To the two of you that actually read my lame-ass blog, sorry it's been so long since updating. I'm busy, k?

Well, not THAT busy...I have had enough time to uncover some more eargasmic music I'd like to introduce you to...

...such as Bart Zago's "Don't Understand Your Love", a *totally* sweet house track . Everywhere I've played this, butts have wiggled. It passes the test.

via FP.

Link to Wikipedia entry on "House Music."

Also in music news, "authorities" (in quotes because there's some doubt as to which agencies were actually involved, up to and potentially including the National Guard - Posse Commawhatus??) in Utah raided a (presumably) legal dance party (where's Kevin Bacon when you need him??) citing concerns over public safety, and claiming the organizers had failed to obtain correct permits for the event.

Personally, I'm having a difficult time understanding or supporting the cops on this one. I understand that "public safety" is a policy and enforcement catchall, allowing virtually any behavior on the part of an LEA (Law Enforcement Agency) to go unchecked, AND I understand the unenviable position of LEA's with respect to litigious parents who would undoubtably be concerned if police *didn't* intervene to prevent a drug overdose, etc....

Having said that, young human offspring have a long, dignified history of making terrible decisions and still living to tell about it. In short, despite authoritarian alarmism to the opposite, kids are pretty much doing OK. Distilled even further, the message is this: BACK THE FUCK OFF, ASSHOLES.

The choice to raid this event in the manner the Sheriff did is a horrific public guffaw. Leveraging "overwhelming force" to scare the beejeezus out of people may make certain intuitive sense to those who are legally obligated to flex said power, but the dissonance created in the minds of the affected will resonate through the community for at LEAST a generation. Disaffected youth (read: future citizens) will feel less compelled to participate in public safety (like...reporting crimes to the police) and less trusting of the authorities they *do* interact with.

The stills from the only video to have surfaced thusfar are quite compelling, and virtually drip with Orwellian overtones. The three-minute video itself delivers an impact all its own, driven in part by the hysterical commands of one of the raiding officers demanding that video cameras be shut off and handed over to police.

Which brings me to my closer on this post...words by a group of people MUCH wiser than I (and arguably, much wiser than the current whole of this country):

"WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security."

Read it for yourself. I know you haven't.