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April 24, 2012 - April 17, 2012

Thursday, June 09, 2011

DON'T START WITH ME, MR. TRUEPUNK. Mr. B hasn't run me by the Boss yet, but I've been thwarted in all my tries at getting on this site, and I swear I have something to contribute,

Like this T-Shirt Contest. Here's my idea. We've got all these candidates who think they want to run against Obama. And people out there who support some of those candidates. So let's get into the T-Shirt business and make some money for the site that can be used for Internet-Age ideas like advertising InstaPunk on the Internet. Radical idea? Stop it. Long overdue.

Who's your dream, good or bad, candidate-wise? Give us a T-Shirt to sell. Here's an example or two:




Send in your ideas. If they're good enough, we'll (or Mr. B could) declare some winners and make some calls to the people who make T-Shirts. Who knows? If you're brief enough, we can take over the bumper sticker market too.

Sorry, Mr. B. I hacked your posting info. But my intentions are good. I'm tired of seeing this site run like a private club. With the dinosaurs out of the way, it's time to make things happen. Don't tell me you don't have an itchy trigger finger too.

A TIME FOR SADNESS? The key paragraph from conservative Roman Catholic columnist Cal Thomas today:


Beg to differ. It doesn't take a moral giant to know to a certainty you would not do what Weiner has done. In the sense that we all have low thoughts, there can be cause for sympathy. But not, for most of us, empathy. There are too many separating factors. Why I'm asking some stern questions about Cal Thomas right now.

"Given similar circumstance and opportunity," would Mr. Thomas regard it as enticing or acceptable or at least barely understandable and somehow divinely forgivable to betray his pregnant wife by engaging in lewd computer chat with women whose age and circumstances he does not know, to photograph his own genitals and forward them as a form of flirtation to females who might be minors, and then to lie repeatedly and arrogantly about what he has done, what manner of duty he owes to his constituents, and what he is doing to the dignity and trust of his wife, let alone the vows he made to her a scant year ago?

Lust is one thing. Most human beings would plead guilty to impure thoughts. But there is also such a thing as honor. Also fidelity, faith, love, and honesty. Not to mention a real man's aversion to the possibility of unintended consequences, like ensnaring innocents in his sexual fantasies, corrupting his vows of office and the mission of his entire career.

True, men in power stray more than most. Maybe his wife makes allowances. But that doesn't make it merely "sad." It makes it nauseating . Which is how I feel about Cal Thomas at the moment.

Time for a confession of doubt. I've toyed over the years with converting to Catholicism. Because the Episcopal Church has lost both its theology and its morality. I yearn for the eloquent faith of the church I grew up in, which is long gone, lingering perhaps only in the first of Christian churches. But this is the kind of thing that holds me back. Does Catholicism mean that you can commit absolutely every kind of sin, no matter how depraved, and as long as you whisper it through the grille to the priest in confession, it's okay?

Cal seems to think so. If that's how it is, count me out. I was born and raised an Episcopalian. We didn't make the sign of the cross at every whipstitich. But we had a term I never hear Catholics mention. Rectitude. Synonymous with that haughty stick up the ass every other protestant denomination condemns Episcopalians for.

We do everything with that stick up our ass, including sin. It's our replacement for the transaction of license granted through a grille. The stick tells us when we've gone too far, or might be on the verge of going too far, because the stick is in our personal ass and makes it bitingly clear that there are some things we can't do without feeling the guilt forever, no matter what anyone says, collar or no collar.

Taking an iPhone snap of your dick and sending it to a total stranger while your wife is swelling with child is one of those things.

We just don't do that kind of thing and retain the ability to confront ourselves in the mirror. Even if the Archbishop of Canterbury is the biggest dick in Christendom. (Which he indubitably is: the urge to be fair, an Episcopal virtue, gone psychotic.)

I know. I anticipate the rebuttals. Cal Thomas misspoke. Catholics don't condone what Weiner did, either. But they would forgive it, via confession, and talk it away in terms of persuasive theology. What I'd forgotten about Episcopalians, old style Episcopalians that is, is that there are sins we do not forgive ourselves, whether God forgives them or not. I find that more empowering than what the Pope, a man with a hat, has to offer. For certain sins I send myself to hell. My authority for that is the splinter of God in me. No other Christian denomination offers men such freedom of will to choose.

To Episcopalians, rectitude is at some level superior to salvation. I'm sorry my church can no longer remember the argument for why that is so. But it's also a vivid reminder that my conversion to Catholicism will never happen. Today I am remembering. Sorry, Rob.

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

HALLITES.15.1-25. The InstaPunk did:

Funny how things work. I know Shane is laughing this morning. Probably about his joke in re Christiane Ammanpour's "weiner."

P.S. I'm feeling good about the new kid, though. His first post certifies him as a twenty-something old fart. Maybe the new regime won't be so different from the old regime. And you've got to admit, the kid can write. If he keeps it up, I will be content to start fading away.

Monday, June 06, 2011

RELAX. DADDY'S HOME. Music spat in my face and took its own life on October 3, 2000, the day Radiohead released their Kid A record. Sure, there've been songs and bands I've liked since then, but they've been exceptions, aberrations, heretics in the 21st century. Death rattles. Music's suicide note read, in part, "I'm tired of going from strength to strength, ferocity to ferocity, exaltation to exaltation. It's just too much WORK to feel that good. This shady corner of my bedroom looks cozy. It's cool and there's hardly any light to hurt my eyes. I'm going to curl up there for a while, bury my face in my sleeves. My self-pitying moans are all you'll hear from me. But don't let my shaking back and forth fool you. I have passed on."

She didn't say when she'd be back. She goes through moods like this every now and then-- remember Disco? Or the Mrs. Miller craze? Ha ha, everyone's old and tone deaf, I get it!-- and you just have to be patient and wait for her to snap out of it.

Thing is, I'm starting to worry she won't. It's been more than 10 years, and post-Pink Floyd noodling, woe-is-me crybaby crap is still the order of the day. Whining is just how you sing now. Even bands that on the surface seem dedicated to rocking out are still whining.

Even rap, which was supposed to be the last gasp of artistic defiance before the long night of Scientific Orthodox Collectivism, has devolved from NWA ass-kicking, Public Enemy (attempted) social consciousness, and Eminem guts-turning-inside-out to... well... to this.



I worry because this is the new decade. Music is supposed to change AT LEAST once a decade, right? Elvis sinks Eddie Fisher. The Beatles sink rockabilly (bad). Madonna sinks Christopher Cross (good). Nirvana sinks all that damned hair metal with one hit.

Go ahead. Bitch about Nirvana. Would you rather Cherry Pie had been the act everyone tried to follow? For a whole decade? Or try this: Scream along with Very Ape and tell me it isn't the Punkest thing you've heard in a minute. You're always wrong.

But then Radiohead and a fleet of Radiohead wanna-bes sank almost everything I wanted to listen to. I remember not hating the radio. Those days are gone.

But it's 2011! Where's my asethetic changeover? Where's my Next Kind of Popular Music?

I think I've found it.


Imagine that put to a club beat. Music that literally, physiologically, only the young can hear. THAT'S the music of a respectable future.

Don't look at me like I'm crazy. It's already begun.


Begun? Hell, it's already out there. Don't tell me you haven't seen them. Packs of youths with their straight-billed backwards caps (they all leave the retail hologram stickers on the bills! Swear to God that's the new thing) and even more enormous-er coats and pants worn lower than their shoes, bobbing their heads in silence. Are they praying? Mourning a fallen gang member?

No. If you'll cup your ancient ear, you'll hear the occasional squeaky groan. That's the low parts on their new favorite music.

You know how in horror movies it's always scarier when you don't see the monster or killer? You'll feel the same way when that street-rumbling bass in ridiculous souped-up Hondas suddenly goes silent.

Adults will mock this music on late night shows and amongst themselves by making no noise. Ha ha. The kids will let you laugh.

Tea with honey will be the new reefer. Singing along to songs pitched that high is a real strain on a young throat.

Now you're thinking "Dude, what the hell are you gloating about? You'll never hear it. You haven't been a teenager for a long time."

Silly rabbit. I'm Brizoni.

I hear everything.

BEFORE. It's June 6. D-Day. But I've turned it all over. So it's aaaallllllll turned over. What a relief. Tired of being responsible for what happens next. Last (second to last, third to last, etc) post. Forget D-Day. They died. I die too. Every day. Every goddammed day. But then again I'm not the cerebral InstaPunk or the homely CountryPunk. I'm just a rank barbarian, not going quietly into that good night. I have not subsided. I have been silenced -- in favor of supposedly more virulent voices. It may be true that I'm dilatory and inattentive, but Brizoni can't spell or define dilatory and he's not so much inattentive as AWOL He learned all his economics from Rand. Which means he hasn't a clue how to explain the guilt of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, both of whom feel really really guilty. Awwww. I can't wait.

Something about a double-dip recession. Something you might not enjoy, oh you totalitarians. Oh, I forgot. Brizoni has his own totalitarians to worship. All named Ayn Rand. Sorry. Anti-totalitarians. Meaning they're totalitarians anti the anti's. Like have an MBA or suffer the fate of all committed anti-capitalists. Like Antonio Francisco. According to the literary evidence, he gave Dagny Taggart many fine orgasms. But there's no evidence Rand ever had a single one.


Signed,

TruePunk sliding free and away....

P.S. I've been assured we'll get a "Detroit" post from Brizoni. We'll see. If not, we'll be back all hammer and tongs...

PPS. Yeah, it's still the anniversary of D-Day. Permit me to sneak in my awe and respect, regardless of the new age of ignorance.

ADDENDUM: Final thought. Much as I hate Harvard for its politics, I still love it for this. Sorry.

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