A Note
For those of you who read, follow, subscribe to, advertise in or otherwise have an interest in Antimatters: The Voice of Songwriting and the Arts in Lower Manhattan...

Although I shall remain as Editor, I shall not be hosting the online version of this zine. (I have a band to put together and stuff to write - it's all I can do to keep things up as it stands...) Corey Maass at Damn Fine Music is a rather more efficient and effective webdude than I, and in fact can lay out and update a readable web version more quickly than I could. I happily and eagerly cede the reins to him.

He's already got a version of the site up that looks fantastic. Go, boyee!

"Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of sXXXch, or the right of the people peaceably to XXXemble, and to peXXXion the government for a redress of grievances."

From the Foil the Filters Contest (via Metafilter)

It’s About Time
The United States is the laughing stock of the rest of the developed world for its attitudes toward the health of its citizens. The FDA's decision to finally allow RU-486 into the country legally is only about 10 years overdue.

I don’t know how much Bill Clinton actually was involved in this, and it’s not like I have a terribly high opinion of him anyways, but he (or his ever-present People) always had this action high on his agenda (since the third day of his administration, according to the article). The fact that the FDA finally decided on this right now, 5 weeks from election day ... well, it smacks of opportunism, yeah, but it shouldn’t take away from the fact that the U.S. has taken one small step out of the stone age here.

Now, what’s next? How about, oh, universal health care? An end to homelessness? Fewer prisons? Ending the war on drugs? Election Reform?

Something else? Anyone?

Now whoever came up with this idea deserves an award, not prosecution. Sure, it's evil, and wrong on so many levls, but I'm sure cash-strapped precincts all over the world are thinking, hmmmm... maybe we could do this...

The Sound of One Band Sucking
Daria, on a trip to South Park:

Listen here, Joan of Ass! IF you WERE to actually attempted to touch me with that little piece of fat YOU call a tongue, I would highly suggest you stick it out of your brain nestled between your butt cheeks and use it WISELY. You can cuss, swear and demonstrate your vocabulary FINESSE to your cow chip of a hearts delight but if you try to challenge me in this debate with your uniquely DRY wit, I will have to scrape the walls with your shattered brain cells with my verbal boot. And THEN, after I pull your heart out to feed the rats in this restaurant, you'll pry for the hounds of hell to chase your decapitated soul to oblivion than having yours VERY truly sewing your lips shut with my razor-sharp words. However, your pleading would be for all for not as I'll end this CONSTRUCTIVE debate by using your blood to clean the trail of your oily residue you just slimed in here and laugh as your brain horrifyingly begs for mercy as I use your COLORFULLY chosen words as a butcher knife and write my name all over these walls for those who are foolish enough to stick their withered tongue were (putting more weight on the last few words) IT....DOESN'T....BELONG!

As a script for either show, it's way too long, and perhaps someone could have tried a bit of spell check, but it's snortworthy anyways.

And oh, do I love it when cartoon characters talk dirty. [*sigh*]

Of course, there are still some things that I won't discuss, but I'll try, you know? It's going to take a while before I get comfortable enough with this whole blog thing that I'll be able to embarrass even the people closest to me, the people I truly love.

But the devil on my other shoulder says, that's what the world is waiting for. The Great Collective Embarrassment.

And I'm all, what world, dicknose? This is currently a repository of my own self-doubt, a catharsis, if you will. At a certain point, I'll start ranting about stuff, hopefully soon cos even this little tete-a-(meme)-tete is taxing my shrivelled little attention span, and then maybe this thing will be worth picking up real often like the blogs I love most (like, oh, Ethel and EOD, just to say I named a couple).

It just bugs me that after all these years of writhing, I still haven't figured out what the hell it is I'm writing about. That can't be right.

One thing that gets me off better than astroglide around the drilled orifice of an overripe watermelon (sorry for oversharing) is that hitch in a good pop song, instead of the beat falling on the whoomp you expect it to fall on, it hits a beat later, and it sounds like surf breaking, even if it's Steve Earle or Bob Mould (or whatever ultranonsurf band you can mention), the big push comes not on the end of one passage it comes at the beginning of the next, and fuck you if you think that's simple, I got news for ya, airbody's IQ points all pooled together in this world & the next too ain't enough to cause pure joy, and that pure joy is exactly what I'm here to find, or at least what I listen to rock and roll for, cos no one with head properly removed from rectum will think for more than one altruistic second that rock and roll will change the world (and yet it does, all the time, all the fucking time, and ain't that a bitch?)

And of course, instead of writing like I promised myself (and both my friends), I'm staring at Big Brother's Live Updates like some freak watching a slow, elegant car crash. Sure, it's boring, but so's my life. And I think I remember Alfred Hitchcock saying something about a straight conversation between two people for five minutes is boring as hell, but if you put a bomb under the table, suddenly it's interesting, even if nothing else changes. Well, if you put a half a million under the house, suddenly it's enough. And they're such nice people too. Well, most of them anyways. (Sorry. The worst thing one can say about someone they don't know - I know that type.)

I'm treating the whole Big Brother like, well, kind of like a summer fling. In a week, it'll all be done, and then I can get back to my real life, my true longer-lasting passions, the things I moved to NY for in the first place.

Oh, wait, there's the Olympics. And then hockey season starts. And I'm supposed to be writing songs, too, and writing, right? Oh, and what about my social life! Shit. Um, never mind.

So I'm listening to the Orquesta Was album, Forever's a Long Long Time, and waiting for the Kris Kristofferson cut, which never happens anymore. I grew up with Kris in the house; my Dad would play The Silver Tongued Devil and I on his Goya 3/4-sized guitar while he and his friend Marshall McLagan would smoke dope and talk about Formula One racing.

The smell of hash smoke is my first cognizant memory, and it's quite pleasant. I haven't gotten stoned in a long time, and now that I'm listening to him sing "Down here, I'm so tired of it all," it's all coming back in a beautiful haze of memory.

Then the record ends. Well that was nice.