adopt-a-Nerds. It just bothers me this appears grammatically incorrect. Technically, it's not, because the name of the candy is Nerds, but it doesn't look right. Maybe that's the point. And why were they called nerds? Because they were unattractive? I ate a lo...