Too Funny: Who do you want leading the country?

I saw this today and almost died laughing.

Which of these men do you want leading our country?


Source: Digital Marine | Original Post

New Live Maskeeta Photos

Recieved some good photos of a recent Maskeeta show in Metairie. I thought it was one of our best shows. Thanks Oscar! Check 'em out at the Maskeeta Blog.

War Advice for Civilians

I wish everyone in America would do a few little things for their own good to be prepared for the rough seas ahead. There will probably be like 5 people that ever read this but hey...it's my dream anyway...so here goes.

Make some time to read some of the blogs written by people on the front lines of these current conflicts. These war theaters out there are so dangerous and chaotic...there is no way we can fathom it here at home yet.. so help them out how ever you can. Check out the Soldier and Iraqi links I've got in my "recommeneded" section. You will learn a lot more by doing that than by watching mind-fuck material like that Fahrenheit 911 shit. Remember, you may have more in common with these people than you would like to in the days to come.

Don't obsess on day to day political rhetoric (especially from the opposition during political seasons) but always question authority...the opposition may still make good points (not including Michael Moore of course...with film making skills you can make anyone or anything look like Satan).

Realize that the 24 hour news networks are extremely biased (Fox News is right wing, CNN is left wing and Al Jazeera is just plain anti-jew) ... feed your brain with information from a variety of sources and take everything with a grain of salt. Alvin & Heidi Toffler wrote about the dangers and growing pervasiveness of 'cult of philosophy', years ago in their excellent book The Third Wave. Also, learn about Psychopolitical Warfare, the Stockholm Syndrome and Roy Master's other thoughts on the "hypnosis of life" because media is constantly trying to mind fuck us. Remember...propaganda is a big part of war.

This war on terror is a monumental conflict of epic proportions on an unprecedented scale...it is going to take a looooong time to win. The path is riddled with setbacks and small victories. Realize that we are effectively under Martial Law. It's being called a State of Readiness or something like that but it's Martial Law nonetheless. Deal with it because we have no choice..the enemy is unfortunately within.

Consider how this war will likely fundamentally change our way of life, cherished institutions, traditions and possibly even the fundamental aspects of being human beings. One way to get ready for this change is to start learning about some of the DOD Research being developed and futurist concepts (see my recommended futurist links). I doubt we will be able to win without mandatory military service like they do in Israel unless we have hordes of battle droids at our disposal like the republic has in star wars or some kind of other exotic weapon that can give us a significant advantage like the Active Denial System combined with human computing interfaces.

Well, there it is for what it's worth. After this entry, I'm hopefully going to start focusing more on music, art and personal experience in my future posts...if nothing else..for my own sanity in these stressful times. Anyway...my concience is clear now...plus I can say "I told you so" later ;-).

Good Luck

The Real History of Soilent Green

As the original bassist of Soilent Green, I felt this blog would be a good forum to set the record straight and try to squash some of the weird rumors and half-truths that I've heard out there about the early history of this now legendary underground band.

It began in the mid-eighties when guitarists Donavan Punch & Brian Patton and singer Glen Rambo of Nuclear Crucifixion contacted drummer Tommy Buckly and I about replacing their rhythm section and wiping the slate clean with all new material. We tried out, they dug us and we started writing in Donavan's grandmothers garage in Chalmette, Louisiana.



At that time, the name we had was Donavan's idea - Corpses with Souls. A month or two later Tommy and I were hanging out and came up with the idea to do a concept song based on the old sci fi movie soylent green. A few beers later we said 'hey, let's call the band soylent green'! We decided to change the spelling to avoid any messy business.

I wrote 99.9% of all the lyrics, lots of the riffs and played on all the demos (also the Voices of A Red God compilation album) for the first four years. We played with underground bands A-Z including Morbid Angel, The Melvins, Exhorder, Exodus, Dead Horse, and many, many more.

Enter The Side Bands. Soilent Drummer, Tom Buckley and I started a group with singer/guitarist Glenn Walle from Osiris. That group was called No Traces. I was growing as a musician and growing out of Soilent. I was starting to write material that the guitarists couldn't handle, technically and I eventually decided to leave Soilent and just play with No Traces. There were some personality conflicts with a certain member..all water under the bridge now, though.

What happened next is that Soilent got the awesome Ben Falgoust from Paralysis to sing and the terrific bassist Scott Williams (R.I.P) from the band New Religion. Scott was a good friend and is missed by all who knew him. However, he couldn't play many of the bass lines I had written and I was reluctant to teach them to him and he respected and understood that. That's why Soilent started all over again with new material.

I became more involved with my other career and eventually fell off the musical map for a while. I moved out to California during the whole dot-com fever and worked on a lot of interesting projects. Things started to get a little brutal out there and companies were folding left and right so I got the itch to retreat to old N.O.

When I returned, I caught wind of some strange rumors. There was a guy in a band that did some time with a guy who was claiming to be me. He apparently had the same first name as me and was claiming to be the original bassist for Soilent Green. I've heard other weird road stories that are usually the case of subtituting someone no one knows with me to make the story more believable. No doubt that some really bizarre shit went down in those days but just don't believe everything you hear. One thing that is true is that singer Glen Rambo was prone to vomiting on the audience and many of the audience members were prone to "bathing" in it and rubbing it on themselves as if it were waters from the fountain of youth or something. I saw it with my own two eyes.

Here are a few photos from back in those days (sorry, no vomit-related stuff in these)....

Virtex

This is one of the coolest projects I ever worked on. It was too bad it ended so quickly but it was fun while it lasted. Looking back on it I can't help but notice how bad the sound design was...I promise...I did not create the music. I had my hands full with animating and flash production. Some really nice animation and drawing in there, though. Props to the crew --- Casey, Jeff, TeeJay, Joel, Elvin, John & Cesar.


Exerpt:

ActionAce.com had set up a new channel on its website called NeoGlyphix – a section for original animated content with new and licensed characters. VIRTEX was to be the first of the series developed, targeting ActionAce.com’s core audience of anime, comic, and action figure fans.

Casey Lau would serve as Executive Producer and Jeff Kwan would lead a team of animators and artists working in Macromedia’s Flash and USAnimation’s ToonBoom animation software to develop the four part “Queen of the Damned” animated series. This would basically pick up the story where it had left off in the comic book series and have VIRTEX confront the next outlaw – the deadly walking corpse Harvester.

Read Complete Article at Digital Webbing/ The Virtex Depository/ Animation

Virtex home page

Moral Clarity

If you experience mild pain or discomfort when reading the title of this entry, you might want to check your paranoa level. Ask yourself this...is moral ambiguity working for you in your personal life? Does it help you make the rational decisions necessary to survive? Why does the backbone that Bush exhibits rub you the wrong way? You should find it reassuring, if anything. Does his hawkishness really frighten you more than the global jihad that is right at our doorstep? Tomorrow it could be your kids getting blown up in their own school like we saw today in Southern Russia. Please get behind the effort to stop this threat. We aint gonna kill 'em with kindness, folks.

Overtone Project

I recently created a site for the local band Overtone. It's a work in progress...more content will be added as the assets trickle in from the band. I should have some more links for various projects that are in development soon.

I've finally done and gone it...

..yes..that's right, kids...I've finally gotten off/on my ass and started blogging. This morning I really felt the need to purge some random thoughts from my brain. I figured this could be a pretty cathartic little activity where I can get stuff off my chest and also go back in time to see what I was ranting and raving about. Hey, I might even learn something about myself. I've also had my Maskeeta Blog for a couple of months or so but have been slacking on that pretty badly. I promise to get back on the ball with that so check it out for all the band related stuff. Check this blog out for more random thoughts about life, the world, beliefs, music and art, etc... So, I guess I'll just dive right in and say what's on my mind today. First of all I've got to say that I'm a little jazzed about the sweet blog template I've chosen.
I've been visiting Simple Bits for some time and have to say they've made what is easily one of the sweetest blog templates ever.

I hope everyone in the country makes a point to check out Senator Zell Millers speech at the RNC Convention last night. If you didn't get to check it out on the tv, go to the GOP site or MSNBC.com video (scroll down about midway through the page and click the LAUNCH button next to the headline "Miller Attacks Kerry") or read a transcript. Hearing someone say what this courageous man said was really refreshing.

Category 4 Hurricane Frances is headed toward florida. My thoughts and prayers are with ya'll... get the hell out of there!