RAPE OF THE YANG - In Response to Margaret Atwood's "Rape Fantasies"

It was during the Wednesday night poker game when they officially announced that the case against Kobe Bryant had been dropped. The girl wasn't going to testify. It wasn't like O.J. with the whole room erupting in either anger or jubilee. It was just a bunch of grumbles and half-raised brows. You didn't know which way to sway - you felt guilty about siding with a woman on this issue, but at the same time: you are a huge Dallas Mavericks fan. For the past year and a half, the entire city was only twelve jurors and a dominant center away from a championship.

But he got off. To me, the biggest issue at stake was a season's damnation of watching Bryant-to-Divac pick-and-rolls every night on SportsCenter. But to the men in that room, it meant something else entirely.

"I knew she was lying," says Tyson. Tyson hadn't won a hand all night, so his demeanor was shorter than it was as we were setting up the game. He usually gets this way about an hour into every game. He is what we call dead money.

"We don't know that she was," says Kennedy Smith. He's a lawyer, so his perception is often a bit more skewed. "Just because she dropped the case doesn't mean he's not guilty. I think you have to pay attention to the fact that the public servants that were in charge of prosecuting a rape case in a little town like Eagle, Colorado had to go up against the best defense that Kobe could buy.  That cased was doomed from the start.  The sad thing is that we may never know and this could have terrible repercussions for women in the future that are raped by athletes and too scared to come forward."

"It's your bet, Kennedy," says Tyson impatiently.  He's folded already and dying for the hand to finish so he can see if the next deal gives him the fingers to go all-in.

"She stood to make a lot of cash if she won," I say.  I had folded too and the hand, which had temporarily been disrupted by the breaking news, had already gone on too long.  "Imagine the money she would have taken from Kobe if she would have gone through with it and won."

A reverent moment passes among the men as they contemplate the money, some of them looking at their stacks of chips as if to put it into perspective.

"It makes you almost wish you were a woman," says Jackson Michaels.  "I'd get raped for a couple million dollars.  If I had to sit through bad sex for three minutes just knowing that at the end of it, I'd be a millionaire, I'd find a way to enjoy it."

"I'd let Lisa Leslie rape me for free," says Tyson.  "I would give her carte blanche in violating me however she wants."

"Men can't be raped," I say.  "It's impossible.  Physically, it's impossible."

"Like hell it is," says Kennedy, the lawyer.  "The same endorphins that activate a hard-on are produced when fear is induced.  That, compounded by the blatant insinuation of sex from a dominating woman in a position of complete control, would activate you expediently."

I'd known this guy for years.  Just because he went to law school gave him the right to be a pain in the ass while Jeopardy! was on or a crossword puzzle was in sight.

"So a man can be raped?" I ask.

"Sure," says Tyson.  "Haven't you ever seen Oz?  Or the Shawshank Redemption?" 

"I mean, by a woman?"

"Certainly," says Kennedy.  "It's entirely possible.  In fact, I fantasize about it all the time."

HATE - The Eternal Muse

Art is mighty, art is powerful.  Many arguments have been called over the years about what most powers inspiration for art.  The Greeks found their inspiration in their Muses.  The Romantics sprang forth from nature.  As medicines developed in the latter twentieth century, drugs gave birth to entire movements.  However there is no older or more effective source of inspiration than one that bubbles up from within us and that is HATE.  It is entirely ours and entirely within us and therefore gives us power reserved for the most supreme: to create.
What more is satire than the freedom to hate?  Disgust with the behavior of others and the artistic display of such loathing.  When Machiavelli wrote The Prince, he would have laughed at his book's consideration as one of the leading manuals on ruling, influence, and power.  If you like to get your history from cable TV miniseries like I do, you would know that Cesare Borgia, the model for Machiavelli's masterpiece is a dick, and The Prince is essentially a how-to manual for douchebags.  Machiavelli wrote the book as a tribute to his superiors (the Medeci), but cloaked in satire, he damned them for being jerk-offs. 
Living in the modern age, we have no shortage of hate art, and one medium in which it is most predominant is music.  So in an attempt to tie this argument together and put a pretty little bow on it, I give to you, ladies and gentlemen:

THE TOP TEN LIST OF HATE MUSIC.

10. "Helping Hands" by Black Eyed Vermillion
With a voice like this and anger-fueled lyrics, this Austin band should be ranked higher.  Or lower, depending what team you're on.
9.  "Dial-A-Cliche / Margaret on the Guillotine" by Morrissey
No one seemed to inspire more through hate in the mid to late eighties than Margaret Thatcher.  From the Irish to the Argentines to the bloody feminists, the Iron Lady collected her fair share of enemies.  Unfortunately for her, many of them could sing.8.  "Head Like a Hole" by Nine Inch Nails
Pretty Hate Machine was the first CD I ever bought myself and it was and still is music mastery, with compelling angst-driven lyrics and hypnotic driving beats. However, I can't bring myself to buy another NIN CD.  Maybe it's my age.  But to Trent Reznor's credit, his work on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack helped shape my thoughts and beliefs on music.
7.  "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle" by Nirvana
Why did Kurt Cobain choose a troubled actress from the 40s as the subject of his vitriol-laced song on In Utero?  Was it because they both were native children of Seattle?  Was it because of his ability to relate with her substance abuse?  Or his inability to cope with success?  Either way, he likens to the personality of Frances Farmer, probably more from his hatred of his community (which, more appropriately is Aberdeen, Washington), and this type of angst has also fueled the masses.  From the works of Mark Twain to every high school kid who's written shitty poetry.  Hatred of one's community is no joke, man.
6.  "You Rascal You" by Louis Armstrong / Milton Brown / Hanni El Khatib
I will make a separate post just on this song.  It seems to have been originally written to score a short animation film starring Betty Boop and sung by Louis Armstrong.  However, country swing musicians took it and adapted it as a standard, as evidenced by Milton Brown.  The sentiments carried over and musicians such as Hanni El Khatib and the Black Keys still perform it, nearly 80 years after it was written.
5.  "Fire On Babylon" by Sinead O'Connor
The Irish have been singing from hate since long before Easter 1916, and nobody does it better than Sinead.  Her brand of folk capitalized on her sudden fame to bring injustices by the British to light, but as her eccentricities colored her career, many people quit listening.  However, her defacing of the Pope's picture on Saturday Night Live is still rock hard.
4.  "Oxford Town" by Bob Dylan
In the tradition of the murder ballad or the disaster ballad in American folk history, Dylan tells the tale all too common in the America of the Sixties: racial disharmony.  There are so many songs to detail the hate that exists between cultures, and I'm sure there will be no shortage of them in the days to come.   
3.  "In The Air Tonight" by Phil Collins
Ah, the days before the Internet... back when a rumor circulated through people and became fact with very little to corroborate it.  Like blowing into Nintendo cartridges to get them to work, or having a friend of a friend who worked in a hospital and saw firsthand what may or may not have been pulled out of Richard Gere's ass.  Add to that list the guy who let Phil Collins' brother drown and, all those years later, gets a ticket to a sold out Genesis show and the lights find him in the audience while Phil Collins sings this song to him... Nope.  Sorry ladies and ginnulmins: it's about a divorce.  Which still counts as a hate song. 
2.  "How Do You Sleep" by John Lennon
Oh snap!  John Lennon started the movement of bashing people in song.  EVERY SINGLE LINE pops Paul McCartney in the mouth.  And why shouldn't it?  That capitalist bastard sold out the band and their agreement to dissolve in a joint press conference on April 11, 1970 by announcing his own departure one day earlier... and on the same day his first solo album released.  Way to sell out your mates, Paul.  Maybe the Strange Boys say it best, but I don't want to go there.  That's way too hateful.
1.  "Positively 4th Street" by Bob Dylan
Lots of people got mad at Dylan for abandoning folk for the electric guitar.  They wrote dirty things about him and protested and threw things... those peaceful folk musicians.  Even his women (Suze Ritolo, Edie Sedgewick) were pissing him off, cavorting about with sycophantic d-bags like Andy Warhol and other 15-minuters.  So to all the music critics and Greenwich Village hangers-on and snotty hipster folk musicians: you got a lot of nerve...

I know there are tons out there that I've missed and I want you to tell me about each and every one of them.  Just remember: keep your tone civil.  Jesus is watching... and following this blog. 

In Lieu of a Letter of Resignation -- Top Ten Songs for Quitting your Job

Remember "mix tapes?"  Remember the all the work put into breaking up back in the late eighties/early nineties, what with having to put all your lovesongs on a Memorex cassette tape and send it over via her best friend?  Nowadays, with text messaging and email, little care is spent on departures, which is sad.  All transitions should be commemorated with song. 
So please enjoy these ten songs celebrating one door closing, another opening...  And be grateful that
you won't need a pencil to wind back the tape.  Remember: it's not you, it's me.... Okay, maybe it's you.

10. "Been on theJob Too Long" by Wilmer Watts and the Lonely Eagles

Wilmer Watts and the Lonely Eagles were born of the Gastonia cotton mill culture in North Carolina, reaching the peak of their limited success in the late twenties before the stock market crashed.  Watts himself a former cotton worker knew all too well the troubles of working to death and found an outlet in music to entertain himself and other workers.  This song of his is a version of the murder ballad "Duncan and Brady" and was recorded in 1929 and available on the compilation Gastonia Gallop: Cotton Mill Songs and Hillbilly Blues.

9.  "Work Song" by Dan Reeder

Since Mr. Reeder's chain-gang lyrics really said everything he needed to say so simply, perhaps it's best if we don't use a lot of words either.

8.  "There Ain't No Use In Me Working This Hard" by The Carolina Tar Heels

The Carolina Tar Heels feature two heavyweights in Carolina music traditions.  Dock Walsh became known as "The Banjo King of the Carolinas."  Gwin Foster recorded first with the Tar Heels, then met David O. Fletcher and formed The Carolina Twins, a brilliant and haunting duo.  This song, recorded in 1927, became a staple in black music, with variants that included "Crawdad Song" and "Sugar Babe."

7.  "Bang on the Drum All Day" by ToddRundgren

Todd Rundgren presents two options in this pop hit from 1983.  The song has since been used to poke fun at members of the Occupy movement to celebrating touchdowns by the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field. 

6.  "Maggie's Farm" by Bob Dylan

While the folk movement of the Sixties liberated many people, Bob Dylan wrote "Maggie's Farm" as a protest against the protest singers.  He described this song as a liberation against the expectations of the folk community, even going so far to play it with an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, much to the ire of many music critics and fans. 

 5.  "Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee ErnieFord

"Sixteen Tons" details the troubles of the American coal miner who lives "another day older and deeper in debt."  The company store mentioned in the song often was the culprit in mining communities as the miners were paid in scrip rather than cash, which essentially equaled a voucher that could only be spent in stores backed by the coal mining company.  This led to many laborers unable to spend their wages outside of the community or to save money. 

4.  "Dirty Work" by Steely Dan

It should be pointed out that Steely Dan got its name from a steam-powered dildo in William S. Borrough's Naked Lunch and that their original drummer was SNL veteran Chevy Chase.  Just in case you didn't know.

3.  "Take This Job and Shove It" byJohnny Paycheck

If you love the Johnny Paycheck or David Allan Coe song, you will really love the film of the same name from 1981, starring Robert Hays, Barbara Hershey, and Art Carney.  The film was famous not only for its witty comedic screenplay, but for being robbed of its Oscar by Chariots of Fire.

2.  "Frankly Mr. Shankly" by The Smiths

First released on the awesome 1985 album The Queen is Dead, "Frankly" is said to be written about the studio head at The Smith's Rough Trade record label who wrote "bloody awful poetry."  However these lyrics can apply to any boss in any job in any industry. 

 1.  "Take This Hammer" by Lead Belly

And then there's Lead Belly, the quintessential lyricist from long, long ago.  This song could be played in the cotton fields, on the chain gang, or in your office cubicle.  Every worker in America should keep a hammer at their job and, when the time comes, hand it over the Captain to "tell him I'm gone, tell him I'm gone."

What do you think... am I missing any??

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For those of you who didn't make it.

The Flood, The Levee, and the Blues

The end of the world has long been contemplated, with many stabbing wildly in the dark at what may bring about the end of times.  Most recently, global pandemics provided the scare.  Ask your parents and they'll tell you that the threat of nuclear war made them "duck and cover."  Runaway asteroids, zombie apocalypses, and global warming are other popular extinction theories, but one is older than all of them and has a further reaching audience and that is the Flood.

Every culture has their great Flood story.  Whether it be due to an angry deity seeking divine retribution, as in the Christian mythology, or creation missteps needing correction, as with the Maya, the Flood reigns supreme in anthropological studies.  The stories and art inspired by these deluges are even more captivating.  Children of both Judeo-Christian and Islamic faiths are indoctrinated with stories of Noah's Ark.  The Epic of Gilgamesh, one of the earliest known stories, deals with the Flood.  But it is the art sprung from a more recent calamity that provides the greatest cultural contribution to  the theme: The American blues.

After the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, flood songs were like the zombie and sparkly vampire movies of the 2000s: everybody was doing them.  One of the "Fathers of Blues Music," Charley Patton chronicled the tragedy with "High WaterEverywhere," one of the seminal works in the genre.  Son House ("Levee Camp Moan") worked and sang with Patton, then taught McKinley Morganfield how to play guitar.  Morganfield moved to Chicago, plugged in an amplifier and changed his name to Muddy Waters.  The rest is history.

WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS took the act global.  Kansas Joe McCoy and Memphis Minnie recorded the song in 1929 to little fanfare.  However, the rise of Muddy Waters brought attention overseas to the American Blues and nowhere else was this more evident than in the British Invasion.  The Rolling Stones and Beatles' love for Chess recordings caused other sensational recording stars to mine old Delta musicians for inspiration and in 1970, Jimmy Page and RobertPlant set down to record.  What developed was a mind-blowing account of one of two greatest tragedies: 1) the displacement of thousands of people following a natural disaster and 2) the fact that it takes a Brit to cause a song about it to rise in the charts.

But BACKWATER BLUES cashed in much earlier than that.  Bessie Smith knew better than to let a good disaster go to waste.  In February of 1927, when the waters were still rising, she recorded the haunting and compelling hit in New York for Columbia Records.  The song is a first-person account of what many Delta sharecroppers experienced as they gathered what they could and headed for higher ground.   Singers from B.B. King, Dinah Washington and Meschiya Lake have  "stood up on some high old lonesome hill" and delivered the song to wider audiences and new generations.

Flood songs continued to be the rage even after the Delta waters receded.  Johnny Cash's FIVE FEET HIGH AND RISING followed the trend, chronicling his own dread following rising waters on his boyhood Arkansas farm.  Mattie Delaney recorded THE TALLAHATCHIE RIVER BLUES, which dealt with the same issue in a different part of the state years later.  Hurricane Katrina of 2005 has caused the canon of blues music to be revisited with new significance and a clear division in the music of New Orleans. 

Katrina presents a salient point to those seeking the end of times from a science fiction or horror movie.  While zombies are the rage right now, and pandemics are pretty damn sexy, the chances that the angry god may want to go "old school" are still high.  As poles melt and waters rise and sinners continue to thrive, who is say it isn't time to hit the reset button and begin anew?

The Johnny Folsom Show -- Johnny Cash's 80th Birthday with the Johnny Folsom 4

On the eve of Johnny Cash's 80th birthday, there are several appropriate ways to commemorate the event.  You could dress in black, program playlists on the iPod full of old country and gospel standards, or you could find where the Johnny Folsom 4 are playing.  Those familiar with the Cash tribute band would already know they're in for a treat, but these Raleigh talents aren't just offering up the old Cash covers tonight, not on this special occasion.  No, rather they are offering tribute to The Johnny Cash Show which ran on ABC from 1969-1971.  And there is no better venue for such a spectacle than Saxapahaw's Haw River Ballroom.

Nestled along the banks of the sleepy Haw, the Ballroom sits inside a former cotton mill that also houses The Eddy Pub, Saxapahaw General Store, and a police outpost.  The high ceilings, the three floor layout, the parts salvaged from the old mill (including an old drying vat with underlighting that casts a brilliant effect) all offer a vibe that rests somewhere between a Saturday night at the Ryman and a Sunday picnicking on the town square.  However, no other venue outside of a prison seems suitable for an evening with Johnny Cash.

And would any other act dare attempt to pull it off?  The old Johnny Cash Show featured not just the talents of the "Man in Black" and the Tennessee Three, but showcased guests ranging from Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, the Monkees, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Stevie Wonder, Clapton, Linda Ronstadt, a very young Neil Young... just to name a few.  Over the nearly two year run of the show, Cash had over forty guests appear to perform, making it a true spectacle not only of country talent, but also gospel, folk, rock and blues.  The audience never knew just who would drop in from one episode to the next.

 Quite an ambitious premise for 2012, right?  Not for the Johnny Folsom 4.  Band leader David Burney takes the mantle of the Man in Black, strumming wildly as his basso-baritone voice fills the giant venue.  The boom-chicka-boom comes from David Gresham on lead, Tom Mills slapping the bass fiddle, and Randy Benefield on drums.  Eleanor Jones steps out onto the stage, adopting the sassy June Carter persona and welcomes the audience before Burney whips around to face the masses and says, "Hello.  I'm Johnny Cash." 

The roar of the crowd nearly drowns out the opening chords of "Folsom Prison Blues."  Folks are dancing in no time.  By the time Burney's singing about that "man in Reno," it's obvious that they needed a venue big enough to hold the swagger and bravado of Cash's music and the Haw River Ballroom fits the bill.  Between songs, Burney addresses the crowd as friends, just as Cash would have and did.  We're treated to not only biographical information about Cash, but insight into how he performed, what he believed, what he liked.  "Five Feet High and Rising" tells us of his childhood fears of flood during hard times.  His love for gospel music is explained before launching into a moving spiritual.  For those of us unable to have seen Cash perform during his life, this is more than a treat.  It's a time machine.

And then there's the guests.  The Johnny Folsom 4 trucks out top Triangle talent, just as Cash did during the run of his show.  Cash always loved performing with contemporaries and Burney is no different.  Big Medicine's Joe Newberry joins the act, offering vocals and guitar for some Carter Family, an act that influenced Cash from childhood to death.  Steve Howell of the 90s country act Backsliders steps in and embodies Carl Perkins, replete with the flair, finger work, and fringed jacket of the rockabilly demigod.  Eleanor Jones's saucy twang elicits goose pimples as she joins Burney for such Cash and Carter classics as "Long Legged Guitar Pickin' Man" and "Jackson."  The amazing Kim Newton takes the microphone for a few songs that would have chased Linda Ronstadt out of the room. 

This biography offered via a small microcosm of Cash's life is fitting on his 80th.  We are treated to every facet of the performer: the prison singer, the outlaw, the man influenced by Pentecostal hymns, murder ballads... They do not ignore the cocksure, grand ole bravado balladeer years with "Man In Black" and "Busted."  We see the man who helped birth rockabilly at Sun Studios with "Hey Porter" and "Walk the Line."  We're offered a taste of the later years where his poignant reflections on death and age walked him to the door with "Hurt."  His old buddies Kris, Waylon, and Merle are there in spirit, if not in song.  Burney sings "I've Been Everywhere" and means it, just as Cash did, and whips the crowd into a frenzy as he deftly rattles off local North Carolina towns, including Saxapahaw, for which they explode.

 By the time everyone is invited out to perform "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord" and "Daddy Sang Bass," no one wants this night to end.  The applause is thunderous.  Burney and the band are just as gracious as Cash would have been and have no intention of sending us home empty-handed.  The lights dim and they take the stage again for the encore.  This time, tribute is paid to a man who influenced everyone including Cash: Lead Belly.  Their rendition of "Rock Island Line" is indicative of what Cash would pull out for one of his shows and their boom-chicka-boom goes faster and faster, just as the namesake's train, whipping the audience wild as the train picks up speed and trucks on, possibly never to stop. 

 But the train does "move it on a little further down the line."  The music does stop.  The lights come back up and the show ends, just as the crazy, raucous life of Johnny Cash did nearly nine years ago.  But lucky for us we have musicians like the Johnny Folsom 4 and venues like the Haw River Ballroom and nights like this night, here on what would have been his 80th birthday, to make sure that his music never stops for long, that it merely keeps a-rolling...

SICK MUSIC

Throughout history, mankind has been plagued with sickness and disease.  Often malady has caused great social change or turmoil.  The Seven Plagues delivered the Jews from Egyptian rule.  The Bubonic Plague eased overpopulation woes and changed the world's diet.  Spanish Influenza ended the first World War.  HIV ended the Sexual Revolution.  But those are only the big ones.  Every day we encounter disease face-to-face.  One in every three people we know or meet are infected with some sort of affliction.  As the planet's population reaches seven billion, we are priming ourselves for another epidemic to alleviate overcrowding.  The question is not if, but when. 

This theme is no better traced than through music, and one of the great songs to detail illness is "St. James Infirmary."  This jazz/blues standard is commonly credited to Joe Primrose, but a deeper history actually exists, tracing it back to both England through the ballad "The Unfortunate Rake" and Ireland, where Celts sang "The Bard of Armaugh" for centuries.  The British incarnation of the song detailed a man who contracted venereal disease through prostitutes that "cut him down in his prime."  When the song moved to the States, the cowboy music singers turned it to "Cowboy's Lament" or "Streets of Laredo."  However the Jazz Era brought it to New Orleans with Primrose and Louis Armstrong, popularizing that very song as "St. James Infirmary."  Since then, many artists have taken a crack at it, adding their own touches to it, from The Pine Hill Haints, Doc Watson, Janis Joplin, the White Stripes, the Doors, and many, many more.

No illness has infected the annals of music history more than TB which wracked the great minds of history just as disease wracked their bodies.  TB goes for the lungs, causing coughing spasms, spitting up blood, and severe weight loss.  The disease existed long before it was recognized, having previously been blamed for many other problems, including vampirism.  It's easily considered the most poetic of diseases perhaps because it's taken out more of the creative geniuses than most other maladies.  Some men in history who, with this time bomb in their bodies, performed like a juggernaut, releasing creative works at a fevered clip.  John Keats died at 25 after only four years of publishing and is known as one of Britain's top poets.  Jimmie Rodgers produced an alarming rate of songs, sometimes lying on a cot between takes, up until he died.  Dr. John Holliday lost his dentistry practice due to his coughing fits, but changed careers and cemented his legacy in the lore of the American West.  Others cut down by TB: Chekov, George Orwell, Thomas Wolfe, Simon Bolivar, Vivian Leigh, and Franz Kafka. 

TB Blues by Jimmie Rodgers - TB Woman Blues by Lead Belly - TB Sheets by Van Morrison

Another common affliction in music lore is lovesickness and scores of artists have documented its symptoms.  However the dichotomy of the disease is no more apparent than two classic songs, "Fever" by Peggy Lee and "Lovesick Blues" by Hank Williams.  Lee's soulful, sultry voice discusses the attraction Romeo and Juliet felt for each other, but leaves it to the listener to determine the ending to this star-crossed reference.  Captain Smith and Pocahontas are referenced much to the same effect.  Despite these allusions, the listener is left to believe that Peggy Lee's fever is one we'd wish to contract.  Hank Williams' response tells a different story.  The protagonist in "Lovesick Blues" wails and yodels his lament over being "in love with a beautiful gal" that leaves him "nobody's sugardaddy now."  It should also be noted that the author of this song is Irving Mills, which is a pseudonym for "St James'" Joe Primrose.

The theme of the slow death continues with "Goin' Down Slow," a song that describes the final reflections of a fast-living man.  Although the song was written by "St Louis" Jimmy Oden,  Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon immortalized it with Wolf's guttural, gravelly protests against the grave that counteract with Dixon's boastful reminiscences.  The song is also best known for entering the term "Great Googly Moogly" into the American lexicon.

Another affliction prevalent in modern society is drug addiction and Social Distortion's "Sick Boys" deftly handles that theme.  Sickboy is a term that gained popularity in the late 1970s-early 80s for junkies going through withdrawal.  As the effects of the narcotic (cocaine, heroin) wear off, the addict becomes sick, often sweating and vomiting.  One of the compelling characters from Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting earned the name Sickboy due to this habit.

Richard Cheese's rendition of the classic "Down Withthe Sickness" (originally by Disturbed) was featured in Zack Snyder's reimagining of Dawn of the Dead (2004), which offers a take on my favorite pandemic of all time: reanimation of the dead.  Zombie infections have been plaguing creative curiosities for centuries, presumably going back as far as Gypsy times in Eastern Europe, pre-Colombian slave trade days in Africa, and of course, Haitian voodoo lore.  But not until George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) and the Dead movies that followed, has zombie culture invaded the zeitgeist.  The zombie holocaust usually involves either a disease that attacks the living or a condition that reanimates the dead, but either way, one bite and the apocalypse is thankfully on its way.  Because as I always say: "I know we all have to die sometime, just why can't it be at the same time."

Colonel JD Wilkes pens a murder ballad with "Somethingin the Water" by Th' Legendary Shack Shakers which details the troubles of his hometown of Paducah, Kentucky, where the Union Carbide's uranium enrichment plant had been leaking chemicals.  Many Union Carbide employees later sued after years of exposure and complaints of symptoms like "baby fingers growin' out of his elbows."  The entire community was affected, but Wilkes draws a line from Union Carbide to another tragedy.  On Dec. 1, 1997 at Heath High School in Paducah, a fourteen-year old student opened fire and killed three of his classmates praying in a group.

Cu'Chulainn is Ireland's great mythological hero, similar to Greece's Achilles.  His "battle frenzy" endeared him to the people and cemented his place in Ulster lore.  Many legends exist about Cu'Chulainn, most notably the myth of his "wasting sickness."  Due to his failure to secure two birds for his wife at a fair, he was cursed for a year with a sickness that caused the mighty warrior to deteriorate.  Irish folk singer Shane MacGowan of the Pogues, who sang "The Sick Bed ofCuchulainn" on the awesome album Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, constructed quite a reputation for himself with self-destructive behavior including drunkenness and hooliganism and this song sets typical antics of such a tough against the legendary site of the legendary warrior's decay.  Does this mirror the decay of Irishmen everywhere, a comment on the old adage: "God invented whiskey so the Irish could not rule the world?"

So what will the next major affliction of mankind be?  What will be the cause of the next pandemic?  In the 1980s, HIV and nuclear holocaust were the major scares.  The 90s exposed the world to the African danger of killer bees and Ebola.  The turn of the century showed us that anthrax was more than a metal band and made terrorism more of a reality.  Swine flu and bird flu never quite measured up to the pandemic we were promised.  But throughout time, as population swells, nature has a way of righting the ship.  Whether it be plague or war or climate change or a cataclysmic event, we could stand to lose a few billion people for the sake of mankind and its future.  As we near seven billion people -- three times as much as it was only sixty years ago -- we have to face the brutal facts: the end is near.  Disease will overcome us all.

Repent now, before it is too late.