This has been a killer week of coverage and reviews here at Citizen Dick, and I played absolutely no role in it. I’ve decided to pop my head out from underneath the rock I’ve been living under to deliver today’s Radio Dick feature, and with quite a bit of regrets, I’ve not written as much as I like to this week. As the music piles up around here, so do outside responsibilities, and while the other dicks have been writing up a storm, I’ve been sitting in a humid and non-air conditioned classroom this week making it look pretty for Tuesday’s grand opening. This is quite the shame, as there are scores of excellent albums hitting the shelves over the next couple of weeks and while I’ve been on a mini-hiatus, my ears have been swirling.
One of the perks of writing for a more global blog is that we get to reach a pretty broad audience. Theoretically, if I had a pressing philosophy or astute observation about our world, I could ship it out to a couple thousand people around the world fairly quickly. Much like the asshole cops in my hometown, this affords me quite a bit of power, and if I’m not careful, I could develop a complex. On the flip side, we love our readers and just to let you all in on a family secret, there are a lot of you that come back daily. Not all of us are statisticians that keep a watchful eye on our website traffic, but a couple of us do. A large percentage of you are coming back to read our words, and we’re really pretty thankful for this. Subsequently, this means that I have an audience today. Since I’ve got this luxury, I’d like to use this space to ask a few hard hitting questions of you. I’ll do it in numerical fashion for the sake of readability and ease.
1. Exactly how many “End of Decade” lists do you think you’ll read and agree with? Is this even important at this point? The photo above has something to do with album release quantities through the years. I have zero interest in trying to dissect its meaning. Rest assured, a couple of the writers here are super into this idea so we’ll probably have some form of decade wrap up on the site soon enough. However, isn’t this entirely relative? Also, who becomes the authority on this enterprise? Certainly Pitchfork and the GvsB + Hipster Runoff conglomerate are notoriously important to read daily but I’m a little wary of allowing them to dictate my tastes to me with this type of mega-list. Carles, I read your site daily and love it, but you’re no more credible than I am when picking a definitive list of albums from the last ten years. I have trouble sifting through the album pile from August alone.
2. Have you ever seen the Zeitgeist documentary, and if so, what are your thoughts? This week, a girl I’m seeing shoved this gem in front of me, and because I’ve done zero research on the film, this question may come across as entirely naive and outdated. I’m not normally a conspiracy theorist, nor am I much of a religious zealot either. I found the film mildly amusing, primarily because they attempt to discredit the entire philosophy of religion, as well as the 9/11 attacks, but give zero credible resources to substantiate their claims. I think much of the film is common sense, but I figure if I’m going to out two major narratives in history, I should probably unpack my bags and document a source or two. I always want desperately to believe the UFO and ghost stories, but until someone hands me definitive proof, it’ll always be a sneaky mystery. The religious section of the film was entirely satiating, I thought though. It’s too bad it was in a sinister sort of way.
3. Why doesn’t everyone in modern society own a smartphone yet? I sat in a two hour opening meeting yesterday about the future of technology and education. The feature problem of this meeting is that the building administrators that created the presentation are two years behind. I was bored out of my mind. They told us about smart phones and how things could be synced up and how people could actually play X-Box with people NOT sitting in the same room as them. Were they serious? I had X-Box live five years ago. As we left, I did a general survey and people all expressed the same sentiment: “I don’t understand you kids and your iPhones and Blackberries.” Do I live in The Shire or do I live in a major metropolis? There needs to be a government program to get everyone a smart phone, an email address, and a text messaging plan. It’s all going to happen eventually, but the process of changeover is nauseating. Does this make sense, dear readership? (Side note: During the presentation, the superintendent called upon our technology coordinator to explain something. He didn’t hear him at first because he was playing a cow shooting slingshot game on his iPhone. The irony was thick.)
Essentially, there is very little journalistic value to today’s post, but those three questions do a pretty good job of summarizing the thoughts I’ve had this week during whatever free time I’ve received. Musically, I’ve been spinning tunes endlessly as I prepare my room for the start of school. The tracks on today’s post hit a lot of different arenas, but all are hot off the presses and buzzworthy. As always, longer form reviews are planned for most of these, but for today, we’re just going to relax and play this list a few times. As my Summer comes to a screeching halt, we all hope you enjoy your work week. Keep coming back for the goods throughout the week.
Elvis Perkins in Dearland – Slow Doomsday
Pissed Jeans – Dream Smotherer
The Almighty Defenders – Cone of Light
She Keeps Bees – My Last Nerve
The Gossip – Love Long Distance (Fake Blood Remix)
