Yeah, it’s been awhile. I wish I could say that I’ve been horribly busy or whatever, but in all honesty I’ve just been a shade negligent. Once you combine that with the fact that I’ve had nothing to say of any value on any subject whatsoever, then perhaps you can begin to understand, come to grips with, or even grok the yawning silence that has been Simplemath.org as of late.
But enough about me.
Let’s talk about Johnny cash.
I’d heard an interview about the new Johnny Cash album on NPR and I think that I can best describe my anticipation of the release as overwhelming. Luckily, this particular adjective is also a fair assement of the actual album, so I won’t spend more time thinking of a different one. Johnny Cash has always had a reputation as an experimental country artist, and possesses a range and depth in his songwriting — song-craft is a much better descriptor — is undisputed, so I find it interesting that Johnny chose to release an album consisting mostly of covers. The album is too cohesive to dissect song by song, but highlights include Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt, Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus, Bridge Over Troubled Water, and Danny Boy … each of these receives the Cash treatment of spare guitars, sparse arrangement and subtle lyrics.
The theme among these songs is the contemplation of loss, and Cash has earned his stripes in that regard. He sings with a hard-won, unfeigned, unfettered world-weariness that contains no trace of angst, a sound that modern artists Staind, Creed, and the like can only imitate but never truly achieve.
What is amazing and yet altogether unsuprising about this album is how readily Cash makes each of these songs his own. Cash should have written Hurt, not Trent Reznor, and he manages to sing a stunning rendition of Personal Jesus while removing any trace of irony from the lyrics. The album is a true accomplishment, and I lack the vocabulary to do it justice. Just listen.
In other news, The Family (TM) was in town for the holidays, but I’ll most of that out. One aspect of the visit worth noting is how much CNN we watched. I’d been out of the news loop for awhile, in preparation for the Visit. So, here is a quick little run-down of November’s notable events.
“Sign this treaty Dude! Here’s a plastic cup. The pony keg’s in the bathtub!”
Meanwhile Putin is depants-ing Estonia in the basement.
My favorite — and when I say favorite, I mean “fills me with dread” — portion of the bill is the creation of a new DARPA program. the Total Information Awareness program, headed by John Poindexter. Yes, that John Poindexter. The idea behind behind TIA is to create a network of database that will combine biometric data (face recognition, fingerprints, gait, etc) and Transactional data (financial records, consumer records, visa records, etc) to try to pre-empt terrorist attacks. In other words, TIA plans to track everything that everyone does to determine who is most likely to be a terrorist by matching that information against the patterns of known terrorists. Yeah, that will work.
If I asked you to take a letter to Alaska for me would you do it?
What if I gave you 37 cents?
You still refuse? Well, the post office doesn’t refuse. They take that letter to the frozen tundra, and they do it in four days, so the next time you want to complain about an increase in the cost of stamps, do me a favor. . . go into your kitchen and pour yourself a cool frothy glass of Shut the Fuck Up.