Author: Leon

Categories
Entertainment

Best Music 2012

Here’s a rundown on the best albums that came out in 2012, in no particular order.

Westwinds – The Real McKenzies

Every song by this band makes me want to hold a drink up high in one hand, wrap my other arm around your shoulders and sing along at the top of my lungs. It being the end of the year, a time for a reflection, check out The Real McKenzies’ ode to MLK, The Message. Here is a gift for you to keep. There’s a message you can hear all over the world if you only try. To all those who worry about this troubled world, we can change it all today.

Uno / Dos / Tre – Green Day

Really three albums, but they might as well as been a three-disc release. Putting aside the claim by some of my friends that Green Day ripped off the Mr. T Experience sound, these guys keep making music I can listen to on repeat. Everyone in the family enjoys it, which makes it good roadtrip music. Plus, the ElSob world view matches up pretty close to MTZ: Well I don’t want to be an imbecile. But Jesus made me that way… I think X-Kid might be the best track, but The Forgotten was the name of my teenage punk rock band. I can’t bring myself to share the video since it has all these distracting scenes from the last Twilight movie in it.

Rebirth – Jimmy Cliff

I knew this album would be great after last year’s Sacred Fire EP. His version of Guns of Brixton might be better than the original.

Acoustic Volume Two – Tony Sly & Joey Cape

It certainly was a terrible loss when Tony Sly passed away this year. I was looking forward to many more years of his music. Visit tonysly.org for more info about him and donate to help support his family if you can afford it.

S/T – OFF!

Keith Morris is 57 years old. You are probably younger and not rocking as hard. What do you have to say for yourself?

Lost City – The Lost City EP

A Portland-based four-piece rock band. Inspired by The Boss, Jimmy Eat World, Cormac McCarthy, and Patton Oswalt. If you liked My Life in Black and White, you will like band.

S/T – Classics of Love

If you liked Operation Ivy, you will like this band.

“God, Forgive These Bastards” Songs From The Forgotten Life Of Henry Turner – The Taxpayers

Tempest – Bob Dylan

We Come In Peace – D.O.A.

Into the Future – Bad Brains

 

 

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Categories
Freedom Philosophy

How not to feel the horrible burden of Time

Lapham’s Quarterly (Winter 2013 edition) opens with the following mission statement by Charles Baudelaire (circa 1867). It suits the holiday mood, which for an atheist like me is every day. (Why? Read Every Day is an Atheist Holiday by Penn Jillette.) Cheers!

One should always be drunk. That’s the great thing, the only question. Not to feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and bowing you to the earth, you should be drunk without respite.

Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please. But get drunk.

And if sometimes you should happen to awake, on the stairs of a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the dreary solitude of your own room, and find that your drunkenness is ebbing or has vanished, ask the wind and the wave, ask star, bird, or clock, ask everything that flies, everything that moans, everything that flows, everything that sings, everything that speaks, ask them the time; and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, and the clock will all reply, “It is Time to get drunk! If you are not to be the martyred slaves of Time, be perpetually drunk! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please.”

 

 

Categories
Personal

2012 Atkinson Yearbook

Every year, for many years, I’ve made a photobook of the past year for Vicky as an XMAS present. You can click to view the 2012 edition.

 

Categories
Entertainment News

Trout planted into Hidden Valley Lake

You can fish for Trout at Hidden Valley Park this XMAS.

Christmas Fishing: Trout Being Released Into East Bay Lakes

Here’s a new tradition for East Bay families. Christmas fishing.

The state Department of Fish and Game this month is releasing thousands of trout into more than a dozen Bay Area lakes to the delight of local anglers.

The department announced it would release more than 30,000 pounds of rainbow trout in Bay Area lakes during the month of December. Some of the fish weigh as much as two pounds.

Categories
News Science

Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Living in Mother’s Brains

They don’t know why, but they have seen cells from a mother’s child in her brain. Perhaps the cells pass through the placenta. This could also mean those same cells could pass the other way from mother to a child she bears later. The might find the cells of your older brother sibling in you!

The most amazing, humbling idea for me to contemplate is that beyond what my relationship with Vicky is, a profound merging of souls on the intellectual level, our becoming parents means some of my DNA may have traveled from Tre and Henry into her body to stay forever.

Scientists Discover Children’s Cells Living in Mother’s Brains

The link between a mother and child is profound, and new research suggests a physical connection even deeper than anyone thought. The profound psychological and physical bonds shared by the mother and her child begin during gestation when the mother is everything for the developing fetus, supplying warmth and sustenance, while her heartbeat provides a soothing constant rhythm.