Snackable Rants

I want to approach institutional freedom and choice in America from a perspective that should be familiar to capitalists and business-people of all stripes: Brand Building.

A brand is a symbol or representation of an idea. It is both a concept and a tacit promise. When I purchase a can of Coca-Cola and crack the aluminum tab, I drink the contents without fear that I might find something unexpected inside – such is the power of a brand. Such also, is the power of Health Canada, which ensures I won’t be drinking poison. But within regulation, Coca-Cola certainly has wiggle room to be inconsistent. Coke however, and most of the world's top brands, recognize the need for consistency in what they deliver. Consistency builds trust and inspires loyalty among purchasers. Whatever you may think of Apple, Starbucks and even McDonalds or Coke, you probably recognize why they go to great lengths to preserve the strength of their brand in this way.

Doing so requires standardization. Doing so means vastly restricting the choice and freedom that employees, franchisers and even customers might enjoy. If you purchase a McDonald store, you cannot cook the food in cobb ovens, and oppositely, as a customer, you cannot order filet mignon. Choice is limited, but the return on consistency is vital for the McDonalds brand. But what of the American brand?

When you send your child to school in the United States of America it should mean something. People on the international stage should recognize that your kid received an education in one of the most powerful nations in the world, and there should be a standard of quality that inspires trust and respect. Just as you should not have to worry that your new Mazda 3 doesn't have proper brake-pads on all wheels, the biotech company employing your child should not have to wonder whether their new hire received proper education in evolutionary science.

Voucher-based healthcare, schools that can opt-out of teaching vital and relevant information, and wildly inconsistent abortion and marriage laws are not just a bad idea. They are a combined force that massively weakens the brand that is the United States of America.
Here’s your Grande Latte. Oops it has some lemonade in it. Here’s your GED. Aw shoot. We forgot to teach you about contraception and safe sex. If people cannot count on America to provide them and their families with consistent healthcare and education, tourists will not want to visit, immigrants will not want to move in, and current residents will want to move elsewhere. When conservative republicans harken back to the ‘golden age’ of America, they are talking about a concept, and idea and a brand. A brand that is severely tarnished.

I’m not trying to debate the fundamentals of freedom in society with this article. Ideas about which freedoms and what choices are important for people to thrive, succeed in, and love the society in which they live are beyond the scope of a 500 word rant.

But question those that tell you that freedom and choice are always the bottom line. Think about that when you buy an iphone, and get an iphone that works just like everyone elses.

"Habits have been compared to handcuffs, easily put on and difficult to rid one's self of.


Virtue is born of good habits, and the formation of habits may be said to constitute almost the whole work of education."

Personally I think that to say education is mostly habit-building is a little overkill. But as someone who has build too few good habits over the course of formal education, this advice really hits home for me.

I also really do believe that goodness is a practice and not a state - and a continual one at that. Jay Smooth touches on this in this excellent TED talk. The whole thing is very worthwhile.

I recently rediscovered several hilarious and horrifying advice books belonging to my Grandfather, all dating from the early parts of the 20th Century. While I expected rampant misogyny, racism and loopiness (and was not 'disappointed' in these regards), what did surprise me was some genuinely good advice. For the next week, I will be posting bits of insight from a manners guide (see left), and a very brief explanation as to how I think each applies to my own life -  94 years after the publication date. Many of these will be apart from their original context, but I think this makes them even more prescient perhaps.






Without further ado:



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"Queen Victoria forgave certain breaches of etiquette made in ignorance, and left her guest to discover the mistake at another time. It is a reprehensible host indeed who does otherwise, and so makes a guest uncomfortable. Etiquette is all wrong and false when it makes one forget the higher laws of courtesy or hospitality."




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Consider these words as you read the comments thread for any online discussion. To me, this speaks to not just etiquette, but the larger notion of not letting corrections betray a general attitude of respect. Those who energetically engage in sniveling correction, angry pedantry and flat-out knowledge wank would do well to heed this highly relevant wisdom.


*See related:

Posted by Alastair at 11:23 PM | Labels: Gender Roles, Online Trends | 0 comments | Email This BlogThis! Share to X Share to Facebook |

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Kanye West is the definition of the dude you love to hate, but he's certainly appreciated for the music he makes. After last years outstanding 'MBDTF' and this year's very good 'Watch the Throne', I'm not exactly breaking ground by saying I have a lot of love for Yeezy. But right now I want to pay tribute to something that I don't think gets acknowledged very much: 

Beyond the bravado, clever rhymes and world-class beatmaking, Kanye has continually revealed himself as one of the most progressive voices in not just hip-hop, but all of mainstream media.

Kanye on Pornography and Sex Work (from Hell of a Life):

 Tell me what I gotta do to be that guy
Said her price go down, she ever fuck a black guy
Or do anal, or do a gangbang
It’s kinda crazy that’s all considered the same thing 

Ok, so first up, Kanye sends up the racism in porn that equates the 'depraved' nature of interracial sex in certain eyes to other 'taboo' sex acts. For some, sleeping with a single black man equates to fucking 5 white men simultaneously.

Next, he takes a critical shot at the pay scale for many porn production companies, and the inherent problems with paying actors and actresses differently for what they are prepared to do, or to refrain from doing.

THEN he does some serious judo.

Well I guess a lotta niggas do gang bang
And if we run trains, we all in the same gang
Runaway slaves all on a chain gang
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang

To my mind, he's making two spectacular points here:

1) The sexual double standard of guys who would happily engage in 'taboo' acts like group sex, but then use a woman's participation in the same act as evidence of her being a slut and a whore

2) Sexually and culturally, a lot of racism still ties black people in America together, no matter who's on the 'upper' end of this racism. Black men might employ black women in a rap video and show her in a erotic and degrading light, but those same black men are still being seen by other (white) men as dangerous animals, goons and thugs. In the constraints of racism, black women are whores and black men are criminals. The 'bang, bang, bang, bang, bang' refers to both slang for fucking, and the sound of a gunshot

 Kanye then turns his focus to society as a whole:

One day I’m gon' marry a porn star
We’ll have a big ass crib and a long yard
We’ll have a mansion and some fly maids
Nothin’ to hide, we both screwed the bridesmaids
She wanna role play, 'til I roll over
I’mma need a whole day, at least rolled doja

At first we have a celebration of hedonism (not exactly new to rap), but look again. Kanye isn't going to have a house full of porn stars to pour champagne on, he aspires to marry a porn star - legitimately and with full implications. He makes it sound fun, and sees her propensity for sexual adventure as a perk, and not a source of shame. Kanye sees nothing wrong with being associated with a sex worker. But others do:


What party is we goin’ to on Oscar day
'specially if she can’t get that dress from Oscar de
La Renta, they wouldn’t rent her they couldn’t take the shame
Snatched the dress off her back and told her, “Get away”
How could you say they live they life wrong?
When you never fuck with the lights on

According to Kanye, the stigma associated with sex work is society's fault, and not sex workers'. He even takes a nice jab at the prudes, and implies (correctly) that a lot of the baggage around sex and sex work stems from personal guilt and discomfort.

The fact that anyone is articulating this stuff so well, let along someone in a genre as frequently problematic as commercial rap, is downright amazing. I'm almost out of space here, but just to prove that this one song isn't an out-of-character move for Kanye, check out a line from this year's 'No Church In The Wild':

We formed a new religion
No sins as long as there’s permission
And deception is the only felony
So never fuck nobody without telling me

An egalitarian, sex-positive, couple-defined relationship with a textbook definition of a 'Monogamish' commitment.

And the beat is dope.


Long live Yeezy.

QFS


This series was prompted by my friend Jocelyn, who found herself quite broke, and quite in need of excellent tunes.

Lucky for her (and for everyone), there's a whole lot of great free music being released these days. Download, enjoy and get excited about these great bands.





#2 - Wugazi - (Mashup)


Yep. Exactly what it sounds. Wu-Tang and Fugazi mashed up, unexpectedly (and quite well) by Cecil Otter of Doomtree and Swiss Andy. I'm new to Fugazi (heresy!), but I've been rolling with the Wu for a while now, and this works nicely to my ears. Even when the mix doesn't quite pull it off, it's a lot more interesting than most Wu Mashups*. Bonus point for including ODB's pre-Kanye award show moment.


*For another great Wu-Tang Mashup, see Enter The Magical Mystery Chambers. Beatles and Wu. Bong Bong.

Standouts:


"Another Chessboxing Argument"
"Floating Labels"
"Last Chance for the Clientele Kid"

Download Link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?4z43zfoxmgla19t

http://wugazi.com/

Hey Friends!

This one is prompted by my friend Jocelyn, who found herself quite broke, and quite in need of excellent tunes.

Lucky for her (and for everyone), there's a whole lot of great free music being released these days. Download, enjoy and get excited about these great bands.








#1 - NOVELS - (Self-Titled)


What do you get when you combine members of Tokyo Police Club, Will Currie & the Country French, Born Ruffians and Jay Sad? Really fun music, that's what.

Granted, the record is about as precious as one would expect from such a combination, but it's poppy, exuberant and has moments of real inspired collaboration. There's also some righteous keys on the last track.

Standouts:

"This Wouldn't Be The Last Time"
"No Hard Feelings"

Download Link:


http://www.okaynovels.com/

Listening to Kathleen Edward's 'Voyageur' today was like seeing a good friend buy a whole new wardrobe - not because someone told her to, but because it was time for a change. That same funny, smart, attractive and self-deprecating friend that you've known for years is still entirely herself, but suddenly catches your eye in a whole new way. What a wonderful update.

'Voyageur' hums and whispers, but there is buzzing and thunder on the horizon. Sometimes it rolls in, as in 'Mint', but it always looms. A storm is coming. The ground is shifting. "We're never gonna feel the same" she sang on lead single "Change the Sheets", and she meant it.

'Empty Threat' opens the album on a lighthearted and even quietly funny note, but we feel the stagnation and the loneliness (and we know it can't last). 'Chameleon/comedian' is as blunt and economic as we expect from Kathleen Edwards. No words are wasted, and she's equally unsparing with assessments of her own character as she is with anyone else. 'House Full of Empty Rooms' is a standout for me, and 'Pink Champagne' is gorgeously sad, but there isn't a bad track on Voyageur.

I think I've already talked too much about this one. Just go listen to it. Support Kathleen Edwards. It's January 16, and there's already a record this good? 2012 is gonna rock.

Anti-Pioneer - Feist

I knew something on "Metals" would occupy a slot on this list. Feist's darker, stronger follow-up to "The Reminder" was every bit worth the four-year wait. But which song to choose for this list? The 3/4 minor-key swagger of "How Come You Never Go There" or perhaps the fragile beauty of "Circle Married the Line"?

No, with so much excellent material on "Metals", it still always comes back to "Anti-Pioneer". I'll be short and sweet with this one.


1) The guitar. Feist has a very distinctive voice, but also a wonderful and recognizable guitar style. She plays mournfully here, and always with so much feeling. It's almost a duet between her two melodic voices when she trades between the guitar interludes, and the vocal verses.

2) The harmonized breakdown at the 3-minute mark. I can't get enough of this part. It gives you exactly what you want - and then more, and more until it finally fades back into her guitar. Shivers every time.

3) The cinematic string section. The arranging on this song is detail perfect, and this particular part elevates the track in a seamless and intelligent way.

4) The wonderfully dry and sparse drumming that perfectly compliments the song, while remaining a major voice in itself.

5) An endless stream of sonic nuances. Everything sounds amazing on this track (and on the record overall)

Enjoy, in all its beauty:




So, there you have it. "Anti-Pioneer" is the last of my Top 5, 2011. It's no small task, but I would love to hear the top 5 lists of others in the comments. I'll be returning to ranting for my next couple pieces, so stay tuned in the New Year.

Hope everyone who celebrates Christmas had an awesome one! Shout out to Hanukkah too, for which I chilled with a lot of drunk Jewish appreciators (and a couple of actual Jews as well).

Don't Carry It All - The Decemberists

The Decemberists can't catch a break, man.

When they craft a gigantic (awesome) achievement like "The Hazards of Love", it gets nailed for "missing the catchy choruses and verisimilar emotions"*. When they follow that up with a gorgeously minimal record like "The King is Dead" - absolutely laden with hooks - they apparently "cling so closely to formula" that they sound "unconvincing"**. Whatever.

"The King is Dead' is absolutely stellar, and "Don't Carry It All" was one of my anthems for the year. This beaming song was delivered in time for spring to arrive, and it brought a huge smile (and a couple tears) to my face as I drove around watching the trees come into bloom. In the second line of the song, Colin Meloy describes the days becoming longer as a "march towards the sun". Indeed. This is how you write a song about a season change.

In fact, "Don't Carry It All" is an ode to change of many kinds. Old to new, chaos to stability, life to death and then rebirth. As always with the Decemberists, complex topics like marriage, community and loss are handled with perception and remarkable economy. A single verse will reveal a lifetime, and words are to be clung to for full effect.

Perth - Bon Iver


I had a lot of expectations surrounding the second full-length Bon Iver album, as I imagine a lot of people did. "For Emma, Forever Ago" is a pretty special record, and for the next one, I was expecting something beautiful, ethereal and even quite different. What I wasn't expecting was for "Bon Iver" to sound so confident.

"Perth" opens with about eight second of silence, and a gorgeous guitar line follows. It repeats, undulating many times until ghostly harmonies and snare drums built softly underneath. None of this (minus the electric guitar) is that surprising, but it all sounds exactly right. This feeling of just nailing it - of a vision expertly carried out - continues through to the more surprising parts of the song. Machine gun polyrythms? Bombastic brass shots? Double kick drum? On paper it sounds bizarre, but I didn't question it once while listening.

"Perth" also does (well) the duty of establishing the first section of the record as a whole. "Minnesota, WI" and Grammy-nominated "Holoscene" sit beautifully in the afterglow that a track as strong as "Perth" creates.  It carves a wide emotional berth, sounding at once deeply melancholy and triumphant. From there, the record has everywhere to go.

"Bon Iver" is a great album, and "Perth" is a perfect way to open it. It doesn't shrug off the features that made "For Emma" succeed, but it signals loud and clear that audiences are in for a different ride. "Bon Iver" will never mean the same thing as the album before, nor should it. "For Emma, Forever Ago" is only a playlist away, and we have something much more exciting in the second album than repetition. We have progress.

Yer Spring - Hey Rosetta


"Seeds", and Hey Rosetta remain inexplicably (and criminally) underrated. They are definitely one of the best bands in Canada, and likely one of the best in the world. When I think of music that makes me proud to be Canadian, Hey Rosetta is invariably one of the first that comes to mind. They're really that good.

I also think "Seeds" is the best thing they've ever done. 2008s "Into Your Lungs" was a huge achievement, but "Seeds" does something pretty remarkable in its nuance: It dials it all back a bit.

"Into Your Lungs" had everything - huge emotional climaxes, grinding guitars, vocal catharsis and whispered tenderness. The range covered is massive, and the results are very impressive. Hawksley Workman gave the band a sonic palette to match the enormous appetite of the songs, and listeners are delivered track after track of epics. Five and six-minute songs that change pace and tone sometimes three times. It's astonishing, but it's also sometimes exhausting.

I am a big fan of "Into Your Lungs", and don't get me wrong. There is a big place in my heart for sprawling, wrenching works like "Tired Eyes". But simplicity can work at least as well for Hey Rosetta. Some of the most singular songs on that disc - "New Goodbye", "A Thousand Suns", "Psalm" - were also some of the best. And with this in mind, enter "Seeds".

"Seeds" is a refinement. It takes the daring, the poetry and the enormous musicality of the former album and hones it to a razor's edge. It sounds a little different, but as far as I'm concerned, almost nothing is lost and a great deal is gained. "Welcome" is, in almost every regard, a perfect rock song. "Young Glass" contemplates and then becomes an anthem before you've even noticed. And then "Yer Spring".

For all the talk of simplicity, "Yer Spring" is actually among the most complex songs on the album, but it never feels that way to me. Washed out reverb crashes into a drum feature, building to an eastern-flavoured string breakdown, distorted vocal tension and finally rockout release. I can hardly think of another band that could pull that off at all, let alone with this much grace and style. Where "Into Your Lungs" drew attention to these big moments and shifting sections, the songs on "Seeds" dance through them with utter finesse. "Yer Spring" is as complicated and daring as anything they've ever done, but Hey Rosetta has the confidence here to let is soar without even waiting for the breathless listener to catch up.

I still don't know if I've fully caught up. But I do know this. I had the privilege this year of listening to one of the best bands in the world at the height of their powers.

Gangsta - tUnE-yArDs


I was a latecomer to the M.I.A. bandwagon (that really seemed to peak in late 2008) , but as so many did, I found her music exciting and refreshing in a way that caught me quite off-guard. The songs that I liked the most, "Bucky Done Gun", "Sunshowers", "Galang" and the inescapable "Paper Planes" were a staggering collision of musical styles, lyrical content and aesthetic. Jamaican dancehall and grimy London electronic beats supported rapid-fire bursts of sharply self-aware commentary on the global, the intensely personal and the the confluence of those worlds. Weed and sex and poverty and excess. Injustice and liberation. It was a crazy-ass mix, and I was totally sold.

The follow-up album did not sell me however. This is really a topic for another article, but 2010s "/\/\ /\ Y /\" had nowhere near the impact on me as either "Arular" or "Kala". Where the first two had seemed so sharp, so immediate and captivating - "Maya" just seemed kind of...muddy. I bring all of this up here because that same startled excitement I had when listening to the first couple M.I.A. albums came flooding back to me this fall, and picked up right where I wished "Maya" had done. The band is tUnE-yArDs and the disc, "WHOKILL".

WHOKILL sounds like Fela Kuti and the Dirty Projectors and M.I.A. and a thousand other good things, all while sounding pretty damn original. Merrill Garbus, a funky-ass bass player and a couple saxophones make a whole variety of delightful noises - sometimes very rough and abrasive, and others soft and sweet. The album is dope, and a number of tracks could have made this list ("Bizness" and "My Country" in particular) but for sheer pedal-to-the-floor ear-grabbing, "Gangsta" wins out by a measure.

Distant sirens start the track, followed by huge drums and fuzzed-out bass. The drums cut out, and another siren - one made by the human voice - enters, and distorts. A harmony drops on top of the line, and all of this builds until, it too, sharply cuts. A powerful, neigh-androgynous voice demands "What's a boy to do if he'll never be a gangsta?!", and it all come shooting back together.

At this point, it has been 45 seconds.

"Gangsta" rules. It gets to be a lot by the end of the track, and some people will surely find it overwhelming and not their cup of tea. That's cool. But for those who can get on board, there's much to marvel at, and shake your body like a crazy person to. Little touches like the intentional de-tuning of the word 'sound' make this track absolutely fly out of the speakers. It's raw, exciting and a little bit frightening for good measure.

The intoxicating, worldly and chaotic blend that an artist like M.I.A. did so well is back in full force here. And holy does it sound cool.

I read a lot of political/activist blogs, and many of them start like this:

"Alexi is a mid-30s caucasian queer feminist transgendered atheist working-class anarcho-communist vegan..."


...and that shit gives me a major case of scrunchyface. 85% of the people in this world are probably unclear about what some of those words mean, and 95% would never use them (or so many) to describe them self. It's totally alienating (and I went there to read!).

Everyone comes to personal understanding in a different way, but how we individually understand our own lives, and how we publicly choose to represent them are different things. I wouldn't criticize someone's private self-image because that's their thing, but when a person's intro to the world is to lead with the term "cisgendered" I will absolutely criticize that - and I don't think that's unfair. Prince publicly identified as a made-up symbol in the 90s and everyone told him to knock it off.

Differences should be celebrated, but I don't think reveling in them is especially productive. Just as hyper-ambiguous terms like "queer" can be a barrier to understanding someone, hyper-specific terms can seem like a social pre-emptive strike. Whatever you were about to talk about, you already know how I feel.

I don't believe that. Do you eat KD in a socialist way? Do you watch Glee as a Libertarian first? Our long-held beliefs certainly inform how we interact with the world - but they should be a lens and not a filter. Wearing all your beliefs, identities and values on your sleeve tells me that you like these ideas more than you like talking to people. I'll let you eat your socialist macaroni in peace.