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Wednesday, 18 February 2009

  • WORDS IN THE SOUTH

    Ah yes... "Words in the South." Not to be confused with the Jeff Foxworthy bit of the same name. Of course, the bit is funny. He shares how southerners slaughter the English language and we laugh and laugh. We laugh because we think, "Ho! Ho! Surely no humans actually talk like this!" However the terrifying reality is that people actually do talk like that with frightening regularity. Working at an auto parts store I have the misfortune to wait on some of the dumbest people ever. My service to you, dear reader, is a little glossary of words often spoken in the shouth. So if you find yourself in some rural area and need to talk about cars with someone, God help you, you'll know what to say. I will write the word as it is said by southerners then the actual word they're trying to say.

    1. Rasinall - "Racing Oil"

    2. Skribiduh - "Distributor"

    3. Skrainuh - "Strainer"

    4. Ford Air Condintioner - "Ford Expedition"

    5. Haa-sin - "Housing"

    6. Ford Expra or Ford Assfire - "Ford Aspire"

    7. Skrubbah Cap - "Distributor Cap"

    8. Sinnuh Ling - "Center Link"

    9. Roterey - a "Rotor" of any type

    10. Brake Shoes - brakes of any type

    There you go. I hope you never have to use these words!

Saturday, 06 December 2008

  • WORST. CHRISTMAS SONG. EVER.

    I am what Scrooge would call a "Christmas Lunatic." I love the season, the cold weather, the music... just about everything. So if anyone can spot a bad Christmas song it's me. Among my top three least favorite Christmas songs is "The Christmas Shoes." Whoever wrote this song should be commended because it is a spectacular failure. It's the type of song that is so bad and so awful that I can't help but smile when it comes on. It's so bad I've grown past hating it. So in the spirit of the season (and the spirit of my usual sarcasm) I'm going to post the lyrics and then add my own comments. Enjoy!

    "The Christmas Shoes" by Some Guy I Hope I Never Meet

    It was almost Christmas time
    There I stood in another line
    Trying to buy that last gift or two
    Not really in the Christmas mood
    Standing right in front of me
    Was a little boy waiting anxiously
    Pacing around like little boys do (How is that exactly? I've never seen a little boy pace around unless he has to pee.)
    And in his hands he held
    A pair of shoes
    And his clothes were worn and old
    He was dirty from head to toe (Apparently the little boy was fresh from his Oliver Twist audition.)
    And when it came his time to pay
    I couldn't believe what I heard him say

    Sir I wanna buy these shoes for my Momma please
    It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size (And he knows her exact shoe size. He must play a lot of "dress up" with mom's clothes because I never knew my mom's shoe size when I was little.)
    Could you hurry Sir?
    Daddy says there's not much time
    You see, she's been sick for quite a while
    And I know these shoes will make her smile
    And I want her to look beautiful
    If Momma meets Jesus, tonight. (Wow... this whole chorus is so wrong!  This kid's mom is on her deathbed and all he can do is worry about whether or not she has proper footwear? And since when did Jesus care about what shoes we had on? Is there some passage in the Bible that says, "Yea, and Jesus separated the sheep who had nice shoes from the goats who had ugly shoes. Good shoes did thusly go to the right and ugly shoes to the left. And unto those who had Jimmy Choo shoes the Lord spake, "Yea verily, you...look...FABULOUS!")

    They counted pennies for what seem like years
    And cashier says son there's not enough here
    He searches is pockets franticly (All the money probably fell out of the pockets of his old nasty clothes.)
    And he turned and he looked at me
    And he said Momma made Christmas good at our house
    Most years she just did without (So his mom was the big martyr of the family that sat around and said, "Oh, no don't mind me I don't need any cookies" or "Oh don't mind me I'll just die.")
    Tell me Sir
    What am I gonna do?
    Some how I’ve got to buy her these Christmas shoes (Because, as many important studies have shown, Christmas Shoes cure terminal illness.)

    So I layed the money down
    I just had to help him out (Uh oh! I think someone's gonna have a staring role in one of the verses to "Thank You" by Ray Boltz!)
    And I'll never forget
    The look on his face
    When he said Momma's (gonna be dead but she's) gonna look so great.

    Sir I wanna buy these shoes, for my Momma please
    It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size
    Could you hurry Sir?
    Daddy says there's not much time (Yeah, there's not much time so you should definitely run off in a futile attempt to find her really nice death shoes instead of spending quality time with your mom in her twilight hours.)
    You see, she's been sick for quite a while
    And I know these shoes will make her smile (I can just hear her now, "Oh well... it's not that cure for cancer that I asked for but It'll do pig.")
    And I want her to look beautiful,
    If Momma meets Jesus tonight. (Jesus takes the hot chicks on one date before the judgement.)

    I knew I caught a glimpse of heavens love as he thanked me and ran out.
    I know that God had sent that little boy to remind me
    What Christmas is all about (So...yeah... what a pleasant thought. God killed this little kid's mom to show some ungrateful moron what Christmas is all about. What the heck? I thought Christmas songs were supposed to be uplifting! God hates it so much when we're mildly annoyed at waiting in lines that he'll KILL random moms just to shut us up!)

    Sir I wanna buy these shoes for my Momma please
    It's Christmas Eve and these shoes are just her size
    Could you hurry Sir?
    Daddy says there's not much time
    You see she's been sick for quite a while
    And I know these shoes will make her smile
    And I want her to look beautiful
    If Momma meets Jesus tonight (If you haven't heard the song, this part is sung by children. It's usually at this point that I'm laughing out loud at the absurdity of the song so I don't know how good the kids actually are.)

    I want her to look beautiful
    If Momma meets Jesus tonight

    (One final note before I go. Go back and read the lyrics again but this time exchange any instance of the word "shoes" for "boobs". It makes the song so much more entertaining!)

    Merry Christmas!

Thursday, 13 November 2008

  • MY TEN MOST INFLUENTIAL ALBUMS

    In keeping with the musical theme of the last post, I'm going to post the ten albums that I think were the most influential to me over the course of my life. Why am I doing this? Why not? Truth is, there's not much to do when you're making deliveries so I think of stuff like this. These albums are in chronological order in terms of when I found them, not necessarily when they came out.

    1. In God We Trust by Stryper - I remember when Stryper was on MTV all the time. They played "I Believe in You" and "Always There For You" constantly. It was because of this that I originally wanted the album. So.... I begged my mom to get it for me and I nearly wore that thing out listening to it. I think it was the first tape I ever got that was really "mine." My collection of hundreds of tapes and CDs began with this one.

    2. ...And Justice For All by Metallica - Ahhh yes... thanks again to MTV for introducing me into another band. The video for "One" was unlike anything I'd really ever seen before. The song was melodic yet brutally heavy and the video was creepy without being over-the-top shocking. I got this album shortly after this video came out and man...... I just couldn't believe how awesome it was. I still can't believe it to this day. This disc was the fire in which my metal heart was forged! \m/

    3. Silence is Madness by Bride - After I became a Christian I labored under the mistaken impression that I could only listen to Christian bands. Silence is Madness was my first "Christian" album (yes I know technically Stryper was Christian, but this was different). This disc was still an awesome slab of metal with a little blues thrown in. It retained the gothic, darker tones of the previous albums (though I didn't know that at the time) and really introduced me to the entire Christian metal scene. To this day I'm still a fan of Bride, Deliverance, Tourniquet, etc. because of this disc.

    4. A Saved Man (In the Jungle) by S.F.C. - If you were a young Christian man in the late 80's/early 90's the quality of Christian rap available ranged from "completely laughable" to "almost tolerable." That all changed with S.F.C. I remember sitting around the table with some friends when we first popped this bad boy in. When we heard the scratchin' of the first track ("Whatever") our jaws hit the floor. This was actual rap. Not some white boy or old Italian man trying to rap. This was honest to goodness rap. It was also pretty innovative at the time because lyricist Super C didn't pull any punches - he preached hard to unbelievers then turned around and called out the church for its hypocrisy, especially regarding race. I don't listen to much rap these days, but this album will always be a favorite.

    5. Once Dead by Vengeance Rising - So I put in this tape and the first thing I heard was lead vocalist Roger Martinez growling the Lord's prayer. "Cool", I thought until I realized that he did the whole album that way. I didn't like it at first, but the brutal riffing and blues-inspired leads could not be denied. Vengeance Rising became one of my favorite bands and paved the way for me to appreciate even more extreme forms of metal.

    6. Circle Slide by The Choir - It's amazing what a young man will do for a pretty girl. I was at the Christian music festival Kingdom Bound with a friend. We saw this girl with a King's X shirt on and asked her where she got it. That lead to a whole conversation about music and she suggested we go see a band called The Choir. Now, at this point I was into METAL if it was soft or quiet I wanted no part of it. However, because I wanted to hang out with this chick, I went anyway. To my surprise The Choir turned out to be a great band. I bought Circle Slide later and listened to it all the time. It was the first time I really took a chance and expanded my musical horizons and led me to become the audiophile I am today.

    7. Undeceived by Extol - I went through a period in my life where I didn't listen to music much. After a while though, once God had dealt with the issue that I had with music, I slowly started getting into it again. This was probably the first non-worship CD I got after that period and proved to be the beginning of my musical renaissance.

    8. The Book of Secrets by Loreena McKennitt - I got this about the same time as Extol. I heard "The Mummer's Dance" on MTV and really liked it so I went out and got this. This proved to expand my horizons again into territory outside of tradition rock music. I immediately connected with the emotions of songs like "Skellig" and "Dante's Prayer." Also, a musical interpretation of "The Highwayman" made me feel all smart.

    9. Good Apollo, I'm Burning Star IV by Coheed and Cambria - I've been known to be a person who is very nostalgic about the past and this bleeds into my musical tastes. I was dating Lindy when she mentioned that she wanted this CD. So, in an effort to impress her, I bought it for her. It took awhile to grow on me but after awhile I began to appreciate the band's fusion of an emo-y sound and classic rock and metal. Since then I've been a lot more receptive to Lindy's taste in the newer music and I find that if I give anything a chance, it just might be cool.

    10. Synchestra by The Devin Townsend Band - So I heard Devin Townsend on Ayreon's The Human Equation disc and really liked him. When I saw this disc in Best Buy I bought it hoping to hear something new... boy did I ever. Devin Townsend is like, I don't know, controlled chaos sometimes. The sound is so dense - filled with distorted guitars, keys, horns, vocals, and it all comes together to make something awe-inspiring. Sometimes I wonder what the music is like in heaven, and I think that Devin Townsend comes pretty close! lol

    Well there they are. Hope you run out and check out some of these bands... but I know you won't! Rawk on! \m/

Saturday, 27 September 2008

  • FAVORITE MUSIC OF 2008

    Here are some of my favorite albums of 2008. Not all of them necessarily came out in 2008, they're just what I'm listening to this year... and they're not in any particular order.

    1. Ayreon 01011001 - I love just about anything Ayreon and the new disc is no exception. Any band who can take ten different music styles, cram them together, and manage to create memorable music has my support. I don't think it's quite as spectacular as The Human Equation but that's like saying "The Godfather 2" wasn't as good as "The Godfather."

    2. Saviour Machine Saviour Machine I & II - This band has been out for a loooong time but I finally got into them this year. I can't believe it took me this long to appreciate this band. I love Eric Clayton's over-the-top Bowie-esqe operatic vocals and I love the intricate guitar parts. Not only that they're probably one of the few bands that can make an entirely piano song and still have my attention.

    3. Metallica Death Magnetic - Welcome back Metallica! After the mess that was St. Anger they come back a few years later and give me what's now my favorite album of theirs since ...And Justice For All. Is it perfect? Not really... "The Unforgiven III" isn't a very good song but beside from that the rest of the album is 100% pure metal. It makes my heart sing!

    4. Lost Dogs Scenic Routes - Scenic Routes has been out since when... '91? I've been a fan of the band for almost as long and yet this year is the first time I've heard this disc. Every time I hear the Dogs w/ Gene Euegene (R.I.P.) I'm reminded of how much I miss him and wish he was still here writing music.

    5. Paramore RIOT! - Okay so Paramore isn't much more than your average teeny bopper rock band, but NOW they're writing hooks. Pretty good ones if you ask me.

    6. Panic at the Disco Pretty.Odd. - They're not emo any more kids... now they want to be the Beatles! Okay... I'm in. Seriously though, I do enjoy the change of direction to more upbeat music and they lyrics aren't all about dysfunctional relationships.

    Here are some of my favorite songs of 2008...

    1. "Handlebars" by Flobots - Flobots is a band that includes a white rapper and a girl playing the violin. It sounds weird and it kind of is... it's also a dang catchy song too.

    2. "How I Could Just Kill A Man" by Charlotte Sometimes - This is a pretty mellow acoustic radio rock tune but something about it makes me like it but I haven't been able to put my finger on it.

    3. "American Boy" by Estelle ft. Kanye West - Yep... Kanye West is a total jerk but he does know what he's doing with music.

    4. "Devour" by Shinedown - Mmmm  a hard driving rock song with a monster hook.... tasty! Seems vaguely Devin Townsend-esque if you ask me.

    5. "Shut Up and Let Me Go" by The Ting Tings - Why is it that computer and ipod commercials have the coolest music?

    6. "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz - I didn't like his music too much at first but after hearing a few interviews with him and started to like him as a person... somehow that made me appreicate his music more.

    Now for a change of pace.... My least favorite music...um... things of 2008.

    1. "All Summer Long" by Kid Rock - I don't even have words to describe my hatred of this song. He just stole two other songs and put them together - and when I mean "stole" I don't mean "sampled," "borrowed," or "paid homage to," I mean STOLE. Ick!

    2. Metallica haters. Sorry folks Death Magnetic is freaking awesome. You can whine about the mastering (which isn't perfect I admit) or complain that you can't hear the bass (since when have we ever been able to hear the bass on a Metallica album?) but you can't escape the fact that this disc rocks.

    3. Guitar Hero/Rock Band obsessives. Okay I understand the appeal of these games, after all, I do own Guitar Hero. However, to those kids who can play Dragonforce's "Through the Fire and the Flames" on expert with their back turned to the screen I have one thing to say. If you took all the time and money you spent mastering that song on a game you could've used it to master that song in real life. Then you'd have an actual skill. As it is you're just some stupid kid with too much time on his hands and, obviously, no girlfriend.

    4. The decline of used CD shops. This really isn't anything but my personal annoyance. Used to be you could walk into a store and find a couple of great CDs, but with the rise of digital distribution it's hard to find anything anymore. Time marches on, I know... but it breaks my little collector heart.

    There you go... have a nice day!

Sunday, 24 August 2008

  • CREATIVITY

    So lately I've been writing and recording some songs. They're pretty rough because all I have is this cheapie microphone and a free sound recorder, but it's still fun. I finally put chords to a song that I wrote for Lindy like two years ago. My goal is to have some more songs done and can hopefully put them on a CD.

    So.... at some point you'll get to purchase my debut CD Autumn Rain EP.  The songs that I'm working on are thus follows...

    1. Walk With Me

    2. Stones

    3. Autumn Rain (instrumental)

    4. Unnamed rock/metal tune.

    So anyone know any studios near Statesboro?

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