Blue Gillespie is in my House!

Just last week I ordered Blue Gillespie's EP's.

And lo! The first one arrived today! It was very very quick I must say.

The EP arrived is a medium sized bubble-wrap interior envelope and when I opened it there was little cardboard CD envelope with a small black CD inside... with tiny ridges and black all over like a real EP!

( Pics of the EP and cover under the cut )

So cute.

My brain was a bit slow and for a moment I thought "they didn't send me... a real EP did they!?".

Of course not.

I'm now listening to Cave County Part One, Part Two should probably be here sometime later this week or next as it was only released on the 21st of August.

Oh, Gareth your growl is very sexy *bats eyelashes* the guitar is doing mean riffs! And per usual of my rock music listening the drums are totally doing it for me.

When the first riffs came over the speakers I had a moment of "man, I feel like a teenager again", back when I used to listen to Korn, Metallica, Rob Zombie and other crap metal bands (I still listen to these on occasion, because dude it's awesomely loud!), but BG are really good!

I'd listened to them on their Myspace page, but they sounds so much better on my stereo system!
Very epic in a closed space kind of sound.
I'm sure they rock in live performances (why am I not in Wales!?).

Edited to Add: Twenty three minutes of very good, classically harsh notes and lyrics and just damn good music from a band I really hope releases more than just EP's some day (though I hope they remain independent).

The Ministry of Truth Does Not Approve!

Wow, do I have some stuff to share.

Okay so I don't want to make this a huge links post and rant but damn! The weekend was just non-stop with the amount of WTF's that seemed to bleed into the News and I can't not share it with you dear readers.

I hope those of you who are more than just interested in the Occupation and Israeli policy in Palestine did not miss Professor Neve Gordon's Op-Ed in the LA Times: Boycott Israel: An Israeli comes to the painful conclusion that it's the only way to save his country, which came online on Thursday the 20th of August.

It's a whopper and a very important read.

However, it wouldn't be a News day if someone didn't condemn those filthy dirty anti-Zionist Jews with self-hate.
Have you ever notice that only other Zionists accuse us of hating ourselves. What's up with that?

On Friday, the Los Angeles Jewish Community began to mull over boycotting Ben-Gurion University is Israel, which is the Uni in which Prof. Gordon teaches Poli-Sci. Funny Diaspora reaction aside the really special moment and quote comes from the LA Israeli Consulate Mr. Yaakov (Yaki) Dayan:

"I believe that the definitive answer to anti-Zionist lecturers like Gordon is to set up a center for Zionist studies, which unfortunately does not exist in Israeli academia," [Dayan] continued. "This center would help dispel the lies disseminated by Gordon in the name of your university."

Oh my God, my eyes could not have rolled farther into my skull without giving me brain damage.
I just... *sigh*.
As I said, a very special moment.

That's not all. Oh no, not even close. There is more Israeli craziness in store.

Who hasn't heard of the controversial Swedish newspaper article accusing the IDF of murdering Palestinians in order to harvest their organs.
I gotta say, it smacks of hyperbole, but that's not my point.
As controversial as the article may be, I think the Israeli Government's reaction was just beyond out of proportion.
And defensive of course.
PM Netanyahu is set to request, nay, demand that the Swedish government condemn the article.

After the article was published, it would appear Israel did not appreciate the Swedish government's reaction... which was to be quiet about it.

On Friday, the Israeli Ambassador to Sweden Benny Dagan met with Deputy Foreign Minister of the Scandinavian country and urged his government to issue a denunciation of the article. Deputy Foreign Minister Frank Belfrage emphasized his country's freedom of speech and how it limits the ability of the government to respond to articles in the media.
[...]
A Netanyahu aide said that "Israel does not wish to infringe upon the freedom of the press in Sweden. However, as much as the Swedish press is entitled to freedom, the Swedish government should enjoy the freedom of denouncing such reports."

The desk is well acquainted with my head, because really, of a government is nosing into the media, it's no longer a free press.

The Swedish Jewish Community's reaction to this is pretty interesting; one of the head's of the community, Lena Posner, says that until Israel got involved, it was a non-issue:

Posner told Ynet, "The article was published here on Monday, but no one paid any attention to it. It wasn't a news report and was buried in the back pages of a tabloid. The writer is known to many of us as anti-Israel, and so it the entire paper. This is why no one took it seriously – until Israel got involved."

Read this one, it's pretty good and manages to show Lieberman as the paranoid maniac that he is because beyond accusing Sweden of Antisemitism and saying that this silence over the matter is equivalent to their silence during the Holocaust (Godwin! Hello!) - he's gone on to accuse Norway of promoting Antisemitism, here's why:

"I remember that in the Durban-II conference," Lieberman said, referring to last April's UN anti-racism summit which was criticized as allegedly biased against Israel. "The Norwegian representatives were among the few who didn't walk out, and today I realize it's not a coincidence. How low can you go?"

How low indeed.

So... anybody got any good jokes?