Am I showing my age by admitting to listening to Cd's? I don't have an MP3 player. I have downloaded MP3's and I listen to the songs through my laptop. But currently I have a portable CD player hooked up and I am listening to Dave Mattewhs Band - Under the Table and Dreaming. I have nothing against the progression of technology but I am afraid that I will miss the art of the album. I don't know what I would do in life without Dancing Nancies.
The idea of listening to music may be something we take for granted here in the US of A. It is absolutely a freedom of expression. Sure, many albums are released with 'parental guidance' notices. But, of course, that only makes the record more intruiging for teenagers. To be sure, censorship is wrong in a free society - but the US of A has never really been free.
In the past few weeks I have read a number of books that make me wonder about the state of our society. In reading the 5th book in the Harry Potter series, I was confronted with the concept of a higher governmental power trying to overtake a school. (see Darwinism vs. Creationsim) Upon the completion of that extremely long Harry Potter book I picked up Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. The most incredible feature of that novel is that it was written in 1932 and it suggested so many truths in the very near future.
Alice Sebold wrote the Lovely Bones - a story about the results of a young girl raped and killed by a neighbor. Disturbing? Yes. I had to re-type that first sentence numerous times because I just couldn't type the word raped. But the story is not really depressing. It is about how a family and community deal with the death of a child.
I have read almost all of Shakespeare's plays. I have read most of Hemmingway. I have read Dickens. Tolstoy. Twain. Kerouac. Irving. Fitzgerald. Updike. But, for unknown reasons, I had never read Ray Bradbury. Until just a few weeks ago when I read Fahrenheit 451. Why should you care about the books I have read? Well, why in the hell are you reading this stupid blog? If you would prefer that all of your knowledge comes from television and that books are unnecessary, well then you will be very happy being a drone in the very near future.
Currently I am reading the book Wicked. It is the story of the life of the Wicked witch of the west from the popular Wizard of Oz movie. It too deals with social injustice and wrongdoings of the government. I don't know how the book will play out, but I have seen the movie and I know the ending. But can you blame the witch for being pissed that Dorothy killed her sister? I mean, what would you do if a house landed on someone you loved?
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