9:00pm until 1:00am-Friday, January 25, 2013
You know what this means! We're back at it again. The boys at Airaid Records are bringing you the wildest night in Baltimore music, SCHLONGTASM: XXX! As always, we'll be at Joe Squared - Station North. As always, the night will feature SCHLONGTASM mainstays El Sledge (+). In addition, we have returning to the stage, Jason and the Butchers and OHO*. And this year we welcome newcomer Hangdog. This year we celebrate the big XXX (30 for the Roman-impaired) of the Schlong (Airaid Records Executive Dan Long). So you know this is a DON'T MISS!
Joe Squared-Station North
133 West North Avenue Baltimore, MD 21201
(410) 545-0444
joesquared.com/
*Jay Graboski, David Reeve and Ray Jozwiak
Please visit http://www.ohomusic.com
OUT OF THIN AIR by John P. Graboski
Performed by Oho (rehearsal recording)
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
(Thanks to NBCNews, Chuck Todd, Matthew DeLuca)
Gun-rights groups vow to fight any restrictions of weapons. I presume that includes grenade and scud missile launchers should the enthusiast have a large enough desire.
Of the many well-reasoned defenses they give for owning assault weapons is they are 'just plain fun to shoot' adding that folks who would ban them are 'misguided.' (One also said that high-capacity magazines are "fun" to have. Should we be concerned? Why must we even attempt to negotiate with these daunting intellects?)
President of the West Virginia Citizens League wonders how 'just one more law will solve these issues' which I translate as 'if a new law doesn't completely eliminate tragic, mass shootings by mentally imbalanced people, let's NOT DO ANYTHING. But then what great logic can we expect from one who says "People are killed greater number by cars, bats, hammers, hands, and feet" than by guns. He adds that ". . . attempting to ban the tool will have absolutely no effect." Now let me get this straight. . . I guy walks into a dark movie theater with a desire to shoot-up as many innocent people as he possibly can with a machine gun BUT, machine guns are banned. So he walks into the movie theater anyway, without a gun, BUT HE CAN'T SHOOT ANYBODY.
Same guy says that assault guns are used in a 'relatively small number of homicides. I don't how you twist that, fact it, a small number of homicides that involve 20 (give or take) innocent people at one time are BIG THINGS to me.
Another brilliant mind (chairman of the Buckeye Firearms Association) says if someone can how him how lives will be saved by additional gun control, he'll look at anything, but a ban on assault weapons won't do that. He says, “I don’t like a bunch of dead kids, so I don’t see why we waste time on stale policies. . . ” How does one attempt to deal rationally with a mind of this lofty caliber?
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
(from http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/15/16524425-nra-releases-practice-range-shooting-app-after-blaming-video-games-for-violence?lite)
". . .Just weeks after the National Rifle Association forcefully blamed violent video games for gun violence, a new shooter game is out that appears to be from the NRA. "NRA: Practice Range" was released Sunday in iTunes, the Apple-run site. It features a 3D-shooting range and offers users simulated target practice. It isn’t clear what connection the NRA has to the app, which is described as an "Official NRA Licensed Product" on iTunes. NBC News has reached out to the organization for comment but has yet to receive a response. The game's launch comes one month after the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., which touched off a national debate over how to limit gun violence. “Guns don’t kill people. Video games, the media and Obama’s budget kill people,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said at a Dec. 21 press conference where he addressed the tragedy at Sandy Hook. "There exists in this country, sadly, a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells and stows violence against its own people, through vicious, violent video games with names like ‘Bulletstorm,’ ‘Grand Theft Auto,’ ‘Mortal Kombat’ and ‘Splatterhouse.’” The free app was initially recommended for ages 4 and up, according to the iTunes rating system, but later Monday was recommended for 12 and up. . . "
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
Rules were made to be broken. Constitutions were written at specific points in historical time when specific circumstances existed. Many circumstances that existed at that time have CHANGED. That's why females can now vote. That's why slavery no longer exists.
(from Thom Hartmann, Truthout | News Analysis)
". . . The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the difference - see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia's vote. Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be too.
In the beginning, there were the militias. In the South, they were also called the "slave patrols," and they were regulated by the states.
In Georgia, for example, a generation before the American Revolution, laws were passed in 1755 and 1757 that required all plantation owners or their male white employees to be members of the Georgia Militia, and for those armed militia members to make monthly inspections of the quarters of all slaves in the state. The law defined which counties had which armed militias and even required armed militia members to keep a keen eye out for slaves who may be planning uprisings.
As Dr. Carl T. Bogus wrote for the University of California Law Review in 1998, "The Georgia statutes required patrols, under the direction of commissioned militia officers, to examine every plantation each month and authorized them to search 'all Negro Houses for offensive Weapons and Ammunition' and to apprehend and give twenty lashes to any slave found outside plantation grounds."
It's the answer to the question raised by the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Django Unchained when he asks, "Why don't they just rise up and kill the whites?" If the movie were real, it would have been a purely rhetorical question, because every southerner of the era knew the simple answer: Well regulated militias kept the slaves in chains.
Sally E. Haden, in her book Slave Patrols: Law and Violence in Virginia and the Carolinas, notes that, "Although eligibility for the Militia seemed all-encompassing, not every middle-aged white male Virginian or Carolinian became a slave patroller." There were exemptions so "men in critical professions" like judges, legislators and students could stay at their work. Generally, though, she documents how most southern men between ages 18 and 45 - including physicians and ministers - had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives.
And slave rebellions were keeping the slave patrols busy.
By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings. As Dr. Bogus points out, slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.
If the anti-slavery folks in the North had figured out a way to disband - or even move out of the state - those southern militias, the police state of the South would collapse. And, similarly, if the North were to invite into military service the slaves of the South, then they could be emancipated, which would collapse the institution of slavery, and the southern economic and social systems, altogether.
These two possibilities worried southerners like James Monroe, George Mason (who owned over 300 slaves) and the southern Christian evangelical, Patrick Henry (who opposed slavery on principle, but also opposed freeing slaves).
Their main concern was that Article 1, Section 8 of the newly-proposed Constitution, which gave the federal government the power to raise and supervise a militia, could also allow that federal militia to subsume their state militias and change them from slavery-enforcing institutions into something that could even, one day, free the slaves.
This was not an imagined threat. Famously, 12 years earlier, during the lead-up to the Revolutionary War, Lord Dunsmore offered freedom to slaves who could escape and join his forces. "Liberty to Slaves" was stitched onto their jacket pocket flaps. During the War, British General Henry Clinton extended the practice in 1779. And numerous freed slaves served in General Washington's army. . . "
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
Like the Catholic church in 1992, an overdue, yet impotent apology. . .
(from http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/14/showbiz/lance-armstrong-interview/index.html)
". . . For more than a decade, Armstrong has denied he used performance-enhancing drugs, but he was linked to a doping scandal by nearly a dozen other former cyclists who have admitted to doping. What Armstrong said or did not say to Winfrey could have ramifications. Some media outlets have reported that Armstrong has been strongly considering the possibility of a confession, possibly as a way to stem the tide of fleeing sponsors and as part of a long-term redemptive comeback plan. But such a confession might lend weight to the lawsuits that could await him. . . "
(from http://4thefirsttime.blogspot.com/2007/09/1992-catholic-church-apologizes-to.html
". . . 1992: Catholic Church apologizes to Galileo, who died in 1642
In 1610, Century Italian astronomer/mathematician/inventor Galileo Galilei used a a telescope he built to observe the solar system, and deduced that the planets orbit the sun, not the earth. This contradicted Church teachings, and some of the clergy accused Galileo of heresy. One friar went to the Inquisition, the Church court that investigated charges of heresy, and formally accused Galileo. . . Soon, Galileo wrote up a similar dialogue called "Dialogue on the Two Great Systems of the World." This book talked about the Copernican system. "Dialogue" was an immediate hit with the public, but not, of course, with the Church. The pope suspected that he was the model for Simplicio. He ordered the book banned, and also ordered Galileo to appear before the Inquisition in Rome for the crime of teaching the Copernican theory after being ordered not to do so. Galileo was 68 years old and sick. Threatened with torture, he publicly confessed that he had been wrong to have said that the Earth moves around the Sun. Legend then has it that after his confession, Galileo quietly whispered "And yet, it moves." Unlike many less famous prisoners, Galileo was allowed to live under house arrest. Until his death in 1642, he continued to investigate science, and even published a book on force and motion after he had become blind. . ."
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
Watching 'friends' bicker about guns on my facebook page. (Kinda funny really.) Hopefully they'll never be personally close enough to each other for any actual shooting to occur.
The new MySpace is very weird. I can't figure it out . . . I'll give it a few more tries.
Getting psyched for Oho's appearance at Schlongtasm 30. (No, it's not a pornographic thing.) It's Dan (The Schlong) Long's (of Airaid Records)30th birthday celebration at Joe Squared Pizza on Friday, January 25th. More on that later. Brushing up on our tunes.
Couldn't have been gloomier weather here in the 'Big Banana' (as my friend Frank used to call it).
Trying to cope maturely with my SAD. It's cold, mostly gray and not very motivating this time of year. But I try to remain GLAD in spite of it.
No better way to stay gainfully occupied that with . . . MUSIC!!!. . . .
What
do YOU think?
http://www.rayjozwiak.com/guestbook.html
You can NOW download
your
very own copy of Ray Jozwiak's
newest release:
AMBIENCE & WINE
