Sunday, September 30, 2012

It's Alive!!!!!!

I know I write on my own blog, write on Facebook and other things, but today is a plug for an artisan jewelry shop on Etsy run by my wife. Good stuff. Please buy it so I can find half of my house again. I swear it grows and grows and grows. Beads, wire, vices (mechanical, not fun ones) and tools ending up everywhere and in larger and larger piles. I swear IT BREEDS. 

Check it out--
http://www.etsy.com/shop/twotreesstudio
nice stuff at a reasonable price.

rojo
Here Come the Debates!

‎"The far-left magazine Mother Jones (possibly one of Fidel Castro's favorite publications) has put out another old video of Mitt Romney, in which he says Bain Capital 'was formed to invest in start-up companies and ongoing companies ... then harvest them at a significant profit.' Even though Mother Jones is appalled, that's what capitalism is! You grow companies, you make them more profitable, then if you're lucky you sell them for lots of money. Sometimes the free market is brutal, but it does provide vast opportunity for those willing to work hard and take chances." Bill O'Reilly

Is this true? Is all capitalism has to offer is profit to the highest manipulator? I hate to say, but without social controls, that is what capitalism on steroids is. Just like communism is at its worst a demotivating society where you get equally what is produced, whether you helped in that production or just slacked off. In fact, that is what makes this election cy
cle so interesting. and nerve wracking. Will it be capitalism on steroids where everyone wants and wishes to be at the top of the bubble? The system will never self-sustain without the system eating human lives, the bottom of the social economic structure provides the lives or fuel for this dystopian process. (Hey, sue me for bleak thoughts on a warm sunny, football Sunday.) A system where economic mobility is seriously limited to those who are members of the lucky sperm and egg club, except for a few innovators who have the guile for business as it is.

Or will it be a different environment where regulations for banks and criminal prosecutions for gambling with others money and environmental consciousness are part of the agenda. Where second-tier manufacturing has as much importance as banking? Where workers take pride in what they produce, not that they just produce profits?





rojo

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Music for a Date Night

An overlooked collaboration with Flaco and Ry Cooder.

Polka!

enjoy,

rojo

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Not Enough Credit


a great album from Fillmore Records in 1969! Elvin Bishop's first solo album. and Rock My Soul featuring Jo Baker and Mickey Thomas.

Sunday, September 02, 2012

Great Little Book

from Confessions of a Pagan Nun:

"I do not understand a man who does not want to know all that he can know. Why would anyone choose ignorance? If he chooses ignorance because he is lazy, then he is a fool, for the ignorant are put to hard labor digging and hauling stones for masters who tell they need no knowledge. If a man must labor from dawn to dusk to avoid a blow on the head to earn a cup of grain, he has no time to gain knowledge and remains a slave to his masters. I think, therefore, that it is a worthy vocation to free a man enough that he can learn who he is and what he is capable of...Teaching is a sacred art...The teacher the bard, the singer of tales is a freer of a man's minds and bodies...But he is also a danger to the masters if he insists on telling the truth. The truth will inevitably cause tremors in those who cling to power without honoring justice. (pp. 104-5)

I learned regret in the ruins...I regretted that ambition had ruled my heart instead of affection for my kin. And with the lessons of regret came the gratitude for having life still to move my lips and limbs, and to speak kind words to embrace those I might not see again on this sweet-smelling earth. I learned I cannot wait to love what is in my presence, for it or I may be well gone tomorrow. (p. 145)"                    Kate Hornsley, author

I had never heard of this book or author before, but this spring by chance I found myself in one of the best independent bookstores I know, The Tattered Cover, in Denver. Killing time while my wife searched for something, I remembered reading somewhere that Charles de Lint had a column if Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine, so since they have a great magazine section, I found F&SF and his column. He mentioned this book and another by Kate Hornsley as very good reads. So, I was off on a mission looking for her books there. Sadly, no luck. I went to the Gender Studies studies and in the Used section there I found nothing by John Stoltenberg (anyone who looks at men's studies should read his On Becoming a Man), but found Kate Hornsley's fiction there, used at a great price. Must have been fate. they are good!

Find them yourselves and read them. yahoo!

rojo