This is a rare moment where I have to disagree with Glen Beck. Football injuries can only be avoided by replacing every player with clones of David Akers, Morten Andersen, and Gary Anderson.
You see, a nation with national health insurance regulation is just like a football league without enough retired kickers playing nose tackle. The government steals all of the money you could have spent on useful stuff like homeopathic remedies and chiropractor bills and uses it to provide middling health care for preschoolers who should have made better choices in their lives. And, that's just like how the NFL gives all of its playing time to boring guys who make very boring tackles when it could allow clones of retired kickers to be attempting very entertain tackles on every down.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
An Obama Victory Party With Dungen
After finishing a performance of Festival, Gustav Ejstes, the creative mastermind behind Dungen, felt inclined to share his feelings about the election. "I have something to say about Barack Obama becoming president," he told the crowd in between the claps, whistles, and shouts, hesitant to speak over the enthusiasm. "I am happy."
I couldn't give an exact set list, but I'm pretty sure the band at least played "Satt Att Se", "Det Tar Tid", "Fredag", "Mina Damer Och Fasaner", "Mon Amour", "Du Ska Inte Tro Att Det Ordnar Sig", "Festival", "Panda", and "E For Fin For Mig".
I probably missed some songs in the beginning while I was driving my poor sick friend Ellen home. Ellen had a Spanish test the next morning at 8 am along with a sinus infection which seemed to be working its way down to her chest resulting in a great deal of uncomfortable coughing and general misery. At first, She made a brave attempt to attend the concert with me despite her misery. Things started off well for Ellen. She was clearly sick, but managing to have some fun while studying for Spanish at a table while the first band played through a number of feedback and reverb heavy tunes. In hindsight, maybe she wasn't well, but just delirious since she was doing homework at a rock concert. While doing homework, Ellen even missed out on some good antics from the band's front woman, who was fiercely committed to every one of her songs and playing a guitar nearly her size with skill and intensity. Still she didn't seem to be succumbing to her sickness. However, after enduring a number of Vampire Hands tunes that didn't agree with her illness and hearing the news that three more tunes would be played before Dungen took the stage, Ellen could no longer stay in a bar and listen to music which shook her body into further misery. As a guy who gets sick with sinus infections all the time, I empathized with Ellen, so I took her back to Manor with the plan to come back to the 400 bar in time to see Dungen's set. Happily I succeeded.
The playing was tight and professional but also playful and openly creative in spots. The band seems to leave room for improvisation. Panda in particular seemed to have some spots of material created on the spot, but maybe this is just because I'm so familiar with the album version of the tune. The instrumentals often seemed largely extemporaneous as well. This doesn't mean they were performed sloppily. Rather, the musicians played with freedom, and the music lived as an organism open to change, often adapting to the moment.
After it was all done, the bass player asked if any of the crowd had been present some years ago when Dungen had last played a concert in Minneapolis. Some of the crowd confirmed that they had. One gentleman lamented that he had been under 21 at the time of this last concert. The bass player had taken a picture at the last concert. He wanted a sort of 'before and after' photo this time around, so the remaining crowd squeezed tightly together. The band decided they belonged in the picture as well, so they came off the stage to join us. As I was trying to fit in as tightly as possible without sexually harassing anyone, Gustav Ejstes himself suddenly was right behind me. Don't take this the wrong way though, he was just a guy trying to fit into the frame of the picture.
Still, I'll always remember the time between November 4th 2008 and November 5th 2008 as the time Barack Obama became the president elect while I listened to Dungen perform "Panda" live.
I couldn't give an exact set list, but I'm pretty sure the band at least played "Satt Att Se", "Det Tar Tid", "Fredag", "Mina Damer Och Fasaner", "Mon Amour", "Du Ska Inte Tro Att Det Ordnar Sig", "Festival", "Panda", and "E For Fin For Mig".
I probably missed some songs in the beginning while I was driving my poor sick friend Ellen home. Ellen had a Spanish test the next morning at 8 am along with a sinus infection which seemed to be working its way down to her chest resulting in a great deal of uncomfortable coughing and general misery. At first, She made a brave attempt to attend the concert with me despite her misery. Things started off well for Ellen. She was clearly sick, but managing to have some fun while studying for Spanish at a table while the first band played through a number of feedback and reverb heavy tunes. In hindsight, maybe she wasn't well, but just delirious since she was doing homework at a rock concert. While doing homework, Ellen even missed out on some good antics from the band's front woman, who was fiercely committed to every one of her songs and playing a guitar nearly her size with skill and intensity. Still she didn't seem to be succumbing to her sickness. However, after enduring a number of Vampire Hands tunes that didn't agree with her illness and hearing the news that three more tunes would be played before Dungen took the stage, Ellen could no longer stay in a bar and listen to music which shook her body into further misery. As a guy who gets sick with sinus infections all the time, I empathized with Ellen, so I took her back to Manor with the plan to come back to the 400 bar in time to see Dungen's set. Happily I succeeded.
The playing was tight and professional but also playful and openly creative in spots. The band seems to leave room for improvisation. Panda in particular seemed to have some spots of material created on the spot, but maybe this is just because I'm so familiar with the album version of the tune. The instrumentals often seemed largely extemporaneous as well. This doesn't mean they were performed sloppily. Rather, the musicians played with freedom, and the music lived as an organism open to change, often adapting to the moment.
After it was all done, the bass player asked if any of the crowd had been present some years ago when Dungen had last played a concert in Minneapolis. Some of the crowd confirmed that they had. One gentleman lamented that he had been under 21 at the time of this last concert. The bass player had taken a picture at the last concert. He wanted a sort of 'before and after' photo this time around, so the remaining crowd squeezed tightly together. The band decided they belonged in the picture as well, so they came off the stage to join us. As I was trying to fit in as tightly as possible without sexually harassing anyone, Gustav Ejstes himself suddenly was right behind me. Don't take this the wrong way though, he was just a guy trying to fit into the frame of the picture.
Still, I'll always remember the time between November 4th 2008 and November 5th 2008 as the time Barack Obama became the president elect while I listened to Dungen perform "Panda" live.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Rochefort 8
Rochefort 8 is a Trappist beer brewed in a Belgium monastery. It is also heaven in a bottle. It smells like a monastery in possession of wonderful fruits, fragrant flowers, flowing streams of sweet liquid, and fresh living soil. It tastes like it smells with tad more complexity. A bit of leather, a bit of alcohol, bubbles, apples from the farms of Eden, and grains from Valhalla. All combine to make a warm belly and flushed cheeks.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
The Nature Of Time and Eternity
At the tender age of 18, I decided to attend a small liberal arts college in St Paul, MN, Hamline University. About to graduate high school, eager to move on to an institution of learning better able to meet my intellectual needs, I chose Hamline for practical reasons. It was one of the few schools to which I had applied. The school gave out scholarships based on academic merit and, I had worked hard applying for these scholarships. A small example of the foot in the door phenomenon, get students to work on a little scholarship essay and they're more likely to attend since they've already committed a bit of themselves with a certain amount of effort in writing the thing. They don't want to waste the time they've already spent by not taking the offer and going to the school. So, slightly manipulated, but appreciating the scholarship money, I decided on Hamline.
Now I've experienced many things about Hamline I don't like. The administrative structure, the wasteful avarice I occasionally witness my tuition money going toward, the small selection of available classes to take, all are examples of things I could do without. Most of all, I despise the hamline plan. It's a program meant to enforce breadth of study among students. All liberal arts colleges seem to have something similar, and maybe they're just as bad. I hope not. The Hamline plan centers around gaining little letters that are arbitrarily attached to classes. Students are pretty much forced into taking classes they have only a little interest in to earn these special little letters and often the letters are only remotely related to the material covered in these classes. Fortunately, this semester, I found a class to give me a few much needed letters that has turned out to be pretty interesting. Philosophy of science.
Today in philosophy of science, a theologian visited. The normal professor practices the Jewish faith and today was a religious holiday. So, I had my first substitute teacher in years. It was appropriate to have a theologian come in at this time, we were discussing the relationship between religion, actually mostly theology, and science. More specifically we discussed models of god that attempted to reconcile scientific understanding with a christian god while allowing for the existence of evil. This model rejects the classical Greek influenced christian doctrine that god is all powerful. Instead, God plays a role as a completely good influencer of the actors in the universe, and people are allowed self determinism. The future is undetermined. All that exists is the single moment we're in, which is connected to the past and to some unknown future. Not what most people are used to thinking. Someone had to ask, what about heaven and hell? I could only propose to fit into this system, one which I'm not too invested in, the idea that maybe time is just another dimension fixed into eternity with us requiring perceive this moving forward time in order to make sense of the universe. In this case, heaven consists of all the moments someone lets God influence him or her into doing exactly the right thing These would be moments of perfection fixed for all eternity, true bliss.
Still, I like Cartesian dualism with all its incoherence better, souls are way more fun than eternal moments. Still, the idea makes me want to put my mark on the moments I pass through, to make them eternal.
Now I've experienced many things about Hamline I don't like. The administrative structure, the wasteful avarice I occasionally witness my tuition money going toward, the small selection of available classes to take, all are examples of things I could do without. Most of all, I despise the hamline plan. It's a program meant to enforce breadth of study among students. All liberal arts colleges seem to have something similar, and maybe they're just as bad. I hope not. The Hamline plan centers around gaining little letters that are arbitrarily attached to classes. Students are pretty much forced into taking classes they have only a little interest in to earn these special little letters and often the letters are only remotely related to the material covered in these classes. Fortunately, this semester, I found a class to give me a few much needed letters that has turned out to be pretty interesting. Philosophy of science.
Today in philosophy of science, a theologian visited. The normal professor practices the Jewish faith and today was a religious holiday. So, I had my first substitute teacher in years. It was appropriate to have a theologian come in at this time, we were discussing the relationship between religion, actually mostly theology, and science. More specifically we discussed models of god that attempted to reconcile scientific understanding with a christian god while allowing for the existence of evil. This model rejects the classical Greek influenced christian doctrine that god is all powerful. Instead, God plays a role as a completely good influencer of the actors in the universe, and people are allowed self determinism. The future is undetermined. All that exists is the single moment we're in, which is connected to the past and to some unknown future. Not what most people are used to thinking. Someone had to ask, what about heaven and hell? I could only propose to fit into this system, one which I'm not too invested in, the idea that maybe time is just another dimension fixed into eternity with us requiring perceive this moving forward time in order to make sense of the universe. In this case, heaven consists of all the moments someone lets God influence him or her into doing exactly the right thing These would be moments of perfection fixed for all eternity, true bliss.
Still, I like Cartesian dualism with all its incoherence better, souls are way more fun than eternal moments. Still, the idea makes me want to put my mark on the moments I pass through, to make them eternal.
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