Why, WRIF, Why

First of let me apologize for not posting in so long. My computer crashed and I don't know. Life was pretty wild.

Now that that's out of the way. Time for me to go on a little rant and tell an anecdote.

Once there was a kid. This kid normally got decent grades but when he was about twelve he didn't do so hot on his report card. He took the TV, out of his room as a commitment to show his parents he was going to try harder, but he left the radio in his room.

And good times were had as while working on algebra he heard awesome music on the dial. After 10 pm there was an awesome 2 hour commercial free rock block on the local hard rock station. He heard a lot of his favorite bands, The White Stripes, Disturbed,Nine Inch Nails, Evanescence, Drowning Pool, and Rage against the Machine for the first time on that station.




WRIF, what the hell happened? Nearly every song now a days is at least 10 years old. There is no new stuff. I can name at least 5 bands that qualify as hard rock off the top of my head who came out with new albums this year. What happened to the commercial free rock block. Why do everytime I turn on the dial I get either commercials, talk, or old stuff that I have mp3s of already. If I want to listen to music 10 years old I can go to the classic rock station down the dial or better yet just go to my own collection.

Maybe it's falling revenues. I'm an old fashioned guy who believes in competition in the free market (to a point). The internet is kicking your asses but there are some things a DJ is better at than Pandora, and there some things satellite can't do either.

Hosting a live party at the local club. Covering a concert at the local club or bar. Broadcasting local news, both hard and music related. Making relevant wisecracks. Call in shows and request hours. Interviewing local bands to have you finger on the pulse of the local music scene. These are things you can do better than your competition if only you would try.

You guys have a job. I subscribe to Rhapsody so I can get almost every song I want so why do I want you guys to succeed. Most of the bands on MTV and the non hard rock stations aren't my style. A few years ago I thought hard rock was dying. Then I started looking for myself its not. It just looks that way because my contemporary rock stations aren't doing their jobs.

Do I like Nirvana? Hell Yeah. Do I like Metallica? Sure. But if I hear "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Unforgiven" one more time, POW ZIP RIGHT TO THE MOON.

I can hear those songs whenever I want. Hell I can sing along, if I want. I want songs I can't get whenever I want on the radio. Those rare tracks from older bands. Like Pearl Jam's cover of I got a feeling. Or brand new bands I haven't heard. I'm tired of feeling like a 22-year old, 40-year-old guy who's nostalgic for old bands when there are plenty of new ones I just haven't heard because the DJs aren't doing their jobs.

I like the institution of radio. Almost every artist, I hear talk in interviews, says something about the first time they heard their song on the radio. Sure pod-casting can come close but the good old radio performs or is suppose to perform a valuable function in society. It exposes people to artists they may not have considered and brings together a geographic music scene.

Microsoft!!!!!!!!!!!

You know how a few weeks ago I was singing Microsoft's praises. Well my computer died. And what really ticks me off is I probably could have fixed it if Sony gave me a CD with XP on it but they didn't. The greedy sons of explicit deleated. Sony's boot disk partition won't work and a new copy of XP would cost around 300 bucks. Microsoft!!!!!!!!!!!!

I Hate Apple

I do not have an i-phone. I might love apple if I did but because I don't I can be a bit more objective. There is a lot of buzz about the i-pad but honestly. I haven't seen it. Right now Google is in the best position to knock a blow to Apple, but I hope the sleeping giant awakens and Microsoft does something cool.

For ages I have defended Windows and I will briefly do so again. I get the games. I get lower prices. That's starting to not be enough. All the apple ads make it seem like windows guys are stuffy suits but for me its the opposite. While at school I've been exposed to some pretty cool apps that would make the stuff I plan to do for a living easier, but guess what. Those all work best on Macs. The problem is the stuff I would do in my off time like playing Total War would work best on a P.C.

All of this is moot though considering I don't have enough money for a new computer anyway, and the same could be said for an i-phone whose lowest monthly plan is $70. I definitely can not afford that. My problem with apple is that their products are always out of my price range, which is weird since I am their target audience the young geek.

I keep waiting for Big Willy Gates to come back to the company like Jobs did and wow me with new democratized tech I can afford, but I doubt it will happen.

End to Detroit Social Promotion

A couple of recent news articles said that Robert Bobb is ending social promotion in the Detroit Public School system. Why does this matter to a dude who is 5 years out of high school who, does not and has never lived in Detroit? My mom is a retiring teacher in Detroit and she hated, scratch that loathed social promotion.

The teachers over the years have gotten a lot of flack for the problems of the Detroit Public Schools system, but there is only so much teachers can do. When a student can't read its harder to teach. Its worse when you consider that there are also other students in the class, and getting the ones up to speed who are behind just to learn what they should for that grade level takes an inordinate amount of time. Over the years the problems become compounded so that by high school students may be ridiculously behind. Some of them get so discouraged that they figure they can never catch up end start believing class is a waste of time. At that point some of them start dropping out or disrupting the classes as a whole.

I'm glad the problem is being attended to but at the same time there are reasons why social promotion exists. Having kids who are drastically different ages in the same class can be a problem. Sixteen-year-olds may pick on thirteen year olds. Also there is a stigma about repeating a class. While in college I've realized that classes are tough and have had to take classes over again. I'm not proud of it but its better than getting over your head. I think its similar for high school students and their parents want to them to move on maybe not considering the ramifications of moving forward unprepared.

I did what I did and no one else

On the day I speak face to face with my God,
I shall not beg pardon for my sins because they were not mine
I will tell him I did what I believed best at the time
Not what my parents believed best
Not what my teachers and professors thought best
But for better or for worse what I thought right
I made my choices and will not recant them
I bear the eternal burden of them

My Mind Is a Dangerous Place

Too many paths
Too much data
Every thing screaming
Loud confused chaotic
A million different directions
Paths within paths
Ideas that come for only a fleeting moment
Never to be found again
But their importance was grasped
Holes
Data unclear
What does it all mean

The Good the Bad and the Downright Ugly

You want to know me
There’s too much
There’ Good there's bad
Cruelty and such
You have to take the ugly
But in the end I ain’t that bad

Twelve Armies

Twelve armies lie locked by the sea
cross it they try
by taking to the sky
They are blinded by what they believe

For the spirits of old cry
when they see the innocents flee
What will come is worse than all perceive
For the sky will be scythed

From the wound the dragons will bleed
Belching and Burning they will uses flame and fire
to release their ire
And when they finally perish it will be our doom they have brought

For this is what our vanity has wrought
Our pride has triumphed
For what we had was not enough
And as goblins we gobble more like pigs in a trough

Sorrow, Sorrow

I wail on the walls of my life
Sorrow Sorrow
On the outside there is no strife
But inward Scars and marks
of failure desolation and loneliness lie on my red beating heart
Where to start?
Where did it end?
Alone Alone

Where to begin?
Shall I bear my sins.
Where is God?
Is it that I feel his absence.
Is that what pains me
There is a God, I know but a sign there is no
I live day to day
Just trying to make my way
But that is not enough
what else what else.

Why am I so sad
There is nothing I see that is bad
At least in my realm
In the controlled
But outside of these walls
I Fear I fear

I hear the horsemens' hooves but their trumpets are silent
All within is violent
Despite it all the world must go on and will
And I with it
where is my place within it
I don’t know I don’t know

I wait
Why wait
move damn it move
The world moves while I lie still and silent in the corners
watching the mirth and the blood run
laugh you they tell me
and I do

I laugh

but at night my knees held to my chest I cry not for them
but for me
and my uncertainty
what to do what to do

“What am I” I scream
And then in the darkness my lips curl upward in a terrible way
I am the beast
The wild thing forgotten
Living only now not then only now
I live to laugh as all is done on earth as it is in hell
and Not even God seems to care

Where is he within me
Where is God within Man
Within me Within Me

I though I had a priestly nature
Kind and pensive
But I have lost all thought
I refuse to look back
To look forward

Now Now
You don’t have character until you know regret
I know regret
Is that why I sorrow
For the things I should have done
People I should have helped
Things I should have said
Questions I should have asked
Now Now

The past is gone
I can never get it back
atone atone

Its not the fate of my soul I fear
But the former states of my mind

To face not only the deeds of wickedness I have committed
But the deeds of Honor I have failed to make
And Amends can not be made all there is to do is regret
And wonder will the opportunity to stand ever come again
Never Never
Perhaps that is why I have sorrow

The New Mecca

The five points shall meet
All the bards of the day will take their seats
A new age will come
A renaissance on the horizon
The rise of the city will start
As it becomes a new Mecca of Art
Some will call it a crime
But generations later will call it sublime

Loud Silence

Too Quiet
I always enjoyed the quiet.
I found my peace, my center in it,
But, now I feel it’s a front on a fight
As Ajax said I’m tired of all this running and hiding
The peace has become a war

I Got No Game

I got no game.
I have not mastered the art of talking about sex while not talking about sex
The back and forth tennis match of erotic word play.
I got no game.
Nothing on the tip of my tongue pleases the ladies.
All my lines are too short.
My rhymes seem too forced.
It all seems rehearsed.
I don’t know when to stop and when to start.
When to speed up and when to slow down.
I got no game.

This Mind is Mine

This mind is mine
Think you know that’s fine
But always remember that this mind is mine
I’m closest to my closest thoughts
No… you can’t analyze it with ink blots

Hard as Rock

I am the mountain king
Unmoving unwavering
Strong as stone
And Hard as Rock

I dream of a place

I dream of a place
A place of wonder
A place of limitless potential that grows from the heart
I long to go to that place of dreams
But I can’t see it
I long to know that it exists