December 18, 2014

Terri Schiavo was not persistently vegetative: she was as dead as a dinosaur.

...The blue areas are remaining brain tissue but most of the scan shows black areas which are essentially fluid (cerebrospinal fluid). The normal body reaction to irreversibly damaged tissue is to replace it with fluid and this is clearly what has happened after Mrs. Schiavo suffered severe anoxic damage to her cerebral cortex. Most of what remains of her brain is essentially a fluid filled sac surrounded by a thin shell of brain tissue rather then the solid structure we normally associate with a brain...

At the time, Terri Schiavo was neither persisting, vegetating nor pining for her native Florida Everglades; she had passed on. She was no more; she had ceased to be. She had expired and gone to meet her maker: Terri was late. She was a stiff, bereft of life and resting in peace. If she hadn't been impaled by feeding tubes, she'd be pushing up the daisies. Her metabolic processes were history; she was off the twig. She had kicked the bucket, shuffled off her mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible -- " target="_blank">SHE WAS AN EX-TERRI!


rocktivity

December 8, 2014

For me, that's only the SECOND best swimmer's reaction ever

Summer Sanders once thought she'd finished so far out of the money she didn't even look at the leaderboard as she held on to the edge of the pool. The camera stayed on her as she caught her breath and finally started looking for her name -- on the lower part of the board. You could see her confusion mounting: Had she been disqualified? Had she simply skipped over her name? But she finally looked all the way up, and her freakout was epic! "I thought I'd finished fourth," she explained afterward.

Congrats, Alia!


rocktivity

December 3, 2014

DING DING DING! Rocktivity, you're our grand prize winner!!!!

"Disintermediating the labels" -- is that the legal term for "We are no longer ON a record label because our last album proved that Queensryche minus Tate equals zero, so we've gone into desperation mode"?

I was wrong about that. But I wasn't wrong about this:

...(S)eeing as (new singer) Todd (Le Torre) won't be getting anything out of the holding company, is it unreasonable to conclude that "generating" HIS income will depend on the crowdfunding?

I've dug up original singer Geoff Tate's side of the story:



And this from Queensryche's label Century Media:


But if they still have a record deal, WHY are the remaining members of Queensryche trying to raise $2 million AND doing crowdfunding? Proof yet again that the simplest explanation tends to be the right one: Buying out Tate most likely included giving him the rights to most if not all of their entire back catalog -- and they are just plain flat broke!

If (what's left of) Queensryche no longer have either publishing income or the bandmembers who generated that income, that leaves the band's name as their sole asset (which in turn makes their eliminating their newest members from the holding company extra inexcusable). Tate, meanwhile, has already signed a record deal, putting his ex-esteemed colleagues just one Operation Mindcrime Live album away from being the world's best Queensryche tribute band.

Detection of desperation mode accomplished: I love the smell of vindication in the morning.


rocktivity

December 2, 2014

Queenryche "missed" when they "divested" themselves of their most valuable "assets."

You're absolutely right about it being so much harder to be a rookie non-Top-40 act these days, and for the need for a new paradigm. The problem with Queensryche's paradigm is that without singer Geoff Tate (and original lead guitarist/co-composer Chris DeGarmo), it comes across more like something that the Kramer character on the Seinfeld show would have come up with. Anything you invest in is supposed to have inherent growth potential -- where is Queensryche's?

If a Bon Jovi or a Rolling Stones or a Judas Priest were doing this because they had lost their record deals, didn't want to invest their own money, and most important, still had their most profitable members, this career move would be intelligible, at least: investing in those bands would be a gamble worth taking.


rocktivity

November 27, 2014

You're right -- Time to post my DU Thanksgiving traditions

A classic one:

A new one:




And a carol:



HAPPY THANKSGIVING!


rocktivity

November 20, 2014

Rumors about Kristen began when her then-band Sugarland hooked up with Bon Jovi

rumors that I resented greatly because they seemed to be based on her not being as "hot"-looking as her bandmate Jennifer Nettles:



In 2006, Hall alleged that she left Sugarland to "stay home and write songs," but that was hard to swallow. They were just about to start peddling their second album as the opening act on the Kenny Chesney tour; a song Jennifer did with Bon Jovi was shooting up the pop, rock, AND country charts; and both bands joined up for a TV special: Sugarland were about to "arrive." Was Hall "advised" that her "image" -- perceived or real -- would "hold the band back?" Was she threatened with being outed? Was she promised to be spared the "you'll never work in this town again" routine if she left quietly? And why did she have to sue for her share of Sugarland's profits? (The suit was settled in 2010.)

Irony alert: Jennifer Nettles, who married in 2011 and has a child, says she's finding HERSELF to be the subject of gay rumors!


rocktivity

October 29, 2014

DING DING DING! Mackerel, you're our grand prize winner!

Someone should have helped set-up the accounts first off and taken a lot of the temptation away...
And the court should have assigned that "someone" to supervise the deal, rather than "depend" on her, the lawyer, her mother, or the baby daddy. Why did they give her so much time anyway? The deadline should have been the week after she got the crowdfunding money, if not sooner.

(T)hose who donated to her may not donate to another in a similar circumstance in the future...
Yes -- Taylor's children are the real losers in this, along with the children of those whose parents would do the right thing if they were to get the opportunity to stand in Taylor's shoes.


rocktivity

October 28, 2014

This was going to be HIS weekend: TONS of great national press

That quickly turned into milligrams:







And he wants to be seen as a Bush II-like leader? Proceed, governor!


rocktivity

October 18, 2014

Another conservative Daily Show launches -- and divebombs

Left versus right-wing humor has been well-analyzed at subject at DU. From Plaid Adder:



From me:




With these precepts in mind, how does The Flipside stand up?



I guess I'm supposed be impressed that Lotfus is willing to skewer Republicans, but does he really? He bemoans how the GOP had the White House and Congress but broke their promise not to make government bigger. But then he says that Obama came in and spent even more -- is that actually true, or is that part of the joke? Reagan led us into prosperity without the help of big media? He led us into trickle up prosperity and bag people, and big media was a LOT smaller back then. And he suggests that Republicans stop being power hungry hypocrites -- but that wouldn't fix the party, that would implode it.

Flipside seems to be about mocking a strawman conservative power structure ("Don't wear jeans! Fix your hair!") -- which preserves and respects the inherent authoritarianism of its real one -- and using that as the basis on which to pass itself off as being at least as "fair and balanced" as Stewart and Colbert.


rocktivity

September 15, 2014

Palin has not commented publicly on the episode,

Consider the source: RCP's polls are great, but editorially speaking, I would be remiss in not advising you that it's more likely than not that the Palins will come out as the heroes. Aside from that, is this source an actual eyewitness, a family spokesperson -- or a family MEMBER?


With or without Willow?


It also differs slightly but significantly from “Don’t you know who the Palins are? They're idiots!”


That doesn't make the witness a liar -- Bristol might actually be ambidextrous. While I consider myself to be "naturally" left-handed because that's the hand I eat, write, and drink with, I do everything else right-handed, including throwing both objects and punches!


rocktivity