KILLED BY DEATH

You know that Lemmy is gone.

And it’s sad in the sense that really, it was a miracle he lived as long as he did. He wasn’t exactly in the same league as Keith Richards – no one is – but his reputation and his band Motörhead lent itself to the mythological and decidedly unhealthy Rawk lifestyle.

And yet Lemmy just kept on going to the point where you figured he was indestructible. According to legend, when he collapsed from dehydration during one show in 2005, his solution was to start adding ice to his Jack and Cokes. (Earlier this year, he switched from Jack Daniels and Coke to vodka and OJ for “health reasons”.) He certainly outlived at least two former bandmates.

Anyway, Lemmy was a true rock legend. Some people will point to his days in Hawkwind as the real highlight of his career. But to be honest I’ve never heard a Hawkwind record in my life. Motörhead was my first and only Lemmy experience (starting, obviously, with that guest slot on The Young Ones), and you have to admire the fact that he pretty much stayed true to his mission for 40+ years. For the last few Motörhead album releases, I’ve joked about how Motörhead has made a new Motörhead album that sounds like Motörhead – but really, there aren't many bands that can stick to more or less the same basic LOUD ROCK formula for four decades and still make it work (albeit with varying levels of quality).

Put another way, as standard as their rock blueprint may have been, you know when yr listening to a Motörhead album. They had their own sound, and Lemmy was a key reason why. He was like no one else in the business.

Also, he was mates with Samantha Fox.



That counts for a lot with me.

Anyway, let’s go with the obvious choice for the selected music video.

"Motorhead - Killed By Death" (Watch on YouTube)

He knew how to die,

This is dF

THE ONLY CLIMATE CHANGE ARGUMENT YOU’LL EVER NEED b/w MODERN JOURNALISM SUCKS

Yr Insanely-Stupid-Clickbait Headline of the day:



No he fucking didn’t. He said something you agree with. There’s a fucking difference. This headline is the reason journalism sucks now. That and the Knowable page just reposted Schwarzenegger’s entire column with a new sucky headline. Which is just doubly lazy.

Here’s the actual headline to the piece:



This is a better headline because it’s limited to the POV of the writer, and it actually tells you something about what the article actually says.
Also, as Schwarzenegger isn’t actually a journalist, he can be held to a lower standard than actual journalists. And he has the better headline here so just let’s think about that for a moment.

Sorry, but as someone who edits magazines for a living, this is a big pet peeve of mine. I understand the need for clickbait headlines – really, I do – but there’s a good and bad way to do it. And the worst offenders are invariably ones like this that claim the person in the story stated some opinion about some political issue that “totally crushed” or “destroyed” or “shut down” whatever political entity or ideology they oppose.

Which it never, never does. It would only be true if everyone on the other side gave up and joined yr side, or went Galt and disappeared into the woods, never to be seen again.

Anyway, my actual purpose for posting this is to relay Schwarzenegger’s post, which is actually quite good. Admittedly that’s something I never thought I’d type. But he does pretty much sum up the way I’ve felt about the climate change debate for some time now:

While I do think climate change science is real, I also think it’s beside the point. Whether you personally believe climate change science or not, what’s indisputable is that pollution is choking our cities and ruining our water supplies, and eventually, one way or the other, we will need an alternative to fossil fuels when they run out, and there’s no sense in waiting until then to figure out a plan.

How that can be accomplished affordably – and whether govt funding/regulation is required – is, of course, up for debate. But we need the debate to actually happen, and it won’t as long as the GOP leadership keeps using climate change denial as an excuse to avoid discussion of the issue.

Clean it up,

This is dF