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dustedmagazine · 3 years

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Dust, Volume 7, Number 8

Big Thief

Our August collection of short reviews contains more big names than usual with singles from Big Thief and Dry Cleaning, a digital compilation from Thou, live music from Obits and a side project from members of the Bats and the Clean. Never fear, there are obscurities as well, including an improv guitar player even Bill Meyer had hardly heard of, a Norwegian emo artist in love with Texas and a death metal outfit verging into psychedelia. Our writers, this time including Tim Clarke, Bill Meyer, Jennifer Kelly, Ian Mathers, Chris Liberato and Jonathan Shaw, like what they like, big or small, hyped or unknown. We hope you’ll like some of it, too.

Marc Barreca — The Sleeper Awakes (Scissor Tail)

The Sleeper Wakes by Marc Barreca

Odd connections abound here. One might not expect the usually acoustic-oriented Scissor Tail Recordings to make a vinyl reissue of an electronic ambient music cassette from 1986, any more than one would expect its maker to currently earn his crust as a bankruptcy judge. So, let’s just shed those expectations and get to listening. Unlike so many lower profile electronic recordings from the 1980s, which seemed targeted for a space next to the cash register of a new age bookstore, this album offers a profusion of mysteries that compound the closer you listen to them. It’s not at all obvious what sounds Barreca fed into his Akai sampler. Japanese folk music? Church chimes? A log drum jam? Tugboat engines? One hears hints of such sounds, but they’ve been warped and dredged in a thin coat of murk, so that the predominant experience is one of feeling like you’re dreaming, even if your eyes are wide open.

Bill Meyer

Big Thief — “Little Things” / “Sparrow” (4AD)

Little Things/Sparrow by Big Thief

Who knows how much more music Big Thief might have released in the last 18 months if the pandemic hadn’t tripped them up? Given the creative momentum generated by 2019’s UFOF and Two Hands, it’s fair to assume the band have plenty of music waiting in the wings. “Little Things” and “Sparrow” arrive with no sign of a new album on the horizon, so are probably being released to promote Big Thief’s upcoming US and European tour. Both songs clock in at around five minutes and handle musical repetition in different satisfying ways. Reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac’s “Everything,” but hyped up on caffeine, “Little Things” feels like an exciting new direction for the band. It cycles through its whirlpooling, modulated acoustic guitar over and over, the frantic little sequence of chords never changing; the interest comes from the ways in which the rest of the instruments bob and weave in the ever-shifting, psychedelic mix. “Sparrow” is a more traditional Big Thief song, sparse and sad. Its melancholic sway is enlivened by some beautiful wavering vocal harmonies as Adrianne Lenker paints a picture of a Garden of Eden populated by sparrows, owls and eagles, culminating in Adam blaming Eve for humankind’s fall from grace.

Tim Clarke

Simão Costa — Beat Without Byte: (Un)Learning Machine (Cipsela)

Beat With Out Byte by Simão Costa

Piano preparation often makes use of modest resources — bolts and combs, strings or maybe just a raincoat tossed into the instrument’s innards. By contrast, Simão Costa’s set-up looks like took all of the entries in a robotics assembly competition and set them to work agitating a snarl of cables that met the pirated telecommunication requirements for an especially crowded favela. But whether it’s twitching motors or Costa’s own hands doing the work, the sounds that come out of his sound remarkably rich and cohesive. He stirs drifting hums, metallic sonorities, and stomping rhythms into a bracingly immediate sonic onslaught.

Bill Meyer

Cots — Disturbing Body (Boiled)

Disturbing Body by Cots

Disturbing Body is the low-key debut album by Montreal-based musician Steph Yates, who enlisted Sandro Perri to produce. Where the songs are pared back to mostly just vocals and peppy major-seventh chords on nylon-string guitar — such as “Bitter Part of the Fruit” and “Midnight at the Station” — comparisons with bossa-nova classics such as “The Girl From Ipanema” inevitably arise. Where the tempo is slower, the chord voicings are less sun-dappled, and Perri’s arrangements call upon a wider palette of instrumental colors, the songs venture into more interesting terrain, calling to mind a less haunted Broadcast. There’s an eerie sway to the opening title track, backed by rich piano chords and clattering cymbal textures. Fender Rhodes and the light clack of a rhythm track give “Inertia of a Dream” an uneasy momentum. And forlorn trumpet, percussion and piano situate “Last Sip” at closing time in a forgotten jazz club. There’s something evasive yet subtly intoxicating at work here, the album’s ten songs breezing past in half an hour, leaving plenty of unanswered questions in their wake.

Tim Clarke

Dry Cleaning — “Bug Eggs” / “Tony Speaks!” (4AD)

Bug Eggs/Tony Speaks! by Dry Cleaning

A few months on from the release of their excellent debut album, New Long Leg, Dry Cleaning have put out two more songs from the same sessions, which are featured as bonus tracks on the Japanese edition. For a band whose unique appeal is mostly attributed to Florence Shaw’s surreal lyrics and deadpan delivery, it’s heartening to hear further evidence that it’s the complete cocktail of musical ingredients — Shaw plus Tom Dowse’s inventive guitar, Lewis Maynard’s satisfyingly thick bass, and Nick Buxton’s driving drums — that alchemizes into their winning sound. The verse guitar chords of “Bug Eggs” are naggingly similar to New Long Leg’s “More Big Birds,” while the instrumental chorus has a yearning feel akin to album highlight “Her Hippo.” Maynard’s bass tone on “Tony Speaks!” is absolutely filthy, swallowing up most of the mix until Dowse’s guitar bares its teeth in a swarm of squalling wah-wah, while Shaw’s lyrics muse upon the decline of heavy industry, the environment, and crisps.

Tim Clarke

Flight Mode — TX, ’98 (Sound As Language)

TX, '98 by Flight Mode

In 1998, well before he started Little Hands of Asphalt, Sjur Lyseid spent a year in Texas at the height of the emo wave, skateboarding and going to house shows and listening to the Get Up Kids. TX, ’98 is the Norwegian’s tribute to that coming of age experience, the giddy euphorias of mid-teenage freedom filtered through bittersweet subsequent experience. “Sixteen” is the banger, all crunchy, twitchy exhilarating guitars and vulnerable pop tunefulness, its clangor breaking for wistful reminiscence, but “Fossil Fuel” waxes lyrical, its guitar riffs splintering into radiant shards, its lyrics capturing those youthful years when anything seems possible and also, somehow, the later recognition that perhaps it isn’t. It’s an interesting tension between the now-is-everything hedonism of adolescence and the rueful remembering of adulthood, encapsulate in a chorus that goes, “Well wait and see if there’s no more history/and just defend the present tense.”

Jennifer Kelly

Drew Gardner— S-T (Eiderdown Records)

S/T by Drew Gardner

Drew Gardner has been popping up all over lately, on Elkhorn’s snowed in acoustic jam Storm Sessions and the electrified follow-up Sun Cycle and as one of Jeffrey Alexander’s Heavy Lidders. Here, it’s just him and his guitar plus a like-minded rhythm section (that’s Ryan Jewell on drums and Garcia Peoples’ Andy Cush on bass), spinning off dreamy, folk-into-interstellar-journeys like “Calyx” and “Kelp Highway.” Gardner puts some muscle into some of his grooves, running close to Chris Forsyth’s wide-angle electric boogie in “Bird Food.” “The Road to Eastern Garden,” though, is pure limpid transcendence, Buddhist monastery bells jangling as Gardner’s warm, inquiring melodic line intersects with rubbery bends on bass. Give this one a little time to sit, but don’t miss it.

Jennifer Kelly

Hearth — Melt (Clean Feed)

Melt by Hearth

This pan-European quartet’s name suggests domesticity, but the fact that none of its members lives in the country of their birth probably says more about the breadth of their music. The closest geographic point of reference for the sounds that pianist Kaja Draksler, trumpeter Susana Santos Silva, and saxophonists Ada Rave and Mette Rasmussen’s make together would be Chicago’s south side. Their dynamic blend of angular structures, extended instrumental techniques, and obscurely theatrical enactments brings to mind the Art Ensemble of Chicago, even though the sounds on this concert-length recording rarely echo the AEC’s. But it is similarly charged with mystery and collective identity.

Bill Meyer

Klaus Lang / Konus Quartett — Drei Allmenden (Cubus)

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Drei Allmenden (translation: Three Commons) treats the act of commission as an opportunity to create common cause. For composer and keyboardist Klaus Lang, this is a chance to push back against a long trend of separation and stratification, with musicians bound to realize the composer’s whim, no matter the cost. Invoking works from the 16th century, he penned something simple, flexible and open to embellishment. Then he pitched in with Konus Quartett, a Swiss saxophone ensemble, to get the job done. The three-part piece, which lasts 43 sublime minutes, amply rewards the submersion of ego. Lang’s slowly morphing harmonium drones and Konus’ long reed tones sound like one instrument, enriched by tendrils of sound that rise up and then sink back into the music’s body.

Bill Meyer

Lynch, Moore, Riley — Secant / Tangent (dx/dy)

Secant | Tangent by Sue Lynch, N.O. Moore, Crystabel Riley

Electric guitarist N.O. Moore is barely known in these parts. I’ve only heard him on one album with Eddie Prévost a couple years back, and the other two musicians, not at all. But on the strength of this robust performance, which was recorded at London’s Icklectick venue, it would be a loss to keep it that way. They combine acoustic sounds with electronics, courtesy of guitar effects and amplification, in an exceedingly natural fashion. Each musician also gets into the other’s business in ways that correspond to the one spicy suggestion made by one cook that elevates another’s dish to the next level. Susan Lynch’s clarinet and flute compliment Moore’s radiophonic/feedback sounds like two flashes of lightning illuminating the same dark cloud, and her vigorously pecking saxophone attack mixes with Crystabel’s cascading beats like idiosyncratically tuned drums. This is one of the first albums to be released on Moore’s dx/dy label; keep your eye out for more.

Bill Meyer

Maco Sica / Hamid Drake Tatsu Aoki & Thymme Jones—Ourania (Feeding Tube)

OURANIA by Mako Sica / Hamid Drake featuring Tatsu Aoki & Thymme Jones

Ourania is named for the muse associated with astronomy in Greek mythology, and the album has an aim for the stars quality. In 2020, Chicago’s Mako Sica lost not only the chance to play concerts, but one third of its number. Core members Brent Fuscaldo (electric bass, voice, harmonica, percussion) and Przemyslaw Krys Drazek (electric trumpet, electric guitar, mandolin) could have just hunkered down with their respective TV sets. Instead, they booked themselves three other musicians who make rising above circumstances a core practice. The duo convened at Electrical Audio with Hamid Drake (drums, percussion, Tatsu Aoki (upright bass, shamisen), and Thymme Jones (piano, organ, balloon, trumpet, voice, recorder, percussion), rolled tape for a couple hours, and walked out with this album. The 85 minute-long recording (edited to about half that length on vinyl, but the LP comes with a download card) exudes a vibe of calm, even beatitude, with twin trumpets and Fuscaldo’s echo-laden, nearly word-free vocals weaving though a sequence of patient grooves like migrational birds on the glide.

Bill Meyer

Mar Caribe — Hymn of the Mar Caribe (Mar Caribe)

Hymn of the Mar Caribe b/w Rondo for Unemployment by mar caribe

Some musicians burn to make something new; others generate attention-getting sounds designed to maximize the potential of their other earning activities; and others, well, they just want you to sway along with their version of the good sounds. Mar Caribe falls into that last category. This Chicago-based instrumental ensemble has spent most of the last decade maintaining a robust performance schedule, and it would seem that recording is pretty much an afterthought; a photo of the test pressing for this 7” was posted in May 2019, but the release show didn’t happen until August 2021. Sure, COVID can be blamed for part of the delay, but one suspects that mostly, these guys just want to play, and they didn’t bother to stuff the singles in the sleeves until they knew when they’d next be leaning over a merch table. The titular suspends anthemic brass and pedal steel over a swinging double bass cadence, and if there was a moment during the night when the band invited the audience to pledge allegiance to their favorite drink, this is what they’d be playing while they asked. Guitars lead on the flip side, whose busy twists and turns belie the implied laziness of the title, “Rondo For Unemployment.”

Bill Meyer

Mint Julep — In a Deep and Dreamless Sleep (Western Vinyl)

In A Deep And Dreamless Sleep by Mint Julep

These songs traverse a hazy, dreamlike space, diffusing dance beats, dream-y vocals and synth pulses into inchoate sensation that nonetheless retains enough rhythmic propulsion to keep your heart rate up. “A Rising Sun” filters jangly guitar and bass through a sizzle of static, letting tambourine thump gently somewhere off camera, as voices soothe and reassure. “Mirage” pounds a four-on-the-floor, but quietly, angelically, like a disco visited through astral projection or maybe a really rave-y iteration of heaven. There’s an ominous undercurrent to “Longshore Drift,” in its growly, sub-bass-y hum, but glittering bits of synth sprinkle over like fairy dust. This is indefinitely gorgeous stuff, ethereal but surprisingly energizing. Dance or drift, take your pick.

Jennifer Kelly

Monocot — Directions We Know (Feeding Tube)

Direction We Know by Monocot

Directions We Know is an LP of free-form freak-outs generated by an instrumental duo that includes one musician who you might expect to perpetuate such a ruckus, and one that you might not. The more likely character is drummer Jayson Gerycz, who may be known for keeping time with the Cloud Nothings, but has shown a willingness to wax colorizing in the company of Anthony Pasquarosa, Jen Powers and Matthew Rolin. The happy surprise is Rosali Middleman, whose singer-songwriter efforts have kept her guitar playing firmly in service of her songs. She doesn’t exactly abandon lyricism in Monocot, but the tunes serve as launching ramps for exuberant lunges into the realm of voltage-saturated sound. On “Ruby Throated,” the first of the record’s four extended jams, Middleman lofts rippling peals over a near-boil of drums and churning loops. By the time you get to “Multidimensional Solutions,” the last and longest track, her wah-wah-dipped streams of sound have taken on a blackened quality, as though her overheating tubes have burned every note.

Bill Meyer

Obits — Die at the Zoo (Outer Battery)

Die At The Zoo by Obits

Few aughts rock bands held more promise than Obits. The four-piece headed by Hot Snakes’ Rick Froberg and Edsel’s Sohrab Habibion emerged in 2005 with a stinging, stripped-back, blues-touched sound. Froberg’s feral snarl rode a surfy, twitchy amplified onslaught, that was, by 2012 a finely tuned machine. I caught one of the live shows following Moody, Standard and Poor at small club in Northampton the same year this was recorded (so small that I was sitting on a couch next to Froberg, oblivious, for 20 minutes before the show), and what struck me was how well the band played together. The records sound chaotic, and that was certainly there in performance, but the cuts and stops were perfect, the surfy instrumental breaks (“New August”) absolutely in tune. At the time this set was recorded in the Brisbane punk landmark known as the Zoo, the band was near the peak of its considerable powers—and regrettably near the end of its run. Die at the Zoo is reasonably well recorded, rough enough to capture the band’s raucous energy, skilled enough so you can understand the words and hear all the parts. It hits all the highlights, blistering early cuts like “Widow of My Dreams,” and “Pine On,” the blues cover “Milk Cow Blues,” and later, slightly more melodic ragers like “Everything Looks Better in the Morning” and “You Gotta Lose.” The guitar work is particularly sharp throughout, its straight-on chug breaking into fiery blues licks and surfy whammy explosions. It’s a poignant reminder of a time when American rock bands played ferocious shows halfway across the world (or anywhere) as a matter of course and a fitting eulogy for Obits.

Jennifer Kelly

A Place To Bury Strangers — Hologram (Dedstrange)

Hologram EP by A Place To Bury Strangers

A Place To Bury Strangers returns with a new rhythm section and renewed focus on the elements that made its version of revivalism the loudest if not brashest of the New York aughties. Sarah and John Fedowitz on drums and bass join Oliver Ackerman on the five track EP Hologram which is the most concise and vital APTBS release for a while. For all the criticism of copyism thrown at the band since their early days, APTBS has always been as much about Ackerman’s production skills and feel for texture as musical originality and the songs on Hologram sound fantastic at volume. Beneath the sonic onslaught of fuzz and reverb, not a brick is misplaced in this intricately constructed sonic wall. True “I Might Have” is pure Jesus & Mary Chain and “In My Hive” a Wax Trax take on Spector but Hologram is an endorphin rush of guitar driven noise bound to make one forget the world, if only for a while.

Andrew Forell

Praises — EP4 (Hand Drawn Dracula)

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Jesse Crowe’s work as Praises has been ongoing since 2014, but has shifted in tone, instrumentation and emphasis since then. While the first two EPs have more of a full, rock band feel, the third one and 2018’s full-length In This Year: Ten of Swords took things in a more electronic, sometimes industrial direction. It was an even better fit for the rest, probing creativity evident in Praises’ work, and 3/4s of the new EP4 are in a pleasingly similar vein. The echoing, ringing denunciations of “We Let Go” and “A World on Fire” are fine examples of Praises’ existing strengths, but the opening “Apples for My Love” is immediately captivating in a very different way. Gauzy and rapturous, it’s a reverie that keeps the satisfying textural detail of the other songs but turns them to different ends. It’s not something that was missing from Crowe’s work before — again, the other tracks here are also very good — but a reminder that what Praises has shown before is not the extent of what they can do.

Ian Mathers

The Sundae Painters — The First SP Single (Leather Jacket)

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“This is a supergroup, is it not?” someone asked the Sundae Painters bassist Paul Kean on social media last year, to which he responded, “Some may choose that title. We prefer superglue.” Kaye Woodward, his wife and longtime bandmate in both The Bats and Minisnap, takes the lead vocal on “Thin Air,” one of the pair of A-sides found on their new band’s debut seven-inch. From the outset, Kean’s unmistakable bass playing and Hamish Kilgour’s (The Clean/Mad Scene) drumming lock into a psychedelic march, with the other instruments weaving like kites above, vying for position on the same breeze. “You fight your way down/You fight your way up/You wait for the dust to settle,” Woodward sings. A few gentle strums cut their way through the parade, and a guitar calls out gull-like from above, before everything trails off as if something potent has just kicked in. On the flip side, “Aversion” has an old friend-like familiarity to it, soundwise (if not lengthwise) sitting somewhere between VU’s “The Gift” and “Sister Ray.” Things begin a little stand-offish, though, like you’ve interrupted a guitar pontificating to a rapt audience — it turns its head to look you over, falling momentarily silent, before picking right back up where it left off. Kilgour’s spoken vocals join the conversation, as the song builds towards a groovy kind of fever pitch. “You look a little stoned,” he says, before responding to his own observation. “Well me I’m a little bit groggy/But it ain’t too foggy/I can see some way of getting out of here.” By this point, both guitars (played by Woodward and Tall Dwarfs’ Alec Bathgate) are full-on screeching and howling, and as the song sputters to a sudden finish, our man’s left waiting for someone to buy him “a ride out the gate.”

Chris Liberato

Thou — Hightower (Self-released)

Hightower by Thou

Hightower is the latest in a string of digital compilations from Thou, most of which collect songs that have been previously released on small-batch splits, 7” records and other hyper-obscure media that briefly circulated through the metal underground. You might be tempted to pronounce that a cynical cash-grab, but Thou has posted Hightower (along with previous compilations, like Algiers, Oakland and Blessings of the Highest Order, a killer collection of Nirvana covers) on their official Bandcamp page as a name-yo’-price download. Thanks, band. Beyond convenience, Hightower has an additional, if a sort of inside-baseball, attraction. The band has re-recorded a few of its older songs with its latest, three-guitar line-up. Longtime listeners will recognize “Smoke Pigs” and “Fucking Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean,” which already sounded terrifyingly massive back in 2008 and 2007, respectively. The expanded instrumentation, new arrangements and better production give the songs even more power and depth, all the way down to the bottom of the effing ocean. Yikes. And there are a few additional touches, like K.C. Stafford’s clean vocals on “Fucking Chained…,” which provide an effective complement to Bryan Funck’s inimitably scabrous howl. Rarely has being pummeled and feeling bummed out been so vivifying.

Jonathan Shaw

Tropical Fuck Storm — Deep States (Joyful Noise)

Deep States by Tropical Fuck Storm

Fueled by exasperation as much as anger, the new album by Melbourne’s Tropical Fuck Storm rounds on the myriad ways in which the world has become a “Bumma Sanger” as leader Gareth Liddiard puts it on the eponymous song about COVID lockdown. A roiling meld of psychedelic garage garnished with elements of hip hop and electronic noise it’s close in method and mood if not sound to another Australian provocateur JG Thirwell whose Foetus project girded maximalist surfaces with rigid discipline. If the Tropical Fuck Storm sought to mirror current conditions, they succeed but lack of clarity in both production and intent makes Deep States a frustrating experience. Backing vocals from Fiona Kitschin (bass), Erica Dunn (keys and guitar) and Lauren Hammel (drums) leaven Liddiard’s blokey pronouncements and there are some good sounds and biting words but the band’s determination to overelaborate and underdevelop musical ideas makes this album seem like a lost opportunity.

Andrew Forell

Marta Warelis / Carlos “Zingaro” / Helena Espvall /Marcelo dos Reis — Turquoise Dream (JACC)

Turquoise Dream by Marta Warelis, Carlos "Zíngaro", Helena Espvall, Marcelo dos Reis

Turquoise Dream documents an example of an encounter that is a mainstay of avant-garde jazz festivals, in which out of towners mix it up locals that they may or may not know. This particular concert, which took place at the Jazz ao Centro Festival in 2019, is one such encounter that deserves to live past the night when it transpired. It featured three stringed instrument players who live in Portugal and a Polish pianist who is based in Holland. But they don’t sound like strangers at all. Violinist Zingaro, cellist Espvall, and guitarist dos Reis blend like flashes of sunlight reflecting off of waves, adding up to a sound that is bright and ever-changing. Warelis, who is equally resourceful with her head under the lid of her piano as she is at the keyboard, adding fleet but substantial responses to her hosts’ quicksilver interactions. The result is music that is resolutely abstract but closely engaged.

Bill Meyer

Wharflurch — Psychedelic Realms ov Hell (Gurgling Gore)

PSYCHEDELIC REALMS OV HELL by Wharflurch

Wharflurch is just plain fun to say — but there are at least two ways in which the name also makes sense for the band that has chosen it: it has a bilious, nauseous quality that matches the vibe of the pustulent death metal you’ll hear on Psychedelic Realms ov Hell; and if you separate the words, you can conjure a sodden, rotten wooden structure, swaying vertiginously over a marshy expanse of water, which is filled with alligators and decaying organic material. Imagine that sway, and that stink, and then imagine yourself collapsing into the viscous fluid, soon to be gator chow. Sounds like Florida, and that’s exactly from whence Wharflurch has emerged. Which also makes sense. Is Wharflurch’s music “psychedelic”? Depends on what you hear in that word. If you want to see hippies dancing ecstatically on a verdant, sun-drenched stretch of Golden Gate Park, then no. But if you have spent any time in the warped, dementedly distorted spaces that psychedelics can open (less happily perhaps, but very powerfully), then yes. Wharflurch likes to accent its meaty riffs and muscular thumps with weird flutters and electronic effects that frequently have a gastric, flatulent quality to them. The saturated and sickly pinks and greens on the album art do a pretty good job of capturing the music’s tones. So do the song titles: “Stoned Ape Apocalypse,” “Bog Body Boletus,” “Phantasmagorical Fumes.” Still game? I’m sorry. But I’ll also be standing right there next to you, on that wobbly, lurching wharf, watching the gators swim near.

Jonathan Shaw

Whisper Room — Lunokhod (Midira Records)

Lunokhod by Whisper Room

That the title of Whisper Room’s fifth album is taken from Soviet lunar rovers makes a certain sense, given how potentially frustrating it might have been for the trio to be working at such a distance. Generally their other records are recorded live, in one room, seeing Aidan Baker (guitar), Jakob Thiesen (drums) and Neil Wiernik (bass) exploring simultaneously, hitting whatever junctions of psychedelic/shoegazing/motorik sound come to them. With Baker in Berlin and travel understandably limiited, this time they recorded their parts separately, layering them together (and bringing in sound designer Scott Deathe to add the kind of pedal processing their sound engineer normally does live). The result certainly sounds as collaborative as ever, seven seamless tracks making up nearly an hour that makes the journey from the friendly, clattering percussion of “Lunokhod01” to the centrifugal ambience of “Lunokhod07” feel perfectly natural. Even though it explores just as much inner and outer space as Whisper Room ever have, there’s something very approachable about Lunokhod that makes it one of their best.

Ian Mathers

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freetheshit-outofyou · 5 years

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This is how Civil Wars happen. Attempting to change an integral part of the election process to ensure future political wins by narrowing the section of the nation that will have any say in said future election.

This particular video nails it. Mrs. Warren is talking to folks in Mississippi and they are cheering at the prospect of the abolishment of the electoral college, they are giddy about it. I don't think they grasp that if that were to happen, they would have almost no vote at all. Sure they could vote but it would mean little to nothing in the election process.

Ranking cities in America by population from the highest to 100,000 in 2017 there 311 cities that fell into that category. The only city in Mississippi that is on the list Jackson with a population of 166,000 +/-, they are 156th. One city in the entire state, might get the very smallest of a say.

For reference there are 74 cities in California on the list, 39 from Texas, 22 from Florida, Arizona has 10, 8 from Illinois, 7 from New York, 5 from Nevada (2 are Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, same same.). 3 from Pennsylvania.

Out of the top 10 most populated cities New York has 1 city, California has 3, Texas has 3 and #11, Pennsylvania has 1, Arizona had 1, and Illinois has 1. Those cities populations range in density from 8.6M to just over 1M. That is the list of cities that would decide the Nation’s political process.

The top 10 states by population are CA 39.5M, TX 28.7M, FL 21.2M, NY 19.5M, PA 12.8M, IL 12.7M, OH 11.6M, GA 10.5M, NC 10.3M, MI 9.9M.

That means 11 states would effectively control the federal government with CA far and away having the controlling stake. I heard several news stories today about how the electoral college is not only outdated but racist and cuts out the monitory vote. Clearly those people have not looked at what would happen without it. Let me explain. If we moved to a popular vote system, one person one vote system, count them all up and the one with the most votes wins system of vote it would cut out more than half the states. Let’s stick with Mississippi the 34 most populated state, it would have much less say than California the most populated state. MS could only vote 2.9 million times if every citizen could vote, we know they can’t, but for arguments sake, California would vote 39.5M times. That means CA’s votes would roughly be equal to AK, ND, SD, DE, RI, MT, MA, NH, HI, ID, WV, NB, NM, KS, MS, AR, NV, IO, UT, CT, OK. (Those 21 states make up about 40M +/-.) The demographic makes up of the top 10 populated cities would seem to make the idea of removing the electoral college racist in concept as well. Not only would it null out votes in states with low populations but cut out cities with higher minority populations. The demographic of the top 10 populated cities:

(This information is from WWW. http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/)

1) New York City, population 8.6M “44.6% of the population is white, 25.1% is black, and 11.8% are of Asian descent. Hispanics of any race represent about 27.5%”2) Los Angeles, population 3.9M

“White: 49.8% (28.7% non-Hispanic), Hispanic or Latino of any race: 48.5%, African American: 9.6%, Native American: 0.7%, Asian: 11.3%, Pacific Islander: 0.1%, Other: 23.8%” I don’t know math to good but I think that is like 140% soooo yeah.

3) Chicago, population 2.7M “45% White (31.7% non-Hispanic White), 32.9% Black, 5.5% Asian, 2.7% from two or more races, 0.5% American Indian. In addition, 13.4% are from another race. For comparison, the population of Illinois as a whole is 71.5% White and 14.5% black”

4) Houston, population 2.3M “White: 50.5% (25.6% non-Hispanic), Black or African American: 23.7%, American Indian: 0.7%, Asian: 6%, Pacific Islander: 0.1%, Other race: 15.2% (0.2% non-Hispanic), Hispanic of any race: 43.8%” (Again that’s like 140%.)

5) Phoenix, population 1.6M “White: 65.9% (45.6% non-Hispanic), Black or African American: 6.5% (6% non-Hispanic), Native American: 2.2%, Asian: 3.2%, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 0.2%, Other race: 0.1%, Hispanic or Latino of any race: 40.8%” (I quite you cant have more than 100% of anything to include people. I understand why there is overlap it just does not help.)

6) Philadelphia, population 1.5M “White: 41.0% (36.9% non-Hispanic), Black or African American: 43.4% (42.2% non-Hispanic), Native American: 0.5%, Asian: 6.3%, Other race: 5.9%, Hispanic or Latino of any race: 12.3%”

7) San Antonio, population 1.5M “White: 72.6% (non-Hispanic: 26.6%), Black: 6.9%, Native American: 0.9%, Asian: 2.4%, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander: 0.1%, Other races: 13.7%, Hispanic or Latino of any race: 63.2%”

8) San Diego, population 1.4M “White: 58.9% (non-Hispanic: 45.3%), Asian: 15.9% (5.9% Filipino, 2.7% Chinese, 2.5% Vietnamese, 1.3% Indian, 1.0% Korean), African American: 6.7%, Native American: 0.6%, Pacific Islander: 0.5%, Other race: 12.3%, Hispanic or Latino of any race: 28.8% (24.9% Mexican, 0.6% Puerto Rican)”

9) Dallas, population 1.3M “White: 50.7% (non-Hispanic: 28.8%), Black or African American: 25.0%, American Indian and Alaska Native: 0.7%, Asian: 2.9%, Hispanic or Latino of any race: 42.4%”

10) San Jose, population 1M “White: 42.8% (non-Hispanic: 28.7%), Asian: 32.0% (10.4% Vietnamese, 6.7% Chinese, 5.6% Filipino, 4.6% Indian, 1.2% Korean, 1.2% Japanese, 0.3% Cambodian, 0.2% Thai, 0.2% Pakistani, 0.2% Laotian), African American: 3.2%, Native American: 0.9%, Pacific Islander: 0.4%, Other races: 15.7%, Hispanic or Latino of any race: 33.2%”

Except for Philadelphia and Chicago, the bulk the populations are white and Hispanic/Latino. Those two demographics would be making the election choices with whites being able to overwhelm, for now, the voting numbers. It seems that a popular only voting system is dramatically slanted in favor of white voters not minority votes and especially not in favor or black or Asian voters.

I think folks are so wrapped up in this tear the system apart mob mentality that they don’t realize the one thing giving their states any real leverage in the presidential election process is the electoral college.

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meredithxdevine · 5 years

Photo

@timw82 Knucklehead 🎞 March, 2016. Giddy up TX. https://www.instagram.com/p/BtHQwh6hvWn/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1iwhu62lx3ojb

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nickgerlich · 5 years

Text

More Cowbell

My father taught me many lessons about doing the marketing. That’s an old-school term for grocery shopping. He was the purchasing agent in our family for everything we ate, and took his work seriously.

After all, he was an accountant. He could squeeze blood out of turnips, I tell you.

One thing I remember quite well is his admonition to shop where the best cuts of beef could be found. I guess he figured that anyone could handle chicken, turkey, and ham, but it took a special skill to do the beef right. And in the absence of any decent supermarket beef, he would just go to a butcher shop. That’s how serious he was about it.

Many years ago, the butcher’s union in Chicago had a grip on their business, and when they went home at 6pm, no meat could be sold. Period. They rolled out long sheets of butcher paper and covered up the meat, just like some stores close off the liquor section on Sunday.

That was then, though. Soon enough the unions lost their grip, and meat became something you could buy along with toilet paper at 10pm.

When my parents moved to Florida back in the 80s, they quickly settled on Publix as their preferred supermarket, one among many choices, but the one that had, in Dad’s estimation, the best beef. By default, they got the rest of his business.

Apparently Publix understood this, too, because even to this day they employ numerous butchers in each store to make sure they have freshly cut beef ready to take home and grill. Dad was not alone in his buyer behavior, and Publix obliged nicely.

Which may explain why Walmart just announced it is getting into the beef business with a unique partnership with four other companies in three states, including Mc6 feedlots in Hereford TX. Their press release says it’s all about transparency and other Marketing buzz words, but the truth is, they are establishing their own supply chain for 500 stores, and making a major effort to build consumer confidence in their meat department.

While I won’t be buying any for personal consumption because of my dietary preferences, I will certainly buy it for my family. Furthermore, this is a serious move, one more piece in the puzzle as the grocery wars continue to heat up. Amazon may be busy building its logistical supply chain, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if I see Jeff Bezos standing knee-deep in you-know-what telling us he just bought a feedlot.

If there is one thing that Walmart hasn’t exactly been known for in its grocery section, it is meat. There isn’t a butcher in sight, and even though there still won’t be any in the future, at least Walmart will be able to say it has a quality private label of beef. You can count on them beating this cowbell loudly.

I’m also sure the four partner companies...two in Texas, one in Kansas, the other in Georgia...are also happy with this arrangement, as it will certainly boost their sales, and hopefully signal an expansion of this initial market test. There are a few thousand more Walmarts around the country that could be served, which means these companies are probably all a little bit giddy right now.

And if Dad were still around, maybe he would change his mind about Publix and give Walmart another shot for his grocery dollar. If anyone knew the answer to that old advertising question “Where’s The Beef?” it was him. We could always count on him to bring home the best.

Job well done, Dad...literally, and on your plate.

Dr “Make His A T-Bone“ Gerlich

Listen: https://soundcloud.com/nickgerlich/more-cowbell

#marketing #Walmart #beef #Angus

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lovestruckay · 6 years

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WIP Game

Talk about the WIPs you’re intending to work on this year.

I was tagged by @crimsonriley and this looks like a good opportunity to taunt all my readers lot of fun!

I’m going to tag @vesperlionheart, @shyyynobi, and @beyondthemoor to join in on the fun. And, because I absolutely count WIPs as including art, I’m going to tag @yomi-gaeru, @byelawliet, and @maybe-please! <3

I have a number of WIPs (over a dozen) but there are only a few that are going to be actively worked on this coming year.

Homeward

MadaSaku, Time Travel AU, Eventually Mature

[FF - AO3]

This is my most popular fic and my main focus as a writer. It’s an AU where Sakura is thrown backwards in time during the battle between Danzo and Sasuke. The majority of the story so far is her amassing a reputation as a miracle healer and as an incredibly powerful kunoichi. I thought it would be more realistic for Sakura to have to survive and eventually thrive in the past before she came across one of the major clans (well, except for the poor Fuma clan).

The story has already gotten to the point where she meets Madara and Izuna (in a pretty flashy way). This is my pride and joy and it’s a fic I’m very happy to write. I love writing Sakura as this incredibly powerful and indomitable woman who demands respect wherever she goes while simultaneously being this sweet, openhearted healer and friend. And I love writing Madara as being this powerful, intelligent and calculating, yet kind man who people have to work to earn a way into his heart. I always envisioned Madara as being a man who needed a indomitable woman like Sakura to make him happy. A woman who could challenge him yet encourage him at the same time. And this woman would certainly be Sakura.

Snippets

“But you have blood on you,” she pointed out, taking a step towards him and reaching forward to touch a splatter of blood on the neck of his high collared shirt.

He nearly shivered as her fingertips brushed his clothed collar bone, his sharingan flickering on of its own accord. The world around him became sharp and crisp and the sight of her reaching out to touch him embedded in his mind before his sharingan returned to inactivity in the span of a heartbeat.

“It’s not mine,” he muttered in a tone deeper than normal as he stared at her concerned expression.

...

He turned his head to face her and could feel heat rising to his cheeks as he noticed how close they were, their noses nearly touching. All he could see of her was her half lidded eyes and her dilated pupils, the black heavily encroaching on the sea green of her irises. She stared right back into his lazily spinning sharingan, her own cheeks taking a red hue.

Uchiha MC

MadaSaku, Outlaw Biker AU, Mature

[FF - AO3]

This fic was actually the beginning of me rejoining the fanfiction world. I had written a couple fics but this was the first one I actually went out and posted. It started as a oneshot but I combined it with a couple other WIPs I had and created this awesome story that I was just giddy to write. It has turned out a long longer than I had anticipated although it has been so much fun to write.

It has just begun to rapidly escalate. The story is a little more than halfway done but there is going to be a lot of incredibly intense and “holy shit” moments coming up that are going to keep everyone on their toes! The story is really at a pivotal moment right now so any snippets will give away what’s going to happen. Sorry!

Untitled ObiSaku

[FF - AO3]

ObiSaku, AU where Obito comes back to the village, non-massacre, Mature

EDIT: I posted this fic while I was doing Sakura Week 2018. It didn’t turn out as absolutely filthy as I had previously planned as another fic (a MadaSaku fic - FF, AO3) I wrote decided to take the whole choking kink. While this fic is still smut, it’s not as dirty as I had originally planned.

This fic is one purely written out of spite. Some random user on AO3 was talking poorly about one of my MadaSaku fics and asked if I was going to do an ObiSaku fic too (because that’s soooooo ridiculous). So I replied with a “you better fucking believe it” and put together an outline for this pure filth with a heaping of fluff and plot.

Some aspects of this fic: Rin will be alive but her, Obito, and Kakashi will be non-romantic best friends. How Kushina and Minato will live and how Minato be Obito’s mentor as he trains him to take over as Hokage. Kakashi will still become the sensei for Team 7 and how Team 7 will split up to train individually, Sakura and Naruto going on journey’s with Tsunade and Jiraiya respectively and Sasuke going with Shisui to train with the Military Police. There will be a lot of self hate, kink self-shame, angst, and a wide age difference.

Nesting

MadaSaku, alpha omega beta AU, founders era, Mature

This fic was entirely inspired by the “nesting” phenomenon in ABO fics. And the fact I very much wanted to write a MadaSaku ABO fic.

Sakura is the leader of the famous clan of healers, the Haruno clan. The Harunos are close allies of the Uzumaki clan, hailing from the same region, and Sakura and Mito are such close friends they consider each other sisters. It is because of Sakura’s influence that Hashirama puts fourth a peace treaty in exchange for him healing Izuna (much to Tobirama’s horror). When the village if finally founded, there is a meeting where all of the clan leaders that are allies of the Hidden Leaf join together to discuss the future. And this is where Madara and Sakura finally meet and everyone makes the catastrophic (at least for a city block) decision of trying to drag them apart.

There will of course be ABO smut with mating bites, pupping, womb sex, etc. But a huge aspect of it will be Sakura and her “nesting” behavior as she chooses a place to make her nest and have her pup. Very sweet and fluffy.

Nonsensical

[FF - AO3]

ShisuiSaku, soulmarks AU, Mature

A cute and kind of funny little one shot made because there is a drastic shortage of ShisuiSakura fics. Depending on how long it turns out being I might break it up into smaller bites. It’ll be a non massacre fic with a healthy amount of angst, some super bad first impressions, some happy endings, Sakura being a badass, Team 7 being bffs, and Hokage Itachi.

Here are a coupe snippets although they are very rough because they are part of the outline and not actual written material.

Snippets:

Shisui didn’t get his soul mark until March 28th when he was eight years old.

He had gone to bed that night with clear skin and woke up that morning with his soul mark written across his left pectoral in a flowing, feminine script. He was excited to learn that he did in fact have a soulmate but the fact that the phrase now inked across his chest was the most random, nonsensical bullshit he had ever read in his short life dampened the feeling. Was his red string connecting him to a psychopath?

He couldn’t think of any other reason as to why someone’s first words to him would be “Pants are not ripe water grass bastard”.

What in the hell does that even mean? Was it some sort of secret code? Was she going to be drunk? Was she insane?

...

Sakura has had her soul mark since she was born although she didn’t learn this until she was a young girl.

When she had asked her parents why she didn’t have one, at the tender age of five after her friend Ino had shown off hers, her parents had laughed with mirth, given her a hand mirror, and told her to find it. After a solid fifteen minutes of searching and acts of stretching that contortionists would be proud of, she located her soul mark printed in a small, professional script in the crook where her inner thigh met her hip. While part of her had been disappointed it was in a very personal place, a spot she could never show up, she had been overwhelmingly satisfied with the words on her soulmark.

I didn’t know angels had pink hair”.

Other Fics (may or may not get written)

Broken Trust

ObiSaku, Uchiha MC branch off, lots of angst

Guardians

MadaSaku fic where Impure World Reincarnation is never outlawed and instead becomes a technique for raising “Guardians” to protect the village. Izuna becomes the first guardian and leads to the formation of the village. Madara, Hashirama, Tobirama, all the hokages, Itachi, etc become Guardians and never technically die, instead being treated as well respected protectors

Fighting Dreamers

MadaSaku MMA AU, Sakura “Cherry Bomb” Haruno and Madara “Wildfire” Uchiha

The Chances

MadaSaku soulmark AU, takes place during the war

Three Rejects

NaruSakuSasu, dark fic where the trio runs away from Konoha after suffering through years of abuse and neglect. Sakura is an orphan, stolen from her clan of incredible healers following the massacre of her family. They can only trust each other and only love each other, ends in tragedy for the rest of the world but bliss for them

Wake Up

MadaSaku fic where Sakura, Madara’s wife, is in a coma in the Warring States Era and imagining her life in the future

Like the Ocean

IndraSaku fic where Indra goes on his journey to help the distant village to determine if he would become the next leader of his village and comes across a strange woman on the beach, part of an even stranger clan of healers and mystics who live on the ocean’s edge

Cosplay

I have a new wig from Shippuden Sakura that I’m very excited to try out. I even got a pair of customized boots that are pretty incredible! I even met a Sasuke cosplayer who is so incredibly sweet and is just as into cosplay and Naruto as I am! So you may or may not see me and Sasuke at Anime Matsuri in Houston, TX this year.

#wip #fanfiction #madasaku #obisaku #shisaku #shisuisaku #indrasaku #homeward #uchiha mc #my fanfiction

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