Five Song Friday: Special Weather Statement
This Week: Prank Buzzers, Hot Messes and Fern Bars
Mother Earth has had enough of our human being bullshit.
The sky is falling. The waters are rising. The world is on fire.
“These things happen,” you say.
Yes, but rarely all at once.
Like my cowboy friends might say, “I have a feeling this old girl is fixin’ to throw us.”
Need convincing? Watch the Weather Channel.
Their meteorologists are dropping mad superlatives these days.
WORST. STRONGEST. HOTTEST. DEADLIEST.
Once the weather folks get all wide-eyed and giddy and their green-screens look like a Roland Emmerich highlight reel, it’s time to get concerned.
The only way out of this mess is if everyone on the planet stops driving… tomorrow.
Or we could invent a time machine, travel back to 1980s New Jersey and commandeer all the cans of Aqua Net.
Maybe Jim Cantore will agree to personally fight every named storm in a bare-knuckle, no-holds barred cage match.
Otherwise, there are dark days ahead and we need to come to terms with velvet-voiced ghoul Keith Morrison replacing Al Roker as “America’s Weatherman.”
We can’t be too upset though, because Mother Earth is just defending herself.
Humanity is an infection.
Her global immune response has kicked in and she’s trying to shake us loose with heat waves and hurricanes, earthquakes and eruptions.
Who can blame her?
We’re all a bunch of selfish jerks who use and abuse her to get what we want.
We pillage her resources, plunder her buried treasures and wage constant war against the way things have been for millions of years.
We are greedy and impulsive and not half as smart as we pretend to be.
But we’re not dumb because we think “Man versus Nature” is a battle we can win.
We’re dumb because we believe it’s a battle at all.
Making nature our adversary isn’t so much cutting off our own nose to spite our face… it’s more like sawing off our left arm and replacing it with a Wal-Mart.
Humans are experts at industrial-strength insanity and short-sighted silliness.
We destroy old-growth forests and turn its corpses into entertainment centers and end tables.
We build multi-million dollar mansions on SAND.
We forget that our role in this 4.5 billion-year-old story is just a bit part with no speaking lines.
That’s why we can’t have nice things.
If you’ve ever watched an episode of Hoarders, you know what happens when sad sacks struggling with mental illness and an insatiable appetite for stuff are left to their own devices.
The stories usually end with people in hazmat suits shoveling piles of trash and excrement and other people explaining that decades of cat urine have caused the kitchen floorboards to rot and collapse.
Frustrated relatives yell and cry and someone always dry-heaves into the bushes.
It’s not pleasant.
And I’m pretty sure we’re headed for the same fate.
We’re ruining a perfectly good home because we think we’re special and deserve EVERYTHING.
We can’t be bothered to clean up our old messes because we love the rush of buying new things and adding them to the pile.
We find comfort in clutter and chaos.
But maybe the boldest delusion is that WE are going to kill this planet.
Sounding the ecological alarms and blowing the rape whistle to keep humanity’s goddamned grubby hands off Mother Earth? It’s well-intentioned, but pointless.
Human beings will be long gone before we can do any real damage.
We are squatters who squandered our one good thing.
We are NOT Mother Earth’s stage 4 lung cancer.
We are not her brain tumor or Ebola virus.
We are a mere tickle in the throat.
You know that feeling you get sometimes before bed? A little tired and blah and you wonder if you’re getting sick? But then you sleep a good sleep and wake up the next day feeling totally fine?
For Mother Earth, that brief moment of achy anxiety is humanity.
We are a minor discomfort.
Mild sunburn or an upset stomach.
We are a stubbed toe.
Earth is way past the stage where she politely asks us to leave.
She just skipped right to the part where she starts tossing all our crap onto the front lawn.
Sincerely,
DJ CrankyPete
Five Song Friday 079
“Electroshock” - Fucked Up & The Halluci Nation
I recently clipped a live electric wire with a pair of shears. It popped and sparked and scared me deep in my soul. I do not like electricity. Never have. It probably goes back to the day I was picked to run the filmstrip projector in school and got shocked by the mobile AV cart. It wasn’t like the cartoons with lightning bolts and burnt hair. It was a dull, pulsing pain that felt like someone was jamming a prank handshake buzzer directly into my heart. Like this song, it also tickled a little.
“Don’t Mix the Colors” - Courtney Love
If you look up “hot mess” in the dictionary, you probably won’t find it, because it’s not really a word. But if you picture “hot mess” as a person, the disheveled blonde visage of a road-weary rock goddess with a smoldering cigarette and runny mascara probably comes to mind. In terms of the growling, middle-finger-flinging banshee she usually is on record, this is an otherwise subdued single from the former Mrs. Cobain. I dig it.
“We Do This’” - Dynamite MC, Krafty Kuts
I find myself drawn to the UK’s upbeat take on hip-hop. This kind of funky, danceable, party-with-the-lights-on sound is a welcome breath of fresh air next to America’s constant barrage of amped-up, auto-tuned, danky mumble raps. That’s just my opinion… but it’s also correct.
“Tight Rope” - Leon Russell
Part of me was always scared of Leon Russell. As a kid, his white beard, hat and shades schtick made him seem creepy and sinister. I was always confusing him with Leon Redbone and one or both of the Winter brothers. Russell lived in the fringes of seventies music, not exactly rock or pop, but the kind of gravelly, blues-tinged crooning you might hear in fern bars that sell a lot of scotch and sodas.
“In the Hands of the Gods” (Tumbleweed Gunslinger Mix) - Morcheeba featuring Biz Markie
I met Biz Markie once during a multi-level, warehouse hip-hop party sponsored by a major cigarette company. I’m not clear on the details but what I can remember is bringing my Yo! MTV Raps trading cards to the gig so I could get them signed by the Biz and Big Daddy Kane. I hadn’t heard this song before, so it was a special moment the first time I listened to the lyrics: “A self-believer/An over-achiever/Have more stunts than Colt Seavers.”
“You don’t know what you got til it’s gone” ― Joni Mitchell
WORD! Just figured out to respond to these. I know a bit slow here.