Random Music Wednesday

My musical history, like your mom, is pretty broad.

My dad is a professional musician and was always playing bars/clubs whether he had a day job or not. He encouraged me to listen to mostly whatever I liked, as long as it wasn't "crap." So I once I was able to buy my own records I ended up with mostly stuff from The Stones, Neil Young, Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, The Who, etc. As I got older I moved onto a bunch of harder rock and heavy metal -- Blue Öyster Cult, Iron Maiden, etc., and went through a brief punk phase, mostly stuff like Black Flag, Bad Brains and Dead Kennedys. I also started listening to other random stuff and generally expanding my horizons. While I never could stand any sort of contemporary Country music, I liked the old traditional stuff and got into a bunch of the old country clues and bluegrass and stuff. I also started enjoying all different kinds of jazz especially Miles Davis. Anyway, I also went through an early techno/electronica phase. Tangerine Dream...

... and Jean Michel Jarre:

...made all my '70s childhood "space age" dreams seem possible, and were just the thing for a geeky, computer obsessed, very stoned teenager. Somewhat ironically, I still have that stuff on vinyl, but have never converted it. Haven't listened to them in ages.
So, to the present. While browsing around eMusic last night needing to use up my monthly credit, I ran into the new Daft Punk album. I'd seen it mentioned and the iconic cover art was familiar, so I gave it a try. This song:

Reminded me of all that stuff.

Ah, nostalgia.

Oh yeah, and this is my 100th post. Woo.

Monday The Thirteenth

This day should be the day we all fear, not the traditionally scary Friday.

Here, have a scary spider:

May viewing this blahg be the worst thing that happens to you today.

Why Not?

So evidently this is a thing.

I'll play along:

Meh.

It's Always Rainy In Oregon

Or, y'know, not.

Although we seem to have broken the planet, it looks like Oregon might be a pretty nice place to be, at least until the hordes of ravenous humanity fleeing the desolation of what was once California arrive.

Hopefully they won't show up until after the weekend. I have plans.

May Day! Mayday?

I still have a job. For now. Yay.

Unfortunate that nobody even notices May Day in the U.S. anymore, even though the change from a traditional spring holiday to a modern worker's rights holiday celebrated in pretty much the whole rest of the world is related to an American incident.

Anyway, cheers! If you don't have a job, may your search be short and your résumé be type-o free. If you have a job, may our glorious international corporate overlords not decide that it's more efficiently done in a deadly Bangladeshi sweatshop.

No one Everyone could've predicted...

...that our glorious corporate overlords (all hail!) pushing for more "skilled" immigration to solve our desperate "skills shortage" were doing so solely in order to keep wages in the STEM sectors low.

A brief excerpt:

If there was a shortage of IT jobs then you'd expect wages to rise, but in fact the team found wages in the field (on average) peaked in 2001 and have remained flat ever since, and in some cases have fallen over the last 14 years. The reason, according to the research, is that overseas workers are being recruited to keep wages low.

The researchers found that the US produces a surfeit of STEM graduates, but only half of them are hired. The rest of the jobs in the IT industry, primarily entry-level positions for the under 30s, are filled using foreign workers and may account for up to 50 per cent of new hires.

"Even our high-end estimate, of 50 percent, is a conservative estimate of the proportion of guestworkers hired," Professor Salzman told The Register. Salzman has spent the last 13 years researching this area of the market and has amassed a large body of evidence to support his claims.

I'm so surprised.

Just to be clear, I'm totally fine with immigration. Let people come here, whether they want to be ag workers, or tech workers. Just don't pretend that a certain kind of immigration is all swell and good and shiny while a darker icky smelly kind of immigration is eleventy times as bad as Hitler.

R.I.P.

Richie Havens, yet another relatively unsung great, died today. If not for the vagaries of fucked up logistics at Woodstock, he may never have even garnered the minor fame he ended up with -- he went on first because all the other filthy hippies were late.

Regardless, he was a man able to transform the blues standard "Motherless Child" into the Woodstock classic "Freedom":

RIP Richie.

UPDATE

Moar, 'cause fuck you Mr. Death:

The following contains the entirety of the first video above after the initial song. Oh well, sosumi.

Update again, 'cause fuck you that's why:

Update again: Moar? Yeah, more, you got a problem with that?