zengar

I'm one of those people who actually tries to be familiar with the proposals on the ballot before hand, especially since one Maine question a few years back regarding gay couple's rights was so artfully written that "yes" meant no and "no" meant yes. (I can't recall whether the question was for or against)

I've been having some real problems doing this with the San Francisco Clean Energy Act. I can find no indications of what the actual wording is or what it will actually do, merely endless variations and repetitions on the material from the proponent's website or the opposition's page. Not only do these two sites sound like they are talking about almost completely different bills, neither of them provides any sort of external support for their interpretation. At the bottom of the clean energy act site's "about" page there is a section of text in a [blockquote] format that looks like it may be the text of the act, but nowhere does it say so or even that it is actually a quote from somewhere else.

Anyone know where I can find out whether PG&E is using scare tactics to maintain a monopoly or whether the board members are trying to use dislike of PG&E to grant themselves powers we would be wise to keep away from them? I have a sneaking suspicion that the answer is "yes" to both.

I know that stores started playing christmas music today, if they hadn't already done so earlier. I don't like this fact, but I have come to expect it. But when did radio stations start jumping on that bandwagon? I knew that in a couple of weeks they would toss out their normal playlists and start in on a random selection of "seasonal" tunes, frequently to the degree of transitioning from country to soul. But previously the stations gradually eased their way into that by slipping songs that fit their normal genre into rotation before switching completely over. Not this time however.

Could this be a east-coast/west-coast thing? maybe something just specific to San Francisco? Or is normal radio just that desperate to not have me as a listener?

The world does not need the B52's song Rock Lobster being covered by a metalcore band. For that matter, my opinion is that the world doesn't need metalcore. What is the point of calling something music if it's such a wall of noise that you can barely distinguish the BEAT, much less a melody? Forget about lyrics. Half of it went by as unpleasant background while I was doing something else without me having a clue what it was. Eventually, I picked up enough notes that seemed familiar that I checked on the title, and THAT is when I found out.

According to Wikipedia, this particular "band" was a practitioner of "mathcore." Mathcore was (or is) an offshoot of metalcore, which itself is a mixture of heavy metal and punk. The supposed differentiation of mathcore is "a high level of technical musicianship," which brings to mind some of the beautiful covers I have heard of Metallica songs. Why do people capable of "technical musicianship" or of writing complex and interesting melodies do so in genres that obliterate any evidence of such things? I suppose that in at least the examples I'm referring to, perhaps the singers voice wasn't up to the standards of any other genre, but in that case HAVE SOMEONE ELSE SING.

For that matter, the current track (I'm about to change stations) reminds me that I like most songs from Rage Against the Machine... until the singer starts in. At which point, if I had forgotten that was the prelude to one of their songs, I become full of rage at my radio (ironically enough) because of the way my hopes got raised and then dashed. Maybe that is the point