Never been one to let the carrier drop

For Halloween me and P. went to Freak Night – mostly because PvD was playing and P. was really dissapointed about seeing his earlier show, but also because I had read good things in netland about Freak Night.

It was okay.

It wasn’t a rave, and it wasn’t a mainstream concert – it was somewhere in the middle – with tinges of ‘Techno Mosh Pit’ which I could have done without.

I’m really glad I was sober, though. I would NOT have enjoyed being altered for that.. everyone was too pushy and I had a very hard time finding the vibe amongst the .. well, whatever they were. And I kept feeling like I was on some kind of twilight zone drug just because of all the costumes and lighting and contact buzz from other people who were obviously tripping out of their gourd. But none of the warm, happy, loved feeling that I usually get at parties.

One guy came up to me and said ‘third time rolling, third time raving’. I didn’t know how to explain to him that he wasn’t at a rave.. 😉 Hope he had fun.

At least no one accused me of dancing like I was gay or threw water bottles or physically intimidated me.. 😉 [Referring to one really bad night at Club Fusion]. Actually, everyone was pretty cool, all in all. Except that the place was packed to the nines and somehow the attendees were less gentle than ravers usually are.

My one other beef is that someone seems to have decided if they couldn’t have good sound, they would make up for it in volume. I have *never* found myself wearing earplugs at any kind of show before, and I’ve been to many, many concerts.. but I ended up tearing up a old train ticket and rolling it up into earplugs because I couldn’t take the volume. I’m still noting a distinct lack of frequency response in my left ear. And yet, the sound sucked. That’s the unbeleivable part. 50 kilowatts and it still sounded like the crossovers were set by a drunk monkey. Of course, it was somewhat hard to tell because the sound pressure levels were high enough to make my _ears_ distort.

USC: memo: next time, less watts, more quality. And try spreading the speakers out a little instead of making two monster stacks out of them. Bass bins in the back as well as the front would be appriciated. Maybe even suspend a few from the ceiling to try and keep the stereo image as you wander back? Thank you.

PvD had a really good set though.. a few old familiars and a few new things, and he kept flipping back and forth between trance and jungle which was quite odd but rather tasty in a way..

There were a lot of totally excellent costumes, however. That was probably the best part, for me. Between the twenty foot clown on rollerblades, Little Bo Peep complete with sheep, the human cow (man, he must have been hot.. cow suit, face paint, and a uniquely placed udder.. ;-)), the Klondike Bar (Yes, really), the giant pug dog, many butterflies, and too many others to list or mention.. it was a great night for checking out the costumage.

speaking of costumes, my hair is still blue.. I’m about to wash it, though – which is good, because having blue hair makes me feel like a anime charicter.

Though purple hair might suit me.. 😉

Hope you all had good Halloweens.

New clips from me + ron’s jam session last night, cut up and sans all the talking and whatnot:

http://www.sheer.us/stuff/RonJam-10.22.03-three.mp3
http://www.sheer.us/stuff/RonJam-10.22.03-one.mp3
http://www.sheer.us/stuff/RonJam-10.22.03-two.mp3>http://www.sheer.us/stuff/RonJam-10.22.03-two.mp3

And, from a recent jam session with Mike:

http://www.sheer.us/stuff/JamItOn.mp3
http://www.sheer.us/stuff/SweetHomeSomewhere.mp3

And, from a long ago meeting of Howling Moon (the band I was in with MIke for a while):

http://www.sheer.us/stuff/southern_cross_howling_moon.mp3

You know, it’s amazing how many of my audio clips I originally hated that six months or a year later I decide I really like.. I wonder if it’s just repetition, or if something else is going on there.

By the way, if anyone likes the clips of me + ron, tell your friends! We need fans. 😉 [Maybe we should start a mailing list or something..]

By a regular plain old citizen of the United States Of America
A Proclamation

Bush can have debilitating effects on communities (especially those who happen to be standing in the way of him getting more oil), marriages (especially between gay people), families (I may never forgive my mother for voting for him) and children. (Like my friend Jen, who recently found her child approaching a police officer and asking him to do something about “the bad man in the white house”). During Protection From President Bush Week, we commit to take steps to confront the dangers of Bush.

The effects of President Bush are perticularly pernicious with respect to children. There are very few things more scary than growing up in a world where wars are started based on things that are broadly known to be lies – especially to children who may not understand that these things *are* lies, and may honestly believe that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and is planning on using them at home – or, once discovering that they are lies, may be very disillusioned to discover that the President of the United States is a man who will lie and have innocent people killed for personal profit or revenge.

We have commited significant resources to making sure that Bush will not be elected for the first time in November. We are vigorously prosletyzing and severely critizing the actions of those who would harm our children. Last year, MoveOn.Org launched a series of initiatives intended to help educate the populance as to the frauds perpitrated by Bush.

Last year, I wrote messages on my web site apologizing to Iraq and other countries. I encourage all Americans to author web content that is in the interest of promoting peace, love, and respect, and to start dialogues which may lead us to a greater understanding of each other. Working togeather with our fellow Americans, we are making progress in protecting our children from war, hate, and disrespect.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, JONATHAN W (“Sheer”) PULLEN, Ordinary citizen of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the First Ammendment Of The Constitution and laws of the United States which permit me to say any darn thing I please, do hereby proclaim October 31 through November 6, 2003, as Protection From President Bush Week. I call upon public officials, law enforcement officers, parents, and all the people of the United States to observe this week with appropriate programs and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirty-first day of October, in the year of somebody’s Lord two thousand three, and of the Independence of the United States the two hundred and twenty-eight.

Jonathan W. “Sheer” Pullen

[See this for what this article is parodying.. although I am being somewhat serious. We *need* protected from this guy.]

http://sheerpanic.friendtest.com/ – how well do you really know me? It’ll be interesting to see if anyone manages to get 100%.. I’m betting either or could.. 😉

Well.. It’s been brought to my attention that the web site mentioned two posts back is actually run by some very left-wing people. So I amend my statement: There are some right AND left wing whack jobs.. 😉

Of course, given that I would like to stop corperations from poisening groundwater and enslaving people in third world nations and whatnot, am I guilty of attempting to apply my morals to other people? It is a bit of a problem.. it turns into one of those ‘it’s okay when I do it, but not when you do it’ sort of things. I haven’t really come up wityh a good solution for this, although I don’t think it’s unreasonable to want to live in a world where people aren’t starting wars for ficticious reasons and/or to make large profits.

Anyway, I don’t care whether you vote democrat or republican, porn is not the biggest problem facing us. Gay marriage isn’t a problem at all – except that gays can’t get married yet. I hope that one day soon humanity will be able to come to terms with the fact that some people are gay and some are straight, and that’s just kind of the way the world works.

But until that happy day.. sorry that I just assumed by the content found within a article that it was coming from the religious right..

My opinions still stand – left or right. [Just like if I had had to choose between McCain and Gore, I would have voted for McCain.. McCain and Kucinich, though, I’d have to go with Dennis. McCain and Dean – well, I’m really not sure. I’d have to hear them debate. But it’s a non-issue, since McCain will never be on the presidential ticket.. he’s simply too decent and honest to be a president of the U.S. – of course, you could also say the same thing about Kucinich.

Bleh. Enough politics. Back to parking meters.

[I’m listening to one of the new Ron jam things right now.. and really digging it.. ]

www.i-eye.de

Use babelfish. 😉

S.

A anonymous comment in my journal, which I suspect probably comes from Qaz:

A real bunch of right-wing wack jobs for ya, Sheer:

http://www.rochesternow.org/porn.html

And by response to it below:

Actually, yes, exactly.

While the tone of the article is entirely reasonable, there are several things taht they assert that I think are somewhat false-to-fact:

We feel that pornography is harmful to women and that as women we have the right to live in a society free of this harm.

This is the first one I want to attack – because I have a long list of beefs with it. The first one is that I feel that football inherently devalues human life by showing that violence – real, bloody violence – as a part of a game is acceptable. Can I demand that my views be used to censor this game that 90 million americans enjoy?

There’s this little thing called the first amendment. WHich is just as well, because if we removed every piece of content that anyone found objectionable, shortly we’d have no content left. I happen to think the bible does a rather good job of demeaning women, can we have it censored?

We dare not grow old or become overweight

Depends on what kind of porn you’re watching, now doesn’t it? I know of fetish porn where the whole *point* is being overweight. Different people are turned on by different things – and one of the beauties of the internet is that everyone can get exactly what they want. I don’t go for porn with perfect body types – perhaps the author of this article does.. 😉

More importantly, pornography frequently eroticizes violence.

Not any that *I* enjoy watching, but yes, you’re correct, it does. However, the people who enjoy this sort of play undoubtedly understand that it is just play. And if we’re going to complain about what people enjoy looking at, isn’t porn sort of a silly place to start? How about the television commercials that show that lying in the name of profit is okay? (Or the political canidates that show the same thing?). Or, how about the commercials that imply that you will only be popular if you are young and beautiful and buy product X? How about football, aforementioned, which shows that violence can be fun? Or children’s cartoons which show that violence is funny? Or COPS, which implies that violence performed against citizens is something to be proud of – we should definately beat up people caught selling plants!

However, we do feel that misogynistic sexual entertainment for men portrays the humiliation of women as “sexy” and presents women as two-dimensional beings.

Well, except that it’s just entertainment, just fiction, and almost everyone over the age of 12 understands this. Why not complain about mysoginistic TV shows like Married With Children? In porn there’s usually very little actual social interaction, so it’s blatently clear that it’s a fantasy world. (Actually, some porn has taken to having disclaimers at the front of the tape, something I ran into lately that amused me so much that I cut just the disclaimer with a video editor and threw the rest of the video clip away (it wasn’t very good, but the disclaimer was hilarious). But anyway, back to my original point – in television shows, there’s not nearly as much framing to indicate that the work is truly fictional.. why aren’t the authors complaining about this instead?

I never said that porn was fundamentally good – I said that it’s a very, very small evil compared with a whole lot of very large ones. And it does have it’s place and purpose.. to help single men deal with their sexual frustrations in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone.

It’s just a visual representation of what they would be imagining anyway. Or would the authors also outlaw imagination?

Eventually, viewing enough pornography can desensitize all of us so that we do not even question the devaluation of women in our society.

I don’t agree with this at all either. I don’t think that porn has in any way desensitized me to the putting down of women, or any other group for that matter.

We believe that the number of rapes and assaults on women would be drastically reduced — but not entirely eliminated — if pornography were to disappear

And on what data do you base that assumption? I think that it would probably remain approximately the same, or more likely increase slightly.

Have you done a study to see if rapists consume more porn per capita than the average male? Perhaps you’d like to tell me about how all those catholic preists have been buying ‘PlayPrePubecentBoy’ all these years? Can we please try and apply a little bit of reality to our assertions?

Many young males state that their first sexual experience was masturbating to pornography. Think of what this pornography then says to these men — that women like to be treated like objects, treated with contempt, and enjoy eroticized violence.

You have got to be kidding me. I didn’t get any such sense at all. You are in the twilight zone, my friend, and reality has apparently passed you by. Why don’t you go ask a few 14 year olds if they feel like women should be treated with contempt? And then ask them where they got that idea, if so? I bet you the answer is far more likely to be Eminem than Playboy.

Who benefits from pornography? Who finances pornography? Who is behind the camera? Who buys it?

Normal, healthy single men buy it, because they enjoy it and it helps them to avoid sexual frustration. They don’t, however, entertain any thoughts that it is in any way real. All one needs to do is try to approach a pretty girl in a bar to learn how fundamentally unreal it is. 😉

Or is it the majority of us who want to live in a society which does not allow the subordination, degradation or violation of women?

What you forget is that your entire article is devoted to the degredation of men – stating that we’re such simple and mentally incapable beings that we can’t enjoy a work of fiction without thinking that it’s a basic reality and that we can now go out and perform the acts we see depicted in the real world on anyone we want – or that we would think that there was anything real at all about the work of fiction portrayed – or that it was okay to think of real – i.e. not fictional – people in that way.

Personally, I think porn is *better* than the alternative.. which is to imagine the same sorts of things, only with people that you know because it’s far easier for our imaginations to handle the rendering of people we’re familiar with.

In short, and to sum up:

The first amendment protects speech for a good reason – because otherwise, there will always be some nut job wanting to impress their morals on you for what might sound like perfectly sane and reasonable reasons.

—————————————————————————–

ICE-T LYRICS

“Freedom of Speech”

[Intro]

A-yo Ice, man. I’m working on this term paper for college. What’s the
First Amendment?

[Verse 1]

Freedom of Speech, that’s some motherfuckin’ bullshit
You say the wrong thing, they’ll lock your ass up quick
The FCC says “Profanity – No Airplay”?
They can suck my dick while I take a shit all day
Think I give a fuck about some silly bitch named Gore?
Yo PMRC, here we go, raw
Yo Tip, what’s the matter? You ain’t gettin’ no dick?
You’re bitchin’ about rock’n’roll, that’s censorship, dumb bitch
The Constitution says we all got a right to speak
Say what we want Tip, your argument is weak
Censor records, TV, school books too
And who decides what’s right to hear? You?
Hey PMRC, you stupid fuckin’ assholes
The sticker on the record is what makes ’em sell gold
Can’t you see, you alcoholic idiots
The more you try to suppress us, the larger we get

[Verse 2]

[You have the right to remain silent]
Fuck that right! I want the right to talk
I want the right to speak, I want the right to walk
Where I wanna, yell and I’m gonna
Tell and rebel every time I’m on a
Microphone on the stage cold illin’
The knowledge I drop will be heard by millions
We ain’t the problems, we ain’t the villains
It’s the suckers deprivin’ the truth from our children
You can’t hide the fact, Jack
There’s violence in the streets every day, any fool can recognise that
But you try to lie and lie
And say America’s some motherfuckin’ apple pie
Yo, you gotta be high to believe that
You’re gonna change the world by a sticker on a record sleeve
Cos once you take away my right to speak
Everybody in the world’s up shit creek

[Verse 3]

Let me tell you about down south
Where a motherfucker might as well not even have a mouth
Columbus, Georgia, said they’d lock me up
If I got on the stage in my show and said “Fuck”
So I thought for a minute and said “No,
I wasn’t even gonna do a damned show”
Cos for me to change my words from my rhymes
Is never gonna happen cos there’s no sell outs on mine
But I vowed to get those motherfuckers one day
They even arrested Bobby Brown and Cool J
Yo, they got their’s comin’, cos I’m mad and I’m gunnin’
Homeboys, and there’s no runnin’
I’m gonna tell you how I feel about you
No bull, no lies, no slack, just straight fact
Columbus, Georgia, you can suck my dick
You ain’t nothin’ but a piece of fuckin’ shit on the damned map

[Verse 4]

Freedom of Speech, let ’em take it from me
Next they’ll take it from you, then what you gonna do?
Let ’em censor books, let ’em censor art
PMRC, this is where the witch hunt starts
You’ll censor what we see, we read, we hear, we learn
The books will burn
You better think it out
We should be able to say anything, our lungs were meant to shout
Say what we feel, yell out what’s real
Even though it may not bring mass appeal
Your opinion is yours, my opinion is mine
If you don’t like what I’m sayin’? Fine
But don’t close it, always keep an open mind
A man who fails to listen is blind
We only got one right left in the world today
Let me have it or throw The Constitution away

[Outro (Jello Biafra)]

What they’re trying to do with radio, with this, uh, McCarron-Walter
Act and a lot of other ways, is start by saying that they’re
protecting the public from wicked rock bands, or girlie magazines, or
whatever. But, if you follow the chain of dominoes that falls down,
what they’re really trying to do is shut off our access to information
itself.

If they can’t do it by law they know there’s other ways to do it.

It’s national protection from porn week.

I think I’m going to be sick.

I have BAD news for you, Dubya. This time, you’re pretty much on your own.

Hear that empty sound? That’s the sound of all the voters who’ve never looked at porn..

Really, this is pathetic. My first experience with porn was at age 14 – Dan, bless his generous soul, replied to my curiosity about the female form with a playboy. Shortly thereafter I discovered newsgroups, and found not just porn, but porn in my own personal flavor.

I really don’t think it warped me for life.

Of all the things our children need protection from, pornography is about #9999661863.

I mean, really. Sex happens, FUCKING GET OVER IT ALREADY! That goes for the rest of you right-wing whack jobs, too. Look, if God really does exist, then S/HE INVENTED SEX! Okay? So can you stop whimpering about how some human somewhere might be enjoying a bunch of ones and zeros that happen to render into a naked female body, and find something _meaningful_ to worry about? Like the wars on false pretenses? I think those are a lot worse than a few naked girls.. or guys..

[actually, that’s what Bush is really upset about. Gay porn. because he’s secretly attracted, and doesn’t want to admit it. Or perhaps because he’s seen some photoshopped picture which put his head on the body of someone with equipment that matches the size of his brain..]

Hm. I guess that was moving over into slanderous territory. This LiveJournal post is intended as humor only. I know nothing about the size of bush’s reproductive equipment. Standard disclaimer here.

No, really, this is SICK. After starting a war and spending (read: moving into Halliburtan’s pockets and hence Cheney’s) billions of dollars to repair the damages done with that war.. (not to mention the billions that war cost), Bush thinks we need protected from a few naked women?

No, my friends, we need protected from Bush.

You better all be registered to vote. You all don’t vote again and I’m going to kick your collective asses.

I’d like to think that between alienating gays and their friends with Marriage Protection Week and alienating everyone who can remember being 14 with Porn Protection Week, Bush is going to have a very, very shallow turnout at the polls..

.. but on the other hand, I’m sure he’s doing wonderfully with the religious right. In between this and the whole partial birth abortion thing..

Why am I still awake at 8 am? Well, I got wrapped up in some parking meters..

I had another good studio session with Ron, for which mp3s will be shortly forthcoming. We did a couple of multitrack recordings of much shorter duration.. and a couple of live improv bits which did not make it into multitrack format [hence there will be no edits, sorry folks, what you hear is what you get, distorted moments and all]

All in all, a good time was had by all and good sounds were again produced. (Well, *I* think good sounds were produced. And I’m sure Scott will like it – 😉

mp3s at

http://www.sheer.us/stuff/RonJam-10.22.03.mp3
http://www.sheer.us/stuff/RonJam-10.22.03-2.mp3

I’m going to go sleep now. I’ll wake up somewhere around 6 pm. 😉

I miss P.

A good letter to SCO.

By the way, I think that truly SCO has passed Microsloth, and now holds the new world title for ‘bastion of evil’.

Personally, I hope they get sued into bankruptcy. The sooner the better.