Atomictumor

We here at the ‘Tumor have been pontificating for many moons (well, a few moons) about how Oak Ridge needs to get its act together and make the school system a top priority issue, bigger than a Town Center, or a residential subdivision, because its the jewel of the crown around here.

Well, to that end we’re working on another project, the Atomic City Education Society, which is starting up a bumper sticker campaign in the hopes of raising awareness that our school system isn’t getting the backing it has enjoyed in years past.

Yeah, a lot of people see the school system as a money pit. I see it as one of the best systems in America, and a lot of people agree. Thats a huge, HUGE calling card. The problem is, if we leave it to the politicians to fix, it won’t happen.

We need an organized, grassroots movement in town of people who understand that a declining school system is a city in decline, and if we don’t shore it up we’re going to drop into mediocrity, and thats not going to fill those 4000 houses out west up.

So, hook up with a bumper sticker, and be part of the cool crowd.

“I don’t know anybody who’s made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really”

Dylan has successfully made himself appear old and timid in a quote from a Rollng Stone cover interview. Actually, the whole thought of Bob Dylan, the man the 60’s built up as its spokesman, only to find out that he really just wanted to play his guitar, appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone, the holdover from that decade, wrapped up in 80’s glam, 90’s glitz, and 00’s apathy, is kinda funny.

Rolling Stone is a joke, its Entertainment Weekly for the top 40 crowd, and to see Dylan on the cover, crying back to those days, well, its a little sad.

Of course, if you read the interview, he isn’t necessarily talking bad about the music, as Reuters would have you believe, but the recording. The digital revolution wasn’t good to Dylan, and I can’t say I disagree with him. While I disagree that records have sounded bad since 1986, and think thats a pretty dumb statement, I personally prefer to listen to good music on vinyl. Jack White famously eschewed digital recording, most notably with the White Stripe’s Elephant (which was recorded in a hole-in-the-wall studio in England with 4 track circa 1960s equipment), and the record went on to sound fantastic.

On the other hand, groups like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Of Montreal use modern recording techniques to create music that sounds a hell of a lot like it was produced in 1983 by David Byrne.

Then, on the third hand, you have bands like Radiohead, which completely embrace modern recording techniques and tools to create albums that are amazingly innovative while being easy on the ears.

Just because you have producers like The Matrix ruining music for everybody doesn’t necessarily mean you have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sure, one of the more relaxing things I can do is pop Bob’s Nashville Skyline onto my turntable, which is one of the more low-fi records ever created (next to Beck’s One Foot In The Grave), but its absurd, Bob-o, to assume that modern sounds are bad.

Just sounds like you’re getting old.

Edit - later that day.

I found this link at a blog I hadn’t been to before, which helps ease my mind about ol Bob.  Maybe it’ll be OK after all…

So, Joe Powell found this prayer antenna (because God might not be broadcasting on a strong enough wavelength), and it contains this:

Which, in my mind, is the culmination of every art form ever.  This picture just says it all.  In fact, I wish I had seen it before finding out about the antenna, because I would have come up with SO MANY theories as to what it was for.

I want to print this thing up as a flyer and distribute it everywhere I go, or maybe as a bumper sticker.  Its just too damn good.

Then I continued my morning reading, and moseyed into Netmom’s page, where she was discussing, among other things, a growing tendency among some Baptists to be, well, extremist.  We all hear about the Fred Phelps and Pat Robertson wackos (I lump Buchanan into this category), but theres an increasing amount of the rank and file who honestly and truely believe that the country is on a path to damnnation.  They site issues like gay marriage, civil rights, abortion, and immigration (?) as proof that America not only doesn’t espouse their values, but is actively trying to deny them from living a holy life.

Then I read today’s chapter of the Jill Carroll story, about the reporter kidnapped in Iraq who was released after weeks of captivity.  While harrowing, this is some damn interesting reading, with Jill’s story interlaced with the stories of her colleagues and family, and attempts to find her, etc.

The problem is, its easy to start seeing some serious common threads between the people holding her hostage, these mujaheeden, and these fundamentalist far right Christian speakers.  I’ve often said that it would only take an economic depression to turn America into the Christian political equivalent of Iran, and by researching this stuff, it looks like a whole lot of people are ready for that to happen.  It should be scary to anybody who isn’t one of them.

Anyway, enjoy the picture.