Let me begin by mentioning how utterly embarrassed I am to be an American right now. Our Congress is a three-ring circus, and I'm disgusted with how our elected officials are holding American citizens hostage while they engage in their pissing match.
I just read this great quote from Bill Maher: "What could be more reasonable than losing an election by 5 million votes and then demanding the President to govern as they would, or else shut the government down and not pay our bills?"
Well said, Mr. Maher.
What credibility does the United States have in trying to get other nations like Iran and Afghanistan to embrace our form of democracy if we can't even take care of our own backyard?
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I was just thinking of how much I miss real record stores: places like Tower Records, WhereHouse Records, even Harmony House. Yes, I'm mentioning the old chain record stores, but they have become such a thing of the past that I feel intensely nostalgic about them.
As I know I've mentioned before in this blog, I don't like downloading music. I know the lure of it, the convenience of it, but it does nothing for me at an emotional, visceral level. For me, the entire experience of music is ritualistic, emotional, tactile. I like browsing through bins, looking at album and cd covers. I even get a huge high tearing the cellophane off a new cd and the often times frustrating chore of tearing off the thin security sticker, and the high-pitched sound the sticky tape makes as it is torn from the plastic jewel case.
Downloading music offers none of this ritual, and therefore offers very little appeal to me.
But these days, it's so hard to find any decent place that sells physical music. All we have around here is Best Buy, Schuler Books & Music, Meijer, and a few small stores in East Lansing: Flat, Black, & Circular and The Record Lounge. I rarely have a chance to make it to the small indie stores in East Lansing, and the other larger retailers that still stock music tend to have woefully inadequate inventories.
In short, it sucks.
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Still thinking about Breaking Bad and its ending. (I apologize to any of my audience who are bored with my yammering about this show). I read a commentator, really just a fan of the show and not a professional critic, say that the point of the show was really more about personal transformation than anything else. This makes sense, and makes me a little embarrassed about my previous Breaking Bad posts in which I missed that completely and only focused on Walter White making fat stacks from meth to give to his family.
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Well, I'm gonna go ahead and publish what I have right now: warts and all. I may go back and revise later.
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