Antwerp or bust…

It’s just a suggestion…

Happy July 4th!  Today, we, along with half of the country, will be heading out to watch fireworks to celebrate Independence Day.  Where Warped One and I go, they have a nice little grassy area (better to sit and bake on in this 110 degree heat) and they always have a couple of bands play prior to the fireworks extravaganza.  Then, of course, during the show (fireworks) there is music playing to accompany the fireworks as they explode in the sky.  The songs they play are always pretty much the same… some pop fare, and the obligatory Neil Diamond “America” and Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA”.  This year, there are a few songs I’d love to hear them include, but it will never happen…  those songs are:

“Dear Mr. President” by Pink.  Such a poignant song.

“Bring ‘Em Home” by Bruce Springsteen.  What an amazing cover of the Pete Seeger classic, with some timely updates.

“Pennsylvania Stars” by Paul Hipp. 

and lastly, “Livin’ In The Future” by Bruce Springsteen.  What a frightening future that is…

Happy 4th of July.  May our soldiers be safe and may this unlawful occupation end swiftly and safely.

In a previous post I mentioned my dislike of the Christian fish symbol on cars.  This is what I’m truly tempted to put on my car… it’s something I do believe in and think we need a lot more of. 

Want your own?  Click here to see all the choices and buy one for all the peace-lovers you know.

A friend of mine recently wrote a post about how his iPod was filled with a strange dichotomy of music — namely:  Bowling for Soup and metal.  The post got me to thinking about my own iPod which is very eclectic in it’s music choices, but it has some definite themes going on in what I tend to enjoy and choose to put on it.  So today I’m going to try to put together a perfect “summer music” playlist of stuff I enjoy on my iPod.  Care to know what it would have on it?  Sure you do…

“Road to Nowhere” by Talking Heads.  Never has a song where the singer caws like a crow been so much fun to listen to with the windows down.  Okay… in the bowels of hell, where I live, I usually have the windows up because my face would melt like a Nazi in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” but you still get the point.

“500 Miles” by Koopa.  I admit that I still love the original by “The Proclaimers” and every time I hear it I think of Johnny Depp in “Benny and Joon” and wonder to myself exactly what “havering” is.  But the Koopa version is a bit harder and kind of fun in a slightly different way. 

“Cody” by Bowling for Soup.  A happy song with some great guitar slides in it… with the line “There’s just no pleasing Queenie, since Queenie lost her mind”.  Gotta love that.

“Girls in Their Summer Clothes” by Bruce Springsteen.  This song is off of the aptly named “Magic” album which got little, if any, real airplay but is truly an amazing album and this song just reminds me of everything about summer when I was younger.  And Bruce hasn’t sounded better.

“Tell Me a Lie” by The Fratellis.  Again, what song makes you go “Ah ah ah ah” at full volume over and over?  It’s got great lyrics and a great mild punk beat.  “He’s a liar, he’s a liar, and a good one at that.”

“Skin Divers” by Duran Duran.  I admit that I adored Duran Duran when I was in high school.  But their stuff after “Seven and the Ragged Tiger” always seemed a bit lacking to me.  There were a few songs here and there that were good (I still think I’m the only person who loved the song “Big Thing” and it has virtually disappeared off the face of the earth now), but for the most part they all seemed to sound a lot like “Ordinary World” which I think may be the worst song in the history of the world… okay, it’s not THE worst… I mean there are songs like “Tiptoe through the Tulips” and “MacArthur Park” but it’s pretty bad.  But the new album “Red Carpet Massacre” is interesting and “Skin Divers” is sexy and makes me want to dance.

“Dirty Little Mind” by Jackyl.  I mean really… what other song misspells the word ‘dirty’ so many times… D-I-R-T-E-E-E-E-E-E and makes it sound so incredibly “dirty” when they do it? 

“Trees” by Marty Casey & The Lovehammers.  “It’ll be you and me, up in the trees and the forest will give us the answer.  It’ll be you and I up in the sky it’s a combination for disaster.”  Love his voice… love the whole sound of the song. 

“Baby Doll” by The Fratellis.  It’s a bit slower, and I think it’s a gorgeous song.  I can listen to it over and over again… it’s amazing and sounds spectacular loud in my car with the windows down the air conditioning on.

“Ring Ring” by Mika.  Not since “Every Breath You Take” has a song about obsessive love sounded so good.

“Tonight and the Rest of My Life” by Nina Gordon.  There are actually two versions of this song, one is the original off of the album by the same name.  The other is acoustic and is found on her sophomore album called “Bleeding Heart Graffiti”.  I like both versions, but for the moment I’m stuck on the acoustic.  It always makes me want to be at the ocean.

“Biggest Mistake” by Melee.   “I’m gonna sue JetBlue for everything they put me through”… hehe… who hasn’t wanted to do that when you miss a flight and wind up with a “certified psycho”?  I saw this band live last summer when they opened for Bowling for Soup and they were fun and this song really stood out — enough that I went out and bought their album. 

“Personal Jesus” by Marilyn Manson.  Granted, I like the Depeche Mode version too, but this one is darker, heavier and in my opinion it’s sexier this way.  “Reach out and touch faith”, indeed.

“Straw Hat and Old Dirty Hank” by Barenaked Ladies.  Again, it’s a song about obsession but it’s got this strange little “square dance” feel to it that I think is fun and very ominous. 

“Chain of Fools” by Angeline Ball & Maria Doyle.  No it’s not the version by Aretha, but it’s damn good and deserves a listen.  It’s from The Commitments soundtrack, which is one of the best soundtracks I think I have heard.

“You May Be Right” by Billy Joel.  This is my favorite Billy Joel song.  I like his stuff when it’s more “rock” and less “ballad” and this works for me.   Most people seem to only remember this as the theme song from the Dave Berry-based sitcom that starred Harry Anderson.

“It’s My LIfe” by Bon Jovi.  I admit I have a weird fascination with the “talk box” that Richie Sambora uses on several of the Bon Jovi songs, but this one is definitely my favorite.  I think it’s a good anthem… “It’s my life, and it’s now or never.  I ain’t gonna live forever.  I just want to live while I’m alive.  My heart is like an open highway.  Like Frankie said, ‘I did it my way’.  I just want to live while I’m alive.  ‘Cause it’s my life.”

“…Baby One More Time” by Bowling for Soup.  Yes, I do mean the Britney Spears song.  But covered by BFS, it’s a completely different song.  It almost makes you forget that what’s-her-name ever recorded it.

“Humanity” by The Scorpions.  The closing song off of a good album about the end of humanity.  “You’re a drop in the rain, just a number not a name, but you don’t see it, you don’t believe it”. 

“American Witch” by Rob Zombie.  All right… it was hard for me to pick just one Zombie song because I think he has a lot of great songs out there.  For me it was between this one, “Lords of Salem” and “Dragula”.  But this one is a bit less… angry than “L.O.S.” and while I like the chorus of “Dragula” better, I think the overall sound of “AW” is stronger.

“Eleanor Rigby” by David Cook.  It’s from The American Idol show, but I think this version of the song is FAR better than the Beatles version… please don’t flame me… It’s my blog and therefore my opinion.

What is your Summer Music playlist?

One nice thing about having a relatively long commute (about 30 miles each way) is that it gives one a chance to think.  And think, I do…

This morning I was driving behind a car that had a license plate frame that said “God is Awesome”.  I don’t know why, but it bugged me something fierce all the way to work.  I find myself getting annoyed with all the Jesus fish that people attach to their cars, also.  Why?  I don’t know.  I guess I find a lot of “Christians” to be very close-minded people whose God is not one of tolerance and love but one of politics and hate.  While I grew up going to church (sometimes Catholic — stand up, sit down, kneel, repeat — and sometimes Methodist — potlucks) I never felt passionately about it and when friends of mine from youthgroups would buy in to the whole “spread the faith and convert everyone to our beliefs” I never could do it.  I just wasn’t passionate enough about it. 

Driving home I drove beside a car with the “Flying Spaghetti Monster” pirate fish emblem.  Now let me say that I adore the Flying Spaghetti Monster story and I actually have an FSM t-shirt I bought.  I want to put one of the pirate fish emblems on my car, because I believe in keeping church and state seperate and that is the whole basis of the FSM pseudo-religion.  (If you aren’t up on Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, check out http://www.venganza.org/ )  Why don’t I put one on my car?  Because I’m afraid I’ll offend people or will alienate myself from people I know. 

Although the people who know me quite well (and there are a few, but truly not that many) would say that I’m opinionated and have strong beliefs, most people really don’t know where I stand on many issues.  I work in a management role and while the environment that I work in is a fairly creative one (it’s an art school) I worry that people would see me differently if they knew that I’d rather have a Flying Spaghetti Monster emblem than a Jesus fish on my car.  Even my in-laws don’t realize that I don’t necessarily share their beliefs.   I fear that by letting my true self be known, people would dislike me or disrespect me.

I feel as though I am beginning a new chapter in my life.  Sometimes it takes a big event to wake you up, and sometimes it even takes a non-event.  In my case, thankfully, what woke me up was a non-event, but the possibility scared me a lot.  You see, cancer is extremely prevalent in my family.  Every female on both sides of my warped and twisted family tree has had breast cancer.  I have worried that I am a ticking time bomb for years, and recently I thought my time bomb was about to go off.  It turned out that the scare was just that… a scare.  It wasn’t anything and for that I am eternally grateful.  But it was a bit of a slap in the ass for me to get going on the things I want to do. 

Mainly my focus has been health related.  Over the past few years I’ve allowed myself to gain weight and to become more and more sedentary.  I use a wheelchair but there is no reason that I can’t be as fit as possible and to be every bit as gorgeous and slim as I can be.  Right?  So I’ve been doing a low fat diet for a few weeks and actually am doing quite well on it.  I don’t consider it a diet so much as just a new way to eat and I’m really beginning to enjoy the way it makes me feel.  But eating better isn’t enough for me right now… so I’ve begun working out at a gym.  I’ve found a personal trainer who has actually worked with disabled women before and he’s got some great ideas of ways to make the exercises and machines work for me.  I have done more in the past few days that I have done in the past two or three years, I think.  This must become a new beginning and a new way of life for me.  I will not continue the way I have been.  I refuse to be fat for the rest of my life.  I will be the woman I want to be and I will do the things I want to do.

But man, am I gonna be sore in the morning. 

All I can say is, hooray.  I loved David Cook from the beginning and now I can hope he’ll actually get to put out more music that I’ll actually like.  I bought his cds (with his old band and his solo album) before they were taken completely out of circulation, and I really like them.  So I have serious hope for his career… and he’s just downright adorable.  Yes, I’m too old to think things like that but… damn, it’s true.

John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama!  I listened to his endorsement speech and I must say that it gave me chills.  I really liked Edwards for president and was sorely disappointed when he pulled out of the race.  But today made me hope that he might be interested in another Vice Presidential run, this time with Obama.  But if nothing else, this gave me hope that maybe this democratic primary debacle will actually end soon. 

Come on Hillary, I’m sure you would have made an excellent candidate, and I would have supported you.  But you are not going to win, and it’s time for you to end this thing NOW.  Please.

Recently I wrote a post for “Blogging Against Disablism Day” (BADD) about community and how the disabled population haven’t really come together to create a real community the way that other minorities have done.  As I thought about what I wrote it became apparent to me that it’s become the norm to discriminate against the disabled population.  We are the blacks before the civil rights amendment, and I think the reason we don’t band together is because we know it’s true. 

Want to ride the bus?  Sure you can, but you and your wheelchair will have to sit in the back.  And good luck if your companion can sit near you.

Want to sit in the movies?  Sure… here’s the designated spot.  You wanted to sit somewhere else?  Sorry no dice, those aren’t for you.

Want to go to a restaurant/museum/public building and find there are steps to get inside?  Sure, you can come in just come around through the alley and enter through the kitchen. 

Want to go on a cruise?  Sure there are a handful of accessible rooms… better book early (like a year in advance) otherwise the able-bodied folk who want a bigger room for the same price will take them. 

These are all things that have happened to me and only a small handful of the experiences that we all go through on a daily basis.  We have special drinking fountains, seats on the bus, special bathroom stalls, etc that everyone can use but we can’t use everyone else’s stuff.  I can’t reach the regular drinking fountain, get to the seat on the bus or fit my wheelchair into a regular bathroom stall.  It’s become acceptable to relegate us to second class citizens and we have gladly accepted it.  What’s sad is that before we were second class citizens what were we?  I shudder at the thought…

As someone who consumes books the way others eat food, I think this may well be the COOLEST GADGET EVER.  I am so buying this when I have some free cash…

Totally amazing idea…