The Annual Post-Fourth Roundup

As I do every year, it’s time for my annual Post Fourth of July Roundup. Why do I do this? Because every year I see a lot of people who have absolutely no business dicking around with fireworks doing so.

I live in a state where fireworks are legal, and sold in stores statewide all year long. In my town of just about 6500 people, I have two or three large, permanent stores damn near the size of a Dollar General that sell pyro to anyone and everyone who can fog a mirror and wave a dollar bill. And for the two weeks prior to the Fourth, roadside stands made from semi-trailer cargo containers pop up like weeds. Nothing says HOLIDAYS like buying explosives from a ramshackle hut staffed by what looks to be retired carnival workers like some Beirut arms bazaar.

Right here in my town....and yeah, they have a website no less.


I grew up in states where the most you could get was maybe a few firecrackers and some sparklers, and even then it was only around the Fourth. Here in SC, it’s common to buy them all year long, but most especially at July 4th and New Year’s. Instead of a few whoops and cheers, or maybe banging a wooden spoon on a saucepan to make noise to ring in the new year, my neighbors fire off a barrage of explosives that make my neighborhood look like Baghdad on opening night of Desert Storm. And then they continue to do so…all night…and for a few nights thereafter, causing my dogs endless grief.


When I was stationed in Kansas, about a week to ten days prior to the Fourth, we’d see the stands spring up like mushrooms after a rain, and we did what bored 21-year old kids with extra money did: we bought assloads of fireworks and whatever we didn’t fire off on the holiday we shot off, usually at each other and oft times down the hallways of the barracks. It was nothing for us to toss a lit brick of firecrackers under a guy’s door at 3AM for shits & giggles. Mature, responsible military policemen indeed.


Anyways, I guess I feel guilty for having been so reckless with stuff that’d blow off fingers with ease, and so every year I bring a little attention to the dangers of the pretty things that go boom.

In Ocracoke, NC, four workers unloading fireworks in preparation for that night’s show were killed when the whole shebang exploded at once. Dock master Robert Raborn noticed the workers unloading the truck from the Anchorage Marina about 200 yards away. He heard the explosion, which he described as one of the loudest things he has ever heard, then turned to see what happened.

"It was like 40 minutes worth of fireworks going off in four seconds," Raborn said.

In Youngstown, Ohio, Mercer County dispatchers reported that emergency workers took one person to the hospital by helicopter from a fireworks accident that occurred a little before 11 p.m. Saturday. The accident also caused the house where the accident took place to catch on fire, a dispatcher said. No other information was available.

In Quakertown, Pennsylvania, a man was killed Saturday after an accident during a fireworks show at the town’s Memorial Park. Police Chief Scott McElree said "some kind of explosion" occurred as the show’s grand finale was starting and authorities immediately halted the show and evacuated part of the park. The 40-year-old man was taken to St. Luke's Hospital with head injuries, officials said. The man was pronounced dead at the hospital shortly after the blast.

In Arthur, Illinois, some people attending a large fireworks display on Saturday night suffered minor burns when a shell misfired, Arthur fireworks commissioner Mark Jones said Monday.

Now, those accidents are bad enough, and they involved professionals who are used to handling pyro daily. The ones that really cause me to shake my head are the ones involving rank amateurs or kids doing dumb shit. Leave the fireworks to professionals…jeez.

In Bennettsville, North Carolina, two kids were burned when their father was lighting off a home-grown display when one of the rockets misfired towards the house, landing in a BUCKET of fireworks on the porch. Kids were on said porch. The six-year old girl has second-degree burns, and her four got a minor burn on his shoulder. Both are recovering at the Augusta Burn Center in Georgia.\
And worse still, right here in South Carolina, fifteen year old Ryan Stancell has lost his hand and most likely have to have both legs amputated after a fireworks accident Thursday night.

He is currently at Greenville Memorial Hospital with severe burns on his chest and will need skin grafts, according to his mother. She said they do think he will survive.

Neighbor Perry Oakley said he felt the shock inside his house when the explosive went off, and ran to help.

“I was completely shocked out, “said Oakley. “There was a nurse at the end of the road and if it wasn’t for her, I don’t know what the kid would have done. She got us to take our belts off and create tourniquets for him. “

Oakley said even more shocking, the explosion was caused by sparklers.
“It was a sparkler. Those are $.25 a box and most people would never think that would cause the damage that it was capable of, “said Oakley.

The Anderson County Sheriff’s Office said there were possibly more than 100 sparklers gathered together, creating what’s called a sparkler bomb. It creates tremendous explosive power, according to the Anderson County Fire Chief.
“Anytime you alter a firework and use it for anything it’s not supposed to be used for, it’s a recipe for disaster. “

The fire chief says the investigation is still open and charges could be filed, because it is against the law to alter an explosive device. He says the boy was with a 21 year old at the time, and reports say that it was the adult, not the fifteen-year old, who actually lit off the device. Stancell realized the danger and was trying to extinguish the blaze when it exploded.

I checked a couple different sources and have read 100 sparklers, 144 sparklers, and up to 500 sparklers were taped together to make this redneck clusterbomb. Regardless, that’s just insane. What sort of imbecile straps a couple hundred sticks together of something whose sole purpose is to BURN, very hot and very fast, like nothing’s gonna happen?

As is usually the case, the innocent party is also the injured party. My heart goes out to those injured this year.

Look….even trained professionals can have disasters happen on their watch. The vast majority of you are not trained professionals. Many of you should not be allowed near fireworks, and some of you shouldn’t even be allowed near a book of matches. What’s worse, the frikkin’ Web is full, and I mean FULL, of instructional videos and pictures of how to make sparkler bombs.

Oh yeah, THAT looks safe. A fool and his fingers are soon parted...

Don’t end up being featured by me next year in my 2010 roundup…

A Three Ring Funeral

You gotta be shittin’ me. As if the death of The Fantastic Plastic Pedophile wasn’t enough of a circus, his family has honest-to-shit enlisted the aid of the REAL circus to do his memorial, and he’ll be buried in what amounts to nigh on a pharaoh’s sarcophagus.

The memorial service will take place Tuesday at the 20,000 seat Staples Center, and big screens outside will televise the spectacle from 10AM onwards to a million or so idiots outside who weren’t lucky enough to be the idiots inside.

The memorial will feature performances and tributes from a host of music and acting legends and will open with a parade of circus animals, including tigers and elephants walking trunk to tail - part of LA’s annual Parade of the Elephants.
The parade was devised by The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, which has had to postpone its own show at the Staples Center.

A spokesman for the circus said Tuesday's event would be the 'greatest show on Earth', exactly the phrase Jackson used in 2002 when asked what he thought his funeral would be like. Eerily, Jackson replied: 'It’s going to be the greatest show on Earth. That’s what I want. Fireworks and everything.'

How utterly asinine. I don’t want any of you to say a frikkin’ word of derision when I ask for a bagpiper and a couple soldiers to fold the flag. My request pales in comparison to this lunacy.

Details of Tuesday's public memorial were released in Friday by the owners of Staples Center. CEO Tim Leiweke says 17,500 free tickets will be provided, with 11,000 tickets being for seats inside Staples Center and 6,500 for seats in the adjacent Nokia Theatre, where fans will watch a simulcast.

People who want tickets must register on the Web at Staplescenter.com. After 6 p.m. Saturday, 8,750 names will be randomly selected to receive two tickets each.

Notifications will go out on Sunday. Those selected will obtain their tickets via Ticketmaster on Monday. No word yet on whether Ticketbastard will charge handling and processing fees on those free tickets.

Among the guests expected to attend the memorial service are Diana Ross, Elizabeth Taylor and Paul McCartney, who is likely showing up in hopes of getting back the rights to his Beatles songs.

President Barack Obama has also been invited, one report claims, and last night he spoke for the first time about the singer’s death. He said: 'I still have all his stuff on my iPod. I grew up on his music.' He added that he thought Jackson had experienced 'a tragic and in many ways sad personal life'.

Nice to know our Dear Leader has such a tremendous grasp of the fucking obvious. My 9-year old stepson knew that MJ was messed up, so I’m glad the man with his finger on the nuclear button …oh, who am I kidding? …the guy who’s taking all my money…has at least that much situational awareness. Did Obama issue any statements on Ed McMahon’s death? Or Billy Mays? Or Farrah Fawcett? Or Karl Malden’s?

If by “sad personal life” on your TelePrompter, do you mean “slept with little kids in his bed in a house filled with chimps and surgery-grade sedatives”?



SuperFreak will be buried in a $25,000 golden casket, no less.

The coffin, a rare design called the Promethean, is made of solid bronze but is 14-carat gold-plated, with a hand-polished mirror finish and velvet lining. It was ordered from the Batesville Casket Company and is identical to the coffin used to bury James Brown in 2006.

After the memorial, there will be a private ceremony at Forest Lawn cemetery in Hollywood which will be attended by family and close friends only. Grid coordinates will be made available in the next couple days so that the media can hover overhead and people can swarm the “private” event. DVD’s and t-shirts will be on sale shortly thereafter to ease the burden of debts…

Jackson, who was believed to be $400 million in debt, also held giant assets, including the rights to his own songs and a 50 percent stake in the company that owns the majority of the Beatles' catalog. Jackson was worth $237 million as of March 31, 2007. Like so much else that boggles the mind about Jackson's life, though, he had $700,000 of that amount in actual cash, a relatively paltry sum given his opulent lifestyle, prodigious borrowing and ridiculous seven-figure shopping sprees. And then there’s Uncle Sam, who, once debts are stripped out of the Jackson assets, will want to exact his pound of flesh; as much as 45% of what's left of the estate once the legislated $3.5 million exemption is accounted for.

So, after the funeral, the Obama Administration will force-feed a Michael Jackson American Legacy Relief Stimulus Package of 8.6 billion dollars, of which 200 million will alleviate Jackson’s death and the remainder will be pork for ACORN.

July 4th, 2009

Happy Fourth, ya’ll.

For my readers outside the USA, I know today is just another Saturday, in which case I hope you have a great weekend. Party it up but be safe. For my fellow Americans, Happy Birthday! And for my fellow veterans and current service members, I salute you all, my brothers and sisters, and I salute your sacrifices and those of your families.

I am the son and grandson of immigrants, from Canada, Poland, and Wales, with roots further back in England and Scotland. I am the product of people who came here looking for a better life than what they left behind. I am also one in a long, long line of soldiers and sailors and airmen (I actually don’t have any Marines in my lineage to my knowledge, but my oldest friend in the world is a former Devil Dog so that covers that).

My great great-grandfather, circa 1900

My great grandfather, second from right, in the 1930's

My grandfather, circa 1940

My folks in King's Bay, GA in 1988

Me in Germany, early 1989

I made my decision to enlist in the Army on July 4th, 1987. Four days later, I signed on the dotted line, and left for basic in January 1988.

Having traveled outside my own borders and lived overseas, I am keenly aware that while I feel that I live in a great nation and there’s nowhere else I’d really rather be, there is indeed more to this world than the United States, and the world does not revolve around us. I am, however, proud of how we as Americans band together to help those around the globe who need us.


Be safe. Be happy. Be proud of where you live and who we are.

Be free.

Saturday Morning Cavalcade of Drug-Fueled Weirdness

I pity da foo' who had to watch this crap!




I think I’ve finally figured out why the world today is so incredibly screwed up. The shit we watched on TV as kids destroyed our ability to grow up into rational human beings. Of course, we can lay much of that upon the now stooped shoulders of our forebears, with their acid trips and mushroom-induced magic carpet rides that were taken in order to come up with the crap that filled our Saturday mornings. Most of the blame I lay solely at the feet of the tandem teams of Hanna-Barbera and Sid & Marty Krofft. Those guys were responsible for, say, 90% of the shit we watched on TV as kids.

The Kroffts started off by doing the costumes for HB’s disasterpiece acid-fest The Banana Splits. It was a bizarre mix of animation and live action, hosted by a fat beagle with his tongue permanently out, a gorilla with a shit-eating grin, a stoned lion, and a silent hippy dustmop elephant. Ladies & gentlemen, here’s Fleegle, Bingo, Drooper, and Snork.


The Kroffts also brought us H.R. Pufnstuf. Oh, yes, puffin’ some stuff, indeed. A little British nancy-boy with a talking flute in some colorful acid-trip kingdom where his best friend is a bloated talking iguana dressed like a Colonial plantation owner. Later, the brothers would bring us a talking lump of seaweed, with Sigmund the Sea Monster, and a single dad out for a canoe trip with his kids, who instead end up being chased through the Land of the Lost by dinosaurs and weird hissing reptile dudes called Sleestaks. All the while they get to hang out with a conversational dwarf Sleestak and an early cave-child named Chaka that not even the Geico cavemen would claim. The recent remake with Will Farrell completely fucked up the original’s already fucked-up plot beyond recognition.




The late 60’s had everyone all a-twitter with the James Bond series of films, and what do you do with a successful movie franchise? You dumb it down for kids!!! And thus I was able to spend my childhood weekend mornings watching the adventures of Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp. It was a spoofy send-up of the Bond-genre spy flicks, with all the characters played by chimps. Today we’d need to have chimps remaking the Terminator films, or Nightmare of Elm Street. The Transformers flicks would be a total trip with chimps.


There was a plethora of superhero cartoons and crossovers, and for awhile every hero had a young male protégé. Aqua Man had Aqua Lad, and Batman had always had Robin. I’m not sure if it was just an attempt to show kids that they could be heroes too, or if it was just some strange pedophilic eroticism. Sometimes it was just dumbed down, like the Blue Falcon with his imbecile robotic dog Dynomutt.

And of course, there were always mysteries to be solved and crimes to be fought, so bring on the craptastic Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, Jabberjaw (a talking shark who could somehow survive out of the water. Then again, if he can talk in a voice reminiscent of Curly from the Three Stooges, why not walk on land too?), Hong Kong Phooey, Speed Buggy (with a talking dune buggy), and the mirrored shows Josie & The Pussycats and Scooby Doo.

To me, Speed Buggy was just a cheap knock off with the dog being replaced by a car. Pussycats was just a cheap-assed wannabe Scooby Doo with more characters. Both paled in comparison to The Doo. But…..

Some of the Scooby shit really makes me wonder. It was released in 1969, at the height of the war in Vietnam. Somehow, neither of the two male characters had been drafted…well, I think actually, Shaggy (the beatnik hippy) had been to The ‘Nam, and got hooked on weed and other fun stuff in the Mekong Delta. He was afraid of everything, mirroring the paranoia of some druggies. He was always hungry, with the weed munchies. He hallucinated that his dog could talk……Then we have Fred, who really should have been drafted, but was he considered unfit for service? I mean, he had those tight pants on, and always wore that sissy ascot scarf neckerchief….and though they always drove around in a van with two chicks (well, Velma was a bit butch) Fred never tried to slip it to either of them, though I think secretly Daphne wanted a 3-way with Fred and Shaggy.

The 80’s were no better, nor were the 90’s. In fact, I think the shows gradually got worse. I have no idea what kids are stuck with now. I suggest you make sure your kids have plenty of books to read or send their little asses outside to play and get some exercise. If it weren’t for reading, TV would have turned my brain to pudding. Who knows what today’s crap will do?

Hey, Wannabe Idols! Make sure to sing Jacko songs at the auditions!

Oh yes...lose what little minds you have left....


Just a thought, but I got to wondering something. If it’s the height of summer, that means that hundreds of thousands of kids who sing like shit, and a couple hundred who sing pretty well, are converging on 6 American cities to sing the same dreck over and over auditioning for American Idol. Four of the auditions are already over (Boston, Chicago, Dallas, and Atlanta) but there’s still time to (waste) spend your money or your parents’ money and go camp out like some filthy hippie following the Grateful Dead in either Orlando next week or Denver the week after that.

Many of you are just trying to be a big enough asstard that Idol will put you on TV for a minute dressed like a fucking idiot or making a total fool of yourself. One or two of your friends will think you’re cool, but the other 300 million people in America will just laugh at you, and not in a good way.

Sadly, many, many more of you are going there because you think you can sing. I have news for you; you can’t. You sound like shit and will look like an embarrassing train wreck. Now, some of you will be such a ginormous train wreck that the pre-judges will push you forward to embarrass yourself in front of the actual Big Four judges on TV to fill in the blanks on the auditions shows since America loves to watch people fail epically.

Here’s a clue: if you have never sung in front of a large crowd, I suggest trying THAT before you audition. If you can’t do it, stay the hell home. Record yourself singing. If you sound like shit, stay the hell home. Your mom is not a competent judge of your talent; you could scream bloody murder to the tune of happy birthday whilst naked and smeared with elephant shit and she’d think you sounded good.

Dress appropriately but dress like yourself, with just a bit of panache. Don’t go looking like a circus freak or a crack whore, because that’s how people will remember you. “Oh you were the crack whore on Idol this year…how quaint!” And look, if you’re, shall we say, a tad thick in the middle, for piss sakes wear enough clothes to cover your rolls. Don’t show up on TV lookin’ like ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.

Learn some songs. Preferably, learn something a bit unique. I’m terribly sick of hearing you people butcher Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. I’m sick of hearing the same five Stevie Wonder songs. Ladies, please stop with the fucking “Black Velvet”, okay? Allanah Myles was a one-hit wonder twenty years ago and that song has truly worn thin.

And no matter how tacky it’ll be, I just know that you pathetic turds are gonna try and milk the popularity-from-sympathy angle and sing an assload of Michael Jackson songs. He’s dead, and freshly so, so let’s milk that tit and ride that bandwagon, right? The judges will love it, right? Nahhhhh…they’ll think you’re a douche.


They want a pop star, so sing something that was popular, at least in the past 5 years. Please, guys, don’t show up in a pinstripe zoot-suit and croon shit from the 40’s. Frank Sinatra is dead and we already have Michael Bublé and Harry Conick. And all of you, quit singing shit that other Idol winners sang after they won. That’s just sucking up and it sounds stupid. You won’t score brownie points by butchering Carrie Underwood.

This will be the year that Idol jumps the shark. I feel it in my bones.

Another foray into the Top 40 wasteland

It’s been a few months since I last brought you the wretchedness that is Top 40 radio in America. There’s a reason that I listen to either talk radio or a select few bands from my younger days; Top 40 pop music sucks, by and large.

So, every so often I take an hour or two, listen to the dreck they pass off on us, and then remind myself of why I don’t listen to this shit in the first place. But don’t take my word for it—go watch/listen for yourself and see that I’m not smoking catnip.


Cash Cash – There’s a Party In Your Bedroom

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oynjMRofFVk&feature=channel_page

Damn you, MySpace and You Tube. Thanks to you, anyone with a Casio keyboard they picked up at Best Buy can be a star. They look like an emo Jonas Brothers and sound like sugar-coated Daft Punk, with syrupy lyrics and an even more syrupy delivery. Halfway through, you expect the lyrics to segue into Jermaine Stewart’s 80’s crapfest “We Don’t Have To Take Our Clothes Off”.



LMFAO – I’m In Miami Trick

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysJyFAHwVP8

Just what we needed…an updated equivalent of Trio’s “Da Da Da” for the new millennium; full of tinkertoy electronic blips and meaningless blathering lyrics. Actually, the original, non-radio version has “Bitch” instead of “Trick” as the lyric. Another product of the internet generation of iTunes and MySpace. Around the 2-minute mark, I’m ready to jam a steak knife in my trachea.

Soulja Boy Tell Em – Kiss Me Through The Phone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhwQay4QiOw

The annoying fellow behind that fuck-awful Crank That Soulja Boy (DeAndre Ramone Way) is back with some more repetitive babbling coupled with a bubblegum chorus sung by someone else who actually has a halfway pleasant voice. That still can’t save this song. Should have been called “Annoy Me Through The Radio”.

Lady GaGa – Love Game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fDwRRZ7eUo

The pride of Yonkers, 23-year old Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta has been inescapable the past few months. This song follows up the hit singles “Just Dance” and “Poker Face”. Excellent basslines and production are the saving grace, because the lyrics really leave you scratching your brain-case, and this song is no exception, with the inane lines “Let’s have some fun; this beat is sick. I wanna take a ride on your disco stick.” She sticks weird glitter chunks to her face, dresses like a cross between a stripper and a flapper, and has a really good voice when she actually sings. Kinda like Madonna 30 years younger and without a petting zoo full of kids and Kaballah.

Jeremih – Birthday Sex

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTt4GGqBcc0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkYwtYMlFcs

When the hell did Moet champagne get relabeled Mo-weezy? I included two links to the vids because there seems to be two versions of the song, one a slower ballady mix (the official video) and then the uptempo version I keep hearing on the radio. Jeremih Felton seems to have a bright pop future ahead of him. He reminds me a bit of a young Kanye West without the narcissism. However, the bridge (“Girl you know Iiiiiiiiiiiiii, girl you know Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii”) grates on my nerves really fast, as does the chanting of “Birthday Sex….Birthday Sex….”. Yeah, kid, we get it. We all like to get laid on our birthday, but not too many of us feel we gotta sing about it.


Pitbull – I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2tMV96xULk

I actually kinda like Pitbull. I liked his last single, too, “Krazy” with Lil’ Jon. It’s really bouncy and dancey and clubby, which I like. The only real thing I don’t like about this mix is the “ping” noise in the background that reminds me of submarine sonar. I liked it enough at first but after a few listens it gets old. I wonder how many of my friends in the sub community cringe when they hear that? I’m guilty of not being able to understand the non-English lyrics, but they still sound cool. Pitbull (Armando Christian Rafael Pérez) hails from Miami so I’d assume it’s Spanish, but the beginning of the video shows a hottie wrapped in a Brazilian flag, so it might be Portuguese. I dunno; I speak German. Go figure.


Black Eyed Peas – I Gotta Feeling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_2rrxONlLo

The Peas are so far batting a thousand with this new album of theirs, The E.N.D. The first single, Boom Boom Pow, is everywhere on the radio, a great dance track that my buddy Chris said reminded him of the old Miami Bass Wars of the 80’s. You can’t escape the song, which is sad because now I turn the radio off when it comes on. It took less than 4 weeks to ruin it for me. This new rack is a 4:54 long microparty. You can’t help but bounce up & down, even while outside in the yard washing your car…oh, wait; maybe that was just me? This should be the quintessential party track of this summer.


NEWS FLASH:
We interrupt crappy Top 40 radio to bring you an important announcement!

This morning I saw something truly astounding, simultaneously on both MTV and MTV2. They were playing videos… yeah, no shit! I’m used to seeing vids in the morning on VH1, before they start to play non-stop repeats of faux reality bullshit shows at 9AM, but this was new….they were calling the shows AMTV and AMTV2, just a block of morning wakeup videos. I only got to see a couple clips before 9:00 rolled around and the bullshit non-video, non-music, crapfests began anew. The three I remembered:

Sean Kingston – Fire Burning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq77pTi03qQ

Two summers ago, you couldn’t escape this kid’s song “Beautiful Girls”. In fact, I wrote about it. (http://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2007/08/hour-of-my-life-that-ill-never-get-back.html)
Two summers later, he’s back with another inescapable track full of dancey beats and quasi-reggae deliveries. It gets old fast. The video, however, is a cavalcade of images, each about 2 seconds or less in length, with various energetic young folks doing dance moves that make me miss being 21 again, back when the Earth had just finished cooling and I still had the moves. I’ll probably hate this song in about another week or so.

Passion Pit -- The Reeling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVstHPhaJ6M

Wow…we just got sucked back to 1986. This is like an electronic Cocteau Twins song, a wall of synth noise and vaguely unintelligible high-pitched vocals. Video looks like some college kid’s art school thesis project. Up and coming Next Big Thing, Passion Pit is a band from Cambridge, Massachusetts (home of Harvard and MIT). They’re currently the darlings of the indie & new music crowd. Sadly, being named the Next Big Thing by the British music press is usually the death knell for anyone. Just say they’re the next Oasis and they’ll be gone inside of a month.


Dave Matthews Band – Funny The Way It Is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew8hmVIGKcM

Wow….Dave chunked up a little in the face…smoked too much weed and got the munchies I think. Looks a lot like Andy Kaufman here, or at least like Jim Carey playing Andy Kaufman. A pleasant enough song, but for me it’s easily forgettable. The video looks like spliced together concepts from Peter Gabriel’s heyday in the late 80’s and early 90’s. All that was missing was two dancing chicken carcasses.

Hiking in Appalachia

Way to go, Mark “Marky Mark the Megastud” Sanford”. Because of your inability to keep your Gamecock restrained within your tropical-weight Charleston khakis from some King Street haberdashery, we now have you to thank for one of the newest and latest street slang terms.

In order to stay somewhat current on what the hell kids these days are saying, occasionally a 40-year old middle-class white guy is forced to consult the online resource known as Urban Dictionary. I was at their website checking on a phrase when I noticed that their new itemof the day, added on June 27th by a user named Chatnoir80, was the term “Hiking in Appalachia”.

The site’s definition?

“To have an extramarrital affair. Stems from the disappearance and subsequent reappearance of South Carolina Governor, Mark Sanford(R). Gov. Sanford was thought to be hiking in Appalachia. In actuality, he was having an affair in the South American country of Argentina.”

Used in a practical sentence:
“Girl, I just saw Susie's man hiking in Appalachia.”


And what’s this? You’re coming clean about other affairs? And you said you need to try and fall back in love with your wife? Dude, I am shocked that Jenny hasn’t kicked your ass to the curb, and I’m really quite surprised that more folks in the Legislature haven’t called for your resignation and your head on a plate.

Between your shenanigans, and that “paragon of virtue” (sic) Jim Clyburn crying racism over anyone who refused stimulus money and then getting his daughter a cushy job on the FCC (see this: http://trackacrat.com/2009/06/29/i-wants-it-daddy-i-wants-it/), South Carolina is quickly becoming a far bigger laughingstock and hotbed of idiocy than California. At least Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham still have their senses, which is more than I can say for Boxer, Pelosi, and Feinstein.


By the way, Jim…why did you name your daughter Mignon? Sure, it’s French for “dainty” but dude…it always has, and always will be, associated with a cut of meat. You may as well have named her Porterhouse.


Even in Taiwan they know what mignon is....

Teen Suicide and the Power of Positive Thinking (With Guest Blogger Jim)

Today we get another insightful post from my old Army buddy, Guest Blogger Jim, who is originally from Michigan.




Jeff and Laura Edwards lost their son Chase, top, in 2003 to suicide when he was 12. Since then they’ve become suicide education advocates, and helped create the Chase Edwards Act, which encourages schools to hold suicide prevention programs.


I was looking at the Detroit Free Press earlier in the week, when I saw a headline for an article about teen suicides. The reporter was wondering about high teen suicide rates in the state, and went on to talk about a law Michigan passed encouraging early intervention or counseling in the schools.

Just by reading the headline, and having lived there, I was able to come up with the correct answer to the higher-than-national suicide rate. A doctor of psychiatry at a Michigan children's hospital blames it on homelessness, a lack of jobs, depression and hopelessness.

I knew that was going to be the answer before I ever read the article. How, you ask? Because as a kid growing up all I ever heard was negativity. The economy is bad, the schools are bad, the roads are bad, the hunting is bad. You name it; if it was shitty Michigan had it, twice. Back then we called the Red Wings the Dead Wings. The Lions are actually worse now than when I was growing up.

While there is no denying that Michigan has hit a shitty spot on the trail, I still believe it's possible to grow roses there. You don't have to stay there to make a living; move. I did and 17 years later I’m still holding the same job, with no layoffs. If you work for a car company or one of their satellite suppliers, sooner or later you will be out of a job. You stay, hoping it won't happen to you, but everyone gets bit eventually. You people stay ‘cause you like the 3 weeks paid vacation every year as the factories retool for the next model year. That shit is over with Obama running the show, no matter how much money and votes the UAW throws his way.


Teach the kids to be independent thinkers, not followers (Since Dad and Uncle Joe worked for GM, so will I). That starts in school, too. Everything is team-oriented, which is okay for tug-o-war, but not so hot for the rest of your life. Yeah, you have to be able to work with others, but the coach is going to put the best linebacker on the field or center on the ice. Do you get to take anyone else with you on job interviews?

I’d love to know just what the homeless rate is in Michigan. I feel this is just another liberal attempt to make people think things are worse than what they truly are.

The kid the story was about hung himself in an upstairs closet as his dad prepared dinner. While sad, I gotta say the pictures sure don't lead me to believe they have ever been homeless or anything. There was nothing, they said, that made anyone in the boy’s circle of family and friends to lead anyone to believe he was depressed. Not to speak ill of the dead, or pour salt into wounds, but sometimes things happen in life that we just can't control. The article says nothing about if the kid was taking anti-depressants, which we know are linked to higher incidents of suicide in teens. Funny; the doctor of psychiatry, who probably prescribes lots of that stuff, never mentioned it as a cause.

Hopelessness? Is that like teen angst? No one cares, nothing matters, and no one understands me, on and on. Just a guess, but kids: get interested in something or several somethings. Stop veggin' out, alone, in your room, and go do something. Hunt, fish, bike, canoe. Go to church, go out for the team, GET A JOB, and buy a car.

You know, during survival training you are taught to accomplish something, however small, everyday. You know why? To keep you from dwelling on your situation. People who have a purpose don't usually just curl up and die. Stop waiting for something to happen to give your life meaning; go make your life meaningful. Sometimes depression is a chemical imbalance in the body, but sometimes you're just bored.

I guess the big message here is, we’ve got to stop babying our kids and tell them to man up, in my opinion. Don’t push it on the schools; they are our kids, so let’s fix 'em ourselves. Teach them to be self-reliant, self-starters, independent thinkers, and tell them it's okay to be the best. Not assholes, but hard workers. A dose of that might bring down the suicide rate.

I'll leave you with two of my favorite quotes, although I don't know who exactly they are attributed to.

Tough times don't last; tough people do, remember? and
Every time you fall, pick something up.

What are your thoughts on this? I’d love to get some feedback.
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Allow MojoSteve to provide the opening feedback.

Your first quote is from Gregory Peck. It was also paraphrased as the title of a book by Reverend Robert H. Shuller. Your second quote is from Oswald T. Avery. He was one of the first molecular biologists and was a pioneer in immunochemistry, but he is best known for his discovery in 1944 with his co-workers Colin MacLeod and Maclyn McCarty that DNA is the material of which genes and chromosomes are made.

According to a 2007 report by the Michigan Statewide Homeless Management
Information System (MSHMIS) and mihomeless.org, there are 79,940 homeless people in Michigan. That's less than 1% of the 10.1 million population. The May 2009 unemployment rate in Michigan was 14.1%, according to Michigan Labor Market Information.

And, dude, the suicide rate is kinda weirdly high not just for teens on antidepressants, but adults too…and they can cause homicidal rages in oversexed pet chimps in the Connecticut suburbs. The snap-rate is high with those drugs. How many people on Zoloft, Prozac, Ritalin, Luvox, Paxil or other tasty treats have snapped and gone on rampages, or just sunk deeper and ended it? (By the by, Ritalin is an SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) in the same category as Prozac, Luvox, Zoloft, and Paxil.) If I recall, kids like Eric Harris (who along with Dylan Klebold killed 13 and wounded 23 at Columbine), Kip Kinkel (who killed 4 and wounded 23 at his school in Oregon), and Jeff Weise (who killed nine and then himself at his school in Red Lake, MN) were on SSRI drugs, and Brynn Hartman was on Zoloft when she killed her husband, actor Phil Hartman, and then herself.

Sure, we all wanna worry when our kids start doing things out of the ordinary beyond normal teen moodiness. But you need to openly communicate with your kid to know when they're just being a whiny Emo kid in Hot Topic eyeliner listening to sad music and reading Twilight to being a serious risk for harm to themselves and others. I spent hours being a moody shit in my room, listening to The Cure, The Smiths, and Depeche Mode, and I was fascinated with military history, but I also had a great relationship with my mom and my friends and I turned out pretty damned chipper. I channeled my moodiness into my writing and turned my interests into a great 4 years in the Army, getting focused and getting a head start on being in the Real World.


Over 600 people took a ticket to wait for up to five hours to make an unemployment claim on a Tuesday afternoon at the Michigan Unemployment Office in January 2009.

Death is good for the bank account

If ever you needed proof that dying increases your popularity, radio play for Michael Jackson's music is up 1735% this week. Yeah, One thousand, seven hundred thirty-five per cent. That ain't a typo.

According to research provided by Nielsen BDS of monitored airplay from over 1,600 terrestrial and satellite radio stations, 143 of Jackson's recordings totaled 67,383 plays for the week ending June 28, up 1,735% from last week's sum of 3,671 plays.

After having just one song("Rock With You") post more than 500 plays in the week prior to his death, 22 of Jackson's tracks eclipsed 1,000 plays this past week, led by his biggest Billboard Top 100 hit, "Billie Jean" (4,500 spins). That total places the track at No. 51 among all current or recurrent titles for the week. It was followed, of course, by "Thriller", the video for which received more spins after his death than anything else I saw on VH1 Classic.

And since he had over a hundred songs stashed away for release after his death to feed his kids off future royalties, we'll be hearing him for years to come, just like every other dead pop star. In fact, it's almost time for another album from either Tupac or Biggie...

A song of solidarity for the Iranian people

I'm not a Bon Jovi fan. Never have been; probably never will be. I respect them as a band and as musicians, but I'm just not a rock band kind of guy. I'm more the old school New Wave and synth-pop kind of guy. However, I happened upon this article on Billboard's website while researching the latest releases.



A new version of Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" featuring Jon Bon Jovi and exiled Iranian singer Andy Madadian, which is making the rounds as an online video, is meant to send "a musical message of worldwide solidarity" to the Iranian people in the wake of the country's controversial recent election, according to co-producer Don Was.

Was tells Billboard.com that the session, which took place June 24 in Los Angeles, was spurred by a conversation he had with Madadian about "whether there was something we could do just to send out a little message of solidarity, remembering the '60s, believing music can change things." When they arrived to record the song, they found Bon Jovi, guitarist Richie Sambora and John Shanks, who's producing their next album, sitting outside and having lunch.

"They asked what we were doing, I told them, and Jon said, 'Look, man, if you do it right now we'll do it with you,' " Was recalls. "So we did." Madadian -- who's lived in the U.S. since the Iranian revolution of 1979 -- and Bon Jovi duet on the song, with both men singing the first verse in Farsi. Sambora plays a guitar solo, with Was on bass, Patrick Leonard on keyboards and Jeff Rothchild on drums.

"We just cut it," Was says, "and the video is the session. It took about four hours and just fell into place nicely." The video, which features footage and still photos from the session, went up on Was' portion of My Damn Channel on Saturday and was quickly disseminated via MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and other sites. At the end of the video Madadian and Bon Jovi stand next to each other, with the latter holding a sign saying "We are one" in Farsi.

"It is not for sale," Was says. "It wasn't intended to be on the Billboard charts, wasn't meant to be a hit record or even pressed on a CD. It's intended to be downloaded and shared by the Iranian people. The whole idea was to get it into Iran and tell them...to carry on, that the world is watching and we're with you."