Random Thinking

“If this program passes, one of these years we will tell our children and our children’s children what it was like in American when men were free.”

— Ronald Reagan discussing Medicare in 1961

Apparently Reagan’s prediction did not come true since the GOP is now claiming that Obama’s health care plan will remove our freedom.

Click here for the video of Reagan.

Time again for the song of the week from my iPod. This week we are letting Beth pick which means another relatively obscure group.

Halifax is a rock band from Thousand Oaks, California. The current members of the group are Chris Brandt (vocals, guitar), Adam Charles (guitar), Eric Ivener (bass), and Tommy Guindon (drums). The group originally started as a group of friends having some fun in 2003 and led to two self-released albums with several line-up changes by 2005. That year they appeared on MTV’s The Real World: Austin where the group was portrayed as a bunch of mindless drunks, a portrayal that the group claims is a misrepresentation. The group toured throughout the US, Europe, and Japan and the MTV appearance helped make them more well known. 2006 saw the release of The Inevitability of a Strange World, the group’s first album released by a record company. At the end of the year the group won the Dew Circuit Breakout on MTV2. The group has had little success since then and are still looking for a record label to release their new album. Mike Hunau, who was the lead vocalist, left the group last year.

The album The Inevitability of a Strange World has been the only successful album from the group. It reached #130 on the Billboard 200 and #1 on Billboard’s Top Heatseekers chart. The album is named after a book Bob Sala was supposedly writing, in Hunter S. Thompson’s novel “The Rum Diary”.

Promise Me Tragedy
I lie awake at night consumed by tragedy
I feel depression’s cold hand reaching out for me
All I’ve ever wanted was your honesty
But now the words, become the blade that you have driven into me

I don’t need your sympathy

I know you’re alone tonight, with tears you cry
I hope you’re satisfied, and yeah I’m doing fine
Now baby it could be fun, to fire your gun
I promise not to run
You can’t kill me

I feel your venom as it’s flowing to my brain
Weak in the knees but I am loving all the pain
Look into your eyes, I let the trigger rest the blame

I don’t need your sympathy

I know you’re alone tonight, with tears you cry
I hope you’re satisfied, and yeah I’m doing fine
Now baby it could be fun, to fire your gun
I promise not to run
You can’t kill me

You can drain my blood, but you, you can’t kill me (kill me)
You can steal my heart (my heart), but you (but you), you can’t kill me
Tonight I sleep, I dream of anything but you, you

You are alone tonight, with tears you cry
I hope you’re satisfied, and yeah I’m doing fine
Now baby it could be fun, to fire your gun
I promise not to run
You can’t kill me

Until yesterday, Sears was offering products geared to those who like cooking humans including “body part roasters.” I know this has been a tough economic period but are we really reverting to cannibalism to stretch our food dollar? If only the Donner Party had access to sears.com!

Don’t believe me… check Snopes!

Tuesday was the day for more college touring, this time closer to home. The targets were Rider University just outside of Trenton and Gwynned-Mercy College outside of Philadelphia. Rider has been sending mail to Beth for about a year plus it is only 20 minutes from Beth’s aunt so we thought it was worth looking into. It is a very nice school but big with about 4,500 undergraduates. We had the usual introduction and then tour around the campus. Since it is a large school it has some great facilities (it is a Division I NCAA school). Most of the students are from the surrounding area but they do have a large number of students that are from the surrounding states including New York. The campus has lots of activities (including something every weekend) and more than 100 clubs. Although the campus is fairly large, most of the main buildings are located in a circle so it isn’t too long a walk from building to building. We weren’t able to meet with anyone from the English department or from admissions but I’m sure if Beth is interested in the school that could be arranged.

Gwynned-Mercy College (GMC) was our next stop. It is in the suburbs of Philadelphia, about 20 miles from the city center. It is much smaller (the smallest school we have seen so far) with less than 2,000 undergraduates of which about 2/3 are commuters. We had stopped for lunch at a nearby restaurant and our waitress happened to attend school at GMC. She told us that she loved the school but the campus was fairly empty on the weekends. We had a nice tour with the person who it turned out would be Beth’s adviser. Since we brought Nana with us, I doubt that Ryan will forget us! The campus is spread out but nice. There are many fewer clubs (less than 30) and no sororities or fraternities. Since the school concentrates on nursing and education the female-to-male ratio is 65-35. (Rider was about 55-45.) GMC is definitely a good school to attend if you are a guy! In fact, there was only one other family on the tour with us and it was a young man interested in the nursing school. After the tour we met someone from admissions and she was able to explain the admissions process and go over the classes Beth would take. She also explained the scholarships available and they are very good including a 100% scholarship!

Afterward Beth wouldn’t talk about either school and chased me away when I tried to get more than, “they were nice,” out of her. I think she is overwhelmed and perhaps a bit nervous about going into her senior year. College will bring a big change in her life and picking a college is an important decision. More colleges next week.

Time again for the song of the week from my iPod. This is another group that I was introduced to through my dear daughter (who has been mysteriously crabby lately – maybe because school is starting soon).

All Time Low is a pop punk band from Maryland. The group formed in 2003 and is made up of Alex Gaskarth (vocals and guitar), Jack Barakat (guitar), Zack Merrick (bass), and Rian Dawson (drums). The name of the group comes from a song by “New Found Glory”. The group started out by playing covers of other punk pop bands such as Blink-182. The group released their first studio album in 2005, one year before they graduated from high school. In 2008, the group was selected as Alternative Press magazine’s Band of the Year.

The group’s most recent album, Nothing Personal, was released last month and has reached number one on the Billboard Independent, Modern, and Rock charts and number 4 on the Billboard Top 200. Their earlier album, So Wrong, It’s Right was released in 2007 and reached number 6 on the Billboard Independent chart. A single from the album, “Dear Maria, Count Me In,” (written about an exotic dancer in their home town) was their first single to reach the charts.

Dear Maria, Count Me In
I got your picture
I’m coming with you
Dear Maria, count me in
There’s a story at the bottom of this bottle
And I’m the pen

When the lights go off
I wanna watch the way you
Take the stage by storm
The way you wrap those boys around your finger
Go on and play the leader
‘Cause you know it’s what you’re good at
The low road for the fast track
Make every second last

‘Cause I got your picture
I’m coming with you
Dear Maria, count me in
There’s a story at the bottom of this bottle
And I’m the pen
Make it count when I’m the one
Who’s selling you out
‘Cause it feels like stealing hearts
Calling your name from the crowd

Then in the field you’ll be the show girl of the home team
I’ll be the narrator
Telling another tale of the American dream

I see your name in lights
We can make you a star
Girl, we’ll take the world by storm
It isn’t that hard

‘Cause I got your picture…

Whoa…

Ha ha…

Take a breath, don’t it sound so easy
Never had a doubt
Now I’m going crazy watching from the floor
Take a breath and let the rest come easy
Never settle down
‘Cause the cash flow leaves me always wanting more

‘Cause I got your picture…

‘Cause I got your picture
I’m coming with you
Dear Maria, count me in
There’s a story at the bottom of this bottle

The Crying Tree
by Naseem Rakha

Nate Stanley is offered a job as a deputy sheriff in Oregon and accepts it against his wife, Irene’s, opinion. He drags his family 2,000 miles to their new home and then soon after their arrival, the Stanley’s son, Shep, is murdered. The next part of the book is about anger and forgiveness as we watch the young man found guilty of this crime prepare for his execution. This is by far the best part of the book as we watch each member of the Stanley family (but mostly Irene) learn to live with the death of Shep. I will admit that the characters are a bit overdone in this section, Shep is made out be an angel on Earth, but the writing flows well and the story holds together very well.

But it is the last 1/3 of the book that ruins the story. If the author had simply followed through with the story without trying to add a crazy twist, this would have been a very good story. Instead she adds an absurdity to the story. I don’t want to give it away but imagine if you were reading a story about a man trapped on a 20th floor balcony in a fire. Smoke is billowing out of the windows. Will he somehow survive? Can he be rescued? Suddenly an expert on fires appears and explains that the smoke actually isn’t smoke but steam from a leaky steam pipe. But there is still nothing that can be done and the person might as well jump. And everyone agrees. Huh? That is absurd! And yet that is the kind of absurdity that happens in the story.

The worst part is that the book was so good before the final part. The characters felt real and I felt like I could understand them. I was interested to see how the story would play out. But then the author created an unbelievable situation that ruined the story for me. Reading some of these reviews, it appears that some people were able to accept the absurdity that I could not but I can’t recommend this book.

I saw this on a blog (Passive-Aggressive Notes) that I read on a regular basis. It made me glad that Beth doesn’t drive yet but worried that she will be driving very soon!!!

I thought this was so funny that I had to post it.

I AM AN AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE! This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of US Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the Food and Drug Administration. At the appropriate time as regulated by the US Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the US Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school. After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal’s inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it’s valuables thanks to the local police department. I then log on to the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can’t do anything right.

And that pretty much describes things, doesn’t it?

Time again for the song of the week from my iPod. I missed last week because of the college touring but we don’t want to miss another week!!! This week a guilty pleasure, one of those fun songs that I listen to because of the memories it brings back…

The Foundations were a British soul band active mainly from 1967 to 1970 although various versions of the group have been touring almost constantly. The Foundations were the first ethnically diverse British music group to have a number one hit. They successfully imitated the Motown sound popular in the mid-60’s and turned it into several major hits including, “Baby Now That I’ve Found You” and “Build Me Up Buttercup”.

The group went through various lineup changes but included Eric Allendale (who passed away from a stroke in 2001), Arthur Brown, Pat Burke, Clem Curtis, Mike Elliott, Tony Gomez, Tim Harris, Peter MacBeth, Alan Warner, and Colin Young (who joined the group when Clem Curtis and Mike Elliott left in 1968). Besides being ethnically diverse the group was also diverse in ages ranging from Tim Harris who was 18 to Mike Elliot who was 38 when the group formed. The group featured a large horn section which added a special note to the group’s sound. The group broke up in 1970 although various versions have toured under the Foundations name on the 60’s nostalgia circuit.

Build Me Up Buttercup
Why do you build me up (Build me up)
Buttercup baby just to
Let me down (Let me down)
And mess me around
And then worst of all (Worst of all)
You never call baby
When you say you will (Say you will)
But I love you still
I need you (I need you)
More than anyone darling
You know that I have from the start
So build me up (Build me up)
Buttercup
Don’t break my heart

I’ll be over at ten
You tell me time and again
But you’re late
I wait around and then
I went to the door
I can’t take any more
It’s not you
You let me down again

Baby Baby
Try to find
A little time
And I’ll make you happy
I’ll be home
I’ll be beside the phone
Waiting for you

Why do you build me up…

To you I’m a toy
But I could be the boy
You adore
If you’d just let me know
Although you’re untrue
I’m attracted to you
All the more
Why do I need you so

Baby Baby
Try to find a little time
And I’ll make you happy
I’ll be home
I’ll be beside the phone
Waiting for you.

ooh ooh ooh

Why do build me up…

From an editorial in the Investor’s Business Daily (IBD):

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

The only problem is that the Investor’s Business Daily seems to not realize that Dr. Hawking is British and has been treated by the NHS his entire life. As Dr. Hawking said today after the editorial was published, “I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.”

The editorial in the IBD represents the types of arguments that are being made against Obama’s health plan. But they fail to take into account that every European country has nationalized health insurance and yet they aren’t bankrupt and they aren’t sending their senior citizens to concentration camps to be executed.