broken head

step inside my head
see how much i see
feel how much i feel

show you something good
a planet with no roof
the leading edge of truth

a post-euphoric grin
an astronaut i've been
astronomic feelings

-- catherine wheel (1993)

stranger

What is veiled now soon will be shown.
Come walk with me through the unknown.
-- Jeanette Sears (Jefferson Starship) 1981

find your way back

I know its too late now,
But I wish I could go back in time
And start all over somehow
And get it right from the start.
-- Craig Chaquico (Jefferson Starship) 1981

what if this storm ends?

What if this storm ends, and I don't see you
As you are now ever again?
The perfect halo of gold hair and lightning
Sets you off against the planets' last dance.
Just for a minute, the silver-forked sky
Lifts you up like a star that I will follow.
But now it's found us like I have a found you.
I don't want to run -- just overwhelm me.
-- Gary Lightbody (Snow Patrol) 2008

when giants fall

Businesses will find it hard to survive, let alone thrive, amid increasing violence and conflict, shortages and logistical interruptions, and a breakdown of markets and financial mechanisms. Individuals will be forced to rethink livelihoods, lifestyles, living arrangements, and locales. Political structures will be in flux. Around the globe, gangsters, maniacs, and mobs will compete with established regimes for the reins of power. Nuclear attacks, domestic terrorism, and other threats that once seemed so remote to most Americans will become an all-too-frequent reality. So, too, will breakdowns, epidemics, and other fallout stemming from economic deterioration, growing social unrest and criminality, and a forced shift toward greater self-sufficiency.
-- Michael J. Panzner, When Giants Fall (2009)

the inner light

"Seize the time. Live now. Make now always the most precious time. Now will never come again."
-- Capt. Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) 1992

anthem

Know your place in life is where you want to be
Don't let them tell you that you owe it all to me
Keep on looking forward -- no use in looking 'round
Hold your head above the ground, and they won't bring you down

Anthem of the heart and anthem of the mind
A funeral dirge for eyes gone blind
We marvel after those who sought
New wonders in the world they wrought

Live for yourself -- there's no one else more worth living for
Begging hands and bleeding hearts will only cry out for more

Well, I know they've always told you selfishness was wrong
Yet it was for me, not you, I came to write this song

-- Neal Peart (Rush) 1975

take it from the man

it's just like i said -- they're fucking with your head
you ain't safe in your bed or even when you're dead
they're out to school you, so they can rule you
they try to fool you or just get to you

and i seen it coming down, so i headed out of town
because i'm quick like that

i seen them on tv -- they even look like me
they said they'd set me free, but that can never be
but i know it's coming down, so i'm headed out of town
because i'm quick like that, always bounce right back

stupid magazines to sell you useless things
silly as it seems, they even steal your dreams
and i know it's coming down, so i'm headed out of town
cause i'm quick like that, never coming back

man i know it's coming down, so i'm heading far from town
cause i'm smart like that; i'm not coming back

-- anton newcombe (brian jonestown massacre) 1996

american kitsch

"If I'm in a very light mood, I find everything in America so kitsch. If I'm in a bad mood, I find it terribly repressive and heavy."
-- David Bowie (1973)

what hath urethane wrought?

In today's lineup -- stripped of fitness requirements, basic abilities, and the administration of swift justice for the lack of either -- it's pure anarchy. Entry-level kooks now have, with the longboard/leash combo, a backstage pass into what once was the inner sanctum of those who had paid their dues over years of hardscrabble apprenticeship and many, many long swims.
-- Dave Parmenter, Surfer magazine (June 2000)

walk away

Mounds of dirt where there used to be landing strips, airplanes over me.
Mounds of dirt where we used to see blue lights, now I'm free.
-- Experimental Aircraft (2007)

Fed is above the law

"The Federal Reserve is an independent agency, and that means basically that there is no other agency of government which can overrule actions that we take. So long as that is in place and there is no evidence that the administration or the congress or anybody else is requesting that we do things other than what we think is the appropriate thing, then what the relationships are don't frankly matter."
-- Alan Greenspan, PBS interview (Sept. 18, 2007)

life is strange

Time is so strange, and life is twice as strange. The cogs miss, the wheels turn, and lives interlace too early or too late.
-- Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine (1957)

shocking change

Noise is relative to the silence preceding it. The more absolute the hush, the more shocking the thunderclap.
-- Alan Moore, V for Vendetta (1988)

stand or fall

Crying parents tell their children
If you survive, don't do as we did.
Son exclaims there'll be nothing to do too
Daughter says she'll be dead with you.

While foreign affairs are screwing rotten,
Life morale has hit rock bottom.
Dying embers stand forgotten
Talks of peace were being downtrodden.

Is this the value of our existence?
Should we proclaim with such persistence?
Our destiny relies on conscience
Red or Blue, what's the difference?

An empty face reflects extinction
Ugly scars divide the nation
Desecrate the population
There will be no exaltation

-- The Fixx (1982)

witch hunt

The night is black, without a moon.
The air is thick and still.
The vigilantes gather on the lonely torchlit hill.

Features distorted in the flickering light,
Faces are twisted and grotesque.
Silent and stern in the sweltering night,
The mob moves like demons possessed.
Quiet in conscience, calm in their right,
Confident their ways are best.

The righteous rise with burning eyes of hatred and ill-will.
Madmen fed on fear and lies to beat and burn and kill.

They say there are strangers who threaten us --
Our immigrants and infidels.
They say there is strangeness to danger us
In our theatres and bookstore shelves,
That those who know what's best for us
Must rise and save us from ourselves.

Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand --
Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand.

Neal Peart (Rush) 1981

vital signs

Unstable condition -- a symptom of life
in mental and environmental change.
Atmospheric disturbance -- the feverish flux
of human interface and interchange.
The impulse is pure -- sometimes our circuits get shorted
by external interference.
Signals get crossed and the balance distorted
by internal incoherence.

An ounce of perception, a pound of obscure --
process information at half speed.
Pause, rewind, replay -- warm memory chip --
random sample holds the one you need.
Leave out the fiction --
the fact is this friction will only be worn by persistence.
Leave out conditions --
courageous convictions will drag the dream into existence.

Everybody got mixed feelings about the function and the form.
Everybody got to elevate from the norm.

-- Neal Peart (Rush) 1981

deviate from the norm

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
-- Mark Twain

depression suppression

Depressions are not simply evils which we might attempt to suppress, but forms of something which has to be done, namely adjustment to change.... Inflation pushed far enough [would] undoubtedly turn depression into the sham prosperity so familiar from European postwar experience, [and]... would, in the end, lead to a collapse worse than the one it was called in to remedy. Recovery is sound only if it does come of itself. For any revival which is merely due to artificial stimulus leaves part of the work of depressions undone and adds, to an undigested remnant of maladjustment, new maladjustment of its own which has to be liquidated in turn, thus threatening business with another crisis ahead.
-- Joseph A. Schumpeter

losing it

Some are born to move the world
To live their fantasies
But most of us just dream about
The things we'd like to be

Sadder still to watch it die
Than never to have known it
For you, the blind who once could see
The bell tolls for thee....

-- Neil Peart (Rush) 1982

government give and take

What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.
-- Dr. Adrian Rogers

problem solvers?

"Never expect the people who caused a problem to solve it."
-- Albert Einstein

paper money

"Under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and hence positive inflation."
-- Ben Bernanke

money is faith

"When an American exchanges his goods or his labor for a fistful of dollars, he is essentially trusting [Treasury Secretary] Hank Paulson [and by implication Federal Reserve System Chairman Ben Bernanke] not to... manufacture so many of these things that they end up being worth no more than the paper they are printed on.... [M]oney is a matter of belief, even faith...."
-- Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World