ALTERED BEAST - THE REINCARNATION

"Rise from your grave!"


Thank God I don't work for you, oh my brothers and sisters. If I did, I'd actually be in danger of being fired, because Lawd knows I haven't attended to the job of blogging since we hit October together. You would think that I'd continue to put up those pesky Obama campaign posts as promised, but nope. The way I see it, my job is not to just lurk for news on all the normal sites and post an opinion everyday just for the sake/fuck of it. Sorry if I set you up to be disappointed but it makes way more sense to take my time and put out quality over quantity. Creativity over consistency--all day homie. I'd rather do a great thing once and retire with respect than do a cheap thing forever and be branded as consistently marginal when I'm gone. Call it what you like. Maybe I'm just ungassed enough to know that Senator Barack Obama will win without me, so I can relax and watch history being made without my help.





See, I recently hit a monumental point in my life, wherein I decided to say, "Fuck you." And I don't mean that to be taken personally by you, dear readers. Quite to the contrary, you are something of an anomaly; you read this blog without promotion, marketing or gimmicks. I mean that rhetorically as a retort to those who would allow me to go on slaving just because I wanted to be noticed. I'd rather not be noticed for a flash in the pan, actually, and I consider anything gimmicky to be hot pepper on the stovetop. Speaking of gimmicks...

I'm at odds with myself on what to do with this blog. The whole trial (and error) of putting the word "Dead" in every post title became tiring and restrictive, and it was one of the things that forced a creative vacation. My return sort of signals that I'm ready to make some changes, but I've grown to love and hate this damned thing, which lets me know that it just might be permanent. Is that good or bad? I have no idea. I do know that I feel as if this blog is less of a ball and chain commitment than a labor of love. I can't possibly stop being expressive about the things that I write here, lest I let my guard down and dwindle into unchallenging thoughts and ideas. And that would be figurative death by spiritual abandonment.





By the way, did you know that DOLEMITE IS DEAD? Yeah, I saw it today while I was at work. That's another thing; I've got a new job. It's crazy that it came during a period of negative economic growth, but it gave me a fresh new perspective. I can't lie; it feels great to know that I'm going to get a check when I expect it and it actually pays the bills and leaves extra behind, not even considering my ultimate hustle of writing and promoting. Sure, I want Rudy Ray Moore to rest in eternal peace, but that doesn't mean pimping is dead.





I'm actually in a great place right now. Autumn is setting in, the leaves are dying and changing colors from green to gold, brown to burnt, falling to the earth to fertilize the future. It's a wonderful process that recycles life on our planet, and the earthtones create some of the best scenery you can witness when doing something as simple as walking through a nature trail. Don't forget I'm 1/3 white.





I don't know, dear readers. It just seems like I'm always on the opposite end of the world. When shit is shitty, life is gravy for me. When everybody else is partying, I'm feeling pitiful. Maybe it's only right that the changing tide brings me new fortunes. Hell, you might even say I deserve it, after having gone through that good ol' hard knock life that your boy S. Carter so eloquently mused about. Maybe I'm becoming that person I'm supposed to be, or always was, without the detriment of outside wickedness. Or maybe I'm just drunk off this pitcher of Bud Light I've almost finished.

Whatever the case, I do appreciate your patience and suggest that you hang around. Trust me, big changes going to keep coming. Actually, don't trust me. Just don't act surprised.


Viva la Vida!

ANOTHER WAY TO DIE (Besides reading my blog)

I hope you didn't come here looking for reassurance about the debates last night. EVERYBODY SAYS that Senator Barack Obama won the night. The whole country. Most surprising is the fact that FOX NEWS even had to relent and say that Senator John McCain didn't pull it off. In other words, this race is over. You know as well as I do that the next POTUS is also going to be the first black African-American one. And "that one" happens to be Obama.



But enough of that. I'm kind of tired of politics for a minute anyway, and I've noticed that I'm slacking on Hip-Hop, which in my absence has been seeing its vital statistics slipping a bit. Yet before I get back to wifey, I still feel like cheating a bit with R&B and rock & roll. Pardon me while I lose myself...


One of my favorite groups is The White Stripes. Jack White is murder on the guitar, and it just so happens that he's one of those multi-talented cats that can write lyrics, produce them (without computers) and perform them--both vocally and instrumentally--at a higher grade of artistic delivery than most, if not almost all rock artists in modern music.

So you can imagine how crunk I became when I heard a while back that Jack White and Alicia Keys are comiserating together on the new, Amy Winehouse-less theme song to the upcoming JAMES BOND film, Quantum of Solace. The title of the song is the same as the title of this post, if that helps at all.





I can't lie; Alicia Keys is dope. And even though they could have put some T-Pain in there somewhere, I have to say that this is a funky ass song. I dig shite like this; you can catch me at any moment on the interstate in your hometown, blasting some wild rock song with heavy bottomed bass drums and a slap-happy snare and cymbal mash-up. My only real complaint is that White and Keys sound amazingly off-pitch on the chorus, trying to hit the same note with two different sets of vocal cords. As a remedy, I would have had Jack sing in the lower octave, which would have added a fuller sound and given it even more funk. It's not like they asked axed for my musical expertise, but it's here anyway, so I might as well speak when I see fit.

Either which-a-way, I'm still going to download this song as soon as I can find it and create a new Rock mixtape for the ride to and from work for the next week. Hopefully this shit doesn't make me ghost-ride the whip into a graveyard as a result of trying to crank that air guitar while driving. If somebody finds a link, send it on. Yes, I'm weird. Learn to love it.

DEBATE IS DEAD

There are not many things that could get me to change my preference in the upcoming presidential election, oh my brothers and sisters. As I said in a column earlier this year, Senator Barack Obama would have to get caught naked with either a dead girl or a live boy to stop me from voting for him. Tonight, he has a town-hall style debate in the city where I was born—Nashville, Tenn.—with Senator John McCain over who should be The Man with the master plan for 2009-2012 and beyond. I’ll be back tonight or tomorrow with the only commentary that you need to read. Until then, happy viewing.

Free advice: Whatever you do, don’t listen to any Republikkkan spin after the debate is over. Turn the channel if you have to—MSNBC will keep it trillie—but don’t let right wing nuts make up your mind for you.

It’s Yours!

RELIGION IS DEAD

Thank Jebus it's Friday. Speaking of The Lawd, there's a movie coming out that I'm going to try to see sometime this weekend called RELIGULOUS. It's Bill Maher's journalistic satire of religion, and by most reviewer's accounts, it promises to be funny to OBJECTIVISTS like myself while pissing off most Evangelical neo-conservative lunatics and hopefully every other manipulating servant of Satan that pretends to speak the language of spirituality. You know the type...






I don't know your views on Christianity, Islam or Judaism, but you're more than welcome to ask axe God to strike me down for saying that I am highly interested in what this documentary-styled film contains, or you can just leave a comment and be less dramatic. But if you wish to know, I am neither an atheist nor an agnostic, but I have serious questions about the factual or plain-old believable issues that are preached in the name of The Lawd, especially down here under the bible belt, where assholes and dickheads alike stink up the region with their quiet quest for money, power and fame--all in the name of Jesus Christ, Muhammad or MATISYAHU. God knows he has some strange followers that probably believe that he wrote the Old Testament or some next shit like that. Me? I was raised as a Baptist, and I had to go to chuuch all the got-damn time. I would hear all types of buffoonery. A quick list of some of the nonsense includes:

1. If you kill yourself, you're going to Hell.
2. If you're gay, you're going to Hell.
3. If you say "God Damn" too many times, you're going to Hell.

Now, I can't vouch for two of those, because I'm neither gay or dead from suicide. But I lost my fear of speaking my mind years ago, and sometimes you just can't substitute another phrase for the all-powerful "Gyeaad--DAAAYYUM!!" And besides, don't act like a lot of the men that attend mostly black churches aren't apple bottom biters on the low, if you follow. Maybe on the high... But please believe: God has been very good to me, so don't assume that I'm not a believer. I just don't let another human being get between our relationship, so I really have little to no use for modern evangelists, preachers and such.



The few spiritual leaders that I do respect have always agreed that there is no such thing as an unforgivable sin as long as you've accepted God into your life. The others have always made up things that they claim can be found in The Good Book. By the way, it is a good book, but did you know that the Bible was in fact not written by God? A man actually took the trees that God created on "his" earth, in "his" universe, and cut them into shreds so that he could print money, collect 10% of others' income and give it all back to God. God made man and man made money selling God's magnum opus.



OUCH-- I just got struck by a bolt of lightning! But no, really, what is the point of religion? I see it as a way to control people and to turn the individual hero into a compressed weakling who cannot exist on his or her own terms. Maybe that sounds harsh, but riddle me this: when was the last time you sinned? Probably today. And the wages of sin is... you already know. Death. But guess what? You're gonna die anyway, so stop taking things so God-damned literal and learn to laugh at life while you have it. Sheesh!

I expect to laugh incredibly loud at Religulous, but I do not expect anyone to volunteer to see it with me. And while I believe it will do decent numbers at the box office, I can also clearly see the future, when the zealots start protesting and calling for HBO to cancel his show like Comedy Central did back when he started FREESTYLING about September 11. If there's anything guaranteed in America, it is religious persecution, which is pretty sad when you remember that this country was supposedly founded as an antidote to intolerance.



You mad? Who cares. Take it up with the man, woman or entity upstairs. But please, save your accusations of blasphemy for someone that's stupid. I have always believed that the spirit of God lives in each of us, therefore we can communicate directly with the great spirit without the need of an intermediary or middleman. As long as we have pastors with perms, private jets and penthouse apartments that preach prosperity, I'll happily refrain from spending my sacred Sunday afternoon doing anything as ridiculous as attending a "house of God" that man built and paid for. Isn't God already rich? Doesn't "he" own the earth, as well as the universe? How much sense does it then make to cut down "his" trees, turn them into currency and give 10% of the paper product back to "him"?

God don't like ugly. And yes, I know I might go to Hell for this, but like The Last Poets said, "If there's Hell below, we're all gonna go!"

STRATEGY IS DEAD

There's a lot of talk today about this whole debate debacle, as Governor Sarah Palin faces the world in a test of preparedness against Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware.

No one expects Biden to "lose" this debate, which is highly dangerous for him and why you might have noticed both political parties playing down expectations. The wisdom is that if you handicap your player and publicly predict a low performance, even alluding to the possibility of a loss, you will easily come out on top without having to exert very much energy or intellect.

Everyone—even Palin—knows that Biden is the better, smarter and more qualified candidate. But no one knows how bad Palin will be against him. There are many risks, which include a PR nightmare scenario for Biden: he could forcefully prove that he is better, smarter and more qualified, thus causing a sense of resentment. Nobody likes a know-it-all, and everybody loves the underdog. America is huge on victims and charity.

So if Biden engages Palin, he runs the risk of looking like a father, which would also immediately transform him into an old, chauvinist misogynist by default. "Who does Joe Biden think he is, dismissing a woman so fervently?" I can already see Elizabeth's lips flapping tomorrow morning on The View, and it's not at all as if I plan on watching The View.



You can see what type of dilemma that Biden is in, and how millions of Republikkkan lackeys, flunkies and surrogates are prepared to spin this into a victory for Palin no matter how badly she fails tonight. So there's only one way that Biden can soundly rout Palin in their one and only VEEP debate:

He's got to surrender.

Yes; the senator must hold back his mental arsenal of foreign policy, economics, law, social issues, education, energy and anything else he knows that would warrant an answer to any of Gwen Ifill's questions longer than two sentences. We already know that the campaign of Senator John McCain is trying to DISCREDIT Ifill because she has written a book called Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. If it is perceived that she is tossing journalistic "softballs" at Biden, it will appear as if GOP commentators were correct in assuming that she was already in pocket as an Obama loyalist and supporter. If he answers a question exceptionally well, Republikkkans will yell that the fix is in. Sheesh… at least McCain finally came out and admitted that Ifill, highly respected as an objective political journalist, will probably do a great job, as always.



On the other hand, if he decides to limit his answers, it will put pressure on Palin to best him. If she rambles, she will slip. If she keeps her answers similarly short, she will look like she's following Biden's lead because she is incompetent and has no answers. If she answers them correctly and blows everyone away with her understanding of the issues, she will still be less qualified as Biden, because no one with an I.Q. over 60 could possibly believe that he is not ready to step in at a moment's notice.

Biden will win regardless, but public relations can be a bitch to control, and you'd better believe that those wacky, Kool-Aid drinking Republikkkans are already preparing their victory statements for the morning news shows. Palin is a nincompoop, and it doesn't take an intellectual bombardment from Biden to expose this. Allow her to be the cause of her own political death, and she will most certainly euthanize herself on the public stage, proving to everyone that she never belonged behind that podium in the first place.

The best strategy is a non-strategy. If Biden follows my advice, I guarantee that he will have slayed the "LEVIATHAN OF FORENSICS" without having to raise his voice. And you can bet that if Biden walks away clean, the conservatives who were once all too giddy with the pretty lady from Alaska will attack her themselves, or simply decide as early as tomorrow that they cannot support the GOP ticket in November.