The Desolation Angel - An Idiot's Ravings at the Ragged Edge of the American Century

Desolation Angel Radio - 2011 Essential Listening

2011-12-29T10:37:00.003-05:00

. . .One of the things I enjoy most in life is music (obviously). That said, yes I did put together a Best Of list for 2011 and published it as a Note on Facebook. I dread that, because Best Of can change in the next hour after I write one depending on my mood, whatever else is going on, etc.

The constant is this. I enjoy music, put playlists together, do production work for, broadcast on the radio show on Desolation Angel radio, carry the music around of artists and bands who are authentic, raw, passionate, true to their muse, down close to bone, blood, crap, sweat and juices of life people. People who will not compromise, and who have integrity about what they do.

Another constant is old friends, new friends, etc. who play covers, play garage bands, play VFW's, buy studio time, produce their own CD's, etc. all of whom submit them to me, and I have to find a way to politely tell them, without destroying the friendship, that it's frankly, crap.

The year 2011 produced some incredible music, great music. Most of which you all haven't heard because it can't be found at Wal-Mart, Best Buy or Target. It doesn't get played on terrestrial radio, doesn't fit Clear Channel's definition of a category, and it's made by artists who've told Nashville, New York and Los Angeles with their corporate consultants, who couldn't care less whether they were selling cans of tomato soup, sweaters or CD's, but are interested only in profit margins, profit per unit and focus group psychologically profiled; these folks have told them to fuck off.

You want to get good? You want to get recognized, broke out? You want to start booking yourself into paying gigs in bars, small theaters. Quit playing covers. Right now. Don't get back together to rehearse again until you've all locked yourselves away in a room, gone to a quiet place in a graveyard and learned your instrument inside and out. Slap the headphones on, and listen to every note of every cut in the following list. Invest in yourself, invest in your art and LISTEN to what other folks, who have sweat, bled, slept in vans, split one Happy Meal betwixt themselves, all for their art and their vision have done.

The following list is in no particular order, no numbering, no alphabetical order, it's just the stack of 2011 CD's that made an impact, made a difference and were authentic and true. Search them out, buy them, listen to them, over and over and learn what it takes to be a musician. Learn every note, every nuance, listen to the production, the aural and sonic spaces, then get back together and get real:

Gary Clark, Jr. - The Bright Lights

Midnight River Choir - Welcome to Delirium

Jimmy Vaughn - Plays More Blues, Ballads and Favorites

Scott H. Biram - Bad Ingredients

My Morning Jacket - Circuital

Doop and The Inside Outlaws - What Am I Supposed To Do?

Rachel Brooke - Down In The Barnyard

Stoney Larue - Velvet

Reckless Kelly - Good Luck and True Love

Johny Winter - Roots

Ha Ha Tonka - Death of A Decade

Steve Earle - I'll Never Get Out of This World Alive

Cody Canada & The Departed - This Is Indian Land

Have Gun, Will Travel - Mergers and Acquistions

The Great Tribulation - The Flood Brought The Fire

Grayson Capps - The Lost Cause Minstrels

Will Hoge - Number Seven

Tom Russell - Mesabi

Joe Henry - Reverie

The Rev. Peyton's Big Damn Band - Peyton on Patton

String of Ponies - Hurricane Millie

John Doe - Keeper

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit - Here We Rest

Dave Alvin - Eleven-Eleven

Fifth On The Floor - Dark and Bloody Ground

The Drive-by Truckers - The Go-Go Boots

The Cash Box Kings - Holler and Stomp

Ry Cooder - Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down

North Mississippi Allstars - Keys To The Kingdom

George Thorogood - 2120 South Michigan Avenue

Steve Cropper - Dedicated

Micky & The Motorcars - Raise My Glass

Hellbound Glory - Damaged Goods

Lydia Loveless - Indestructible Machine

Caitlin Rose - Own Side Now

Great American Taxi - Paradise Lost

The Black Lillies - 100 Miles of Wreckage

Shelby Lynne - Revelation Road

Tom Waits - Bad As Me

Kenny Vaughan - V

The Kentucky Headhunters - Dixie Lullabies

Ollabelle - Neon Blue Bird

Pistol Annies - Hell on Heels

Lucinda Williams - Blessed

The Band of Heathens - Top Hat Crown and The Clapmaster's Son

Geno Stroia II - From The Hip

Billy Burnette - Rock and Roll With It

Trombone Shorty - For True

Raphael Saadiq - Stone Rollin'

Greg Brown - Freak Flag

Joe Ely - Satisfied At Last

29 Mules - 29 Mules

MiZ - East Hope Avenue

Robert Earl Reed - Carlene

Jimbo Mathus - Confederate Buddha

There you have it. 55 albums that should be an essential part of your catalog. . . .see you in 2012.

Kip

Outlaw Radio Chicago

2011-11-08T09:35:00.002-05:00

This is the live feed into Radio Chicago, which not only carries Desolation Angel Radio, but also carries a ton of other programming on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights starting at 6 PM Central time, 7 Eastern.

Desolation Angel Radio is live every Thursday night at 7 Central, 8 Eastern. Bookmark this link to come back to it every Thursday and catch a new episode.

You can't please everyone. . . . .(revised)

2011-10-05T11:43:00.009-04:00

R.I.P. Steve Jobs 1955-2011

. . . .Steve Jobs passing from this plane yesterday, and the start of his long walk marks something truly amazing, wondrous and revolutionary in the world. Jobs fundamentally altered the way people communicate, listen to music, compute, read books, use and handle technology and altered not just that technology, but society and culture itself. Jobs was the pre-eminent lean thinker, innovator and simplifier of the late 20th and 21st century. His contributions are so commonplace and everyday, that people take them for granted, and don't know that Jobs brain was the fountainhead for them. He was a visionary, an inventor and a seeker. His contributions in tech:

How it all started
Jobs — along with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne — founded Apple in 1976. The first computers were simplistic but revolutionary for their time. Then in 1984, the company introduced the Macintosh 128K, the first computer that abandoned text-only commands in favor of a graphical user interface. Along with it came the mouse, a device which is so crucial to modern computing that it hasn't changed in nearly three decades.

In 1986, during a brief hiatus from the company he helps created, Jobs snatched up a little-known division of film studio Lucasfilm. He renamed this computer animation company Pixar, after the expensive computer imaging technology that his team created. Shortly thereafter, he negotiated a deal with Disney to produce Pixar's first full-length feature, Toy Story. After a string of record-breaking films, he sold the company to Disney for approximately $7.4 billion.

The iMac changed everything

Return to Apple
When Jobs eventually returned to Apple, the company was in shambles. Competing manufacturers held Apple software licenses and were making clones of the company's hardware, undermining the brand. Jobs immediately cancelled the program and brought all Apple development back under one roof.

From there he slowly built up Apple's credibility amongst computer users and eventually oversaw the launch of the iMac and iBook, two of the most iconic Apple products in the company's history. The somewhat unusual look and candy-colored combinations of Apple's hardware began to give the company an edgy appeal, and consumers ate it up. Apple's stock seemed to have no ceiling, as each new product brought new customers into the company's dedicated fan base.

Jobs revolutionized mobile computing

iPod, iPhone, and iPad
Apple launched the iPod in 2001, and along with the iTunes software, Jobs' company revolutionized the way we listen to music. Digital music players can be found in every corner of the globe, and the iPod line is by far the most popular of them all. Apple made purchasing and listening to music so affordable and easy that over 220 million iPod devices have been sold since its introduction.

In 2007 Jobs launched what is undoubtedly the best-selling Apple product to date: the iPhone. His vision of a smartphone was far different than what most wireless consumers were used to, but now it's hard to imagine a world without it. As competitors did their best to catch up, Jobs stayed the course, always standing by his promise to create useful products on Apple's terms, and without influence from the rest of the tech world.

Once the iPhone was firmly a market leader, Jobs took his dream of mobile computing one step further by introducing the iPad — a tablet that didn't try to be a computer. Both the iPhone and iPad product lines have seen massive success and after 4 versions of Apple's smartphone and two iPads, the company is the most valuable brand name in consumer electronics, and has flirted with being the most profitable company on earth.

. . . .It was Steve's thought process that was most revolutionary, and he was never afraid to share it with the world, the thought process that could be summed up simply - "Think different".

"Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And, most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you want to become, everything else is secondary"

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life"

"Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It clears out the old to make way for the new".

. . . .The number of tributes from people that have a clue as to what life is about is stunning and tremendous, which makes the odd one off remarks about Jobs giving the world "shiny shit" and people, who are obviously jealous, clueless and mired in the shit of their own life that they 'created' for themselves all the more glaring and stand-out that much more. But, giving them the benefit of the doubt, let's follow that line of reasoning for a moment, while those very same people remain ignorant of how highly ironic it is that they're publicly saying it on a piece of equipment that the very same man they're dissing invented.

I mean, there's a part of me that can wrap some kind of dim awareness around what they're saying, after all if Steve didn't put computers in coffee cans with Wozniak, and invent the computer mouse, someone else would have. Right? If he hadn't invented the iPhone or the iPad, someone else would have, right? If he hadn't founded Pixar, someone else would have, right? And how about iTunes, hell, we all know that Rhapsody or Yahoo Music could have done just as good a job, right?

Because, everyone knows that if Goddard hadn't done the work on the rocket he did, someone else would have, and we'd have got to the moon anyhow, right? And the Wright brothers for that matter, or Alexander Graham Bell. If Marie Curie and Jonas Salk hadn't done their thing, someone else would have done that work on antibiotics and polio vaccine right? If Henry Ford hadn't perfected mass assembly and paid a wage that founded the middle class, someone else would have, right? If Edison, Tesla, Marconi et al hadn't done the work they did with electricity, someone else would have, right? Shit, if Magellan hadn't circumnavigated the globe, someone else would have, right? And all of these things, and countless more are all things that everyone can live without, right?

. . . .Get a clue asshats, 'cuz bottom line, if you're diddling around on FB copying and pasting someone else's crap, you sure don't have the kind of drive, will, intelligence and savvy he did.

. . . .You need three things to survive in the businesses I'm in; your balls, your word and the ability to act entirely alone, without the support, belief or approval of others. I've got all three, in abundance. On the first two; ask anyone who knows me or deals with me on any level that requires the use and utilization of either of them, in any way, man or woman. I've got 'em. On the third, I think because so many people have just slipped over time into becoming blue-pill taking sheeple, into citizens of the Matrix, they can't even conceive of dealing with someone who operates and acts independently and doesn't need, crave or want the approval of others and doesn't have to live his whole life without confronting reality. 'S normal, I suppose, human beings are instinctively herd animals who think they need the approval of others, who have to operate with the belief that what they think is "mainstream", with all that supplied by others, by external sources, with no ability for internal resources, strength or will, in order to survive. They cannot believe that I don't believe bullshit, lies and crap, and don't instantly react because some piece of propaganda comes across the corporately owned television stations, across Twitter, through Facebook, Google + or the Interwebs.

. . . . Now, lately within the last couple of weeks I have, through the various forms of social media that I use as marketing, as a forum for my opinion (operative word being "my") been told that I don't play well with others. That I make people uncomfortable, there's a problem because I don't believe in the magical FB world of kittens, balloons and everyone agreeing with everyone else. That I call bullshit on people who want to use my updates and comment stream as their personal, political playground, but fundamentally lack the integrity to do it on their own, in their own space, and prefer to stick with the feel good shit there. That it isn't nice to post things that are real; facts, data, numbers, names, because it intrudes on people's virtual world. That some things I say, or post go against the mainstream, or don't jibe with what someone's favorite media mouthpiece has to say about it. And, gasp, horrors, worse, I actually have the integrity and the stones to stand behind what I say, and to put something out there, and, horror of horrors, control the comment stream coming after it.

. . . .Worse, and more confusing than that, I live in reality, which means that most things have more than one side to them, and there's merit in a variety of things, that most things in real life require critical thinking and rational analysis, and it's not all black and white. I've been told that doing that "is confusing", and that people "need it simple".

. . . So, here's some simple black and white for you. I don't care about Amanda Knox, or what Hank Williams, Jr. said, or what Rick Perry's family had painted somewhere on a rock in Nowhere'sville, Texas 30 years ago. I don't care about Casey Anthony, or if Michelle Obama shopped at Target. I don't care about Chaz Bono on Dancing With The Stars, or if Nancy Grace's tit flopped out. I don't care how many U of M basketball players Sarah Palin banged. I don't care about Obama and Boehner's golf game. I don't give 2 dead flies worth of care about what the 8 rodeo clowns debating for the position of lead horse in the harness have to say about which one of them can be the best corporate front to replace the other corporate rodeo clown, Mr. Hopey McChangey. I don't give one crap whatever your favorite corporate media talking head has to say, not one of them; Scarborough, Brzezinski, Doocey, Killmeade, O'Reilly, Maddow, Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, Matthews, O'Donnell, Schultz, Blitzer, Cooper; none of them, not one person that's ever opened their mouth on any of the corporate media fronts; Fox, CNN, or MSNBC has ever had to say, because, all of them, 100% of them, every one of those names up there, all their guests and pundits, every word out of their mouth is a bought and paid for lie. The blue pill, designed to make you buy into the farce that somehow there's two sides, and your neighbor, or your conservative cousin, or your liberal uncle is "the problem". On all of that above, I call bullshit, it's nothing more than chaff, shiny shit designed to distract.

. . . See, I've got a lot of friends, from all over the spectrum, some radically Left and radically Right, some Conservative, some Liberal, some Center, and you know what? Each and every one of them, I support their right to a viewpoint and philosophy, and their right to express it. Same goes for religion. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a good old free thinking secular humanist, a deist, just like Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and Benjamin Franklin, 3 of the Founding Fathers. (Try reading them sometime). Anyone who also knows me knows that I don't give a fig, personally, about someone else's religion. They can have it, it's personal, and I'll support their right to it, but it's not for me. Some of the craziest, most vicious, incredibly insane acts in human history have been committed by human beings in the name of their own twisted interpretation of some religious philosophy or another, and I live in a country that says I don't have to have a declared religion, but does support other people's rights to their beliefs. So do I, and I expect the same in return. If I, or you, wanted to live in country that had an enforced state belief system, or an enforced political philosophy, then anyone who chooses, once they invent time travel, can go back to the old Soviet Union, or Communist China, or Nazi Germany, because that's what a state sponsored belief system, in politics or religion looks like. Instead, I live here, and I support everyone's rights and beliefs, by the way I was taught, that's what patriotism, liberty and individuality are about. Their right to express themselves, politically and religiously, whether I agree with them or not, is a principle that overrides everything else. (Just don't bring it to my door.)

. . . .Here's what I care about. I care about and support the folks occupying Wall Street, same as I support the Tea Parties right to assemble. It's called the First Amendment to the Constitution of the Republic of the United States of America, and it's specifically called out as the people's right to assemble and petition the government for a redress of their grievances. That single principal outweighs anything, repeat, anything else.

. . . .I care about the fact that the same corporate media is skewing the message about both, and doing more of the same old "divide and conquer" routine. Sorry liberals, but the essential message behind the Tea Party, at it's beginning, is actually the very same thing as the folks occupying Wall St. Everything else is their opinion, and they have a right to it. Sorry conservatives, but the folks on Wall St. are carrying the exact same message as the Tea Party, at it's core. (Don't think so? Just ask the unemployed combat vets who are being denied benefits that have occupied positions on the front line to protect these folks Constitutional rights from the NYPD). Everything else is just their opinion, and they have a right to it. Despite what you may believe, despite what you want to be told, no matter what side you're on, the message is the same. It's about the money.
You've seen the carefully controlled media spin on the Wall Street people. How about taking a listen to what you'll never see on the news? Take a good listen, to this "kid", because what he says is true:

It's about the money folks. Your wages have remained flat, adjusted for inflation, since 1971, but corporate profits, and total income have increased %3,000. Oh yeah, the reason those profits soared. Because the price of everything they sell you has gone up. . .while your wages have remained flat. But don't worry, just listen to your convenient propaganda mouthpieces around you. It'll all get better once the "wage" problem comes under control, and everyone starts making less.

. . . .I care about the fact that Mr. McHopey and Changey had, and is having a campaign again entirely funded by Goldman-Sachs, Citibank, BOA and Wells-Fargo. (Don't think so? Look it up, it's public record). I care about the fact that the Koch Brothers, the primary funding source for the conservative and Right movements, made their money from Iran, the avowed enemy of the United States, Israel and democracy. (Sorry, didn't come from a left wing rag, try Bloomberg, with an exhaustive investigation.) It's about the money.

. . . . . .What has the Tea Party and Occupy Wall St. both to the point where they're assembling? It's about the money. And anything anyone else tells you, broadcasts, says, that's otherwise about either one, is just spreading propaganda, period.

. . . . .Not money that's "owed", but money's that's gone upwards. Trillions in taxpayer money that went to Wall St., and corporate firms, while they gave themselves bonuses, paid a lower tax rate than you, while every job got outsourced.

. . . ..Here's the figures, the real figures, the data, about those Wall St. firms and corporations.

GE, 2010 profits of $14 billion, taxes paid $0, and a tax "benefit" of $3 billion that you paid them, while they outsourced and offshored 20% of their U.S. jobs.

Citibank, Profits of $4.4 billion, $0 taxes paid, a tax "benefit" of $1.9 bill paid by you, and a total now on their bailout, paid by you of $1 trillion.

2/3 total of U.S corporations paid $0 in taxes in 2010, while keeping their profits offshore, making a total of $100 billion in tax revenue is lost every year.

. . . . .See, here's the thing. They, those corporations, Wall St,, want you to be a good little cog in the machine, and they looooove being here in the "land of the free and home of the brave", but they don't believe for one second that they should help shoulder the burden of doing any of it. Nope, that'd be your job, that'd be the job of folks occupying Wall St., and the folks in Tea Party.

. . . Nah, you say, he's bullshitting, that's not real, Yes it is. How's 'bout some more facts.

Since 2001, 42,400 factories have been shuttered in the U.S. by those corps and 5.5 million manufacturing jobs, middle class jobs, moved overseas, for a wage of about $10 a week paid over there. Imagine those profits. They don't pay taxes, and the banks that issue their stocks? Trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, and no payback.

George Carlin, (I miss him), said it best once:

"It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it. Be happy with what you’ve got.

Because the owners, the owners of this country, don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought—and paid for—the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.

They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want:

They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.

That’s right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street—and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later ‘cause they own this fucking place! It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.

By the way, it’s the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted, folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue—these are people of modest means—continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you….they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you.

They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. That’s what the owners count on"

. . . .See, that's where I come from. And, if it makes you uncomfortable, good, start to think for yourself, and go do some investigation.
. . . .I believe that money, that the influence of corporations, that the limitless power of corporations, Wall St. and too big to fail banks have brought America to the point where it's a tipping point of almost irreparable damage. It's is a stone electoral fact that the candidate in any election, Federal, State or local who spends the most money, 89% of the time will be elected. Doesn't really have to attend rallies, make speeches, go door to door. Doesn't matter what their party is, what their philosophy is, what their race or sex is. Spend the most money, 90% chance of getting elected. Period.
. . . .I believe that our Nation is at great risk, and therefore, my son's futures, and the grandchildren to come as well, I believe therefore that their future is at risk. No amount of hoping, wishing, praying, thinking, intention; none of it, not one bit, can change any of it. Only speaking up, standing up and acting can change anything in this old world.
. . . .When my sons were born, I promised myself that I would do everything in my power to make their lives better, and how I operate in the world, the things I say, and do, the things people see my post as a status update, or a Tweet, that's all part of it. Remember what I said about the 3 things I needed to get by in the world up above.
. . . . .If it, any of all of the above offends you, if it bothers you to hear or read someone be real, be themselves without asking your permission, or checking to make sure "what other people think" no apologies here, and no retractions, in fact, a two word message: Fuck You, and show some integrity, don't weasel around about shit.
. . . .To the rest of you, have a great day, seriously, you can come along with me or not, I don't give a damn dont' really need anyone else to do what I do, and am going to do, but if you want to come along, then quit bullshitting and let's get busy, we've got a Nation to fix.
. . . . And that's how it is from the last, lonely outpost.

. . . .It's time.
. . . When are you going to wake up?
. . . .Live every day out loud
. . . .I miss you Mom and Dad, a lot. Thanks for watching over me and us.

. . . . .. . . .We can salvage this shipwreck of a Nation. It will take all of us working together. It will take all of us understanding the concepts of the Great American Experiment, the political process of the Republic. It's amazing, I don't see eye-to-eye on every issue with my friends, but we respect one another's opinion, share information, share facts, and we don't talk over one another or at one another, we talk with one another. It's amazing what happens when a group of people who share the common goal of leaving a better country for their children and grandchildren can do when they sit down with one another as human beings, and realize that we each have power, and together, we are unstoppable.

. . . .I'm going to ask this of you for the next 30 days. Turn your TV off, turn your radio off. Start to use that beautiful mind that your Creator gave you, that your underpaid, underappreciated High School teachers tried to develop. If you hear something, if you read something, if someone sends you an e-mail that says "this bill will do this", or "this politician says this", I'm asking you to check it out. Check it out this way, use some of the following fact-based sites, who exist solely for the purpose of data and fact-checking.

- If whatever you've heard or read concerns a bill in Congress, use the following -

Open Congress, it's non-partisan and devoted to a complete tracking of every bill in Congress, both houses. How a bill is developed, who is sponsoring it, what the riders are, what the discussion around it is.

- GovTrack, again non-partisan, non-commercial and open source; devoted to the same things, tracking Congress.

- Open Secrets, one of the most important ones, it tracks the lobbying money and campaign contributions flowing to your congressperson, and most of the time is a pretty good predictor of how they'll vote.

- Political Party Time, non-partisan, devoted to solely tracking political fundraisers, and letting you know exactly what parties your Representative and Senators are throwing for fundraisers and who is attending and how much money they're throwing at them to gain influence.

. . . .If someone sends something to you saying "this is so" or "that is so" or "the President/Senator/Representative said this" use the following:
- Fact Check, non-partisan, designed to separate fact from bullshit and fiction

- Snopes, devoted to the same thing.

- Politifact, devoted to getting to the truth, and separating out the lies that are spread.

. .I keep doing this not because I don't have faith, but because I do have faith. I have faith in the ultimate triumph of the spirit, intellect and heart of the American people. I have faith that the people I know want to leave something better for future generations, and know that something is terribly wrong, and want to do something about it. I do it because Paine and Jefferson were brilliant, unique singularities and were right.

. . . .I keep doing this because I don't believe in big imaginary friends for adults, I don't believe in alien conspiracies running the Government, I don't believe the Roswell bodies are at Wright-Patterson, I don't believe that a big portal will open up on Dec. 21, 2012, I don't believe that the spaceships will show up.

. . . I do believe that the people who have fucked everything up are greedy, avaricious human beings who have been able to steal from the American people, to harm them, who have run unchecked because no one calls it out for what it is. I believe that if we shine the light of day on it, if the people of this country have had enough, we can change it, and change it for the better.

. . . . I keep doing this because I do believe that people, human beings, unchecked will continue to do what they've done throughout history, and throughout the history of this country. Together, they will find the solutions and provide better for their children and grandchildren.

. . . .I believe in us, I believe in people. I believe in the beauty, power and grace of the individual.

. . . .I do this for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of knowing what they do, what they believe, what they know is right. I do it for everyone who's ever walked that lonely road of faith, hope, love, hate, justice, war and peace.

. . . .I do it because I believe in justice, in all it's forms.

. . . .I do this everyday for the people and kids who are tattooed, pierced and inked and keep getting told to get "into the mainstream". I do this everyday for those guys who wear black that you don't understand, you just know there's something about them, and that when the chips are down, when you have to walk down a dark alley somewhere, and you know what's waiting for you at the end of it, and you can only take one person with you, that's who you want walking with you, because you know you'll come back out alive, and that guy doesn't care what it costs him.

. . . .I do this everyday for the outcasts, the misfits, the ones who don't fit and who will turn their back on you and walk away when you try to make them fit into a mold. I do it everyday for everyone who does it their way, knows that they're paying a high price for it, but the freedom is worth the cost.

. . . . I do this everyday for outlaws, cowboys, renegades, pirates and fallen angels. I do it everyday for the people who understand that rock and roll can save their soul, that redemption can be found in a 3-chord lick from a vintage Les Paul. I do it for the men and women who aren't afraid to turn it all the way up, who keep looking for an 11 setting on a volume knob that only goes to 10, who know that rock and roll's got nothing to do with age.
. . . .If right now, you're doing something you don't want to do, stop it. If you've surrounded yourself with people who want you to do or be something other than who you are, walk away. If you've got people around you who actually let it slip out that they think you "should be doing (fill in the blank here)" and it involves your life, your future, your existence as an individual, walk away, right now, and don't look back. You don't owe anyone anything. Live fearlessly. If the people around you can't accept it, can't accept you as you are, really are, they aren't and weren't friends anyhow.
. . . .Don't march to anyone else's drumbeat, don't drink the Kool-Aid, anyone's. Right, Left, conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican, Christian, Buddhist, Pagan. Use your own mind, that's why you were given one. Examine, question, do what's right for you first, everything else will fall in place from there, quit looking for the path, you're already on it.
. . . .Come out of the gate each morning with both barrels blazing, pedal-to-metal, full-tilt boogie, all-in and balls-out, what's stopping you? Do you want to live forever? That'd be boring.
. . . .Got your back. somewhere out there in the night
. .Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. Seize the precious moments before they're ripped away from you. This rodeo is a one-way ticket and no one, absolutely no one gets out alive. There aren't a lot of second chances, and we don't get to dictate terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched. This ain't no dress rehearsal, and the curtain's gone up, it's real and right now. It's not about yesterday or tomorrow. It's about right fucking here, right fucking now. This, what you're reading, what you're hearing, is the proof, the words, the sounds and the sights of someone changing his own life and his own world and not being afraid to put it out there. What have you done for yourself lately and why are you waiting? Do it.

Kip

from somewhere halfway to Heaven, and just a mile out of Hell

You know someone like me, there's still a few of us left. If we have to, we'll stand at the gates of Hell and hold the last train home for you.. . . . . .

[where: 29.52N, 91.57W]

Chelsea, MI 48118