Why The American Democratic Party is Driving Me Nuts

The only big things I care about in domestic politics are:
1. Affordable Healthcare/Free Healthcare
2. Living Wage

And I always considered these things to be pretty "liberal" issues. Still I just don't hear a lot of talk about it, I don't see much political action. In the democratic party's effort to try and attract more conservative voters, they threw the baby out with the bath water. Couldn't they cede a less important issue? And aren't all issues less important than healthcare? Why not make welfare stricter, disqualify some of those who don't deserve it in a hard audit, and then use that money to say, reduce the cost of healthcare across the board about about 5-10%?
All I see is the whining. The Democrats don't seem to put much in the way of constructive action forward, they just seem to play moral police every time anyone republican does something conservative(which, by the way, should not shock them nearly as much as it does.) All they do is react with a continuous level of "outrage" that I'm really starting to doubt is much more than theatrics.(Nancy Pelosi?)
They've had every possible chance so far to capitalize on the negative publicity surrounding the presidency and the majority whip scandals. What do they do? Sure as hell not anything very effective.
On a more grassroots level, Adbusters Magazine and the like are just that much more a manifestation of how the left in the U. S. is just wasting it's time and vital energy. So much young energy at their command, and the magazine reccomends not, say, building affordable housing, starting a farmer's market, or an employment agency for homeless people, but rather, that their readers black out logos on all surfaces in their daily life. They seem to have lost all the left's good will toward humanity, and replaced it with scorn and hostility for a world which voted Republican. They enjoy being the "morally superior" underdog, instead of helping people, they just complain about what has been done to them.
In short, I think that they've just gotten too comfortable with the role of minority and made themselves unfit for being a majority because of it. They've become too comfortable being convinced the world is going to hell, and they've started to enjoy this decline because it gives them something new to whine about or react to. I'm really starting to think that a total corporate dystopia would make the average Adbusters reader or Michael Moore fan happiest, because they would be able to say "I told you so" and then feel like a revolutionary all the more.

And then theres that problem where criticism from the inside of the left provokes total outrage.

I read in the school (MTSU) newspaper this week that there was going to be a large sale of records and sheet music on campus from the MTSU library of pop music. Apparently these were duplicates from within the catalog, which the school claims contains almost every pop music recording ever. The paper said "fleamarket prices" which to me means about $1-3 per LP. I found a lot of records I might have bought at that price, except they were about $25 a piece. What a dissappointment. I did, however, get a very early Sway and King Tech LP(Flynamic Force) with had the added bonus of having the All City Crew promoters business card from 1988 in it! Art on the sleeve looks like hand drawn anime-ish versions of sway and king tech playing.
But on the way out, I picked up a couple issues of the Journal of Pop Music Studies or some such nonsense. They're issued yearly and I got three years.
What a load of crap Pop Music studies is. Did somebody make a living while writing this garbage? Almost without exception, the articles read like a cross between a Rolling Stone review and an amazon.com blurb... Talk about pointlessly self-absorbed rambling! Far and away the most entertaining of them all was an article called : Techno Music and Sonic Communities: When Modern Markets and Postmodern Pleasures Collide. So far from my reading it seems to revolve around the Chemical Brothers being mentioned on Beverly Hills 90210, and its written in a some sort of a self-absorbed combination of "9th grader impersonating Kerouac" and "19 year old pitchfork reader."
It's agonizing, but I have to keep reading, just because of my amazement that trash like this "academic journal" or this field of "pop music studies" even exists. Talk about a pointless pursuit.
Oh and I'm anxiously awaiting both my move and my surgery in two weeks, I may one day be able to listen to my stereo-rama records in stereo!

Now listening to:
Deb Hyer: One Man Band
The Holiday City Hot Cha Kitchen Band
The Creed Taylor Orchestra: SHOCK! Music in Hi-Fi!

So, its the day before Christmas Eve, and my apartment building is on fire while I stand outside in aqua socks and shorts in December. The next day, I call Comcast about my internet access, which has been running slow, and constantly disconnecting.
They offer to send somebody out, but I don't wanna make some poor dude work on Christmas Eve...nor do I want to deal with the quality of work I would recieve from some inept contractor on Christmas Eve.
Now, its February 6th. 6 Technicians and 5 service visits later, my internet is still unbearably slow, I can't play online games, I can't watch a video, nothing!

Here's the laundry list of bull I have been fed:

• Tech 1: Your "reverse-noise" level is too high! Your signal needs turned down.

• Tech 2: "I've never heard of 'reverse noise', I think he must have made that up. You must have been moved on a splitter fed to your building, I'll move you down to the two way splitter.

• Tech 3: Your signal is much too high, it needs stepped down.

• Tech 4: You have problems because of the cable traps on your line, let me remove them.

note that this tech also told me his name was uhhh John and his number was 169, he also sat down at my computer on a sunday morning and looked at government auctions for impounded cars for like 20 minutes.)

• Call Center: There is an area wide problem with two towns(the one I'm moving from and the one I'm moving to) It should be resolved.

• Call Center rep 2: I haven't heard anything about an area outage, I will upgrade you to the 8mbit internet access as a gift. (that was no gift, my bill was $10 higher the next month)

So now its been a month that I've tolerated this complete ineptitude, confusing and misleading lines about what the problem is, lack of professionalism, and general USELESSNESS.

The real problem? They're pretty much the only broadband option in my area!
I hate to give people like this a dime, though. I also hate to feel trapped, the only other real options are satellite and DSL(both of which are almost as miserably useless as this cable company!)
They should fear the day I fidn more options!

So, since that last blog I have rounded up two more songs, bringing the total number of album-worthy vocal tracks to 8 or 9. I am contemplating track orders, and what sort of cohesive elements I could add to the record in the form of transitions, instrumentals(of which there will probably be 2-5) and the like. I have also been thinking a lot about what I want the cover art to be like, what kind of material and look I want the liner notes to have, etc. What's difficult for me is knowing when a phase has ended. I think I will consider the phase I am in now to be officially over when it comes time for me to move and expand the studio into the bigger place I will be getting in March.
Because I have recieved sponsorship I can depend on, this release will not be a CDR, it will be a CD professionally duplicated and screen printed. Packaging is something still up in the air to me...I rarely explain actual technique or talk about equipment, but I think it would add a very interesting element to the liner notes to explain the studio, because every body of work I make feels like such a picture of life in that location and in that studio. Also because I should get street cred for having made the record I have on a computer with a bad fan bearing, in a room with standing room only to record in, while living on just under $15,000/year.
I am also struggling with promotion and marketting for the record, because my "empage" will die soon, and that had previously been a major contributor to any limited publicity I have had. I am going to try and get a lot of promotional copies mailed out to college stations, and then call and request the songs. I am also considering guerilla marketting an easily rememberable URL with some cheap one color screened stickers.
I need a real website, and I need a good website. I can't do this stuff live almost at all, so I'll need a good way to get the music out. I plan on offering plenty of material from the record online, but keeping the bulk of it available only by purchasing the album or requesting it on the radio.
I need advice on this process, because its all new to me. Anyone got any kind of basic marketting tips for me?

Current listening:
Choubi Choubi! A Collection of Iraqi Pop and Funk
Funkytown Budapest: Hungary 1970s
Ho! Roady Music of Vietnam
Flanger: Spirituals

So, my newest record is starting to enter that phase where I can start to feel things gel and develop that environment and character that are conducive to cohesion and finishing. I've been sorting out the 20-30 drafts I have for the record, finalizing and redoing some arrangements. I'm so excited to listen to what I've got so far.
Also finished a real chart topper of a song called "bikini monsters with keytars" which will be album release material only- and it's not often I do that.
I'm gonna get just a couple more songs together.
The album will be in lyrical>instrumental alternating order, and if it ever gets pressed, then A side will be vocal cuts, and b-side is all instrumental.
I just haven't yet figured out how to promote the damned thing though. I know its probably a total waste of time to push it on the electronic community, and that it would probably go over better with rock fans...to whom it would seem much more dazzling than it does to the electronic crowd.(sad but true-many rock fans are baffled by bands containing keyboards)
and I am out to DAZZLE.
It may, in some form or another, also include an EP of about 5-10 minutes of original disco I had made for a halloween release but was unable to finish on time.
record's tentative title is:
"The Genius of deltasleep!"

Yeah, so about a month ago I was interning as an ophthalmic technician at a Dr.'s office here in town(Nashville) and really enjoying it. I talked to the office manager about getting a job there. They say to me, "David, what do you need?" I say "I need a full time job and $15 an hour"
"OK" was the answer, with a nod. My evaluation sheet came back to school with a big smiley "we'll hire him!" written on it. So after much phone tag and haranguing they say that they couldn't pay me what I was asking for...
I was a bit dissappointed, but not shattered, it was afterall, the first offer I made.
But they might be willing to pay me $9.50/hr for a 90 day trial period and then evaluate what I was worth to them.
$9.50 an hour - what an insult! 3 and a half years of college with a 3.899 GPA and an arsenal of skills can only get me $9.50 to make calculations that could leave a patient seeing or not after surgery!? $9.50 an hour to routinely touch the surface of patients eyes, culture samples from eyes, administer eye medications, write glasses and contact prescriptions?!
So I think I am dumping the field and going back to school. In the mean time I need a good job, and I can't find one. I know from the people I've talked to around town, I can't ever expect to make more than $30-35K a year with this. Thats a living, but its not a lifelong plan.

Here are my skills:

Class F license - for hire endorsement
Skilled as a computer technician
Soldering and component electronics repair
Optical Coherence Tomography
Heidelberg Retinal Topography
Fundus and Ophthalmic Photography
Auto-Refraction
Manual and auto-lensometry
A-scan Acoustic Biometry
Corneal Topography and Wave/Orb Scan
Humphrey Visual Field Testing
Refraction
Forklift operator
Extensive experience with children, senior citizens, and persons with special needs.
Pure tone Air/Bone Conduction Audiometry
Butterzone beatz
Photoshopping heads onto different bodies
Red Cross Basic Advanced First Aid Cert.
CPR cert.
Photography


All these are totally useless combined, apparently.
But I guess if you were in a plane crash I might be a good person to have along...
My life is so dissappointing. I swear I will stop doing this to myself...I try so hard.