Saturday, April 14, 2007

HELP SAVE INTERNET RADIO

When I'm not doing my at home duties, or blogging I'm djing for my internet radio station, which is the only artistic outlet that I've been able to mesh with being a stay at home dad. Now the government and the recording industry have gotten together to drastically increase the fees for internet radio stations, no matter how small they are, whether or not they are professional or not-for-profit. It is yet another case of the big money drowing out independent voices and choices because they aren't making any money of small stations, and they can't control what we program.

Please check out the links below and petition Congress to repeal the unreasonable fees for independent internet radio stations. If these fees aren't rolled back internet radio will soon be as lame as terrestrial radio,
peace out and please help










DON'T LET THE INDEPENDENT INTERNET RADIO BE SHUT DOWN

Friday, April 06, 2007

Speaking of googling yourself

I never use my real name on this blog, so I can "keep it real," well really as not to have anyone read this whose feelings might be hurt, and then have to deal with the consequences. So after my last posting I figured I'd google myself and sure enough of the eight blogs I have, Dissonant Dad pops up as the first one! It of course being the only one where I want to keep my name secret, oh fucking great, hi mom!

Grandma, Daddy said you're inept

SO, my son goes to pre-school with the child of a certain recently and publicly disgraced x-politician, which in my state could be any number of people, but just to not cause that family any more grief, in case they google themselves I won't be using their real names. Anyway my mother sees a Valentine's day card rather poorly and haphazardly draw by the progeny of said politician and in front of my son says, "That poor Fake Kid's Name, they sure do have problems," and as if this were some Meet the Focker's-esque family comedy my son blurts out, "Fake Kid's Name really has problems!?! What grandma, Fake Kid's Name has problems?!?"
Panic mode ensues and we come up with some cover lie that he buys and stops repeatedly saying, "Fake Kid's Name really has problems!?!" It was like he was really curious about what problems Fake Kid's Name had.

Now the kids not only pass information on to their parents, unfortunately it's a two way street and your kids will rat you out to your parents, or misconstrue something you say and pass that along to the grand parents and get you in deep shit.
This has happened to me twice, but at this time I can only remember the details of the last time it happened.
My son collects comic books, which I store for him some where that his little brother can get at, and where he has to ask me to get them out, so I can keep track of them while he's using them. I managed to keep all of my childhood comics to pass on to him, and with a little luck I'll be able to keep them in good condition until he's old enough to take care of them on his own, and who knows maybe pass them on to his first born.
So he's going away to maternal grandmother's for the weekend, and the week before every day, several times a day he's asking me if he can bring the comics to grandma's house, so at first I'm like no you can't, that's not a good enough answer, "Why?" "Well because Grandma's going to be very busy watching you two boys, and you guys will have toys spread out all over the house and it will be too hard for her to keep track of the comics, and to make sure you little brother doesn't tear them or draw on them."
Now by the 20th time that answer starts to be, "I'll tell you why, Grandma can't chase after you boys all weekend to protect your comics from your brother," 40th time, "Grandma's not so good at keeping track of stuff," 6 millionth time, "LOOK GRANDMA'S NOT SO GOOD AT TAKING CARE OF STUFF, ALRIGHT I DON'T WANT YOUR COMICS DESTROYED!"
Ring, Ring, "Grandma, Daddy said I can't bring the comics because you're no good at taking care of stuff!" Just fucking great, how do you explain this one away, basically not worth the bother, and frankly she's not good at keeping track of things and taking care of stuff, but I tried hard and long to keep my real opinion under wraps, but that little punk broke me like a first timer in central booking.

random thoughts from the past year: Punk lyrics & BHT

A couple of times a year I check my palm pilot for ideas that I had wanted to expound on in this blog but never got around to, so in order in particular:

* 10/27/2006. Helping my 4 year-old make 77 punk mix, his first mix CD, using the Damned, the Sex Pistols, the Clash's first albums, I was looking up lyrics online to cut out any songs with curse words. I still play plenty of music that has foul language around him, but I don't think his first CD mix should be chock full of "fucks and shits," besides the only time I've heard either one of my boys curse was shortly after I did, (what did you say, duck? right you said duck).
The pressing question is what about Antichrist and whore? I don't feel like explaining these, though I doubt they would pick these words out of a fast punk song anyway.
TODAY'S COMMENT: Can't remember if we used the song with whore? My two year old has taken to saying stupid, which no one in my house says, so I guess he got that from TV, the say stupid in Charlie Brown / Peanuts a lot. It's fun when we're out and he says,"I'm not stupid!" Another fun one is my wife made the mistake of giving him coffee once, and we are at an open house for picking grammar schools for his older brother, he starts to act up my wife tries to calm him down and while the Principal is giving her speech, he yells, "I want coffee!" *

----
General Mills started making most of their cereals with 100% whole grains, so I mistakenly thought cool I don't always have to spend five bucks at the healthfood store for cereal, so I let my son pick some Dora the Explorer cereal. We get it home and I notice BHT is listed in the ingredients, at first i think its in the packaging, but a closer look reveals that it's in the cereal. I didn't know that it was legal to put BHT in food, I thought they stopped that when I was a kid.
The next time I'm at the supermarket I start to check out some of General Mills "healthier" lines of cereal, and most have BHT.
I noticed a number of years ago when I first started to eat healthier, that a company will promote one healthy aspect of a food, like low fat, less sugar, no preservatives, but it will still have a number of other unhealthy ingredients like corn syrup, partially hydrogenated oils, etc. and no sugar usually means so sort of synthetic sweetener, sorry I'd rather have fat kids then predispose them for cancer.
So basically don't let yourself be tricked no matter how distracting your kids are in the supermarket.