System Switch

System Switch

In 1991, an interviewer from the music magazine Rolling Stone asked rock/folk legend Bob Dylan if he was happy after all of his successes in the music industry. The aged singer replied, “Happy is a Yuppie Word”. This is the premise for the alternate-inspirational band Switchfoot’s newest album Nothing is Sound. This San Diego originated band came from a largely surfing culture, thus their name is a surfing term. To a surfer, when you switch your feet on your board, you have a new perspective on the wave, and have a slightly different way of surfing when your feet are switched. The band took this to show how they have a slightly different outlook on life than most bands and artists in the music industry. Responsible for earlier hits such as “Meant to Live, Dare You to Move, and the Beautiful Letdown”, this band has risen to incorporate a much broader audience. Recorded mainly on the road on their seemingly never ending tours, Nothing is Sound has a more improvised feel to most of their other albums such as Learning to Breathe, New Way to be Human and the Beautiful Letdown. The lead singer of Switchfoot, Jon Foreman, ran with this Dylan quote, even writing a song by the same name to have this new album revolve around this thoughtful statement. From this originating seed, an album grew. Attempting to debunk all the normal accepted values of our western American society, Switchfoot talks about how cookie cutter our society has become, from commercialization to the corruption of politicians in our day and age. Even though this usually progressive band attempts to progress their music to a more global level, I believe their music does not progress very much from when their last album, the Beautiful Letdown. While their lyrics may stray from Letdown, their vocals and instrumental portions still sound very similar to their previous album. A few songs progress their musical style, such as the vocal and acoustic Blues and edgy rock single Stars, however only Daisy comes close to their usual standard on this album. The things that make these songs stand out is oftentimes their lyrics, which talk about the members of Switchfoot and their spiritual lives, it is also created to make people think about their lives and introspect. The music, especially Politicians in this album, is also to make people think about the world that surround them and the ways in which they can improve it.
Another new rock album that discusses in their music the hypocrisy our society is System of a Down’s new album, Mezmerize. This heavier rock band’s previous album, Toxicity, also discussed this theme, however many believe Mezmerize does this to greater and more profound effect. Songs about the never-ending scandal slideshow that is the televised media song, Violent Pornography uses a gratuitous metaphor to get across System’s views on how the media has become sensationalist. Anti-war songs such as B.Y.O.B. and Sad Statue compliment the rest of the album, adding to the anti-societal gist of Mezmerize. Lost in Hollywood also adds to this theme, however it is more analyzing the Hollywood and music industry of our age and how it has the tendency to corrupt people, both artists and audiences.
Both these alternate-Rock bands add a slightly different slant to the normal boundaries of what rock has evolved into today. Though vastly different in vocal and instrumental styles, both offer a different view of life than many other bands on the modern music industry.

Walking

Brothers,

Ok.....so I emailed that dark poem Anderson to the teacher who does the literary magazine at my school. It bounces back because the email on our school system was broken. A sort of sign, I think, kind of like, God tryna tell me to rewrite, slightly less angry....because I'm all bout the fileo...and Anderson was a little to angry at myself. So yea, I'm gonna reuse from lines from Anderson, but this is be a better poem.

God Bless
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Walking

Sitting out on the sidelines,
Outside of society's guidelines,
Alone; rolling through town,
Shy; not making a sound,
Those lonely days have passed,
My solitude constricts me like a steel cast,
Fed up with cold brick walls,
You'll hear my voice ricoocheting from these high school halls,
I can't take this solitude anymore,
I'll come thundering down like the mythological Thor,
Some things I did in the past were wrong,
This is why I'm singing this remorseful song,
My jail bars burst open,
I was tired of all the self mopin',
My anxious energy was used for evil deeds,
Then angels began planting the right seeds,
The darkness rolled back,
After a giant spiritual thundercrack,
I stepped through the door,
To a place I'd never truly been before,
A man stands there and smiles,
He pushes my wrongs away in piles,
He knows I'm not accepted on this earth,
He knows why I've cried to him since deformed birth,
He sees through this school,
How all the girls and boys can be cruel,
When theres a bunch of flowers near a cactus,
If they speak; the flowers lose their social status,
His minions send us dreams,
We see birght ethereal gleams,
Through him I'm spitting rhymes,
I'm jumping over this caste system's borderlines,
I'm the resident cripple,
And I'm starting a righteous ripple,
I still can see that man outside my gate,
He and I are linked by fate,
He knows my every thought,
He knows that in the wrong things I have sought,
He understands my deepest desires,
That sometimes I get caught in the meaningless crossfires,
I've been discarded by the discarded,
I can't believe that some of you even speculate if I'm retarded
Perhaps it's cuz I am,
I flirt like a battering ram,
Nobody seems to listen,
Perhaps they'll see his holy sword glisten,
I've found a reason to decree
That I want to be; his strong and fruitful tree,
I let in the sunlight,
My savior's given me his sight,
In a moment all sins I commited fades away,
And I'm waiting for that beutiful day,
When I am no longer desperately stalking,
When I'll be strolling down the mountain, walking, walking, walking....

Lovelorn

Lovelorn

An overcast sky hung over a small suburban main street, casting a gray aura on the bustling sidewalk and road. Pedestrians hurried along the pavement, some with small children following them, others with bags of shopping dangling from their flustered arms. Cars passed by the pavement, their wheels rolling over a steaming tarmac of the road. A summer storm was inevitable, almost as if teasing the thirsty village. Clouds seemed to tumble over each other, a jumble of darkness threatening the earth, almost as if trying to oppress the usual happiness of summer. A tension filled the town, as the storm tried to snap out of its slumber.
I shuffled down the street uncomfortably, the heat enveloping me in a bubble of exhaustion. My bones stuck together in the humidity, almost as If glued to my sides. I fondly passed by all the store signs that I had long since memorized. The wooden boards read things like: George’s hardware store, and Blue Sun cosmetics. The bakery had its menu for the day scrawled onto an easel chalkboard, and I attempted to picture a Great Wall of Chocolate.
Turning the corner on the edge of the street, I got a glimpse of green. Frozen, I could hear my heart begin to thump like the dinner bell in a jail. I knew I could not be mistaken, their standing in the center of the sidewalk serenely, was radiance herself. She was gazing at a bird flying around up in the overcast sky, her amber eyes perusing the bird swooping and diving. Her perfectly tan skin contrasted the dullness of the day, causing my palms to become clammy uncontrollably. She truly was a unicorn among the mundane horses that were other girls.
I continued my slow and steady gait down the pavement, daring not to breathe so close to her. I wished that she would at least wave to me, but her mind was on other things. Every time I saw her, my body seemed to go into temporary shock. I wanted to say hi or at least wave to her, but my throat was dried up and my arm stayed stubbornly to my side.
Passing her by without a word, I inwardly seethed at my shyness. Trapped into being her distant admirer, I wondered if I could ever bring up the nerve to greet her. Knowing that this would never be, I accepted my caged circumstances. Disappointment boiled up within me, as the heat engulfed me…

The Chronicles of Gimp (Edited version)

Dear Brothers,

Here is a story I wrote for my creative writing class. The assignment was to develop a character. So i did, heavily based on me Enjoy

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David Blundell

The Chronicles of Gimp

Klingon Proverb: “Pa’ ghati ghobe’ quv Daq’, There is no honor in self-pity.”
Life really can really take a toll sometimes. You feel like you’ll collapse if you take another step. No pun intended. Things seem to pile on top of you so that you feel like a suffocated Tribble. Sometimes you wish you could be beamed out of the suburban apocalypse you call your life.
That was the feeling I got…again…one day in late August. The sun was beating down as usual, causing me to sweat profusely as I rolled down a cracked and well-used sidewalk. My chair was once again in its never-ending state of brokenness, and my engine whined constantly as if it were C-3PO. I arrived at my destination, the local food mart as the sun began to falter slightly at four o’clock in the afternoon. Han Solo in the falcon would be hard pressed to beat the time I had just made it from my house to the mart, I thought to myself gleefully. There I go geeking out again…
Wheeling myself into the mart, I was refreshed from the sweltering heat outside by air conditioners that flooded the mart with a breeze akin to paradise on a day like this. A cool feeling enveloped my substantial girth, as I made toward my most frequented aisle. A gaggle of giggling girls from my high school passed me by, not even acknowledging my existence as they strode down the aisle, their manicured bodies glistening in the artificial light. Being at belly-button level had its advantages, at least.
Halting at the candy aisle, I smiled as my eyes purveyed the luscious Mars Bars and Twinkies. Looking up at the rows upon rows of unopened bars, I swore under my breath. Typical! My favorite bar, Milky Way, was just inches out of my reach. I fervently wished I were force-sensitive. You will come down; I thought at the bar, waving my hand frantically; but it just stayed where it was as if mocking my attempt to claim it.
Settling for the M&M’s that were just below the Milky Way, I hurried to the checkout counter. A middle aged woman was right in front of me in the checkout line, her glasses almost slipping off her prominent nose. I struggled to retrieve the money that was in the back pocket of my shorts. The woman turned to me and saw that I was having trouble retrieving it. Snatching the bag of M&M’s from my deformed hand, she slapped it on the counter and pulled a dollar from her own wallet. “I’ll pay for that, enjoy these!” she said, trotting out of the mart before I could thank her.
The man behind the counter shrugged and passed me the candy bag. Crashing into the door angrily, I rolled out into the still-blazing heat. Why do people do that? I thought angrily to myself. I realized that she was trying to be kind, but sometimes I wish people wouldn’t be so generous to me as they are. Glancing at the disabled spaces outside the mart, I glared at the white figure etched into each of the blue signs. Not all of us have a big ass like that!
Words soon began to whirl around in my head like a hurricane of insecurity. I screamed to God, wishing that he would hear my bitter cries. I wished I could be a Kirk, destroying foes left and right. I guess it was not meant to be. Anger still raged through me as I rambled on down the road, thinking of bubbles and stars. The only consoling thought that ran through my mind as I gazed out at the pink sky was that a Stairway led to heaven….