I don’t normally stoop to shameless self-promotion, but I’ve reignited an old website: http://www.digitalcitrus.com

With it, I hope to post a new song every day, for at least one year. It’s already requiring a lot more time than I thought, but It should be worth it. Every day, I’ll post a new song with a small blurb about why I like it, or what it reminds me of. I’ll try to “chain together” music. For instance, Song A may remind me of song B, so next I’ll post song B. Song B may then remind me of song C…and so on. There are other rules to what I might post, and All the music I post will be available for download.I will down-sample it just a bit to save on space. If you want CD quality mp3 files, go buy the CD

I hope you enjoy the show.

It’s been 24 hours since the Family Values Concert yesterday at the Smirnoff Music Centre in Dallas, TX. My ears have finally stopped hurting. Not only was it wicked loud, but also very hot–Texas hot. Luckily we were under the covered area. The people on the lawn baked. I saw quite a few red faces.

Here are the bands that played in order of performance:

• Deadsy
• Bury Your Dead
• 10 Years
• DIRENGREY
• Flyleaf
• Stonesour
• The Deftones Funny, because I always thought their lead singer was tone deaf. They put on a great show though.
• KoRn
  

Now for the rundown. Bury Your Dead was mostly screaming. 10 Year’s frontman was a really good singer, I thought they were good. I couldn’t figure out DIRENGREY. They took enormous pauses between each song and I didn’t connect with the music. They were interesting to watch though. Flyleaf was spectacular. Short set but the music was great. They had the best sound coming off the stage of all the bands. Stonesour I didn’t really know except for their last song–guess I’m not that big a fan but they were good. The Deftones were loud. They rocked the place. KoRn was the same as last time I saw them–completely awesome. I was just happy they still play A.D.I.D.A.S. It was a great show.

Highlights:

• 10 Years guy nearly busted his arse once. It was funny
• Seeing a Japanese hardcore rock band for the first time
• Jonathan Davis. When he played the bagpipes, the crowd went nuts.

Lowlights:

• The long line getting in.
• The searing Texas heat.
• The massive amount of decibels flung towards my ears.

When I was 14 years old, I had summer reading for my AP (Honors) English class. Don’t blame my English teacher for my bad grammar, that’s my fault. Anyway, back to the story…

One of the books I had to read was Fahrenheit 451. It is a book by Ray Bradbury, and I really liked it. I had never read a book all the way through before this book, so it felt like somewhat of a milestone for me. In order to do it, though, I had to listen to music. One day, while listening to a local NPR station on the radio, I recorded a classical piece of music onto tape. I listened to this music every day while reading the book and it was ingrained into my memory. After that year in school was over, I lost the tape. I never knew the name of songs on it. All I knew was how it sounded. I asked my dad then if we could call NPR, but i didn’t think I could explain to them the song I wanted to know about. I listened and listened to all kinds of classical music, but I could never find it. I made a promise to myself then to try as hard as I could to find it–That was 14 years ago.

Last week, while listening to the Rhapsody music service, I stumbled on a familiar sound by a romanic-period composer by the name of Anton Bruckner. I knew instantly that this guy must have composed the music I had listened to every day when I was 14, so I kept listening to more and more of his symphonies. Finally, after about 20 minutes, I found it.

Listening to it brought back so much emotion in me and so many memories from when I was 14 that I could hardly get a grip on reality. I was fixed on my younger days. It’s been nearly 11 days since then and I’m still listening to it every day.

In case you’re curious, the Symphony this is all about is “Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 2 in C Minor”. Listen to it in its entirety if you can. It’s really amazing. It may not hit you like it hit me, but then again I have this really old connection to it.

Have you ever had an experience similar to mine with music? Share it!

What is the ‘Right to Privacy’?  I think it is somewhat
abstract in the minds of the general public because it does not convey one
coherent concept.  Some rights to privacy are protected by the right
of publicity which prevents the unauthorized commercial use of an
individual’s name, likeness, or other recognizable aspects of one’s persona. It
gives an individual the exclusive right to license the use of their identity for
commercial promotion.

But what about privacy?  I think most lawyers will agree
the right to privacy is a common
law.  Pete Landry defines a common law as one being derived from the
"common" people versus legislation, which comes from the
"experts".  I think the origins of that term comes from England
when some laws were formed by non-royal commoners.

So this assumes that most citizens of the USA believe that the right to privacy
is a commonly held right, a common law.  The right to privacy isn’t
specifically mentioned or covered in the constitution.  Samuel D. Warren
and Louis D. Brandeis published
a paper in 1890 in Boston that I believe covers some interesting aspects.


Why do I care?  For the last two years, I have tried and
failed to come up with an internal coherent explanation of my right to
privacy.  I know that I feel I have the right to privacy from intrusion not
only by other private citizens, but also from the government.  I’m no
terrorist or criminal. I have nothing to hide, but where does the right of the
government to protect its citizens have to yield to my privacy.  Likewise,
where does my right to privacy have to yield to the government’s right to
protect its citizens?

Publaw has published an
article entitled "The Right to Privacy In the Workplace In The
Information Age".  I think it is a good read.


I’ll end this with one of my favorites. This one is from Ben Franklin:
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

  - Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759.

This is the first installment of “News ad nauseum of the week”.

The idea is to list some of the news items that have long-since gotten old, yet the news outlets seem to still thrive on reporting:

• Janet Jackson’s Teat(NSFW)
• Chaos in Haiti
• Iraq (in general)
• Steroids in baseball
• The SCO Ordeal(I’m guilty)

More to come next week.