2004-10-22 - 10:12 a.m.

In Your Face

On Suicide Commando's "Cause of Death / One Nation Under God", the Converter remix of Cause of Death (titled "try again") cuts off in the middle of one of the most intense segments of the song. Converter has a well established reputation for being extremely brutal (and IMHO brilliant).

Apparently many people contacted Johan Van Roy (Suicide Commando) and Dependent Records wanting a better copy of this disk, because they wanted to hear Scott�s remix in its entirety.

Guess what? Scott's printed remix is complete. It is a song about suicide. It cuts the "life" of the song off in the middle, without going its natural course.

Johan and Scott aren't supporting suicide. They are just as troubled by it as most of the rest of us are. They are just as helpless as the rest of us are too.

Some thoughts: there is a reason a very small part of my monthly pay check goes to Suicide Prevention of Yolo County, I'm troubled by it as well and feel that the issue needs to be brought to public attention and talked about. I actually think the "Cause of Death" MCD actually is mocking the lack of government attention to this, and while it comes off as harsh, the audience isn't suicidal people, but those of us that aren't.

I could be easily wrong here, and my opinion can easily be offensive to others. But it bothers me to see the public often focusing on stupid debates when other social problems are left unaddressed. Heh, I guess when it really comes down to it, politically I'm a left-leaning militant disillusioned centrist.

On that note, my boss (once removed) talked to me this morning about how another private sector engineer I respect is getting in some deep shit for having accidentally released an email confirming that her firm is hiding some water quality results on a public study. My boss is starting to see if there is a chance we can hire this whistle blower should she be blacklisted for doing her job! The woman might not be fired, but it really pisses me off that private consulting firms would lie.

There is a reason I call myself a left-leaning militant disillusioned centrist. I think most of that description is easy to understand with the exception of the word militant. Militant does not mean violent. It means "aggressively active (as in a cause)". To tie this back into terror EBM (which is the genre of industrial music that Suicide Commando is), the reason the music appeals to people like me, is it is in your face. It is aggressively active, and very frequently it is deeply rooted in satire. ||X|||

To move this in a positive direction ... there is a current commercial running on TV encouraging 20-somethings to vote. It takes place in a girls' college dorm bathroom. A girl left the water running at a sink. About ten girls stand around the sink complaining about how horrible it is that somebody would just leave the sink running. They do this for what seems like forever, until some other girl pushes her way through the gawking crowd and turns off the damn sink and leaves without saying a single word. The commercial ends with the words a message saying something along the lines of Act and Vote.

I think it should go without say that while I think discussing things can be important, being pro-active is always very important. Sometimes being pro-active means you need to be aggressive about it, especially when others will tend to ignore the obvious.

-=-

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