Rich Seymour's stochastic statements.

Well, in keeping with the drug theme of the past couple posts. This bit of news probably stands as one of the bigger drug news stories since Carter’s nearly successful attempt to decriminalize marijuana in the late seventies (before the drug scandal… see a classic episode of Benson for a sitcom interpretation of the events to a degree)

So here’s the news, Mexico set to decriminalize some drug use. This legislation would turn Mexico into a premiere college vacation destination at least. It will definitely throw a monkey wrench into the attempts at the U.S. to prop up our imposed puritanical prohibitionist schemes south of the border. Perhaps the kids at CU Boulder need to try going there next 4/20. Here’s a question regarding the CU Boulder, do you get $50 if you turn yourself in?

Up next post, a recount of my trip to Manzanar (Japanese Relocation Camp) yesterday with Tim. Just in case anyone has unflagging faith in the U.S. gov’t to Do The Right Thing (TM)… the fact that nearly every Japanese/Japanese-American became an alien after an attack scare in LA and were forced to move into hastily constructed army barracks in remote locations throughout the U.S. should serve to make us think twice about trusting everything our system cooks up. The tyranny of the majority and mob psychology make for some pretty disturbing things.

“The FDA says there’s no — zilch, zero, nada — shred of medicinal value to the evil weed marijuana. This is going to be a setback to the long-haired, maggot-infested, dope-smoking crowd.” (Rush Limbaugh on his radio show, April 21, 2006).

Rush Limbaugh Arrested on Prescription Drug Charges April 28, 2006

This is going to be a (another) setback to the __________, _________, Rush Limbaugh listening crowd. Rebuttal to Rush’s 4/21/06 mimicry of the FDA on the medicial efficacy of marijuana.

Heh. Right. New Song Alert! We recorded the tunage live a week or two ago then I cloistered myself away yesterday and put down some vox. My voice gets a bit weird Al at the beginning. In a new twist I’ll put the lyrics up right now cause they have stuck in my head after singing it for hours and hours yesterday.

First, here is the mix of the song Factual.

Lyrics after the break.
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So, on a whim, after reading the Belly Fat Blues in the LA Times, I decided to book up to Silverlake/Echo Park to meet up with B. Bobby “Foodmagellan” R. After playing Macintosh with him (similar to playing legos) and fixing up my (beater) bike (Note to self, your bike chain is not long enough to actually go through all of the gear combos on your bike, fixie fixie fixie time!!!); I rolled over to the American Apparel store at Alvarado and Sunset.

It was getting cold and my unclean pirate t-shirt was not going to hold me for the ride home. So I decided to try on a N431 windbreaker in citrus (aka yellow, lemon, winning the tour de france). The clerk, Alexis, dared me to buy it, so I did. But see this is all part of a greater story for my friend’s zine in which I go to AA stores and interview the clerks. Thing is, I am the worst interviewer ever. But that’s part of the magic.

Here though, comes the cooler part of the visit. The reason I bought the thing wasn’t really because I was cajoled into it by a salesperson. No, I have proof that I had been after one of these jams since last year, but only recently did they do the deed necessary to get me to plop down the cash (err credit… yikes) to get it. INSIDE POCKETS!

Transcript of American Apparel email follows:
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So… the other day we went in and recorded a few songs. Totally live and one of takes came out swimmingly. Thing is, we did these totally live takes sans vocals and now I have to write lyrics for the tunes. I thought I had some for the one that came out the best, but now looking back at the lyrics they don’t pop enough for me.

Grr. Oh well, I’m looking at getting some crank bros quattro pedals and some Lake shoes for the old/new bike. Finally got an oil change for the car the other day. That was exciting.

Steadily rolling through some simulations for school-life.

The other night at a bar, I approached a dude wearing a Bicycle Kitchen shirt. In hindsight, he looked familiar possibly from the LA treasure hunt. He told a story to me of losing the chain on his brakeless fixed gear bike downtown. He said it was the most fun he’d ever had on two wheels.

Today I almost got hit head on in slow motion by a Dodge Ram pickup. Completely my fault cause my foot slipped off my pedal (neeeed crank brother egg beater things) while I was riding hands free. I sort of regained control, only to be steadily riding leftward into the path of the truck. I didn’t, no one was hurt, some slight ego bruising.

Last night, I played the open mic at Mr. T’s Bowl in Highland Park. I had a good time. Sad news though, Arlo, the soundguy and music guy there was BITTEN BY A BLACK WIDOW spider. Jesus. I think he’ll be ok, cause it was a couple of days ago. May he get well soon.

Ok, two things real quick.
One, check out this friend of a friend‘s (PeiPei) bgirl/stunt/snowboard/etc action reel. I can recall once being at a party (last century) and she busted some moves that left me feeling … not worthy and ill-coordinated, but happy.

For the self promo side of things, the Hear Here show that Clark 8 was played on is here. It’s about 30 minutes into the first mp3. It’s online only so it’s not FCCCensored.

Tonight we (clark 8ers, mount up) should do some more recording so more stuff soon there. Also there are a couple of tracks that I threw together, which you might dig on if you are into solo acoustic stuff… the second one has a drumbeat at least. golden (the intro falsetto is disturbing, but the bridge is pretty sweet if I do say so myself) and little guy. Right click (or ctrl click) to download.

Mos Def

Absolutely stunning show put on by these three at the USC SpringFest… (Ozma… uhm… sorry no) I mean, I was completely transported. Thanks to E. for coming by at an opportune moment. Mos Def’s two DJs (armed with cdj’s, 1200s and an sampler) were in control. The sound (as in the guy putting the stuff through the PA) blew me away. Best sounding outdoor show I’ve been too in a long time.

MC Supernatural definitely brought some freestyle skills I’d never seen before. He mentioned all of the USC star players in his opening rhyme spree. Then finished off with this going into the crowd and rhyming about whatever people brought out of their pockets. He even kept his flow when he got an orange. Insane.

Saul Williams, who I thought I had never heard, I had heard. On the radio… KPFK probably. He’s strictly spoken word live. And wow. I’ve seen some spoken word people get up in front of big crowds and proceed to make big crowds go boooooo. This man just took the language and expressed a whole lot. Oddly… we (Dan and Tim and I) sat next to him and his mild mannered minicrew at cafe 101. After they finished eating we thanked him for an awesome and positive show. He was gracious and demure.

Then… Mos Def. I guess I had sort of lost track of him. My collection of hip hop is extremely sporadic (like my collection of music in general) and I had only really listened to Black Star which he did some bits from. But mainly he did stuff I super familiar with. Fan-friggin-tastic. Amazing amazing. Catch up with him if you get a chance. He and Talib Kweli will be at Rock the Bells (which has an insane lineup this year… wu tang, immortal technique, de la, del, redman, supernatural…)

Ok… now to mix it up a bit. A mash up of screenfuls of Anime characters in this cohesive race story (an anime music video apparently that’s the term for it)… crazy editing here. Thanks to Y-c for that.

Mom, Dad, friends, neighbors. There’s been something I’ve been trying to hide for a long time.

I’m… I’m … a Mac person.

I mean… in spite of all those harsh words when the first aqua beta hit it was the first time a computer really made me smile. I still remember that day. Ted B. showed it to me. Chad L., all the video guys at DKV and Fathom, Taylor, heck lot’s a guys were into it. Man… and now… after the ipod killed my t40 (one bios update too many… I dunno) (can you tell I’m going for a record in terms of uses of ellipsis…) My boss said, you shall be our MacBook Pro guinea pig. I had been waiting for a while.

The dual core… man I don’t want to go crazy about this considering the momentous things going on elsewhere at the global and personal level, so I won’t. But once again… feel free to call me a hypocrite. And I really am sorry about the one time I called into a radio show and specifically called Steve Jobs something naughty.

Well… maybe not… err… oh… I’m so confused… Also, expect my epic techno HINRG hard house meets dnb meets techstep meets IDM meets HFDSDM meets breakcore… mixes to start coming out as soon as I plug my oxygen8 into this thing.

So, yeah… Work, you know. Somehow we’ve all been sending around insane youtube clips of X Japan (and other japanese things). Getting all of my rock news via MTV growing up, I heard about X Japan before I ever heard of X (err well, I heard X mentioned as the reason X Japan were called X Japan instead of X) So anyway, here is a link to some X Japan live. It’s too much hair rock rawk to embed the video in this post.

To stay on the Japan side of things, compare Japan’s Pingmag making and designing stuff with Make the US version of pretty much the same thing. I feel partial to Pingmag, simply because all of their content is free… I still think make holds a bunch of stuff only in their bound edition which I’m too cheap to ever get.

Thirdsies… Mos Def is playing here at USC tomorrow. I only realized this today, seeing as I only get to the main part of campus once a month or so… Ozma is also playing… I’ve heard of them, don’t know if they’re my thing. Last year Mia Doi Todd played, but I missed out due to studying like crazy for my screening exam.

Laura Cantrell is doing a fill in for Irwin on FMU right now. She’s spinning some Bob Wills, “cherokee maiden”. Good stuff.

The cool DJs Jon and Marc at killradio.org played Oh Boy on there demo show Hear Here. I’ll update that with a link soon, they played it in the first half hour. I also recorded a crazy acoustic tune that we’ll be putting together in Clark 8 soon. I’m debating whether to release it to the 8 people that actually visit this web site.