Think Less Do More

Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. Think less. Do more. 

Which Self Improvement Course Do You Recommend?

     One of the many aspects of this profession is answering a constant onslaught of questions that come in from other people. It is an endless chain of a nearly infinite collection of topics and subjects that comes in 24 hours a day from all over the world. They come in the mail. They come through email (no matter how often I change email addresses). And they come through social media such as Facebook and Twitter, or in Comments on various websites we run such as this one. Most I do not have the time to answer. Most are ridiculous to be honest. But some are intensely heart felt and thought provoking. For the most part I try to answer a few per day. Especially if they are substantive or from someone that I know. Bare in mind that I "know" many people, as my ever tolerant wife continues to remind me.Lately I have been entertaining the idea of answering the questions that come in (if appropriate) publicly. It might help minimize the flow, and in the bigger picture I hope it serves to help more.

     The other day, a few weeks ago actually (I have a thing with "time"), I received an email from Toad. He had taken a self-improvement course a few weeks back and found it to be tremendously helpful. He felt lighter and more energetic than he had in years. But he wanted to go further. His girlfriend, who is getting her Ph.D in Psychology, had fears about him venturing any further into this direction for she was afraid that he might be getting involved in some sort of "cult". 

     I have always found this term an odd one, especially in America, because Americans are so devoutly religious and all religions are at best just very wealthy cults. If one is to believe the basic parameters that have been created to describe what a cult is and isn't. The major religions of the world have been around long enough and raised enough money to buy their way into a certain legitimacy with mainstream society. So much so that they sail past "cult status" and are taken more seriously. As if there is something to them other than the "loyal and deliberate adherence to non-tolerance of other equally popular religions" that modern day cults are defined as having. Many of them have even built schools with which to further indoctrinate their loyal subjects in an attempt to seem more legitimate and more substantially founded in reality, and hence not so cult-like. 

     The problem is that the foundational beliefs of almost every major religion in the world that humankind has invented thus far -- except perhaps Buddhism (which unbeknownst to many is not a religion but rather a philosophy, for it has no grand deity) -- are absolutely and insanely unsubstantiated and bonkers. An all seeing higher power that is at once both all knowing and all controlling (which throws the idea of "Free Will" out the window). Except when He or She is not and bad things rather than preferred things happen to that religion's adherents. Then he's either NOT responsible (the Devil did it), or he did it for reasons as of yet unseen (destiny, fate, good will come of it later, God works in mysterious ways, etc.) Flying invisible angels. Demons and bad spirits. One's dead family watching over you (while at the same time being in a heaven hell purgatory or a new reincarnated body. Virgins waiting for you up in heaven if you do a good job killing people here on earth. Karma, reincarnation, the transmigration of the soul through an infinite cycle of lives in order to obtain Nirvana. One could go on and on... Say or do what you will, religion, when viewed objectively, is quite possibly the biggest scam humankind has ever perpetrated on itself. At least in the manner they are currently being practiced by the world's "major accepted religions".

     Perhaps now would be a good time though to remind readers once again that I personally am still religious and a dues paying member of a church and the religion that goes along with it. (Similar to Charles Darwin, another surprisingly loyal congregate). Most long time readers, friends and fans already know this about me. This is not the main topic of this entry though, so suffice it to say that this fact, as puzzling as it is even to myself, is not something I had much of a choice of in my humble opinion. If i had my way, I'd still be a card carrying hardcore intellectual, existentialist, humanist or agnostic. For in reality, there has never been anything more evil, duplicitous, deceptive, malevolent, manipulative, and destructive on earth than humankind's barbaric religions. And I for one have never wanted to have anything to do with them. 

True Love

Hit me like a ton of bricks on the head. All at once. Just bam in the moment. Watching one of those Ed Burns New York period films. NEWLYWEDS I think. Anyway at one point there's this woman on the screen, a closeup, just her face. She's an older woman who's been married for 18 years who has a son who's about to go to college and getting divorced.
I'm kicking back watching this movie and staring at this woman's face, who's perfectly normal looking, in fact she's the epitome of plain, nothing wrong with her. But she's old. Probably mid to late forties. But not bad looking. And she's talking about now that she's divorced she's going to go out with all these men. So as a man myself I'm staring at her and thinking "there's not a chance I would ever go out with that chick. Look how old she is."
And then it hits me. I'm married. And to a woman who's older. With kids even. The Associated Press interviewed us last year for an article about "cougars and cubs" for Gods sake. And yet I totally love my wife. I mean I am madly in love with her. Always have been. Since the moment we met. Kids and all. And I had a strict "no kids policy" the entire time I was a single man. Never even entertained the idea. Not once. Not one girl in 20 years as a single man.
And yet here I am. Married for almost three years. Kids and all. Wanting to have more kids even. And happier than I've ever been in my life. And that's the thing. The age thing. That may matter when you're watching a movie and you're in your head and thinking about whether or not you'd be attracted to some strange girl you see on the screen. Same with looks and size and facial or body features or maybe even where the persons from or what they do for a living.
But in real life it doesn't work like that. And that's a good thing. A real good thing. In real life none of that matters. When you meet the one you just know. And it doesn't matter where they're from or how old they are. You turn around and look at your special someone and you get that feeling inside. Your heart melts just a little bit more. As it always does. And you know.

Dyslexia: Observations

As discussed numerous times in the past, I've had dyslexia since I was born (so we've been told). They say it stems from or at least often accompanies ADHD; both of which I was diagnosed with at an early age. ADHD has been the greater challenge to be sure when comparing the two. Especially since the ADD portion of it had not yet even been discovered (or invented as some argue) and definitely not yet understood or labeled back then. I, along with millions of others, was instead just labeled as being "particularly special" or a problem or a trouble maker or learning challenged, and usually placed in a variety of different "Special Ed." type programs. (To make matters more confusing for us all, especially pour moi and my young mind, I was also ironically made to begin school a year early, skip the first grade entirely (both of which made me ridiculously smaller, more immature and less hairy than my peers -- but that's a different story, albeit a funny one), and placed in what they then called the "Gifted" programs due to higher than normal test scores. Yes, indubitably my first 16 years of life were a mind boggling roller coaster of fuck all confusion and chaos.)
To be fair to others, in order to better understand the context of anything i might say here, it should be noted that although it was recommended repeatedly to my parents throughout my school years, they chose to never put me on medication for these "challenges", always insisting that with just a little more effort I could do just as well as the next kid. I just "needed more discipline". This isn't really the area I intended to focus on here, so let's leave the pros and cons of that argument to the side for the time being and perhaps come back to it at a later date.
Ok fine, now that I've got us thinking about it, yes I do believe that that was a terrible mistake, though I'm sure an innocent one out of pure ignorance on my parents' part, and indeed I most likely would have fared much better during those years had they at least tried a few medications as suggested. I will never forget that moment, on the floor of my mother's office, seeing my transcripts for college at the age of 16 for the very first time -- 11 years of school and never a grade higher than a D or F on every report card. I was more than shocked. Which illuminates the problem of the condition of ADHD itself perhaps better than anything else one might come up with: my mother God bless her couldn't understand my shock, casually remarking "Well Fishy you know you've never done well in school. You're very lucky your father and I were able to get this college to accept you." To which I replied "Well... I knew I wasn't an A student... But I had no idea I spent the last 16 years producing over 40 report cards filled with D's and F's my entire life. My God! Why didn't you all DO something mom?!?" "Honey we tried! Do you have any idea how many visits to the principles office I have made on your behalf since you started school?!? I practically lived there!"
And she was right. She had practically lived in the principles office since I could remember. The telling point is that up until that moment, for whatever reason... There must have been something different about that moment... I was never "aware" that I was a "bad" student or made bad grades. Even though all the adults around me knew it, assumed it to be true and tried everything they could to help me. That in a nutshell is what having ADHD is all about. You're here. And yet you're not here. You appear to be here to everyone else. But you're just not really here. So people assume you know things that you just don't know. In fact you don't even know there are things that you're supposed to know but don't. It's that bad. At least it was for me.
So as not to cause inadvertent influence in a direction unintended, I will state for the record that since those early years I have tried every medication known to humankind for these challenges and have found none of them to be a benefit enough to surpass the detrimental side effects of them. An important side note I believe.

The Science of the Avatar

Just caught this DVD -- surpringly filmed in front of a small audience way back in 2004 -- presentation of a lecture by William A. Tiller, the physicist, wherein he presents proof through clinical studies and formulas that human beings through intention can significantly affect physical reality. Another grand leap for science into territory that has normally been reserved for spiritual, new age, occult or paranormal paradigms and often dismissed by the scientific community.
Of course Dr. tiller's discoveries are not new to the world of science. Those who have been following this exciting vectoring and merging of the two assumed disparate fields remember well the infamous book The Tao of Physics, to name but one. But Dr. Tiller's work here only adds to what many outside of hard science have known for millennia, that there is much more to our human potential than just doing our best to navigate the events that "happen to us"... But rather it is us who are actually creating those events. They may "happen", indeed; but not without our direct or indirect intention in one way or another.
Harry Palmer, the discoverer, inventor and author of the Avatar series of knowledge and techniques -- books, DVD lectures, and most importantly courses -- has been the chief proponent of these theories over the last thirty years, long before the concept took hold and became hip as a pop culture phenom. [Palmer wasn't the first to propose the idea that beliefs precede experience or that human beings create their own reality.

Quantum Entanglement

Scientists have now discovered that the heart sends approx 100 times more messages to the brain than the reverse, and thus it is the heart that is the primary driving mechanism of what we call conscious thought. 


Furthermore, that based on thirty years of clinical trials, and electrical signal measurements, the heart has the capacity to perceive events in a person's future three to five seconds before the event occurs. Ever have that happen? We dismiss it NOW, because we've been wrongly taught to. But science is speeding along faster than most people realize, coming closer to agreeing with many of the basic tenets of ancient spiritual traditions than most so-called, scientifically minded people, yet understand. 


One day the atheists/humanists/logical pragmatists of the world are going to wake up and discover that science doesn't agree with them, and that it is they who now live in the dark ages, not because they subscribe to (what they categorize as) supernatural spiritual fluff, but because they don't yet recognize that it was never fluff to begin with. It just took science a while to catch up to what others "knew" all along. To really get your mind blown check out the theory of Quantum Entanglment next time you find yourself wondering if or doubting that ESP, psychicism, telekinesis and the like exist. It's in the science now. No longer theoretical. And no longer is "faith" needed. Just more understanding of the mechanisms behind these heretofore mysteries and phenomena. Getting there faster than I'd see in my lifetime. Exciting stuff.

Religious Differences? "Fuck it..." Says the Dalai Lama

Of course his "Holiness" didn't actually say "fuck it" -- he said "forget" in an accent that the audience perhaps deliberately misunderstood in this era where the majority of humanity has now evolved out of our once primitive need to defend the rightness of any one race or religion. People in general on a global scale have become more than tired of the small factions left around the world who are still making the rest of our lives' hell on earth due to their righteous refusal to allow that we are all equal regardless of our religious beliefs. The Dalai Lama himself may have not said "fuck it", but one perceives that humanity itself is clearly at that point.

The most telling aspect of this video of course - despite the pedestrian obsession with the "egads!" possibility of the Dalai Lama saying "fuck it" - is actually the fact that after decades of taking it in the rear, and thus encouraging/obligating his people to do the same, from the Chinese - who have now all but wiped out the Tibetan culture on earth, the robed one looks as though he is finally willing to speak up to the murderous barbarism that is modern day China as it relates to Tibet and other smaller countries around the world. Good on him.

New Reports that Apple Computer Discriminates Based on Race

News reports are flying in from all over the United States that Apple Computer has instituted a new "rule" in its fine print that does not allow its employees to sell its products to people from a variety of different countries -- even if they are American citizens. Some of the countries include Iran, Cuba, Iraq, and of course North Korea. Even if you are an American born and bred, but just happen to speak a language other than English as your native or second language that Apple deems "threatening" (is there such a thing?), they have the right to decline selling products to you. Best not to walk into an Apple retailer speaking Spanish. They might think you're Cuban God forbid.

The Transcendence Diaries have covered a lot of territory over the last ten years. Fishy has seen and heard just about anything, everything and more than a human should be allowed in one blessed lifetime. But this is one of the most shocking things I have heard to date. From a simple civil liberties and human rights perspective it is an abominable discovery. It is an outlandish rule that Apple has imposed. Unfairly discriminatory unnecessary and unwarranted.

Apple Computer once stood for something. Something very special. One still gets teary eyed recalling images of the two Steves in their parent's garage building their new machines. At times we may even blush with pride at the thought of the once renegade Steve Jobs trying to buck the system to uphold his own uniquely admirable brand of integrity, honor and aesthetics. Getting fired from his position as CEO from his own company for doing so. But those days have long since passed. The company that was once known for being independent, somewhat hip cool and rogue has slowly grown into the typical greedy faceless corporate behemoth; bought in, sold out pandering kiss ups.

Where the ever admirable Google -- who's corporate slogan is the noble "do no evil" -- tries to help people in foreign countries battling strict controlling governments or even lend a hand to a people's revolution or two, Apple is more interested in strictly profits and won't sell an iPhone to American citizens if they don't happen to approve of their native language. Just flat out discrimination.

What is Truth

Occasionally we encounter resistance from others when we profess to not believe what they believe. Especially regarding religious, spiritual, metaphysical, philosophical or even psychological matters. Those who possess certain religious beliefs not only have the usual sorts of inherent needs to feel "right" in believing what they do, but actually have it built into their belief systems that they're obligated to help others convert to their belief systems In order to save their very soul. The problem is that we don't even know if there is such a thing as a soul. In fact in philosophy the matter is considered one of the unsolvable arguments of the field that all students must at least once defend one side or the other either orally or in a paper. If forced to prove the existence of a soul as material evidence in a court of law in an important case of life or death no one would be able to do it. No judge or court would buy it. It would be a useless effort. No ones ever seen one. And we've never seen or heard of any proof of anything even close to something like it. And yet billions of people on earth for thousands of years claim to believe that human beings "have souls". I reckon this has more to do with humanity's deep seated resistance to mortality than it does to any sort of rational thought or evidence or even logic. After all, contemplating the death of ourselves is tough. It stings. It is so counter intuitive to and hurts our ego's built in survival
Instincts so much that it's damn close to being unimaginable. Us being here ine minite wirh all of our thoufhts and feelings and memories and in the next not existing at all ever again. And yet all known evidence and knowledge collected thus far in our evolutionary journey as a species here in earth clearly points to the idea of a soul being not much more than a very nice and comforting idea but rather implausible.
Of course this is just one example out of hundreds, thousands maybe, of the types of things we read about and hear about once we venture into studying these subjects of religion and spirituality and psychology and the like. Metaphysics is filled with them. Even psychology , as allegedly scientific as it it's taken to be is filled with conjectured theories that are entirely unprovable. Ideas like the ego or the id or the subconscious aren't really anything more than man made ideas created to try to help explain matters more complex than our current knowledge base allows us to really understand very well.
After over 25 years of studying and researching these subjects I don't have much patience for people who profess to know things that are unprovable. If there's one thing we do know it's that we don't know much. I've always found that to be the most intelligent and therefore safest and even comforting foundation from which to approach the contemplation of life's greatest mysteries. I have a deeply profound respect for other peoples' right to believe whatever they want to. And therefore I don't desire in any way to convince them that anything I believe is something they should. I like most the kind of people who also tend towards this attitude when it comes to permitting that we are all entitled to believe what we want to as long as it doesn't infringe on the safety or welfare of others. They seem to be the smartest among us. And as seemingly contradictory as it may be, some of these same people sometimes happen to believe the most outlandish and unprovable ideas of their own in the realm of religion or spirituality. And yet they are smart enough to recognize that they may be wrong or that it doesn't matter whatsoever if someone else believes what they do or not, and brave enough to allow even that there are people out there who think they're plumb crazy for believing what they do. again it comes down to the "can it be proved in a court of law enough so that it can be used as material evidence" idea. A smart person recognizes this tricky dichotomy, this phenomenon of contradiction in the human psyche.
One of the fastest ways to get to real truth, real knowledge, is to start recognizing that there just isn't much of it floating around. We look and feel solid and material for example; in fact the whole damn world does. And yet we are also led to believe that we and everything else around us is composed of atoms that are 99.9% space. Empty space. Not very solid nor material. Now obviously there is something very wrong with this picture. Theoretically it may proof out on, at least on paper, but try walking through a brick wall knowing that both you and that brick wall are almost 100% empty space. It shouldn't be too difficult. And yet let's face it. It's damn impossible. So as far as we've come in our evolutionary quest for knowledge and to understand, there's still plenty that just doesn't add up. And this is just one of them.
The truth is that we just don't really know much of what the truth is. That's about the closest thing to truth any of us can utter. As disarming and disillusioning as this realization can be, especially when first realizing it and further starting to apply it to ones personal beliefs about who they are and their spirituality, it can actually be a very liberating revelation. If one starts there, and stays there, as a foundation, rather than filling their head with a bunch of untruths and/or manmade theories without material proof, there can be found an exhilarating power when we do occasionally discover something that seems to ring true. Gravity for instance certainly exists. Although there is plenty about it that we still don't understand, one thing we can rely on is that the force of gravity exists in varying degrees all over the known universe. Theres comfort in knowing this to be true. It's such a rare thing to find something truly true about life in our universe that when we do we get a real sense of satisfaction. A confidence about life. And about who we are. Most of our day to day life is still mystery. From who we are to where we came from to why we are in the first place.... This is probably why we've created so many myths and legend and theories about so many things. An attempt to fill all these voids. The problem though is that we've created so many damn myths and legends and theories that are unfounded and unprovable, over so many thousands of years, and each of them by so many different groups of us through our history, that our collective consciousness is primarily filled with untruths. Many of them in stark contrast to or contradicting others. This has created innumerable problems for us as a species throughout our history. Not only do all these contradictory belief systems about everything confuse us, they keep us further and further from real truth the more of them we take on. And worse yet they create a power struggle not only within our psyches and our collective consciousness as a species but in our physical world as well. As each group possessing one set of beliefs tries to assert the rightness of said beliefs over another group who possesses an opposing or even just a different set of beliefs. It could be a genetically ingrained aspect of our basic survival instincts, or it might just be an elemental byproduct of our ego's irrational need to be right that creates this passionate lust to believe that what we believe, as compared to what someone else does, is right or truth. Who knows? Thats the funny thing. We don't even know why we have such a string need to believe what we believe is true compared to what someone else does. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. And yet plenty of people are willing to fight over it argue about it or even kill themselves and others over it. All just to defend the idea that what they believe is true. Try telling someone that they've got no soul and see how they react. It's one in ten million who might agree with you that in the bigger picture they know they have no idea whether or not they've got a soul or not. it's uncommon to find a man who is willing to admit that they don't really know if anything they've tinkered with believing over the years is even remotely true or not or if it's just fantasy or wishful thinking.
Yet perhaps the most astounding thing of the whole paradigm Is that truth itself is constantly changing. For millions of years gravity didn't even exist as far as human beings were concerned. We hadn't discovered it yet. Hadn't studied it or given it a name or applied principles to it. And since that time we've changed what's "true" about gravity countless times. In the future we will continue to do so. Just about everything human beings claim to know, anything and everything in the known universe, has gone through radical changes in how we think about it or what we claim to be true or not true about it.
Because of this, I tend to shy away from buying into much in the way of theories and ideologies. I confess I'm more than addicted to learning and studying and research. Probably to a fault. But I've never found I've been very good at believing much of anything. I find it all interesting. Some of it downright fascinating. But I take it all with a grain of salt. Even the basics. The things in specialized fields we take for granted, such as "I" and "I am" and "I am here" being the "only things we can know for certain" I don't necessarily believe I'm certain about. Even these, as elementary foundational as they may seem to us now, tend to make me question just how long it will be before we don't even believe them anymore. After all, they're made up words. Existing for no other reason than the obligation of necessity at best. And we aren't entirely sure who the "I" is, nor IF the "I" is. And we certainly don't know if "I" is "here" or if there even is a "here". There may be several "heres". Or hundreds. Or none. Who knows? And again, that's the truth of it. We don't.

The Not So Powerful Now

We live in a world which is constantly evolving. Never finished. If you're asking questions about now you're missing the point entirely. The problem with journalism today is that those who participate in it are obsessed with what's happening today. In the present. Which tomorrow will be yesterday. And in two days be old news or entirely forgotten. When the world is looked at with a more historical perspective in mind, we see the bigger picture. We lose the need to analyze and translate what's happening in the moment and instead ask bigger questions. About what things might be like in the future.
The only thing that interests me is the future, for it's the closest target we can aim for in our quest to understand the bigger questions left still unanswered. Most of what transpires in the present is meaningless and already yesterday's news before it's even been written about. The news media, writers, journalists may be interested in it. The common man and the masses may claim to be interested in it. But it's not the stuff that keeps us up at night. Nor what fuels our passion to wake up each morning after. When I view the world, I view it from the future, a far away future, a more evolved future. Always looking back, sometimes to the now, but usually to a time years or decades ahead of now. When confronted with a problem of the now, it seems petty and small, when accompanied by the knowledge that in the end things will work themselves out in ways very few few can even imagine.
Thus it's of very little importance to ask "why did North Carolina ban same sex marriage?" for example, when we already know that in the not too distant future North Carolina will reverse the ban and the country will celebrate its catching up and coming out party. It is equally as mundane to question how one feels about the Tea Party, or the Occupy Movement, or modern day presidential elections. Knowing that they too will fade from the micrscopic lens of supreme importance just as everything does, and instead give way to the bigger stuff of import: that humankind will fight and endure as long as It has to until it no longer has anything in it's way to fight or endure, that in the end man's struggle for freedom and autonomy will win out in the end, just as it always does. The individual political powers parties movements and even the struggles themselves will soon become mere footnotes in our collective history, the names unimportant. What is important is that humankind will survive, no matter the odds, and eventually thrive. This is the future. A far better subject to contemplate and write about.

Great Music Never Needed Great Gear

Just listened to the song HEROES AND VILLAINS by the Beach Boys here in the recording studio w the guys, to hear what real vocals sound like... Just to get some inspiration. What we were amazed by is that this is 1967 mind you. They were still working with tape machines back then. And not big Studer 24 track machines, but tiny little 4 and 8 track machines that teens today in their garage would laugh at. There were No digital audio workstations (DAWs), no Protools systems with infinite "Undo" capability. If you messed up, you sang or played your part over and over again until you got it right. There was no auto-tune. You had to be able to sing in tune. And do it well. Many of today's artists would never have been able to release even one song, just because of that. What we have here is absolutely brilliant sounding. Pure magic in less than 4 minutes. Just really great vocalists singing incredibly intricate vocal lines in a very complexly arranged song. Forget the video attached. It's entertaining to be sure. But just listen to these vocals...!!!

Sometimes I think we've gone too far in our quest for perfection in audio.... When all along music like this was being made with none of today's bells and whistles. And in fact many people still consider the music of the 60s and 70s the greatest music that's ever been released. Call it the curse of the digital audio age. Granted, it does allow for some incredibly tasty new inventive sounds and styles to enter the collective world of music making. Black Eyed Peas are responsible for some bangingly innovative tracks. So is Takemura Nabukazo, Autechre, Akufen... People are out there really pushing the envelope of what "music" is. And it's thrilling to hear what's going to come next. for sure.

But we are also left with an unpleasant taste in our mouth when it comes to other artists who make rather plain dumbed down commercial music with no inherent need for advanced digital gear to produce innovative sounds we've never heard before but who rely on today's "fix it in the mix" technology in order to even put out a new song or album. Without Protools and drum machines and autotune, they'd be unable to record a song that others with more talent could pull off with some ordinary instruments and a two track tape recorder. Now we're in the realm of making stars out of people who really cant sing or play an instrument. Just because they might look appealing to the mainstreamers who don't know any better. The technological advancements that have been developed in music are being used as a crutch by those who are incapable -- rather than as a tool to innovate by the edgy and brilliant among us. That's still happening, thank God. But that music, just as it always has, is being eclipsed by the more mundane vanilla variety. It's hard now to even imagine a world where a song like "Heroes and Villains" by the Beach Boys could be released as a single to radio, get hundreds of spins a week and hit the Top 40.

But as always I do have hope. With the advent of internet radio stations such as Pandora and Spotify, we do seem to be shifting towards a new phase where really good true authentic music is being discovered and eaten up by the masses just as much as the generic shite the major record labels and the radio station programmers are still trying to shove down everyone's throats ad nauseum. now it's possible for artists who receive absolutely no radio AirPlay whatsoever to get a name for themselves and find a little niche for themselves. Especially with the advent of "sync licensing" (TV, movies, commercials) becoming the new vehicle of discovery, versus the old fashioned major label big budget marketing push.

The Danger of Third Party Poltics in Modern Day America

Trotsky recently sent in this link to an article from TruthDig, a righteous lefty news feed webzine. It's disturbing to say the least. Professionally “leaked” White House documents that show what a hardliner United States President Barack Obama is on “terrorists” so the hard right cannot accuse him of being a “softy”. Ironic since that’s precisely why most people voted him into office. But that was then and this is now. And if there’s one thing we learn growing up in America, it’s that during election campaigns it’s all hopes and dreams and promises of peaches and cream. Once elected and in office it’s “time to get real” and “eat your peas”.  

Nothing new here if you’re an avid news hound. But strung together it’s a shocking series of discoveries about just how many people around the world president Obama kills everyday in the name of “keeping America safe”. Just more of the same revelations about what a ruthless killer he is in this new age of remote location drone strikes. Trotsky’s point being that honest intelligent and compassionate Americans need to stop voting for the candidates of both leading political parties in the United States if we’re ever to see a change in these kinds of brutal murderers holding the office of the president.