Tag: music

Nov 20 2014

The Very Model Of A Pro Obama Partisan

With apologies to Gilbert & Sullivan~



Optional Musical Accompaniment To This Post

Bot:

I am the very model of a pro-Obama partisan

Pragmatic in appeasement I really am a Vichy Dem!

I know all of the talking points I’m not afraid of spouting them

from deficit to HCR no arguments abouting them

I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters electorial

Use of information anecdotal and historical

Call me out on this and I will swiftly hand you snottiness

And overwhelm you with my very botti botti bottiness!

All:

And overwhelm you with his very botti botti bottiness

And overwhelm you with his very botti botti bottiness

And overwhelm you with his very botti botti botti bottiness!

Bot:

I’m awfully good at spin, I do insist on positivity

The plan, the facts be damned – I order you to go GOTV

In short, it matters not the issues or just where he stands on them

I am the very model of a pro-Obama partisan!

All:

In short, it matters not the issues or just where he stands on them

He is the very model of a pro-Obama partisan!

Bot:

The proper way to speak of him is always deferential

Those who come to praise him get the treatment preferential

My diaries range in scope from peppy rally to pictorial

Your comments welcome, but policed by those with rules dictorial

I’ll say that I’m a liberal while I act authoritarian

I claim the voice of reason while I speak like a contrarian

I shout down all debate with snide remarks about maturity

Take note of your ideals and thank you kindly for your purity!

All:

Take note of your ideals and thank you kindly for your purity

Take note of your ideals and thank you kindly for your purity

Take note of your ideals and thank you kindly for your purity!

Bot:

I can derail a thread with questions-mostly disingenuous

I do the verbal do-si-do with logic leaps most strenuous

In short, it matters not the issues or just where he stands on them

I am the very model of a pro-Obama partisan!

All:

In short, it matters not the issues or just where he stands on them

He is the very model of a pro-Obama partisan!

Bot:

In fact there is no act that I cannot quickly rat-ion-al-ize

No point I can’t dismiss or instantly infantilize

Here I say we must unite! to clear firebaggers from this place

Get in line, clap harder, now! or you never were “the base”

When I have learnt what progress has been made in dem blog politics

When I know more of tactics than a bunch of rapid response dicks

In short, when I’ve a smattering of elemental strategy

You’ll find no better pro-Obama bot that’s bottier than me!

All:

You’ll find no better pro-Obama bot that’s bottier than he

You’ll find no better pro-Obama bot that’s bottier than he

You’ll find no better pro-Obama bot that’s botty bottier than he!

Bot:

For my loyalty to man above both party and society

Blind faith up to the point where one must question my sobriety

And still it matters not the issues or just where he stands on them

I am the very model of a pro-Obama partisan!

All:

And still it matters not the issues or just where he stands on them

He is the very model of a pro-Obama partisan!

Oct 28 2014

Annie Lennox on feminism, gay, and transgender

photo Annie-Lennox_zps6304e59e.jpgAnnie Lennox has been interviewed several times lately and expressed some ideas worth noting.

We’re coming to a place where [feminism] needs to be inclusive.

I think the LGBTQ community are a part of that movement and we’re all sort of connected on this particular level and it’s very exciting – watch that space.

I am so happy to see now that transgender women and men are able to come out of the shadows finally and say ‘Look we’re here. Why do we need to pretend we don’t exist?’

It’s a very interesting time.

–Lennox

Dec 26 2013

Peace On Earth

Dec 25 2013

Happy Holidays

Dec 25 2013

Merry Christmas

Dec 25 2013

“Christmas Eve And Other Stories”

Trans-Siberian Orchestra – Christmas Eve And Other Stories

Old City Bar

In an old city bar

That’s never too far

From the places that gather

The dreams that have been

In the safety of night

With its old neon light

It beckons to strangers

And they always come in

And the snow it was falling

Neon was calling

The music was low

And the night Christmas Eve

And here was the danger

That even with strangers

Inside of this night

It’s easier to believe

Then the door opened wide

And a child came inside

That no one in the bar

Had seen there before

And he asked did we know

That outside in the snow

That someone was lost

Standing outside our door

Then the bartender gazed

Through the smoke and the haze

Through the window and ice

To that corner streetlight

Where standing alone

By a broken pay phone

Was a girl, the child said

Could no longer get home

And the snow it was falling

Neon was calling

Bartender turned and said, “Not that I care

But how would you know this?”

The child said, “I’ve noticed

If one could be home, they’d be already there”

Then the bartender came out, from behind the bar

And in all of his life, was never that far

And he did something else that he thought no one saw

When he took all the cash from the register drawer

Then he followed the child to the girl across the street

And we watched from the bar as they started to speak

Then he called for a cab then he said, “J.F.K.”

Put the girl in the cab and the cab drove away

And we saw in his hand, that the cash was all gone

From the light that she had wished upon

If you want to arrange it

This world you can change it

If we could somehow make this

Christmas thing last

By helpin’ a neighbour

Even a stranger

To know who needs help

You need only just ask

Then he looked for the child

But the child wasn’t there

Just the wind and the snow

Waltzing dreams through the air

So he walked back inside

Somehow different, I think

For the rest of the night

No one paid for a drink

And the cynics will say

That some neighbourhood kid

Wandered in on some bums

In the world where they hid

But they weren’t there

So they couldn’t see

By an old neon star

On that night, Christmas Eve

When the snow it was falling

And neon was calling

In case you should wonder

In case you should care

Why we on our own

Never went home?

On that night of all nights

We were already there

Dec 24 2013

The Ghosts Of Christmas Eve

Trans Siberian Orchestra The Ghosts Of Christmas Eve

Remembering all our ghosts tonight  

Dec 22 2013

Trans-Siberian Orchestra “The Lost Christmas Eve”

Trans Siberian Orchestra – The Lost Christmas Eve

Dec 21 2013

A Midwinter Nights Dream

Dec 09 2013

Nights from the Alhambra

Nights from the Alhambra

Nights from the Alhambra was recorded in 2006, before a live audience by Canadian singer, song writer and harpist Loreena McKennitt at the Palace of Charles V, in the Alhambra, Granada, Spain for the PBS series “Great Performances.”

Sep 01 2013

Anti-Capitalist meetup: Solidarity Forever (A Sing Along) by EK Hornbeck

An Annual Tradition at The Stars Hollow Gazette and Docudharma.

Solidarity Forever is perhaps the most famous Union anthem yet it’s composer, Ralph Chaplin, came to hate it, writing-

(T)here is no one (among the International Workers of the World, or Wobblies) who does not look with a rather jaundiced eye upon the ‘success’ of ‘Solidarity Forever.’

…

I didn’t write ‘Solidarity Forever’ for ambitious politicians or for job-hungry labor fakirs seeking a ride on the gravy train.

…

All of us deeply resent seeing a song that was uniquely our own used as a singing commercial for the soft-boiled type of post-Wagner Act industrial unionism that uses million-dollar slush funds to persuade their congressional office boys to do chores for them.

…

I contend also that when the labor movement ceases to be a Cause and becomes a business, the end product can hardly be called progress.

For you see, the essence of the song is class consciousness as laid out in the Preamble of The Little Red Book which says, “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common.”  Between Labor and Capital “a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the earth and the machinery of production, and abolish the wage system.”

By this analysis any Union that did not at it’s core embrace syndicalism, the most famous examples of which in the United States are the craft unions of the American Federation of Labor and the industrial unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, was betraying the movement by giving workers the false impression that they have interests in common with and could control the employing class through contracts.

Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work,’ we must inscribe on our banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘Abolition of the wage system.’

Likewise the IWW opposed participation in politics as mere compliance with an inherently corrupt system, “by organizing industrially we are forming the structure of the new society within the shell of the old.”

Now the lyrics I like best are the original 1915 version in which these revolutionary arguments find their clearest expression.

Chorus

Solidarity forever,

Solidarity forever,

Solidarity forever,

For the union makes us strong.

Verses

When the union’s inspiration through the workers’ blood shall run,

There can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun;

Yet what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one,

But the union makes us strong.

Is there aught we hold in common with the greedy parasite,

Who would lash us into serfdom and would crush us with his might?

Is there anything left to us but to organize and fight?

For the union makes us strong.

It is we who plowed the prairies; built the cities where they trade;

Dug the mines and built the workshops, endless miles of railroad laid;

Now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made;

But the union makes us strong.

All the world that’s owned by idle drones is ours and ours alone.

We have laid the wide foundations; built it skyward stone by stone.

It is ours, not to slave in, but to master and to own.

While the union makes us strong.

They have taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn,

But without our brain and muscle not a single wheel can turn.

We can break their haughty power, gain our freedom when we learn

That the union makes us strong.

In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold,

Greater than the might of armies, magnified a thousand-fold.

We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old

For the union makes us strong.

Alas hardly anyone uses them anymore, instead substituting various bowdlerized and watered down versions of the more controversial parts.  Even Pete Seeger (by far the best YouTube version) skips the master and own verse Solidarity Forever:.

Jan 18 2013

Dr Sarmast’s Music School

In 2001, when the Taliban was toppled from power, Afghanistan’s musical culture was left in ruins. Music gradually came back onto the streets and into people’s lives, but by 2009 there was still no orchestra capable of playing the Afghan national anthem.

In that year, renowned musicologist Dr Ahmad Sarmast returned from exile in Australia, and the Ministry of Education charged him with establishing the first National Institute of Music (ANIM). Based in what had been Kabul’s School of Fine Arts, ANIM got off to a slow start: the building was a ruin and there were virtually no instruments.

Dr Sarmast’s Music School follows ANIM’s progress over two years as, gradually, the school is repaired and made habitable. Fine instruments – many donated by foreign sponsors – flood in, and the school’s 150 pupils gradually learn to play to professional standards.

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