General

Empire (1990) aged like milk

Like a lot of people, in 1990 I bought Queensryche’s fourth album, Empire, because the song “Silent Lucidity” was such an effective clone of that big, spacey Pink Floyd sound. I’ve said before that if you dropped the song onto either of the post-Waters Pink Floyd albums, no one would have batted an eye.

But Empire is more than just “Silent Lucidity”. It also features the title track, which is about the usual decline of urban America, its descent into violence and guns, guns, guns (“Got an AK-47 for his best friend/Business the American way1“).

But there’s a spoken word section that recites the following:

In fiscal year of 1986 to 1987, local, state and federal governments spent a combined total of 60.6 million on law enforcement. Federal law expenditures ranked last in absolute dollars and accounted for only a sixth percent of federal spending. By way of comparison, the federal government spent 24 million more on space exploration and 43 -times- more on national defense and international relations than law enforcement.

This seems like a pretty clear statement of “more funding for police = better!”, which was naive in 1990 and in 2026, with police in most American cities being very well-funded, and ICE terrorizing citizens, the reality is that well-funded law enforcement has created a de facto police state in America. And solved none of the issues that the song “Empire” speaks to. Whoops.

But “Silent Lucidity” is still a very nice Pink Floyd homage.

  1. If the lyrics had been more openly sarcastic, they would have worked better, but that might be just me. ↩︎

A thing that shouldn’t annoy me, but does (pods)

Lately I’ve noticed people shortening the word podcast to just pod. I understand the reasoning–a podcast originally referred to an audio program meant to be played on an iPod (kids, ask your parents) but with the iPod dead and buried, if not forgotten (I still have two) I can see why people might want to use a different term now. And this is before you get into what even counts as a podcast now, since a lot of them are now also on platforms like YouTube, where they are…videos.

Still, “pod” bugs me because it still retains the “pod” part of “iPod”, which seems to me to be the part you’d want to replace. But mainly it just sounds just too twee (yes, I have a kind of twee meter in my head that tells me when something crosses the “too twee” line) and doesn’t really make sense because peas are in pods, not people talking to each other. Also:

Podcast > Pod

Broadcast > Broad

If the latter becomes accepted usage, I will embrace pod.

My first Blaugust 2026 post

My first official™ post for Blaugust 2026 comes with me at a crossroads when it comes to blogging.

A few years back I began exploring options to move away from WordPress, which started as a blogging platform but has evolved into something that does way more than what is needed for a simple blog with words and images.

Also, the head of WP started making…interesting public statements and committing actions that left me uncertain about the platform’s future.

I explored many different sites and platforms, and several came close, but always lacked something. I admit I am a fussy person, and it may be impossible to fully satisfy me. WordPress works, not because it’s exactly what I want, but it gives me flexibility to bend it to my vision, such as it is.

But it’s also complicated, and much of its UI and way of accomplishing tasks are things I’ve simply grown used to and tolerated, never enjoyed.

And now, with seemingly everything tech-related going up in my price, my Dreamhost unlimited plan is seeing a significant price increase, no doubt to move me over to one of the limited plans (the unlimited plan is already no longer an option for new customers). This huge price increase has rekindled my interest in thinking how and where I blog.

More thoughts on this soon–my billing renews on August 15th, so I’ll have to commit to some course of action by then, even if it’s just paying the increased cost of sticking with the Dreamhost unlimited plan.

(I will quickly add that I very recently saw a reference to Pure Blog on Mastodon [somewhat hilariously, I initially misread it as Purple Blog and was a bit disappointed that’s not the actual name] and it’s intrigued me. It looks like it’s Static Site Generator software, but tailored more specifically for blogging. I also feel like I’m more willing to get “to the metal” again with CSS and the like now than I was in the past. Anyway, what I’m saying is I’m actively looking for new options and this is one of them!)

Meanwhile, I remain as cool and collected as typing cat.

#blaugust

Litter pickup and watering crows

A while back I decided to use a picker and go out and occasionally pick up the bits of litter around our condo complex. One of those “If you want something done, do it yourself” things that has become a primary philosophy of mine. I usually do every Sunday and other days as needed, covering most of the complex and the sidewalks.

Today’s haul looked like this:

Not visible: About a thousand cigarette butts

I also watered some of the trees in the heritage courtyard this afternoon using a hose with a spring-loaded nozzle (the only way to water with Stage 3 water restrictions in effect). Shortly after I started a crow showed up and stood just inside the range of the water, lapping it up as it fell down on her/him. Eventually three other crows joined in, drinking from the small puddles that eventually formed, showering under the spray, or even attempting a bath in one of the bigger puddles. It was cute. Hopefully these crows won’t attack me now when I enter their turf.

Anyway, this is what I post when I can’t think of anything else. Hopefully my brain will be more inventive moving forward.

My mind has been mindless

Sometimes I post a flurry of nonsense and other times my mind just rattles around, shrugs and says, “I dunno!”

The last few days it’s been doing the latter. I can’t say why these things happen when they do–I could probably write a bestselling self-help book if I figured it out–but it’s been persistent, if intermittent, since I was old enough to scribble mostly inside the lines.

In celebration of finally posting some nonsense, albeit not a flurry of it, here is, of course, typing cat.

Billy Joel, 1993: What did he know?

In the opening track “No Man’s Land” on Billy Joel’s last album, River of Dreams, is the line:

I’ve seen the children with their boredom and their vacant stares 

This immediately brought to mind people staring at their smartphones and scrolling endlessly through social media (which admittedly is a problem not just affecting The Youths, but everyone). The thing is, the album and song came out in 1993, which is 33 years ago as I write this.

1993 effectively predates the internet (as the public knows it) and predates social media and smart device addiction by decades.

Which makes me wonder, what did Joel know back then? Or was 1993 a lot worse than I remember?

1993, per Wikipedia.