LISTENING TO MUSIC (or, trying to) Part III

Recently I borrowed from my brother, who himself had borrowed it from the Fitchburg State College radio station, a copy of the soundtrack to the documentary Rise: The Story of Rave Outlaw Disco Donnie. Disco Donnie was a major figure in the New Orleans club scene, and he was also the first person to be indicted under the RAVE (Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy) Act, which allowed club owners to be prosecuted if anyone was caught using rave drugs in their clubs. The money raised from album sales would go to funding Disco Donnie's defense as well as to EM:DEF, the Electronic Music Defense Fund.

While the CD has its share of big names (The Crystal Method, Leftfield, Josh Wink) and a few great tracks from lesser-known artists ("Freak Frequency" by Vigi & Flip, "Hip Hop Phenomenon" by Tsunami-One, "I Feel Good" by Charles Feelgood), it also feature a few clips from interviews from the film. The one that caught my eye in particular was one entitled "Jesus Preached PLUR (Peace Love Unity Respect)".

It's short enough that I can post the entire thing here:

"Jesus...Jesus preached PLUR, you know, Jesus wasn't, like, a white guy, sitting around, you know, like, being perfect...I mean, Jesus was a North African, you know...he had long dreds; he wandered around and probably smoked bud. He, uh...preached PLUR. He wanted everyone to love each other."

Now, to break this down in detail. Leaving aside the obvious problem of overloading a simple statement with Likes and YouKnows, my main problem is that the central point of the argument is false. Jesus did not preach neither peace ("Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." Matthew 10:34) nor love ("If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Luke 14:26) nor unity ("For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law." Matthew 10:35) nor respect (the part of Mark chapter 7 where Jesus refuses to exorcise a woman's daughter, calling the woman herself a dog). These examples are just a few of many that show that Jesus isn't exactly the role model this person thought he was.

Of course, the Bible contains verses that could allow one to make a case either way. I just felt like playing devil's advocate here for a brief moment.

The conception of Jesus as a cannabis-smoking north African nature-worshipper spreading a message of peace among men seems to me like it might make more sense than a Yahweh-fearing Hebrew with little positive to draw from the Old Testament. It's not outside the realm of possibility that making Jesus a Jew was nothing more than a Retcon to serve the early Christians' purposes. (After all, as Greta Christina pointed out, all religion is fanfic.) So this portrayal by this ditzy-sounding clubgoer is just another instance of seeing Jesus how you want to see him; seeing him in a way that advances your own beliefs. In this case, that of PLUR.

I think all I'm trying to say, though, is this: I agree with your message, but not how you're saying it. I can see your rationale for doing so, since so many people agree, wrongly, that Jesus was a bringer of PLUR. If you're trying to get people to your side, you might not want to use Jesus to do so.

Thinking about this distracted me from the main point of the article, which was supposed to be about electronic club music, but somehow moved onto another topic completely.

A COINCIDENCE

I might have mentioned before that I write music. Today I was playing around with an idea that I think I might make into a full song when I noticed a coincidence.

Originally, I couldn't think of what to save my files as, so I had to hastily name them before I could save them. Most of them have the name I eventually gave them.

A few of them describe the genre they fit into: "NuTrance" "HouseBeat" "ReturnToDrumNBass".

A few describe what I was trying to evoke by writing them: "Questing" "Ominous" "Drift"

Some of them just reminded me to come back and finish them: "RhythmWorthDeveloping" "BuildOnThis" "PossibilityExists"

Eventually I settled on a 3-digit number (for keeping track of them chronologically) followed by a brief description, usually the genre.

And on 2/14, I reached track #214.

SUPER BOWL, PRESIDENTIAL RACE, AND WARCRAFT POST #4

Dad's Jambalaya, as usual, was fantastic. Favorite ad was the Diet Pepsi MAX ad with Chris Kattan making a cameo near the end. And regarding the game itself, WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?

Next subject.

I wish I could have voted, but I was sick with the flu that day, and I probably could and should have braved the cold to vote.

My state of Massachusetts went for Hillary Clinton, which is not surprising since my neighbors in the 5th district already have no qualms about voting for the wife of a former high-ranking politician.

I was planning to vote for Edwards until he dropped out, at which point I backed Obama, along with Ted Kennedy and John Kerry. But I could live with Hillary for president.

And Mitt Romney took Massachusetts in the republican primaries just before dropping out. I'd like to imagine he's the least evil of them, but no, all of them are quite evil indeed. More on that in detail another time.

Next subject.

Now, it's at this point that I realized that I haven't written too much in detail about World of Warcraft since well before the expansion was released. And with another one on the way, I might as well before I suddenly have a lot more to write about.

Blizzard is becoming a bit more like Microsoft as time goes on. I didn't realize this until Blizzard released, as part of their base UI, a module called Floating Combat Text. This module was an attempt to integrate a popular user-created mod, Scrolling Combat Text, into the base UI.

I, for one, don't bother to use FCT, because SCT is much more customizable. FCT displays all events (that Blizzard thinks needs to be tracked) in either green text or red, depending on whether they're good or bad, and they only scroll up the screen. SCT offers customizable events, which can be made to display in any color; and the ability to send text notices to one of three panels, which can be scroll up, down, at an angle, or along a quadratic path so that they flow like water from a fountain. Maybe it's a bit less memory intensive to use FCT than SCT, but I would rather get a memory upgrade. (One more excuse for buying tech.)

It was not until this one case that I noticed this is not the first time this has happened. A few other features, that were not part of the original UI and that were first done by the mod community, include quest objective tracking, display of multiple action bars, and target-of-target frames. The fact that these are now part of the base software reminds me of the case of Internet Explorer being built in to Windows 98 and later incarnations.

Omni the lv 70 human priest hasn't been doing much except daily quests, in the hopes of eventually buying an epic flying mount. The only daily quests that I've been able to find that don't involve a lengthy pre-quest-line are those for PvP and for Cooking. The nice thing about the cooking quest is that in addition to a chunk of change, you get more food to do more cooking with. Sure, you may become overloaded, but that's what alts are for.

And the PvP quests have finally given me an excuse to check out the new Eye of the Storm battleground. Believe it or not, I still haven't set foot in Arathi Basin. Sooner or later, once the random quest ends up sending me to AB, I'll go, but until then, I'll keep hoping the Alliance can win Alterac Valley once in a while.

Keahrde the dwarf hunter is also 70. Two down, seven to go. The only objectives I have for my lv70 characters are to maximize whatever trade skills I chose for them and to get as good a blue weapon as possible, maybe an epic if the opportunity arises. Keahrde's almost through fel iron and moving on to adamantium. Not sure whether to go for the Wrathfire Hand-Cannon or the X-54 Rocket Ripper...

Asmira the human paladin is 68, with at least half a level of experience, so she can now log out anywhere and still be running on rest experience. After spending levels 60-61 as a retribution paladin and constantly wishing for a better and better weapon, I decided to go back to the original "blockadin" spec she had for most of the pre-expansion leveling. It's a bit slow, but there's virtually no down time between battles.

Rashida the night elf druid is 64. Not much I can say about her except that she will probably be the next character to get to fly, simply because it's so much cheaper to get Flight Form (and it's available two levels sooner).

Jorbin the human mage is 61. If only jewelcrafting were cheaper to level, I'd be making all kinds of neat trinkets with him, but such is not the case.

Sasuk the human warlock is 50. I'm hoping his felguard starts becoming more useful in a few levels, but for now it's not doing enough damage to keep aggro. I'd hate to spec out of full demonology simply because it's not working.

Finally, Exadab the night elf warrior is 40, Qledwa the dwarf rogue is 32, Vesper the night elf priest I created specifically for shadow spec, is 24, and Tolaria the draenei shaman is 13.

I stated, a long time ago on another blog (still up on JoeUser if anyone really cares) that I had 6 objectives, and all of them still stand, though some are slightly modified.

1. Reach lv60. Now that the level cap is 70, this is more than taken care of, and after only a few Karazhan runs, Ive got a few purples as well, so Omni's slightly pimped out.
2. Full devout set. I finished this a while ago, and a few of the pieces have since been traded for Virtuous. Now the goal is probably to collect the full Hallowed set, which is the Outlands dungeon equivalent, and it's easier to achieve since there are only five pieces (two of which I have already), as opposed to Devout's eight.
3. See the world. Completely fill in the blanks on my world map. Flying mounts make it even easier to get those odd places in Outlands, but I still need to get a better look at the new islands where the Draenei start sooner or later.
4. Master all the professions. This will have to be split between 6 characters but it can be done: Omni's an Herbalist/Alchemist, Keahrde's a Miner/Blacksmith, Asmira's a Skinner/Leatherworker, Rashida's a Tailor/Enchanter, Jorbin took up Jewelcrafting, and Qledwa is an Engineer.
5. More 60s. Well, 70s now, and so far I'm on the right track.
6. Epic mounts. Omni is epic mounted, as is Keahrde, and Asmira just recently finished her Charger quest. Rashida is next in line, but she might be able to get Flight form first. As for epic flying mounts, I'll focus on getting one for Omni, but the rest will have to settle for normal ones.

Back to the game.