The Refinery

Looking For The Very Best In Opinion Manipulation? Try CNN! Now With Added Bias!

Tonight I read the very first article that CNN has featured as a lead-in story on Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson. The headline for the article was "Why is Gary Johnson Still Running" and pretty much just hammers the man for two supposed gaffes:

1) He could not name a single world leader, or specifically a current leader in the Americas, that he admired, and 2) that he did not immediately recognize the name of the Syrian city of Aleppo when asked how he would help the besieged city,

The first sentence of the article, BTW, was "Gary Johnson is the new punching bag of the 2016 campaign."

Those bits, the ones that take entirely out of context a thinking man's need to actually ponder a question, give it real thought and consideration and not just reply with a flippant, media-friendly sound bite, are straight out of Joseph Goebbels playbook. 

Guess what that bill of goods is trying to sell you?

And guess what the opinion piece featured directly below the "article" about Gary Johnson was titled? 

If you said; "Not Into Hillary? I Wasn't Either". You are correct.

Guess what bill of goods that article is trying to sell you?

CNN has a specific political agenda, plain and simple. There is no possible way that any intelligent, rational human being cannot see that.  It is not and has never been an impartial, independent news outlet.

Mom & Pop Got A Whole New Shop

                           The Native Roots Gas & Grass station in Colorado Springs

I Just Dropped In...To Catch The Dropkick Murphys

The Dropkick Murphys played the Fillmore last night with all the energy & enthusiasm they have been bringing for twenty years now. The crowd was raucous, as one would expect, with quite a large number of transplanted Massholes present for the party.

The opener was a local Denver outfit known as the Potato Pirates, purveyors of an aggressive Ska-Punk sound that has gotten tighter over the years - it had been awhile since I had last seen the band and all their practice and hard work playing in local clubs has definitely paid off. 

Jesse Ahern, a stalwart member of the Boston club scene for a number of years (he was with the Ramblin' Souls for awhile) followed the PP's (yes, I did...) and though there was a bit of irritating technical difficulty with an amp on the far right of the stage for the first couple of songs, he and a quartet of musicians he has now allied himself with, the Roots Rock Rebel Revue, kicked out serious songs that belied roots as far back as Woody Guthrie & Lead Belly.

They finished their set with the Reggae classic Police & Thieves as if they were channeling the Clash. Loved it even if Jr. Murvin would disapprove.

When the curtain went up for the Dropkick Murphys (yes, there was an actual curtain, and it seemed to be having Spinal Tap-esque difficulty rising for a few brief moments) the 3500 or so present exploded, with a pit of several hundred rollickin' moshers forming within seconds.

The band was in great form, opening with their interpretation of the classic Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ya (which, for an anti-war song, sure gets a lot of people up and shoving each other in a hurry). That established the tone for the night, though there were a few shifts in momentum (they performed their cover of Which Side Are You On about 10 minutes in).

Of course, they broke out Tessie about halfway through the show, which had all the BoSox fans in the place (and there seemed to be thousands of them) singing along as if it was 2004 or 2007 again...but the rest of us who were Rockies fans collectively gritted our teeth (for those not in the know, Tessie is the Boston Red Sox anthem, and the BoSox swept the Rox in the 2007 WS in four straight games).

Just a couple of songs after that nearly unbearable sing-along though, the band rocked out with a cover of The Cars New Wave hit Just What I Needed, a song I sang along with at the top of my lungs - that was super cool!

A four song encore included the big hit Shipping Out To Boston, and after the DM concert tradition of women in the audience joining them on stage for Kiss Me, I'm Sh*tfaced, which was followed by men joining them onstage for Skinhead on the MTA, the night was wrapped up with a cool as a Southie sipping a Stout rendition of Sam Cooke's Having A Party.

All in all, a very good night & a great concert, made even better by the fact that even though the Dropkick Murphys are very politically active, they let their music carry their message - no grandstanding to a captive audience that for the most part just wanted to come to a show to shrug off all the election year BS and be entertained for an evening.

For that, I thank the members of the band as heartily as I can...though I'm still not going to be rooting for the Red Sox.

The Cloud With The Fire-Breathing Dragon Tattoo

Hostile Lizards And Other Such Nonsense

Brighter Than The Sun

Cardinal Slip

She had questions, lots of questions. 

However, she did not have a clue as to which order she should ask the questions in. She was also at a crossroads as to how to word the questions - she did not want to come across as accusatory or demanding, and she certainly did not want to come across as clingy or insecure.

She just wanted to know: Am I Important to you? Do I matter? Or am I just a distraction, a temporary amusement?

He looked at her in amazement, wondering what was going on in that sharp, solid mind of hers. Was she aware of how magnetic she was? Did she know that she had sole possession of not only his attention, but also his intentions?

It would make things easier, they both thought, if there was a device available or an app one could download onto a cellphone, that would separate people who thought you were a possible companion who might enjoy dinner & a movie from predators and opportunists who only wanted to steal everything you had, including your dignity.

In the meantime, the dogs & the cat were playing Poker

That One Good Dream

The day finally came when everything that had happened - everything thought by editors to be "newsworthy," that is - had become boring, trite, irrelevant...and nothing else had occurred of note since that could adequately fill the columns of newsprint and minutes of air time.

Not one single thing.

It was a grand & glorious day.

Mo' Hawks In Chicago

If You Have The Option To Stay The Weekend In The Second City, Do So

                                     Two window washers getting the grime off a skyscraper

                                          A meandering school of wild kayakers

                                           Packed like big pickles in a small jar

Jimmy Eats World in the late afternoon

                                            Social Distortion and a Harvest Moon

                                              A club somewhere in the North Side

                                       The early inning attempt to get into Wrigley

The Cubs/Brewers game last night was looking good in the early innings. Tickets in the bleachers were going for $100.00 a pop, Even rooftop seats were going for ludicrious money. 

The game had become important as it was the Cubs chance to clinch their first division crown since 2008. 


That's pretty damn pricey for a Thursday night late season game though, even if it's a division clincher. Over 41,000 people bit though, and filled the stands.

The Cubs ending up losing the game to the Brewers 5-4, which had to hurt the speculators who bought hard tickets just on the chance the stub could at least be sold for the $100.00 they spent. 

The stubs are going for about $10.00 a pop on Ebay at the moment...

Late Summer Flower

                        Late summer flower, almost better than the first flower of Spring

The Best Preserved Drunkard In The Bar

He told me he only drank the finest whiskey

    as he did want to remembered as a loser 

       who destroyed his liver drinking rotgut.

That's Fine With Me

Two o'clock in the morning and sleep 

Is nowhere on the scene

Brain is replaying every embarrassing moment 

Of the past twenty-five years 

And I still can't remember a thing 

Imagination is a vicious creature 

With a voracious appetite 

Prodding and poking for attention

Like a drunk narcissistic astrophysicist

Itching for a fight 

That's it.

I Love My TV

Dr Marshall McLuhan was wrong. It is not the medium that is the message, it is the creators of the message that is the medium.

Think about it. Everything on the medium known as the internet was created by users of that medium...thus, they create the message and concurrently, the medium.

Weird I realize, but true.

A Few Things That Scared Me When I Was Young

The first time an adult driving a car had to do something with her hands other than hold the steering wheel, and that adult looked over at me (I was 8 or 9) while saying, "Hold the wheel, try to stay in our lane."

Drinking a beer for the first time, on a dare. Tasted like crap. 

A teacher zeroing on me for an answer to a problem, even if I knew the answer.

How unapologetically violent I could become when anyone tried to bully me, or any of my friends, around. 

Going to away matches in white areas of S.D. (basically, most of S.D.) and feeling as inadequate as a kid possibly could.

Anyone, male or female, looking at me intently. Acne that was sufficient to incite other kids to label me "pizza face" made adolescence a living hell.

An episode of Night Gallery titled "Green Fingers." (which featured Elsa Lanchester of Bride of Frankenstein fame).

A thought that occurred to me when I was a preteen: "What is the Universe in?"

Leeches.

Just Another Saturday Night On The 16th Street Mall

Particularly, Purple