Some Stream-of-Consciousness About Nazis

I haven’t posted about Nazi invasion and terrorist attack in Charlottesville because I’m feeling… well…

You can easily see my thoughts and things on Facebook, where I let loose a tad with the re-posts…

But anyways…

I don’t really have much to say, to be honest. I’m grappling with my feelings, because, at the moment, I have to deal with the fact that I genuinely feel fine seeing these Nazis killed… and I’m not okay with that. That does not make me comfortable or happy. It seems like a betrayal of my ethics, considering I’m against the death penalty.

But these are also Nazis. I don’t think there’s another group in modern history that can be considered as evil as Nazis. And now they’re here, in the United States, in 2017, marching in our streets and killing citizens.

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Pointless Rant: Why I Won’t Get an iPhone

I’m very stubborn about what I require in a cell phone. The basics, of course… wi-fi and 4G connectability, access to apps, good phone call quality, good sound quality, and so on; the kind of stuff that most people today expect in a smart phone. I like having a portable internet, and as it gets better, I get happier.

But there are four specific things I require that seem less and less popular these days as more and more companies move away from them. The various reasons people give for not needing these things anymore are nice and all, but I simply don’t agree.

Unfortunately, some of the best phones on the market currently lack these features, meaning I have to sacrifice performance for their sake, which gets more and more annoying as time goes on.

For example… I’ve reached a point of abhorring my current phone, the LG G4. I got it, in part, because it offered all the features I want, plus many others that had me excited. Many of those features, however, have become useless as this phone breaks down with major, annoying lag. And apps like Clean Master don’t help; they largely just make it worse. Despite even that, however, I still demand these four features, and until technologies are good enough that even having them as a security blanket is pointless, I will continue to demand them.

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Self Care – Star Wars Anthology Films That Should Happen (3 YouTube Videos)

I have to be honest… my Star Wars fandom was a late-bloomer. Although I largely agree with people that the prequel trilogy was… well… crap, that’s also when I became aware of Star Wars, and found myself interested in it… which is why I will never hate the prequel trilogy as much as some others do.

And of course I loved The Force Awakens and Rogue One, I can’t wait for The Last Jedi, and I’m actually looking forward to the Han Solo movie, as well.

We’re going to be getting a lot of Star Wars films going into the future, too. One every year. And there are rumors that Disney is looking at Netflix for live-action Star Wars series, which would also be incredible. So, of course, many many people have discussed what anthologies they’d want to see.

Featured here are three videos discussing anthology wish lists. The first two videos are in fact connected, as they’re a collaboration. The third video is a completely separate/independent video on the same topic. Then I’ll follow that up with two subjects I personally want to see explored in live-action form…

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The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Considering how much I love guitar solos, it should be no surprise that I have thoughts, here. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is an interesting, and perhaps polarizing, institution in music.

On April 20, 1983, the late Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder and president of Atlantic Records, put together a team that included attorney Suzan Evans, Rolling Stone magazine editor and publisher Jann S. Wenner, attorney Allen Grubman, and record executives Seymour Stein, Bob Krasnow, and Noreen Woods, and founded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. They started inducting artists in 1986, but they still had no home for the museum. So they put together a search committee, and ultimately chose shores of Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio.

The very first performing artist inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1986 was, of course, Chuck Berry, considered by many who think they know to be the founder of Rock and Roll (I, personally, disagree, but I’ll get to that). Others inducted that same year included Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Fats Domino, James Brown, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, and Jerry Lee Lewis. They all fit the original criteria of the foundation:

Artists—a group encompassing performers, composers and/or musicians—become eligible for induction 25 years after the release of their first record. Besides demonstrating unquestionable musical excellence and talent, inductees will have had a significant impact on the development, evolution and preservation of rock & roll.

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Vacation Note: I’m On My Way to Georgia

For those who don’t know, I live in New York. But at the moment, I’m boarding a flight to Georgia. I’ll be there until April 25th. I’m very excited.

I’ve got a lot planned. I’m going to be rooming with my awesome brother. We’re going to a festival, cooking food, and hanging out. I’m also going to be checking out the Anthropology graduate programs at a school or two down there.

I’ll have Self Care posts scheduled, and I will attempt to post a few other things, but I can’t make any promises beyond the Self Care posts. I’m continuing the checking out. I want to enjoy this time and not be stressed.

 

I’m trying my best to avoid things that stress me this week. I need less stress in my life, even if it’s temporary.

I should say… when I say that I have “a lot planned”, a very large part of that plan is just relaxing and enjoying myself, not stressing about anything. That’s the biggest thing, actually. I don’t set up itineraries for a vacation. To me, that seems to defeat the purpose. I don’t want to be on any more of time crunch then I have to be. One day, I might have enough money to take an open-ended vacation… maybe. That day is not today. But 7 days… I can enjoy that.

This is definitely self care for me.

See y’all in a week!

Spoilers!

Another post from my old blog, from November 28, 2013. I’m very curious if anyone else feels similarly… note that there’s some major editing (consisting of a section being moved up) to make this flow a bit better, as well as an addition.

I remember back when Batfans were getting amped up for The Dark Knight Rises. It was an exciting time. So many rumors and theories and tantalizing glimpses and…

The argument over spoilers gets very heated in pretty much every fandom ever. I think most forums dedicated to a TV show, a character, a book series, an author, a movie franchise, or a comic series has a subforum dedicated to spoilers, and often that forum will have at least one thread dedicated simply to compiling spoilers into one place for easy reference. These same forums will also contain a subforum dedicated to the same discussions about future work, but where spoilers are simply not allowed. And furthermore, even in a spoiler subforum, you still have to provide huge warnings and find a way to hide the spoilers so that people who may want to be surprised don’t have to read those spoilers.

Now, this seems like a great compromise where everyone gets what they want, right? People who enjoy having spoilers get them, and people who hate spoilers are free to avoid them.

This seems perfectly reasonable, doesn’t it?

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You’re Selfish!

In a desire to have a discussion that isn’t about infuriating current events, I decided to resurrect this post from my old blog. I hope you’ll join the discussion.

So I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I wanted to put it to all of you, awesome readers, to discuss.

Is “selfish” really an objective measure, or is it, as I believe, “in the eye of the beholder”?

Consider the following fictional scenario:

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Royal-Orlean’s Presence, Jason Peterson, is Losing His Battle with Cancer

This probably won’t mean much to many of you, as not everyone here is as obsessed with Led Zeppelin as I am…

My journey into Zepdom started with Planet Zeppelin, but it’s been Royal Orleans that’s really helped me dig deeper then I ever could have anywhere else.

The owner of the forum is Jason Peterson, known there as Presence.

He’s been battling Lymphona for a long time. He beat it once before, but now it’s back… and it’s winning. Unfortunately, the link to the update is set to members only, but the breakdown is that his lungs are badly injured and he can barely breathe. He’s in critical care on a bi-pap machine, but as his oxygen needs increase, this becomes less and less helpful.

There may be one option left, and that’s stem cell therapy. His family set up a Go Fund Me to ask for donations to help. It’s already past it’s goal, but it’s always good for them to get even more, because with more money they can do even more to fight back.

Royal Orleans is an amazing place for Led Zeppelin fans and collectors. Some would call the place elitist, but that reputation helps to maintain a site that is invaluable as a resource for Zeppelin’s unofficial music, stories from the road (roadies like to talk about their experiences with Led Zeppelin and the members solo tours on the road, there), and so on. For me, it’s like a little Led Zeppelin Garden of Eden.

I would really love if Jason survives, but if he doesn’t, it will be a sad day for Led Zeppelin fans around the world. Hopefully Royal Orleans will live on without him, but it certainly won’t be the same.

Jason, you’re in my thoughts. I only ever knew you as Presence, and you only ever knew me as that annoying jimmyRRpage, who was either all Gimme Gimme or threw threads about a live show wildly off topic. But you were there, at the forum, through the good times and the bad times, when Led Zeppelin reunited in 2007 and the levees broke…

Give that cancer shit no quarter, Jason. We’ll help where we can, and be here for you when you get back.

Wow…

Looking back at my blog recently, it is literally just me sharing stories of how terrible the current administration is, interspersed with Self Care posts.

I’m basically just posting angry, while attempting to lighten things up with nonsense. I haven’t really even provided ideas for resisting.

In my defense, everything is horrible, and everyone already knows how to resist. You all already have the tools, and know the protocols. Call, write, sign petitions, protest, vote… these are the vanguards of resistance. Worse, it so far looks like resistance isn’t fucking working…

And sadly, it’s not going to get better. Because I get a daily round-up of everything that happened that day in Agent Orange’s US-America (quick side-note: I first heard Agent Orange on TWiBPrime… I think Dara M Wilson was the one who I heard use it first; so it’s not mine), I blog about most of those. Every once in a rare while, there’s only one or two things, and they aren’t worth blogging about. But more often, the round-up is long, and there’s a lot I want to highlight.

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