Vreau sa va prezint o melodie care imi place extraordinar, o ascult de zile intregi. Se numeste All the same de la Sick Puppies.

Nu stiu daca ati auzit de ei, eu am auzit All the same cand am vizionat video-ul “Free Hugs Campaign” pe youtube, si mi-a placut la nebunie. E o formatie australiana, compusa din Shimon Moore, Emma Anzai si Mark Goodwin. Dar va invit sa cititi mai multe pe Wikipedia si sa vizualizati video-ul.

A great video and tribute to the footballing legend, the video features the tracks apologize and all the same by Sick Puppies which is a great tune.

check out the video and tell me what you think.

cyaa

“Time of Your Life”
by Green Day

Another turning point;
a fork stuck in the road.

Time grabs you by the wrist;
directs you where to go.

So make the best of this test
and don’t ask why.

It’s not a question
but a lesson learned in time.

It’s something unpredictable
but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs
and still frames in your mind.

Hang it on a shelf
In good health and good time.

Tattoos of memories
and dead skin on trial.

For what it’s worth,
it was worth all the while.

It’s something unpredictable
but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

(music break)

It’s something unpredictable
but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

It’s something unpredictable
but in the end it’s right.
I hope you had the time of your life.

====================================

“All the Same”
by Sick Puppies

I dont mind where you come from
As long as you come to me
But I dont like illusions I cant see
Them clearly
I dont care, no I wouldn’t dare
To fix the twist in you
You’ve shown me eventually what you’ll do
I dont mind
I dont care
As long as you’re here

[Chorus]

Go ahead and tell me you’ll leave again
You’ll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It’s all the same
And I’ll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It’s all the same

Hours slide and days go by
Till you decide to come
But in-between it always seems too long
Suddenly
But I have the skill, yeah
I have the will, to breath you in while I can
However long you stay is all that I am

I dont mind, I dont care
As long as you’re here

Go ahead and tell me you’ll leave again
You’ll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It’s all the same
And I’ll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It’s always the same

Wrong or Right
Black or White
If I close my eyes
Its all the same

In my life
The compromise
I’ll close my eyes
Its all the same

Go ahead say it
You’re leaving
You’ll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It’s all the same
And I’ll take you for who you are now
If you take me for everything
Do it all over again
It’s all the same

“All The Same” by the Sick Puppies, from the Free Hugs Campaign.

This never fails to leave a warm feeling.

Most nights for the last three weeks, I drift into a medicated sleep only to wake to someone calling my name. I’ve always been an extremely light sleeper. A whisper or creak of the floorboards makes my eyes open immediately. I still can’t break my habit of sleeping with an obnoxiously loud fan running, even in the dead of winter.

This morning, no work. I went to open another bank account and so on and so forth, for this future everyone thinks I’m planning. The woman there was nice, quite helpful and personable. But I nearly laughed out loud when she praised me and made her comments about “what a nice girl” I was.

If only you knew. If only anyone knew. I put up my front and it’s swallowed all down, no questions asked. Wear some decent clothes, wash your hair, and ta-fucking-da, you are an esteemed member of society. They’ll still trample your ass, but they’ll smile politely when doing it. I guess that seems more acceptable to them, the friendly smile, a placating gesture.

Usually I can shop for shit and get my mind off of things, but today I had no luck. I was tired and uninterested, though I ended up buying something to see if I would have any reaction to spending my money. The dressing rooms I went to were awful, cramped, with a bunch of girls standing around critiquing eachother’s clothing choices. I got walked in on three different times when I was changing, and finally got fed up enough that I stood with my back against the door to keep them out.  

I came home and binged, after going most of the day without eating. I just ate and ate, only for the feeling. Some kind of satisfaction, even if it was a sad, primitive kind that was only momentary. Afterward I was just annoyed with myself.

Sick Puppies – All The Same, What Are You Looking For.

Interesting this band made a Youtube video for fun and it shot them into stardom!

I spent lunch today at a talk by David Bollier focusing on how to govern (or manage // semantics) the digital commons. His premise, more or less, is:

1. There now exists a digital commons not that different from the commons from way back when. Whereas villagers once benefited from a shared space for, say, sheep grazing, Internet users now benefit from shared code and media (among other things).
2. Commons have to be maintained and protected (see “tragedy of the commons”). What Bollier was interested in was less the shared space and more the norms and relationships that allowed users of the commons to protect it and not abuse it.
3. After giving numerous examples of how people did so for the regular commons, how do we do so for the digital commons?

Just goes to show that few things are new — we’re just changing the scale and tweaking the metaphors is all.

His set up suggests the answer to his question. The way you protect the digital commons is to build the digital equivalent of the commonwealth. Actually, his book’s subtitle suggests that too: “How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own“. And all the qualms you might have about real commonwealths basically the same ones you have about the digital ones.

Some things touched upon:

• The concentration of power within commonwealths (hegemons)
• Defending the commonwealth from outsiders
• The tension between openness and security
• The imposition of Western frameworks upon non-Western societies

All very familiar to the Harvard government concentrator.

Funny thing though — for all of the emphasis that this was a “political question”, there were very few politicians (or political scientists) in the room. Make up was primarily lawyers, entrepreneurs, bloggers, and software people. And while that’s a pretty diverse group of people, I got the impression they all share a libertarian anti-establishment egalitarian vibe. // I mean egalitarian in the libertarian sense of the word, obviously.

So when you bring up, say, hegemons and the concentration of power, the response was defensive. “Free open-source communities are democratic.” “This is a problem we need to solve.”

To someone with an international relations background, I think the response would be more ambivalent. Hegemons, for all their abuses, are sometimes seen as guarantors of free trade regimes and relative peace and stability. The accumulation of power allows solutions. The restrictions of some freedoms allows the growth of others. And so on.

There are definitely examples of this in the software / Internet world. Would computer penetration have been nearly so high without the propietary Windows operating system? What would the web be like without Google’s current dominance? Would MP3 players have really taken off had Apple committed to openess on the iPod? Those are tricky counterfactuals.

Yet the motivating idea behind the closest thing to a dominant ideology among “netizens” is “free as in freedom” . The very notion of power and control is antithetical to many of these people — so the answer to the above questions is: Yes, society would be better off if Linux replaced Windows, Google was not so powerful, and Apple never used DRM of any sort.

I’m not really sure where I stand of all of this yet, but I will note this: America was founded on very much a similar notion — the promise of a libertarian, egalitarian, free society that stood in constrast to the bloated, corrupt tyranny of Great Britain whose most notable achievement was being somewhat better than the French.

Who would have though that 230-something years later, America could itself be regarded by some as a bloated, corrupt “evil empire” whose notable achievement was being somewhat better than the Soviets?

// Disclaimer: I like America.

Dette er en av verdens fineste videoer:

<3

New CD Finally Available

We’ve finally done it! The ‘new’ CD that we recorded 6 months ago has finally been pressed. Artwork done, tracks mixed and stuff. It’s looking and sounding good even if we do say so ourselves.

Hot on the heels of this new CD is our new logo, which is almost exactly the same as the old one, but that’s good because the old one was also awesome!

Check out our website for downloads of the artwork and MP3s of the tracks… but for the real thing you’ll have to pop along to one of our shows and pay the lofty sum of £ZERO… that’s right folks, nothing, zilch, gratis… we’re giving it away! What’s your excuse now!?

Pop along to the Tav on 23rd Apr and pick yourself up a slice of rock! Mmm Hmm

Red Lion Rocks Out

Long time no review, I hear you cry… all that’s about to change!

So there we are, minding our own business, passing the time before the gig having a flick through the local paper when we notice a little write-up about our gig! ‘18-hour Ordeal’, they said – cleverly taking our name and juxtaposing it with that of our noble support act for the night, After The Ordeal! We read on and found quite possibly the greatest compliment we’ve ever been paid…

Hours play the kind of rock you might listen to while jumping the Grand Canyon on a monkey-handlebar monster bike in your underpants

Jumping the Grand Canyon? Monkey Handlebar Monster Bike? Underpants?

Yayah!

After the Ordeal did a fine job of warming up the crowd. Alright, their guitarist might be a touch on the daddy-long-legs side of things, but he was obviously enjoying the music and why shouldn’t he. It was a mix of emo and metal that seems quite fashionable and is clearly serving them well as the set out on a tour of the South East! Good luck to ‘em!

As we took to the stage the temperature outside must have dropped 10 degrees as the room filled up nicely.

We opened with User followed by a short, sharp dose of All The Same. It was clear after those two that one of the Stroud brothers (Jonny? Is that big or little Stroud? I have no idea!) had been drinking for some time. He decided Dan L couldn’t quite get through the set without his help and duly started hammering the strings for him. It sounded… okay!

Then it was the new one – Voyeur. Always a nervous moment for us when we realise we probably haven’t rehearsed the song quite enough but it went off without a hitch and we survived!

The rest of the set went just lovely, thanks, and all those who were there seemed to be in the mood for their slice of rock!

Free CDs were handed out to those who stayed to the bitter end and Stevenage was a happier place for it!

Next one is back at the Tav on 23rd Apr. We know you’ll be there!

Juan Mann aka "Free Hug-Man" in Australia

If you don’t live in an over-crowded city, chances are you haven’t encountered a (mostly) young, scruffy individual offering a free hug as you dash into or out of the subway or bus or are racing around the mall. But all around the world, expressions of unity and love are outpouring as more and more people are offering “free hugs”.

Years ago in Australia, Juan Mann found himself returning to his home country a stranger, with no one waiting to welcome him home. He had nothing, least of all what he needed: a hug from someone who was glad to hold him. So he wrote “Free Hugs” on both sides of a piece of cardboard, and a revolution was started. As I sit here, in a Starbucks typing this entry, I’m awash with tears from just having watched the short video documentary. So trust me, take three minutes and check it out:

Just a few weeks ago, an online social networking site I’m a member of, couchsurfing.com, was organizing a free-hug campaign in Union Square. I wasn’t able to make this one, but you’d better believe that at some point I’ll be organizing one of these events!

My friends, today’s guru is Juan Mann… and our mantra is…

We Are All One

It’s easy to forget this, especially when you live in a city where our animalistic aggression comes out more than we’d like it to and even the most yogic of people have moments where they want to stick a foot out and trip someone who’s pissed them off! So let’s remember that, when the chips are down, we’re never alone. The capacity of the human spirit to love and support is unceasing, endless. And, especially for those who often feel isolated in their sickness and suffering, knowing that humanity has your back can make all the difference.

Om Shanti, - Jacqueline

Sources:

• Free Hugs Campaign Official Website!
• Couchsurfing.com
• Free Hug Man in Australia: Article
• Campaign in London in 2005 using hugs to counter-balance election stress

Boa Música!

Maybe it’s the mood I’m in lately but I’m thinking about scrubbing at least this blog from the ionosphere, maybe Gentle Voice too, maybe amalgamating the two. 

Maybe it’s because Spring is just around the corner and I’m hungry for change.   Maybe the simple truth is that I’ve come to the realisation again (as in 2006 when I withdrew from all web writing) that life is just way too short for this kind of navel gazing.  

Or maybe, just maybe, I’m being petulent again – it has been known …once or twice.  Anyhoo, if I apparently disappear off the face of the earth some day soon you won’t be surprised, but you can at least rest back on your laurels, happy in the knowledge that the reason will be as clear to you as it is to me!

You can’t put a plaster on your heart,
Can’t you?

Sometimes,
A hug is all that we need.

บางครั้ง,
เราก็เพียงแค่ต้องการอ้อมกอดของใครสักคน

I’d been living in London when my world turned upside down and I’d had to come home. By the time my plane landed back in Sydney, all I had left was a carry on bag full of clothes and a world of troubles. No one to welcome me back, no place to call home. I was a tourist in my hometown.

Everyone has problems and for sure mine haven’t compared. But to see someone who was once frowning, smile even for a moment, is worth it every time.

I think,
this is the best music video
because it’s real and it’s touching
all the same

Happy Valentine’s Day

p.s.
Tomorrow,
if you see someone wearing Free Hug T-Shirt,
that’s me.

Notes
- “When your body hurts, you can put plaster on your wound. But when it is inside. You can’t put a plaster on your heart, can’t you?” Quote I got from Tape; one of her lovehurtsproject subject said it during interview.
- Other quotes came from Free Hugs Campaign Official Site
- The song playing is “All the Same” by Sick Puppies

The other day my wife and I went to the movies and saw these four posters all hanging in a row.

I don’t mind where you come from
As long as you come to me
But I don’t like illusions I can’t see
Them clearly
I don’t care, no I wouldn’t dare
To fix the twist in you
You’ve shown me eventually what you’ll do
I don’t mind
I don’t care
As long as you’re here

Go ahead and tell me you’ll leave again
You’ll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It’s all the same
And I’ll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It’s all the same

Hours slide and days go by
Till you decide to come
But in-between it always seems too long
Suddenly
But I have the skill, yeah
I have the will, to breath you in while I can
However long you stay is all that I am

I don’t mind, I don’t care
As long as you’re here

Go ahead and tell me you’ll leave again
You’ll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It’s all the same
And I’ll take you for who you are
If you take me for everything
And do it all over again
It’s always the same

Wrong or Right
Black or White
If I close my eyes
It’s all the same

In my life
The compromise
I’ll close my eyes
It’s all the same

Go ahead say it
You’re leaving
You’ll just come back running
Holding your scarred heart in hand
It’s all the same
And I’ll take you for who you are now
If you take me for everything
Do it all over again
It’s all the same