While living a good chunk of time in Santa Cruz, I ran into a lot of people who felt their viewpoint on the world should override that of anyone who thought differently.  Ironically enough, many such people become oppressive in their fight against oppression.  The example that comes to mind is that of the femi-nazi.  Under the guise of promoting equality amongst the sexes, these people end up going to the far extreme and degrading anything remotely “male”.

I’ve always felt the need to give these people grief.  I guess its my rebellious nature.  Today I came up with a term for a person (like myself) who rebels against overly aggressive feminism.

Suffrajoes.

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past few days, you have already heard that George Carlin has passed away. I know there are countless folk much more eloquent than I with much more to say, but I would be remiss if I didn’t have a memorial post.

A lot of people are focusing on him as a “counter culture icon”, but while I appreciate his work along the lines of “The 7 Words You Can Never Say On TV”, to me he will always be the man who asked why we don’t call buildings “builts” and why we drive on a parkway but park in a drive way.

Oh yeah, he’ll also always be “Rufus” to me.

I’m really impressed by Amy Winehouse’s vocal talents.

I had to clarify that I am impressed by her singing, because for those of you who aren’t familiar with her, she is a complete train wreck. Drug and alcohol abuse, confrontations with police, etc. The sort of things I might have thought were “punk rock!” when I was younger, but now it’s just kinda sad.

I was listening to my Pandora station yesterday and heard this crazy voice coming through that reminded me of Nina Simone or Billie Holiday. I flipped over to see who it was and my jaw dropped to find out that it was none other than Winehouse. I quickly picked up her two albums “Back to Black” and “Frank” (not as good as Back to Black. definite “sophomore slump” had the order reversed, thanks Alan) and have really enjoyed them.

Now why am I embarrassed, you may ask? One word: Hipsters.

That’s right, Winehouse is really big with the hipster (see below) crowd.

So despite her trainwreck public life and her fanbase amongst my mortal enemies, I can’t stop listening to her music.

Curse you Amy Winehouse!