Green Scissors

New music at Green Scissors!

Added to the ever expanding lineup is Horton’s Choice. Another example of some talented folks making music cause its fun. This group got together for a week or two. Made an albums worth of solid pop tunes and then called it a career. And now their efforts are there for all of us to enjoy.

I tried to think up a good description for their sound and I think I have it at last. Imagine that the 10,000 Maniacs, back in their early days, decide to get away for the weekend. They drink a little, party a lot and Natalie Merchant smokes a few too many Camel Reds. Then, on the last day they decide to play a house party for some friends. They are all loose and happy. Natalies voice has gotten a sultry rough edge on it. The amps are turned up and they break out those little used distortion pedals.

Horton’s Choice sounds like what you might have heard at this hypothetical house party. A little rough in places but the band is tight, the lyrics are sharp and biting and the vocals are both seductive and mocking at the same time. Great stuff.

If you like it, check the group’s website for the complete album. Its released under a Creative Commons liscence so you can download and distribute the music with no fear of reprisal.

Enjoy!

I had wanted to wait on this and do some research first so I could dazzle you with facts and figures. Things like the percentage of the world that has a significant portion of the population which accepts polygamy, or the fact that in some countries they are debating whether or not to add a third gender to the legal definitions to allow transsexuals and hijras a better way to identify themselves.

But I know I’m not going to get to that soon, so I’m just going to shoot from the hip on this one.

First, let me state my opinion. Marriage is a religious and social institution. Not a legal construct. The recognition by any government of a marraige is simply an acknowledgement that a group of people have entered into a binding agreement with each other. In a large portion of the world, this is identified as a group consisting of one man and one woman. But the number of exceptions to this norm, both past and present, are myriad.

Now, whether or not you agree with this vision of marriage lets get down to the nitty gritty. It has been shown over and over that governments cannot legislate morality. Period. They can pass laws about moral issues. But it is impossible to change someone’s morals by making something illegal or mandatory. The most glaring example of this I can think of is Prohibition. As a theory its not horrible. Alchohol is a seriously double edged sword. But the essence of the problem is that you cannot tell an entire country what is right and what is wrong. All you can do is try to build concensus. It will work for small populations but not a whole country. There are plenty of townships and counties in this country who have laws against alchohol sales on Sunday’s and there even a few remaining spots that are comepletely "dry". But in the end, prohibition failed because even with a majority opinion, you cannot force morals on people.

Now GW Bush has backed the constitutional ammendment to define marraige in some pretty narrow, albeit widely accepted, terms.

Ain’t gonna work folks. Why not? Well, lets start with our title today. What is a marriage? Its a joinging together of a group of people for social or religious reasons. It serves to help conserve capital and provide stability for the members of the group. Notice, there is no mention of government in there. If I want to marry one woman or six, or six men for that matter, and we all agree to the terms of the union then the deed is done. If I belong to a church that will offer its blessing to such a union then all the better for me.

But that is an issue to be had between me and my partner(s) and the church. The federal government has zero place in that. Ammending the bedrock document of our government isn’t going to keep it from happening any more than the 18th ammendment stopped folks from knocking back a drink or two. What it will do is alienate a pretty healthy portion of the population.

At the risk of rambling on for another 1000 words or so let me sum it up.

Leave the Constitution alone. If you have to fight out the legal aspects of civil unions, let it be done in the courts and local governments. That’s what they are for.

And in case you were wondering, oh faithful reader. This is the straw that broke the non-voting camel’s back. See you at the polls!

I like sports.

Whether its as a particpant, a coach, or a fan sports have been part of my life since I was just a wee little lad and it has taught me a lot about subjects both on the field and off. More than anything I have found that sports distills things down to pretty easy to understand concepts.

When I was young and we played a lot of pickup basketball my dad pointed out that watching how someone participates in a team sport is a good way to learn about someone quickly. Does a player think about the team first, or themselves? Do they make a pass to their teammates or keep the ball? Are they willing to knuckle down and play inglorious defense or do they only work hard when they can make a personal play for their own glory? How do they accept winning or losing? With grace or bad sportsmanship?

In the last few days I have heard a few stories on the radio that have brought this concept to mind. Sports reflects the culture of those who particpate. And in this country sports is a big business. Not suprising since we live in a money-driven captialist society. So I viewed these stories with a certain amount of concern for the world we live in.

First is the ongoing saga of Maurice Clarett. The running back from Ohio State University who has recently been successful in his bid to enter the NFL draft early. Now, I think its good for him personally and I don’t have too much trouble with someone trying to make money doing something they are good at. But its the way Clarett and his camp are portraying this legal victory that really gets me.

I heard his lawyer on the radio yesterday. When asked why noone had previously challeneged the NFL’s policy on early entry, his response was that it takes someone of great character to be the first. Great character? Please! We are talking about a player who was suspended by his school and susequently the NCAA for possible academic impropriety and for filing a false report with police after a car he had borrowed from a dealership was stolen. Recent reports have also linked him to a professional gambler and rumors of the college player taking payments keep surfacing. This is a person of high character? Trying to make this priveledged teen punk out as some kind of pioneering visionary is a stretch even for an already jaded public.

The lawyer went on to compare Clarett to Herchel Walker. While I would agree that Walker never lived up to the hype as a player in the NFL, he was certainly a solid citizen. He worked in his community and sought to broaden his horizons not just as a player but as a person. Even though he wasn’t the greatest running back in history, it is easy to respect him. To make any comparisons to Clarett is just insulting.

Later that day another interview aired in which the organizer of the first ever Lingerie Bowl. Excitedly reported that, due to the success of the Super Bowl halftime pay per view event we can soon look forward to the Lingerie Football League. Now, I could almost tolerate this. Again, nothing wrong with making a buck where you can. But it was the smarmy way this gentleman presented the idea that really rubbed me wrong.

The entire interview was rife with innuendo and suggestive comments. But when asked straightforward questions, the answers were worse. Asked why women would join the league, the response was a rather obvious "for the exposure, these women want to gain publicity to further their careers." And on the subject of whether Lingerie Football degraded women the answer journeyed to the inane. "Well, I think the fact that women want to be in this league shows that they do not feel degraded."

What?

What does it say about the society we live in? I’m not sure exactly. But to gloss over that question in such a narrow minded way seems a bit dense, even for someone who would put his name behind this league. The power of the almighty dollar is certainly never in question but it gives me pause when I hear comments like this. The person being interviewed is either incredibly ignorant or he knows that the market he aims for is one that really doesn’t care whether the particpants are being degraded or not.

And that is what concerns me the most.

From time to time I find that my life gains momentum from odd sources. Sometimes those sources are positive and sometimes they aren’t but they all manifest themselves with the same pattern.

What happens when they finally reach escape velocity is always interesting.

We all have certain internal rythms and clocks that regulate our lives. Some of them are as short as a blink or a heartbeat and others can take decades to come full cycle. In my life I have found that I never seem to have perfect balance in both my personal and professional life at the same time. When things at home are going wonderfully, work seems to be a painful burden and when work is great things at home could be better. My own internal clocks manage these to things in order to keep me balanced. When my domestic life is happy, I begin to notice the little things at work that didn’t bother me before. A very Chicken and Egg kind of situation for me to decipher.

Over the last few months I have felt those clocks drawing close to another turning point. Work has been a damnable pain in the rear for awhile now and for the first time in my life I am looking for a job while I am still on the payroll of a company. But all of those sources that conspire to push me to a life changing decision are in play again and I can feel them carrying me to a critical juncture.

So what will happen? Will the next turn around an unseen corner lead me to new riches? Will I find out at last the answer to the long standing question "What do I want to be when I grow up?" Or will my next trip into the unkown lead me back to familiar ground? Its happened before. Something momentous occurs and I know in my soul that things in my life have changed forever. But when I look around, all I see are the same things.

How do we control these changes? Can they be controlled? I spend a lot of time wondering about these things and trying to identify places I can exert my own conscious influence over my life. I’ve found a lot of those places. But when the momentum starts to build, I still find myself feeling like the little kid on a sled. I can steer or I can roll off the sled, but in the end I’m getting to the bottom of the hill somehow. Perhaps all I can control is what kind of shape I’m in when the ride is over.