Snapped Shot

I've got an early-morning appointment tomorrow morning that will have me away from the computer until later, so until then, I figured I'd share some musical discoveries with you. I'll hopefully be back early in the afternoon!

For the longest time, I had thought that rock on radio was dead. Most of the stuff that I have heard lately was the same old grunge "too cool for the room" garbage that's been playing since '93. So it's much to my surprise to discover that there are two bands out there that have single-handedly resurrected the genre!

The first band, The Automatic (known here in the United States as "The 'Automatic' Automatic" for copyright reasons), truly get the Rules of Rock Radio:

1. Keep it Simple Come up with short, pithy lyrics, and repeat them often. The catchier your hook, the better the song!

2. Don't Be Preachy The hallmark of "Grunge" rock is a tireless festival of preaching, be it about ending war, or about the environment. We get it already! It doesn't get any more original or urgent if you've been preaching the same junk for 10 years. The thing is, the best rock songs ever played on the radio don't really say all that much.

3. Harmony It's not just the name of some stoner hippie chick from back in your parents' era: if your songs include a touch of harmony, they'll go a long way to becoming timeless. I think the Beatles have proven this rule well enough, at least before they became drug-addled old men.

I highly recommend that you hop on over to Amazon (see the above-right box thingy) and pick their album up immediately. You won't be putting it down anytime soon, if you truly enjoy a dose of good old-fashioned yet somehow quite modern radio rock.

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Virginia's Pride and Joy: Mile High School

I'm very proud to say that the second band I'm sharing with you hails from my very own Commonwealth of Virginia, from historic Yorktown and places thereabout. These guys rock. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that these guys are the best band to come from Virginia since John Smith still lurked around these parts! We ran into Mile High School at the Automatic Automatic's concert in D.C. this past weekend, and they are totally ready for radio rock. In fact, don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself: If you are a fan of classic radio rock, give the following track a try. I promise you'll like it!



If you do like it, be sure to hop on over and check out more on their site. Their first album, Life of the Party, is available for preorder, and is scheduled to be released sometime in September. If you enjoy supporting up-and-coming Virginian artists, I can't think of a more deserving bunch than these guys!

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I hope y'all have enjoyed this little diversion from our ordinary fare! Feel free to chime in down in the comments and let me know what you think, or if you know of any other bands that are ready to resurrect radio rock!

I'm sure their healthcare is world class...

(As an aside, my apologies for the light blogging this week. I hope to be back to my regular programming as soon as my schedule clears up a bit!)

Alright, so it's not exactly a fair poll, since it would seem that only Alexa rankings are included, and it excludes such giants as Ace of Spades and My Pet Jawa, but still—American Conservative says it's so, and I'm not one to argue with it!

And yes, I do realize that being amongst the "Top 50 Conservative Political Websites" means I have roughly the same name recognition as anyone who's ever worked with Pauly Shore, so you don't have to worry about anything going to my head any time soon!

I've gotta be honest here: A diplomatic office is truly the only place that I would have ever expected to see this assault on the visual senses.

Alas, fellow proletariat, Comrade Kim is not ill after all! As proof, allow me to offer this photograph of Dear Leader Generalissimo Kim participating in the People's Free And Honest Electoral Process:



And now, back to our Productive People's Work!

Thanks to Phill's quick work, Snapped Shot is now up and running on the new server. As far as I can tell, everything's working normally, but who knows what kinds of creatures are lurking underneath the hood. As always, be sure to let me know if you run into anything that doesn't look right—other than the pic on my bio, which always looks somewhat odd. Entirely understandable, considering the subject.

I'd like to take a moment to offer a special thank you to Phill, who continues to provide all of the support that keeps Snapped Shot up and running. In case you weren't already aware of it, the banner ads here at the site are split between the two of us—with a large majority of the revenue generated by our traffic going to Phill. I won't go so far as to violate Google's terms-of-service, but just keep that little tidbit in the back of your head in case you ever see a banner that looks like it might be of interest to you. I'm not going to push you either way, though!

Additionally, our friend Phill just happens to be a photographer himself, offering a number of professional photographic services in the southeastern United States. If you happen to be in the rough vicinity of anywhere from New Orleans to Tallahassee, be sure to give Phill a ring and see if there's something he can do to help make your special occasion that much more memorable.

Phill, our friendly sysadmin, has written to inform me that the server that Snapped Shot is on will be moving within the next week or so. As a result, I'm in the process of moving things off to another one of Phill's computers now. If it seems like things are awfully quiet around here, or if the server acts a little bit "odd" over the next few days, don't sweat it—we'll be back to normal shortly!

Mahmoud's trying on his scaaaaaary face.

Thanks to Najia Myrtus for this hilarity!

Such a happy couple!

The man behind the camera lens is not always your friend, as these Israeli settlers know all too well.

Reuters seems to have had a bit of difficulty covering the Tour de France this year. The story is as amazing as the photos:

It would appear that the Libyan shakedown is complete. After having its debts over the past 60 years forgiven, and potentially an "unnamed" cash payout, the six medics wrongfully convicted of infecting Libyan children with AIDS and sentenced to death have been released, and are now home in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Continue reading »

You'll recall that Israel released 255 "Palestinian" prisoners on Friday, an opportunity for the "Palestinians" to participate in a massive festival of propaganda.



Fast-forward to today, and notice how the tone is:



Now, it's important to point out that the top picture, of the prisoners being released, is of released terrorists peace-lovers from the "moderate" killers of Fatah, whereas the bottom picture comes from the "extreme" bloodthirsty killers of Hamas. From this, we learn that the Hamas response to Israel's release of "non-violent" Fatah prisoners is to yell, shout, scream, march, and cajole the international press until Hamas has a "Me Too!" prisoner release all its own.

It's not like these types of temper tantrums are unusual for the Palestinians. After all, it's the only form of "dialogue" in their vocabulary.

It'll be interesting to see how long this persists before Israel caves in the next time.