Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Ironic much?

I have nostalgic admiration for AC-DC. Theirs was the first rock concert I ever went to, in the 80's (For Those About to Rock!). My older brother used to play "Back in Black" over and over and over. It was floor thumpy, window rattley goodness. It kinda gave me the invincible teenager feeling, having my entire rib cage reverberating to arguably one of the coolest guitar riffs ever, about 46 times in a row most evenings, for weeks on end. Good times.

My 11-year-old daughter discovered AC-DC one day, when one of their songs was used in a movie. She said, "Mom, who is this? This is awesome music." I was psyched to pass the Tween Torch of Coolness to her, and I quickly went to iTunes to find some AC-DC for her.
Wahhhh wahhhhhh...NOPE. NONEXISTENT. Say whaaaat? Did I type it wrong in the search box? Should I have used a slash? A hyphen? A backslash? Did I get all 4 (really, 3) of the letters right? The answer, after a little research: None of the above. Turns out, AC-DC feels "very strongly" that their album Back in Black should be bought and listened to in its entirety, and not broken up into individual songs, because that would go against the listening experience that they intended. So, sorry AC-DC fans, due to their feelings of artistic purity, AC-DC refuses to have their songs sold via iTunes.

Okay, fine. They clearly have strong feelings that mimic........ oh, I don't know.......integrity(?) about how their music should be absorbed. I can dig that. Artists can be picky about how their messages are received. Whatever. I get it.
OF COURSE it's about the music, not the commercialism.

Alright, now here's my point: Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. But we consumerey Americans all know (sadly) that Thanksgiving has become a brief, food-comatosed, cranberry-infused segue into Christmas and the atrociousness known as Black Friday. That's another rant for another day.

BUT, as I watched tv last night and was visually assaulted by all kinds of holiday sale commercials for chain stores and malls, imagine my surprise when Walmart was using the song "Back in Black" as its theme song for its Black Friday craziness sale.
Walmart.
And by "surprise," I mean disgust.

The band won't let me buy their individual songs on iTunes for a few bucks because that's not how they "intended" for me to listen to their music, but they are more than happy to sell out to Walmart for 30 seconds of multi-gazillion dollar airtime.
Gross.

What's the dang deal, Angus?

Monday, November 14, 2011

Quick list of things that you should not give to a pregnant woman

So far, there's only one thing on my list: Plants.
Once you have a demanding newborn in your arms, your priorities change. In other words, unless you can afford hired help, or you live with your parents, or you are prolific like the Duggers and already have a myriad of older children to raise your newer children, you won't be able to do ANYTHING AT ALL for a few months except hold, feed, placate, and change diapers. You won't be able to remember the last time you brushed your hair or took a shower. You won't have time to pee. Your sleep will be occasional and not very restful. You will lose track of time and go into a bizarre place on the time/space continuum where you don't know what day or week (or possibly season) it is.

That said, any young potted plants or herbs will not get watered, and instead will wither into a sad, premature death as they take a backseat to little deuce. I let 2 tomato plants and 1 basil plant sit in my front yard, untouched. The guilt still haunts me.

We are the village green preservation society

I had an explosion of extra succulent babies this winter.  All the babies had babies.  So now I am painting the cutest little 4” pot s...