I want rock to make a strong come back. Sure, I like rap, but I'm ready for it to make its grand exit... maybe appear again in a few years in a happy, sloppy form.
Rock and Roll vs. Rap:
Rock and Roll is to guitar solos as Rap is to featuring one or more guest artists on a song.
Rock and Roll is to protest as Rap is to contest.
Rock and Roll is to "You're bringing me down," as Rap is to "I'm going to bring you down."
Rock and Roll is to elaborate metaphoric stories as Rap is to elaborate metaphoric insults.
All I'm saying is that I'd like to keep the cycle moving. I love the rap music. I would like the creme of the crop to continue rapping to keep us going through the leaner years. I just want the vast median to now swing over to the rock and roll side of the stage.
Just to keep things interesting.
When I sign into something online, and the website asks me if I want it to "remember me," is that weird?
Is it weird to use words like "remember" and "memory" for an electronic piece of equipment that was created by a human being?
Are we cheapening an actual memory by using these words, or are we creating more metaphor opportunities?
I think its completely reasonable to use these words. They're perfectly good words and they help people understand what it does. I'm aware of that. Why make a word for "the ammount of information a computer can retain" when we already have a word for "retained information."
But, don't you get a little creeped out when a web site "knows" you. Like those tutorial CD-Roms that have little life like humans helping you through the whole process, providing fun, information, and comfort. Or when you call a company and get a voice automated system and a nice sounding woman says "Hi. Welcome to Company Incorporated please listen to a few questions so i can help you out... ok... you pressed 1, that's great!"
"That's great!"?!?!
And that is what is scary to me. That I appreciate being remembered by a website. It makes life easier and leaves me more time to spend with my friends and family chatting online, using my fancy electric can opener, self-checking myself in at an airport kiosk, or watching DVD's.
I wonder if I would notice if my friends were are replaced with robots?
I probably would. They'll have to first prefect the technology of matching intonation on spliced sentences. My fool proof robot test remains: "Excuse me, do you know what time is it?"
"I sure do! It's One OH six AND forty-FIVE Seconds. That's great!"
Could this young man who visited me this last week truly be my younger brother? Can it be?
Can this man who made waffles with me in the morning and offered to cook for while them so I could eat breakfast truly be the same man who, ten years ago, loved the movie "Hook," and during a quiet part of one church service started waving his crooked finger in the air and chanting "Hook! Hook! Hook!" like they do in the movie?
Can I be that old?
There is a mood for which Johnny Cash music is the cure.
I think that when a bone is broken, for example, you don't go in and glue it back together. You come around it and hold it in place until it heals. This is the sense of cure that I mean.
It's just the sound of a guy and his guitar, another guy playing an upright base, another guy on another guitar, and sometimes the first guy's wife singing backup.
That's all it is.
And there exist certain injustices for which these songs were written: bad hair for no good reason, the existence of money, the passing of time....
The entire twelfth year of my life was dedicated to heightening my parent’s awareness of how unfair my life was. I could see it so clearly and they really cared so little. Why did I have to wash the dishes, for example, when my younger brother always got to dry them (see, the drier could leave a whole rack of dishes drip-drying.... this is at least 7 whole minutes of blatant unfairness)!
"I don't like it, but I guess things happen that way." -Johnny Cash