John the Evangelist said there'd be days like this

From momentarily glancing at ordered phonetic symbols, as I do when in a certain mood, I've somehow cobbled together the brain-notion that this spring was going to be pretty good for music.

For a while I couldn't remember just what invested me with this belief. Since moving home my short-term memory has become little more than a fog bank of opaque impressions--droplets of consciousness so diffuse and elemental as to be suspended in orbit and held in tension, each availing the others of a unique and repulsive polarity.

You'll remember that I've made a vital discovery: sitting on one's ass in the country is conducive to nothing other than ass-sitting, with almost no mental legroom for feats of hypertasking. I've realized the buttocks to be connected in so neurologically intimate a way as to render any other simultaneous functions impossible, like sitting while also listening to something; to say nothing of computing while sitting.

You'll imagine my surprise, then, when I emerged from some semi-conscious state this evening to find myself standing over an unfamiliar weblog, uncertain of how I arrived there. This is how movie franchises start. From my initial examination I'll say that this blog has a more than spectacular title and less than intriguing contents. Less than intriguing save an inauspicious release calendar on the main page.

Gazing at it, I suddenly found neurological pathways reaching out to memory nodes, latching on and solidifying in an electro-crystalline structure my belief in the quality of this virgin year's music offerings.

And though there's a lot of good stuff coming out between now and March, one day was particularly alarming. Alarming for its sheer musical fecundity. Right now, mark on your calendars with red pen the date of March 22nd.

By then you'll need to have stored up stockpiles of food and/or gotten yourself in right standing with the Cult of Timothy LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, because at least one person will be ascending bodily.

Me. Rapture. Take a number.

For on that day both the Decemberists and the Mars Volta release albums. And, on that day, while the lilting, idiosyncratic voice of Colin Meloy is spinning hypnotic yarns of "mourning sea-widow[s]" over heart-wrenching accordion and cello, Omar Rodriguez-Lopez might just be melting your face off with a gnarled yet rhythmic guitar solo over driving Latin beats, only to break it down for a twenty minute treatise in zeros and ones--bleeps. Two more disparate bands you could not find.

You'd also be hard pressed to find two bands better at what they do, which is rock the masses' asses.

The mere titles of each album have me writhing in a pre-coital stupor: Picaresque and Francis the Mute, respectively. Both are reported to be concept albums on the heel of concept albums, the Decemberists' 18 minute modernization of the Celtic epic The Tain, and the Volta's De-loused in the Comatorium, which is supposedly about some dude's life, but the lyrics don't make any goddamned sense. Both were great and showed tremendous maturation from previous projects.

One other day of note: . . . And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead's third album drops January 25th. One Trail of Dead album is generally worth two or three albums by anyone else, so you might want to set your estate in order early, just to be safe. There might be some prematurely shuffled mortal coils.

To get your mind in right standing with the pop gods, some tracts:

The Decemberists
Decemberists: Songs from Picaresque and streaming audio

The Mars Volta
Francis the Mute promo crap

...AYWKUBTTOD

Brooklynvegan led the way to that streaming audio page, and ties for first place with fifty thousand other blogs for Most Factually Accurate Blog Title: Descriptive Compound Word Category.

Read the full thing here.

Administration urges abstinence; failing that: rhythm method

According to our government's faith-based abstinence programs masquerading as health and sex education classes, "condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission 31 percent of the time."

31 percent is a big number, and a very scary number. So big and scary, in fact, that it's actually about 11% higher than your chance of getting HIV from a single unprotected encounter [infected male to female]. That article, which is the only one I could find with that kind of statistic, estimated the likelihood of contracting HIV from someone who is positive at "male-to-female is 0.1% to 20%, and from female-to-male, 0.01% to 10%."

That's kind of an old page, but it requires us to ask a question of this federally mandated condom data: What is it about condom use--about wrapping yourself in a non-permeable membrane--that makes you between 150 and 300% more likely to get what he or she has?

Phrased differently: how can going condomless give you a better chance of not getting the HIV or the black crud?

Maybe there's something we AIDSless condom-lovers have been overlooking. Maybe out little latex wingmen are in collusion with the viruses and their harbingers of genital infirmity.

That seems to be what these federally-funded programs want our stupid, impressionable children to think.

Children hear: "Sex out of wedlock can give you HIV." Then they hear: "Using condoms during sex doesn't help you stay disease free." Then, of course: "In conclusion, everyone stay sex-free until marriage and you'll have an unspoiled bridal chamber to invite Jesus into."

Fine. But that last thing comes out like: "In conclusion, condoms don't work and they're expensive and you only have a paper route and your parents would fucking freak if they caught you with them."

Their bodies--the little logic machines that they are--say: "Shit, I just won't use condoms."

In using scare tactics to frighten kids away from sex and corral their hormonal urges, we've caused a stampede of ignorance and now the ankles of more little girls than ever are swelling up and they're puking on the bus on their way to sixth grade, scared to death to tell anyone because their teachers now tell them that abortion makes you sterile.

And we hear declared that the faith-based system works, and--for all the kids and parents know--it does, because no one is allowed to talk about things like pregnancy rates. Discourse gives kids ideas.

But lack of data is not the same as positive data. Refusing to sponsor studies into the effectiveness of abstinence programs is not vindication, it's ignorance. And when sex is involved, ignorance is deadly.

Until we realize that--four years at least--we're going to be saying, in our houses of learning, "kids, if you want to stay disease free, do what Dr. President says, and never ever even speak about your desires and the strange things that are happening to your bodies, not even to Jesus. Sex makes him cry."

"And boys, the rush of blood to that strange, sponge-like appendage in your midsection is Satan telling you to sin. Don't give in. For God's sake don't touch it, even if you want to. Only bad young men touch it and bad young men don't get into heaven."

Then they hear Belinda Carlisle, Satan's succubal puppet, retort, "ah yes, but we'll make heaven a place on earth."

For God's sake--seriously--when it comes to male/female relations or the lack thereof, who is your 12-year-old going to listen to:

Dr President or Nelly?

Nelly knows who.

Read the full thing here.