Thursday, December 16, 2010

Great program for getting rid of crap!



The wonderful PC Decrapifier is what I used to get rid of those pesky "trial has expired" things that pop up when I sign into my user account. Here is the Download


Another great program that actually saved my life is called . Last semester I was doing a 10 page critical analysis, when all of the sudden...Error! File not found! So I typed "recover deleted files" into Google and Bam! I found this great program called Recuva. Here is the download




A little word of caution for PCD: Use caution when selecting what programs to uninstall. If you don't know what you are doing, you could accidentally delete some important files.

I give both of these programs my utmost seal of approval :)

Monday, December 13, 2010

10 WORST Songs ever written!

I was really contemplating the worst songs ever written.  Most of them were written in the 90's. I couldn't find the heart to include many 80's songs on this list because those songs were comically bad. I mean, just look at what people wore back then...


So here it is, the 10 WORST songs ever written. Just think. I actually had to relisten to ALL of these songs just so I could relish how awful they are.

10. Aaron Carter: "Come get it"

Anything Aaron Carter is just poison to the ears but this might just take the cake. Here's a nice lyrical sample:

Then walked in
The girl I'm crushin'
And the kid spilled juice
On my Mom's new cushion

I turned around and
Another kid broke the lamp
(I hope they weren't expensive)
They got them from France
For now I won't sweat it
I'll clean it up later
There's a honey over there
And I really wanna meet her

You know you've listened to a terrible song when somebody tries to rhyme "there" with "her." He was only 12 when he wrote this (Did he write this himself?), so that's why he's only #10. Now he's 23.

9. Toby Keith "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue"

I have to say, I strongly dislike country music in general. It's just chockful of nationalistic, jingoistic bullshit that makes me wince and go "pfffftish." This song is a case study of everything that is wrong with country music. Right now (as I'm typing this) I'm watching the video on Youtube and reading the always entertaining Youtube comments. This is just a sample of thought that bubbles up in the minds of your diehard Toby Keith fan:

Warning - God Is Going To Judge America - Unless You Repent You Will Be Like Sodom and Gommora - Unless You Turn Back To God You Will Be Like Sodom and Gommora - Unless You Repent You Will Be Very Sorry for your sins - and you will beg and beg and plead and weep and mourn - and you will have just started those of you who end up in the Lake of fire - Hell is No Joke and Your Soul Is No Joke - wake up and Turn rom Sin and Live For The One Who Died For You - Repent and Get Right With God 

Indeed.

If you find yourself in the need of puking, you can watch the video on Youtube. In the video, You'll find  the use of soldiers and veterens to push what is mostly a political agenda.
"We'll stick a boot in your ass/It's the American Way." So let's just go ahead and start some morewars and try to justify them by saying the troops "fought for our freedoms." I don't know if this song was made after 9/11, or to the buildup to Iraq. I guess I understand if it was the former, considering it was right after we got attacked, but Iraq was such a fucking joke. I'm not even going to go on any further about the politics of this song, because this post wasn't meant to be political in the first place. Country music sucks, Toby Keith sucks. Enough said.

8. Collective Soul: "Heaven let your light Shine down"

This song is 4:40 seconds of repetitive boring stupidity. And if you thought the song was boring, the music video is like doubly boring. The song does however get interrupted by and OK guitar solo. I really hate it when the singer keeps going "Yea!" like a drunken beard-sporting Harley-Davidson enthusiast-in between what is one of the stupidest guitar riffs of all time.

7. Robbie Williams "Millenium"

This is the song that starts off like this:

Some say that we are players
Some say that we are pawns
but we've been making money since the day that we were born

Besides being a really dreadful song, it's the fact that this song became obselete in 2001. Sure, it was the Millenium, (and those don't come by too often) but there were so many other songs that referenced the year 2000. Although I don't listen to the radio much, any song that mentions a specific time stops getting played once that time elapsed. In this case for the better:

live for liposuction
and detox for your rent
overdose at Christmas
and give it up for lent
my friends are all so cynical
refuse to keep the faith
we all enjoy the madness cause we know we're gonna to fade away
Fade away Robbie. Fade away...

6. "Ice Ice Baby" Vanilla Ice

Ok, I admit it. I got the CD from a grab bag at Bullmoose. So I decided to listen to it. It is what I would call aesthetically horrid. If you want a great experience, then throw in Vanilla Ice and listen to the full CD. After, take your favorite CD and put it in. Much Better! When this song became popular, he didn't even credit Queen or David Bowie after stealing the bassline and piano intro for "Under Pressure." What a douche. If  you really want to know what an awful musician he is, check out the video (embed not working at this time, so just type it in youtube)


5. "Make 'em say UGH!" Master P

Judging by this song, the "P" in Master P's pseudonym must stand for "poop." The song sounds like this guy needs some Exlax, and fast. It goes "Make 'em say UGH! Da na na nah!" I don't know what the second part means and I don't think I want to.

When you see a guy with a tattoo of an ice-cream holding a gun, you know he doesn't fuck around!

4. "I'm so Paid" Akon

This song pulls out all the stops. Too much auto-tune, stupid lyrics, and it's just annoying in general. One of my co-workers at one of my former jobs put this song on repeat. So I kinda learned to not like it. It's also the same as mostly every other rap/hip-hop song. Hustlin', bein' a badass, and bein' ill in the ride. Also usin' words that be needin' an '

3. "Smooth" Matchbox 20

When I decided to make this list. This is one of those songs that I knew would be in the top 3. It's so overplayed and I nearly break my dial trying to avoid hearing this song for the 99,000,000th time. And what a waste of  reputation for Santana! Known as one of the greatest guitarists in the world, and he works on a song like this? Unbelievable. Almost any Matchbox 20 song should be on a list like this, but this... This is just pure dread.

2. Most of Nickelback's songs (Except "If Everyone Cared" which is actually OK)

Nickelback is responsible for the death of modern rock. End of story. This is where I stopped listening to "Alternative Rock" radio nearly entirely. It was the deathblow as far as I'm concerned. Nickelback is so awful, that there are even conspiracy theories as to how bad they are. I don't believe them (but I would like to!). Here's one that has gotten a lot of attention:

"What you people don't seem to realize is that Nickelback is performance-art pranksterism. A practical joke perpetrated on the public. Chad Kroeger is actually a painter and musician from New York. He was in an avant-garde noise rock band called " Fingerprince " from 1991 to 1993. In 1995 he hired 3 actor/musicians for a project where they would imitate terrible music and through various connections in the art and music world, gain international fame. Chad originally intended to use the profits to fund an LSD manufacturing laboratory based in Alberta, Canada. However, they underestimated how positively the public would react towards their music. I have learned,through a reliable source who knows Kroeger personally, that the band plans to stage a plane crash a la Buddy Holly sometime in 2011 before the release of their next album."

WORST: "Dessert Rose" by Sting

"I dream of raaayyyyaaa--- aay--ay-aaaaayyyyyn!" Every time I hear that, I want to pull out my hair and plug my ears with it. Not only is he a terrible singer in this song (He actually made decent songs when he was singer of The Police) but there's this lady also chanting middle eastern sounding awfulness.

                                 Somebody get this guy a water! His vocal chords are fried!

There were so many other contenders for this list. I don't think I would've included Vanilla Ice had he not ripped off Queen and Bowie (because seriously, Ice is a joke and therefore falls under "comically bad"). I kind of want to make another list JUST for these types. We could have LFO (I like girls who where Abercrombie and Fitch) duke it out with Spin Doctors (Just go ahead now!). The possibilities are endless.

Monday, December 6, 2010

I've never seen such an assault on the Press. My thoughts on Wikileaks

It's sad that even Ellen Degeneres out of all people is jumping on the Wikileaks-hatin' bandwagon. Today she referred to it as "very bad" what they are doing. I also imagined the freakout from the far-right and National "Security" war-hawks. This is exemplified by calls from Mike Huckabee (who currently holds the lowest rated show on FOX "News" after losing his bid for president) calling for Julian Assange's (wikileaks founder and editor) assassination.

Mike Huckabee: "Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason. And I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty."

and Caribou Barbie chips in on the action:

Sarah Palin: 'Assange is not a "journalist," any more than the "editor" of al Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a "journalist."

'He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.

It's funny that all these Tea Party Patriots- in all their skepticism of "Big government" are being so vicious to the same people exposing the injustices of our government. Cognitive Dissonance? A trademark of right-wing warhawks.

Some of the more interesting cables released have to deal with the populist movement in Latin America. After being raped and pillaged by the US and other colonial powers for the longest time-they are now trying to move towards integration, which is a precursor towards independence. It seems that Colombia is the only staunch US ally left in the region.

The cables also shed more light on our support for a dictator known as Manuel Noriega, who has been on the CIA Payroll from the late 1950's to the mid 1980's and a graduate of the School of the Americas (known as the "School of Assassins" by many, because other dictators and coup leaders were trained at this American military facility, which is still in operation near Fort Benning, Georgia. The name has been changed to WHINISEC, possibly to confuse people, I guess)

According to a document obtained by Wikileaks:

THE OPPOSITION LEADERSHIP QUIETLY
HOPES THAT CLANDESTINE (AND OTHER) U.S. ACTION,
POSSIBLY COUPLED WITH ANOTHER COUP WILL REMOVE
NORIEGA.

Apparently, we have to be the policemen of the world. The Noriega case is an interesting one because we enthusiastically supported him, and it wasn't until we found out that he was helping Cuba get around the embargo, and helping the Sandanista fighters in Nicaragua-- that we actually decided to do something.Oh yea, and he trafficked drugs. So it was totally worth vaporizing 500 Panamanians over.Don't get me wrong, Noriega was was a terrible guy. He sent "dignity batallions" to beat up people protesting against him. But the United states supported him when it knew he was doing this bad stuff! It's funnywhen we hear about other countries' human rights violations when those countries do things we don't like.Well, onto other nuggets from Wikileaks:

Russian arms sales are consequential, totaling approximately USD 6.7 billion in 2006,according to official figures. This amount reflects a 12 percent increase over 2005,and a 56 percent increase since 2003.

...As former Deputy Prime Minister and senior member of the Duma Defense Committee Anatoliy Kulikov told us, “Russia makes very bad cars, but very good weapons,”

Some of these documents are quite interesting to read.

Moreover, what does it say about us when people at the top of our government are thinking about invoking the Espionage Act of 1914 to try to silence Wikileaks?

Well, people are finally starting to rise up. And people are finally starting to "get it." Glenn Greenwald for example:

...But that sort of legal scheming isn't even necessary.  The U.S. and its "friends" in the Western and business worlds are more than able and happy to severely punish anyone they want without the slightest basis in "law."  That's what the lawless, Wild Western World is:  political leaders punishing whomever they want without any limits, certainly without regard to bothersome concepts of "law." Anyone who doubts that should just look at what has been done to Wikileaks and Assange over the last week.  In this series of events, there are indeed genuine and pernicious threats to basic freedom and security; they most assuredly aren't coming from WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.
People often have a hard time believing that the terms "authoritarian" and "tyranny" apply to their own government, but that's because those who meekly stay in line and remain unthreatening are never targeted by such forces.  The face of authoritarianism and tyranny reveals itself with how it responds to those who meaningfully dissent from and effectively challenge its authority:  do they act within the law or solely through the use of unconstrained force?

Wired Magazine (which is a fairly mainstream publication) is actually saying Wikileaks is good for America.

Adbusters Magazine (which I will be discussing in other blogs, because I read them a lot)gives us the rallying cry we need:

"Suddenly we’re at a pivotal moment.Wikileaks is exposing the corruption among the global power elites on a level never seen before. They realize that this is an existential threat to them and are starting to apply the full weight of the CIA, Espionage Act, etc., to nip this thing in the bud. Don’t let them get away with it! An opportunity like this comes once in a lifetime. So let’s seize it! Let’s all become whistle blowers, let’s all start talking truth to power and, over the next few months, change forever the way the world does business."

Hacktivists of the world UNITE!

oh yea, and as I'm typing this, Wikileaks has 932,472 Facebook 'likes'! 

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Show memories/Really Great Band

Seeing NOFX, Bad Religion, and Anti-Flag play one right after the other, was one of the best musical experiences I've ever had. I thought I'd dig up this sweet NOFX song about my good ol' neighboring state that they played live for the first time at Warped Tour. Enjoy!




 As far as "newer" bands go: The Dopamines are the best pop-punk band with all original members. Here's a taste if you live under a rock and haven't heard of them yet. Their "Expect the Worst" CD is probably going to end up being my favorite CD of the year.

First Post! Oh Boyz!

Hello fellow punkers/radicals/geeks/hackers/hellraisers of the world! This blog is called "PunkITechs" and as the name might suggest, this blog is about music, politics, and technology. But even more than that! Art, poetry, writing, culture etc. I'm new to this whole "blogging" thing, but no doubt you will be hearing from me a lot more! CD reviews, rants, DIY projects, and many other things that will make you happy you came across this little hole in the wall. In the meantime, I'm just gonna do a little explorin' of the landscape of this new platform that I am currently unfamiliar with. Until next post... Chao!