John Myles White: Die Sudelbücher

Lately, I fail to find the focus necessary to properly proof-read what I write before I am willing to post things here, but the following development in Congress is such a blatant absurdity and has so enraged me that I can’t resist posting about it.

Congress Demands Recordkeeping From Social Networking Websites (AKA The Terrorists Have Myspace)

If anyone out there would like to help produce a parody of this article’s claims to distribute online and hopefully remind people of the nonsense that’s being used to advocate the loss of basic freedoms in America, I would love to. Think of it: we could make a Myspace for Bin Laden — replete with emails from fat girls with misleading pictures, comments from fellow terrorists talking about their never-ending hatred for freedom and a blog that only he can read.

Because clearly the terrorists are using Myspace to take American lives. It’s true what Good Clean Fun said:

Tom, you’ve created a monster.¹

1. Good Clean Fun : Between Christian Rock And A Hard Place : The Myspace Song↩

So what the fuck are you going to do, kid? Still ratting at the chains of the gates of the world, but you can’t quite pretend. Still tasting youth’s bitter exile here in your empty generation’s wasteland, where all the things that you’ve been clinging to are being ripped from your hands.

Restless soul, this place will never be your home. And if you wanna have it all, you’ve gotta let it all go — before the adult world strings you up and skins your skinny bones clean to the bone.

‘Cause all this time you’ve been searching for something real and now the pressure is coming down on you. You’ve gotta turn this despair inside out and turn it into your way out. ‘Cause heaven knows you’re sinking and I know we’re much the same. So cheers to our rebel hearts — not just another fuck you, but a bedside love song for a chosen few.

We feel like we’ve been left in the wind to die in the dust with no one speaking to us. So we are speaking up, throwing out our anchor against the fear. Your revelation time is near, so try and listen to the voice urging you on, saying, “this is it, kid. This is your last chance. And this is the only way to glory.”

And this is our last dance.¹

This song keeps on catching my ear when it comes on because it seems to capture so much of my feelings since my return to America.

1. Modern Life Is War : Witness : The Outsiders (AKA Hell Is For Heroes Part I)↩

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.¹

The epigraph I would choose for Titus Andronicus.

1. Niccolò Machiavelli : The Prince : Chapter 15↩

Please tell me how we did this: we got ourselves into such a mess again. We fought so long we can’t remember what the hell it was all about.¹

And time again I find myself wondering whether the things I was sure I had to fight against as a little boy really matter now and how much they ever mattered — and whether or not it was the fight itself that created all of my problems.

Of course, it’s only during the most content periods of my life that I can ask questions like that — which, in many ways, is the answer itself to the questions.

With Honor and Ignite are playing in Madrid this Wednesday. Everything about the situation has the potential for being the best concert of the year. If only I weren’t going back to America so soon.

1. With Honor : This Is Our Revenge : Elevens↩

The world isn’t against you, my dear: it just doesn’t care.¹

Of the several bands I’ve fallen for lately, Modern Life Is War might be the most irresistable — the one that keeps bubbling up from some unconscious impression made in moments I’ve spent humming riffs and thinking of snippets of lyrics I don’t fully know. Until reading the lyrics to the album this morning, I just enjoyed the attitude they showed while playing on Saturday night in Long Island and their music. Now that I’ve read lines like the one above, I’m in love.

1. Modern Life Is War : Witness : Marshalltown↩

The next person who tells me that I like what I like in order to seem smarter is going to get seriously hurt — and well deservedly — for being so presumptuous. It’s a piece of arrogance on such people’s part to assume that because they are philistines I must be as well.

May my tears in God’s dissolve
And He thus my sins absolve.