DhampirBoy's Xanga

Republicans Against Franken

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 08:39:33 GMT

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As far as I can tell, this is all because Republicans hate Senor Al Franken. Republicans always slammed Franken, constantly labeling him as a "far-left loon". They did everything they could to smear him, including Photoshopping his head onto age regression porn. They tried their best to keep him from being sworn into office by encouraging his predecessor, Former Senator Norm Coleman. to refuse to step down. Now, they won't even take Franken's side against rape.

Why are Republicans taken seriously? As far as I can tell, good marketing. Because what the hell have they actually been doing other than taking every conceivable position -- and apparently, inconceivable position -- against the Democratic majority?

I Probably Don't Have a Life Now

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:21:21 GMT

So now I am a full-time student with a full-time job who is also trying to help start a band. Apparently, I don't have free time anymore.

I am attending the International Academy of Design & Technology at Tampa in their Bachelor's program for Recording Arts (ie: sound, in general). The school works in ten-week terms with each class meeting once per week in five-hour blocks. This term, I have four classes, but one is in a ten-hour block, yet is not worth twice as many credits. So I have class Wednesday from 6pm-11pm, Thursday from 1pm-11pm, and Friday from 8am-6pm.

This last Tuesday, I started work at Spirit Halloween, working from about 9am-4:30pm. I get two days off per week. Guess what days those are? Yeah, the two days I spent at school for ten hours, with an hour's drive each way.

Then there is the band, which is just a guitarist, Ryan, and I at this point. We have been meeting once per week in a three-hour block, renting the time and space at a production studio built into three storage units. May have to meet more often.

And really, if I do well in recording arts as a career, it will basically be like this. Especially as a producer, engineer, etc. for music, because as one of my instructors can testify, they don't get sleep. So yeah, no spare time, really. Heh. And I thought I was tired all the time before.

Senator Al Franken Talks About Health Care

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 19:12:41 GMT

So, did you think Al Franken would be such a great model for senators?

"I got to witness something really special. About a dozen tea party activists had staked out Sen. Al Franken's booth, and confronted him loudly when he arrived. But within minutes, he'd turned an unruly crowd into a productive conversation on health care. The discussion went from insurance reform, to the public option, to veterans benefits, to cap and trade. He made a few laugh and even told a touching story that moved a few to tears. A whole lot of common ground was found." -- Dusty Rice

Term 3, 2009

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:03:55 GMT

I have no idea how I managed to get a 4.0 GPA again this term. I didn't even do a large part of my midterm project for Musical Composition and Songwriting. Oh well. I'll take it, I guess.

Right now I am listening to dark psytrance. I should buy an album of this. Or at least download an album. Psytrance itself is rather interesting. It starts off simple, adding a new layer of sound every eight measures or so, slowly increasing in complexity, and just before it hits climax, most of the layers are unexpectedly peeled away, and the process begins anew. This tends to play at about 140-160 beats per minute for at least seven minutes. Basically, it is like tantric sex.

Dark psytrance, in addition to the tone that is implied, tends to use samples from horror movies. Here are a few examples:

Jersey Girl's Quinceanera

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:11:02 GMT

Jersey Girl (whom most of you don't know; she is someone I met in Florida) is having her fifteenth birthday today. I am in charge of the music. She, her family, and her friends gave me more than 150 requests. She also wanted as much as NINE HOURS of music. Hooray for me.

Anyway, going to be rather busy, so I will just leave this here:

Last Session Tonight

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:54:52 GMT

My psychologist wants to know if my friends think I have made any progress in therapy in the past year. What do you think?

If I Could Play Like Anyone

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 07:00:38 GMT

Apparently, most of the visitors to my page come from Google image searches that lead them to my Gay Pride 2007 picture.

I have really been into sludge metal lately, particularly from the Louisiana scene in the early-to-mid 90s. I like to call it swamp metal, though, considering the location of the source.

Apparently, I Should Update This

Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:15:33 GMT

I will have to decide on the purpose of this weblog, however. Because for my weblogs, existence precedes essence.

I haven't been updating any of my weblogs lately, though. My personal MySpace page's weblog doesn't seem to have a theme, either. The weblog on my MySpace music page is about music and the industry. My LiveJournal is for opening up to the people who care enough (thus, no link for that one). And I am going to consider this the same as having a weblog on Facebook. So I have to think of what it is for. And maybe my MySpace's weblog, though maybe not since people hardly read weblog posts on MySpace.

Maybe I will just write whatever is on my mind. Whatever catches my attention.

Anyway, I love this cover and music video. The song is "This Must Be the Place" by The Talking Heads. The video is an homage to "American Psycho". And, well, it has some adult content.

Should I Be Writing in This Thing Again?

Sun, 16 Aug 2009 05:30:06 GMT

Since some people apparently still use Xanga since it became a social networking site.

The "R" Word

Tue, 25 Sep 2007 06:31:31 GMT

In the past three hours, I have received one-hundred-thirty footprints. Apparently I am now big in Hong Kong.
Or I have a dedicated stalker thousands of miles away who has plenty of time to spare.
(Or maybe they just think my weblog is a good place to practice their English skills.)

This was something that Carrot shared in a MySpace bulletin. I thought it was worth sharing, as well.

Soeren Palumbo is a senior honors student at Fremd High School in Wheeling, Illinois, and big brother to Olivia. During Writer's Week (in March 2007), he gave the following speech to a gymnasium full of his high school peers and faculty and received a standing ovation.

Stop the Use of the 'R' Word"I want to tell you a quick story before I start. I was walking through hallways, not minding my own business, listening to the conversations around me. As I passed the front door on my way to my English classroom, I heard the dialogue between two friends nearby. For reasons of privacy, I would rather not give away their race or gender.

So the one girl leans to the other, pointing to the back of a young man washing the glass panes of the front door, and says, "Oh my gaw! I think it is so cute that our school brings in the black kids from around the district to wash our windows!" The other girl looked up, widened her slanted Asian eyes and called to the window washer, easily loud enough for him to hear, "Hey, Negro! You missed a spot!" The young man did not turn around. The first girl smiled a bland smile that all white girls - hell, all white people - have and walked on. A group of Mexicans stood by and laughed that high pitch laugh that all of them have.

So now it's your turn. What do you think the black window washer did? What would you do in that situation? Do you think he turned and calmly explained the fallacies of racism and showed the girls the error of their way? That's the one thing that makes racism, or any discrimination, less powerful in my mind. No matter how biased or bigoted a comment or action may be, the guy can turn around and explain why racism is wrong and, if worst comes to worst, punch 'em in the face.

Discrimination against those who can defend themselves, obviously, cannot survive. What would be far worse is if we discriminated against those who cannot defend themselves. What then, could be worse than racism?

Look around you and thank God that we don't live in a world that discriminates and despises those who cannot defend themselves. Thank God that every one of us in this room, in this school, hates racism and sexism and by that logic discrimination in general. Thank God that every one in this institution is dedicated to the ideal of mutual respect and love for our fellow human beings. Then pinch yourself for living in a dream. Then pinch the hypocrites sitting next to you. Then pinch the hypocrite that is you.

Pinch yourself once for each time you have looked at one of your fellow human beings with a mental handicap and laughed. Pinch yourself for each and every time you denounced discrimination only to turn and hate those around you without the ability to defend themselves, the only ones around you without the ability to defend themselves. Pinch yourself for each time you have called someone else a "retard."

If you have been wondering about my opening story, I'll tell you that it didn't happen, not as I described it. Can you guess what I changed? No, it wasn't the focused hate on one person, and no it wasn't the slanted Asian eyes or cookie cutter features white people have or that shrill Hispanic hyena laugh (yeah, it hurts when people make assumptions about your person and use them against you doesn't it?).

The girl didn't say "hey Negro." There was no black person.

It was a mentally handicapped boy washing the windows. It was "Hey retard." I removed the word retard. I removed the word that destroys the dignity of our most innocent. I removed the single most hateful word in the entire English language.

I don't understand why we use the word; I don't think I ever will.

In such an era of political correctness, why is it that retard is still ok? Why do we allow it? Why don't we stop using the word? Maybe students can't handle stopping - I hope that offends you students, it was meant to - but I don't think the adults, here can either.

Students, look at your teacher, look at every member of this faculty. I am willing to bet that every one of them would throw a fit if they heard the word faggot or nigger - hell the word Negro - used in their classroom. But how many of them would raise a finger against the word retard? How many of them have? Teachers, feel free to raise your hand or call attention to yourself through some other means if you have.

That's what I thought. Clearly, this obviously isn't a problem contained within our age group.

So why am I doing this? Why do I risk being misunderstood and resented by this school's student body and staff? Because I know how much you can learn from people, all people, even - no, not even, especially - the mentally handicapped.

I know this because every morning I wake up and I come downstairs and I sit across from my sister, quietly eating her Cheerio's. And as I sit down she sets her spoon down on the table and she looks at me, her strawberry blonde hair hanging over her freckled face almost completely hides the question mark shaped scar above her ear from her brain surgery two Christmases ago.

She looks at me and she smiles. She has a beautiful smile; it lights up her face. Her two front teeth are faintly stained from the years of intense epilepsy medication but I don't notice that anymore. I lean over to her and say, "Good morning, Olivia." She stares at me for a moment and says quickly, "Good morning, Soeren," and goes back to her Cheerio's.

I sit there for a minute, thinking about what to say. "What are you going to do at school today, Olivia?" She looks up again. "Gonna see Mista Bee!" she replies loudly, hugging herself slightly and looking up. Mr. B. is her gym teacher and perhaps her favorite man outside of our family on the entire planet and Olivia is thoroughly convinced that she will be having gym class every day of the week. I like to view it as wishful thinking.

She finishes her Cheerio's and grabs her favorite blue backpack and waits for her bus driver, Miss Debbie, who, like clockwork, arrives at our house at exactly 7 o'clock each morning. She gives me a quick hug goodbye and runs excitedly to the bus, ecstatic for another day of school.

And I watch the bus disappear around the turn and I can't help but remember the jokes. The short bus. The “retard rocket.” No matter what she does, no matter how much she loves those around her, she will always be the butt of some immature kid's joke. She will always be the butt of some mature kid's joke. She will always be the butt of some "adult's" joke.

By no fault of her own, she will spend her entire life being stared at and judged. Despite the fact that she will never hate, never judge, never make fun of, never hurt, she will never be accepted. That's why I'm doing this. I'm doing this because I don't think you understand how much you hurt others when you hate. And maybe you don't realize that you hate. But that's what it is; your pre-emptive dismissal of them, your dehumanization of them, your mockery of them, it's nothing but another form of hate.

It's more hateful than racism, more hateful than sexism, more hateful than anything. I'm doing this so that each and every one of you, student or teacher, thinks before the next time you use the word "retard," before the next time you shrug off someone else's use of the word "retard". Think of the people you hurt, both the mentally handicapped and those who love them.

If you have to, think of my sister. Think about how she can find more happiness in the blowing of a bubble and watching it float away than most of us will in our entire lives. Think about how she will always love everyone unconditionally. Think about how she will never hate. Then think about which one of you is "retarded."

Maybe this has become more of an issue today because society is changing, slowly, to be sure, but changing nonetheless. The mentally handicapped aren't being locked in their family's basement anymore.

The mentally handicapped aren't rotting like criminals in institutions. Our fellow human beings are walking among us, attending school with us, entering the work force with us, asking for nothing but acceptance, giving nothing but love. As we become more accepting and less hateful, more and more handicapped individuals will finally be able to participate in the society that has shunned them for so long. You will see more of them working in places you go, at Dominicks, at Jewel, at Wal-Mart. Someday, I hope more than anything, one of these people that you see will be my sister.

I want to leave you with one last thought. I didn't ask to have a mentally handicapped sister. She didn't choose to be mentally handicapped. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. I have learned infinitely more from her simple words and love than I have from any classroom of "higher education." I only hope that, one day, each of you will open your hearts enough to experience true unconditional love, because that is all any of them want to give. I hope that, someday, someone will love you as much as Olivia loves me. I hope that, someday, you will love somebody as much as I love her. I love you, Olivia.

Soeren Palumbo

The bulletin ended with the statement "If you think the R-Word should be banned please list your name and repost this bulletin", which I think is a rather ignorant statement to make. "If you are against the use of the R-Word" is something I can get behind. "If you think the R-Word should be banned" is asking for a violation of the First Amendment.

Anyway, I thought it was worth sharing, considering how hardly anyone protests the use of "retard" and its derivatives.

I am still too busy to write up that other post I promised. I do not want to post what I have so far because I would rather share it in its entirety. It is a complicated matter and I do not want to leave anything out and removed from its context. What I will say about it now is that the post will address how Domina and I missed Rocky Horror and why Domina and my mother and sister are not on speaking terms any longer.