Is the Supreme Court Really Conservative?

Cancer patient Angel Raich is no recreational drug use advocate. In fact, she was offended when her nurse suggested she talk to her doctor about using marijuana to control her pain and possibly escape from her wheel chair.

But she did, and now, with a dose of pot every couple of hours, Raich is functioning normally... and still alive, which might not be the case without the pot. She's lucky to live in a state, California, where medical marijuana is legal.

Her story is resoundingly familiar to me... I have a friend who also survives and thrives because of marijuana use for symptom control. Unfortunately, my friend lives in a right-wing barbarian fascist state where there's no medical marijuana law - so my friend must remain anonymous.

But, back to Raich... California allows medical marijuana, but the Federal government does not... and, today, the Supreme Court is hearing her suit claiming that the Federal government lacks jurisdiction to interfere with her medical marijuana use.

This puts the conservative Supreme Court in a quandry. Raich's claim is clearly true on its face. She grows her own pot, for her own use. There's no commercial activity involved. There's certainly no interstate commerce. The Constitution does not give the Federal government any authority at all in such matters.

So, to rule against Raich, the court will have to ignore the Constitution and just make up new law from whole cloth... exactly what conservatives are always accusing liberal judges of doing.

So are the justices really conservative... or are they just evil old men (and woman) who enjoy condemning a cancer patient to a painful death? (I'm actually inclined to believe that many "conservatives" really are just this kind of evil, but it's certainly not what they claim to be.)

I await this decision with interest. Either the court will affirm medical marijuana use and we will see a flood of states following California's lead or the justices will impeach themselves with their own corruption.

Santa's Secret Valley (review)

I'm a longtime fan and sometime developer of computer based adventure games... in fact, the first computer adventure game I played was called "Adventure". It was one of the first, if not the first - from back in the days when the room images were drawn with words (at 128 baud - roughly human typing speed) because that was the only tool available.

Well, this weekend, Rebekah downloaded a new adventure game: Santa's Secret Valley from Big Fish Games. I was very impressed with this one.

Of course, being a modern adventure game this one has a graphic room presentation. The picture shown here is Main Street in Secret Valley where much of the action takes place.

The graphics are great, but that's not what impressed me. The impressive thing is the story and the puzzles that move the story forward.

First, it's a story about Christmas. On the surface, you play Fizbin the Elf, who's bored with making toys for Santa... so Santa assigns you to guard his magic items (magic bag, magic boots, and magic bell). And, since you're so bored you immediately fall asleep, the stuff gets stolen... the rest of the game is your quest to get the goods back in time for Santa to deliver gifts Christmas Eve.

But the Christmas connection is deeper than that. There's a Christmas trivia quiz game show - you'll have to win it at least twice to complete the game. But don't dispair... there's also a library full of books about Christmas and all the questions are answered there. And then there's the maze through which you are guided by the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas"... if you know what the 12 presents are.

The puzzles are often tough, but solvable... and, if one is driving you nuts, there's an excellent system of hints (which you purchase for penalties against your score) that will get you through. There's even a "solve" button for the slider puzzle - I did the slider by hand the first time, but I was glad I could just let the game do it for me the second time (I don't like slider puzzles much, lol).

Santa's Secret Valley would be great for parent and child to play together. It's got just the right balance of educational value (presented in a fun way) with just plain fun.

If you've got kids, pick this one up as a family Christmas present.

Mahoud bin Kalb

Right after the 9/11 attack, before we'd heard of Mohammed Atta, I guessed that one of the hijackers would turn out to be named Mohammed (not a long shot, lol) and wrote a song about his likely afterlife reward...

I called him Mahoud - according Salmon Rushdie, a name used by the Crusaders to insult the prophet Mohammed. And gave him the surname "bin Kalb" - "son of a dog."

I gave my character a wife... 'cause only a truly depraved and evil man would abandon his family to carry out a suicide mission... Funny thing is, Atta really did have a wife - he was that depraved and evil.

The song was slated to go on the Hapless Fool CD, but I cut it in final editing because I just didn't like the recording...

But I do like the song.

I've been playing it recently with a slide on the gourd lute. So today, I re-recorded the song - slide gourd lute, fingered cigar box guitar (playing the original guitar part). Filled it out with a bamboo flute, mini-lagerphone, frog guiro, vibraslap, bass and drums.

So here it is: Mahoud bin Kalb (96kps mp3)

Pods away

Joe Taylor of spinme.com has a cool new tool - Podcast ready music business coaching - with this you can download Joe's instructional conference calls to your portable mp3 player and listen when convenient.

What a cool idea!

Now I just need to figure out how to do the same with some Dr O tunes :o)

Multiple Streams...

We had a great conference call last night with music biz coach Joe Taylor discussing Multiple Streams of Income in the Music Biz.

One of Joe's ideas is that musicians starting out should offer a simple EP CD instead of a full album. I didn't get a chance to mention it last night, but a great source for producing such CDs is DOLLARCD.com.

And, yes, Joe, you should write that book.

Can't Win 'em All

Well, we won one the other day when the evil John Ashcroft, worst Attorney General in the history of the US, resigned...

But now the news is that Colin Powell - the one and only rational voice in the Bush administration - has resigned. Of course, serving in an adminstration that's firmly committed to living in Lala Land, his rational voice was shouted down more often than not, so maybe it really doesn't matter.

Replacing is Mr. Powell is Yes-woman Condoleezza Rice. ROFLMAO - this is a joke right? Sending the vixen to guard the henhouse.

Well, Bush keeps making a fool of himself and the American people.

When are we gonna impeach the stupid SOB?

New gourd lute coming...

Started on a new gourd lute today. The gourd is prepared and here's a rough sketch of the headstock. The final design will be woodburned onto the headstock...

On this lute the six strings will be mounted in holes in the headstock and run to tuners below the body.

The bridge will be supported on a tin can resonator with a hand-wound magnetic pickup under the resonator to pick up the vibrations.

Ding Dong the wicked Ding Dong is dead...

Or at least on his way out.

Yeah the good news is that Attorney General and terrorism supporter John Ashcroft has resigned.

Why do I call him a terrorism supporter? Well, first and foremost, his administration has been focused on eroding civil liberties - exactly the goal of the terrorists. He claims this has been to protect us from terrorism... but what does he have to show for it? The arrest and conviction of a handful of young men who received military training in an Al Qaeda camp. There's no evidence that they ever intended to use this training for terroris purposes - so their conviction is probably a civil rights violation too.

Additionally, Ashcroft's attack on civil rights has detracted from the business of pursuing and destroying the real terrorist threat. He's got FBI agents checking up on how far you've gotten in the latest Tom Clancy novel instead of running down terrorist leads. (OK, that's a little bit of a stretch, but Ashcroft does argue that the FBI needs to be able to conduct that sort of surveillance.)

And the bad news? Well first, Ashcroft will continue his tenure as the worst AG in the history of the country until his successor is confirmed, which, given the poisonous political environment may take a while. And, second, it's unlikely that we will get to see justice done in the form of a well deserved treason conviction of Ashcroft.

Well, you can't always get what you want.

F*** the South

Well so far, this month has sucked and I expect the next four years will as well... but this article made me feel a little better.

Who knew that blues states have the lowest divorce rates? ... so much for moral issues.

The article's a bit offensive, but if you voted for Bush, you need to READ IT.

Here's the conclusion for those of you too lazy to click the link:

Take your liberal-bashing, federal-tax-leaching, confederate-flag-waving, holier-than-thou, hypocritical bullshit and shove it up your ass.

And no, you can't have your f***ing convention in New York next time. F*** off.

Trackback Pings

I was a little annoyed to discover that blogger.com (my blog provider) doesn't support pinging for trackback. But it turns out to be easy to do.

1. Get the track back URL from the target blog.

2. Add four parameters to it:

• title= (the title of your article on your blog)
  
• excerpt= (up to 255 characters from your article)
  
• url= (the permalink URL of your article)
  
• blog_name= (the name of your blog)
  

3. Make this into a URL like this:

track_back_url?title=My%20Article&excerpt=I%20just%20wanted%20write%20a%20sample%20article&url=http://myblog.com/article&blog_name=My%20Blog

Replace italics with actual content. Bold indicates literal conent of the url.

Notice that spaces have been escaped as %20. Depending on the browser you're using this may be unnecessary. There are a number of other escapes that may be necessary but I don't have the escape table in front of me at the moment.

4. Put the URL into your browser's address bar and go.

5. A successful response looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> <response> <error>0</error> </response>

but, it's XML so it may not display properly in your browser (MSIE 6 handles it OK).

Of course, if you're successful, your trackback entry will show up on the target page (remember to reload it).

And the winner is...

Had a pretty good show last night at The Open Eye Cafe.

The debut live performance of BUSHIT was well recieved. (Although I think one college guy studying in the corner might have been put off by it - otherwise, he enjoyed the show.)

I had some equipment problems... the 7 string cigar box vihuela (CBV) was acting up. First, it's high string broke - again - during the recording of of BUSHIT. I decided not to replace it for the show since it would probably have just broken again. I guess I really need to tune this instrument to A415 instead of A440.

Second, when I really got in to playing performance quality music on this instrument I found the action is just too high - can't hit the bar chords and my left hand is awfully tired. Guess I'll be filing down the nut this weekend.

I ended up tuning the 6-string fretted CBG back to standard (I was using it for some non-slide open D tunes) to finish up the show.

Got a few new folks on the mailing list - always a good thing.

And that brings me to... the winner of the mailing list new signup drawing is....

(lagerphone roll please)

Jeannette T. - who received a free copy of Love & Death.

Tax Relief?

When a conservative says "I want tax relief," what does he really mean?

Apparently, he means, "I want to pay less tax while keeping my hand in your pocket for a free handout."

Check it out!

BUSHIT

When the world goes to Hell, sometimes you just have to make light of it... So here's to our terrorist-in-chief: BUSHIT (96 kps stereo mp3)

Lyrics:

Some fool insult your sister
And maybe your mamma too
Can't count on law enforcement
It all comes down to you...

Well Bushit - just shoot him dead right where he stand
No need to compromise... just got to be a Bushit man,
'Cause deadly force is the essense of the Bushit plan.

Don't need no fear of terror
'Cause here's a little truth
The power of the Bushit man
Is terror without ruth...

Well Bushit - just shoot him dead right where he stand
No need to compromise... just got to be a Bushit man,
'Cause deadly force is the essense of the Bushit plan.

Now you out to find the enemy
The problem ain't severe
Just get your weapon ready
And look right in the mirror.

Well Bushit - just shoot him dead right where he stand
No need to compromise... just got to be a Bushit man,
'Cause deadly force is the essense of the Bushit plan.

No need to find an ally
No need to find a friend
'Cause when you live by Bushit
You kill'em all in the end.

Well Bushit - just shoot him dead right where he stand
No need to compromise... just got to be a Bushit man,
'Cause deadly force is the essense of the Bushit plan.

Eleven Vote for Hate

Citizen of Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, North Dakota, and Utah have voted to enshrine discrimination based on sexual preference into their respective constitutions. So much for e pluribus unum.

If you live there, please try to get your state back on track.

If you voted for one of these unconscionable amendments, shame on you. I pray God will forgive your hate, but I don't have much hope of that.

Leader of the Free World... NOT

Well, yesterday the American electorate had a chance to restore the United States' position as leader of the free world... but chose, instead, to leave the free world entirely and reaffirm our position as the leading rogue state sponsor of terrorism.

I guess it's true... we've completely lost our moral compass.

Now who's got a big enough army to liberate us?

Masters of the Cigar Box Guitar

A new CD, Masters of the Cigar Box Guitar goes on sale today. It's a collection of some pretty wild music played on guitars made from cigar boxes (and other boxes, cookie tins, etc.)

Since one of my tunes - Tree 'Fo' a Hurricane is on the disk, I was able to get an advanced copy and have been listening to it in the car. It's just, hands down, some great stuff.

The CD starts off with James Albert, aka Beans Hambone, in the earliest known recording of a cigar box instrument (it's probably a 5-string banjo built from a cigar box). This recording alone is worth the purchase price of $10.

From there the program continues with modern recordings of modern cigar box players.

Some highlights are Gerry Thompson - an excellent songwriter playing live at this year's Cigarbox Guitar Festival, Bazookahosen - an avant garde jazz quintet from Denmark who use a cookietin banjo on some songs, and, of course, producer Shane Speal's band, Jug Fusion. Well, there are about 20 other "highlights" on the CD. Every track is a "must hear."

Producer Shane Speal likes to sell his records on ebay... so, for the next ten days, here's where you can buy Masters of the Cigar Box Guitar.

All proceeds from the sale of this cd will go to the non-profit National Cigar Box Music Foundation.