The Joy Circuit >> I'll send you back into the sky

I can't believe it's still California Month, tremor #44:

The Joy Circuit - "X's"

(self-released, 2004)

I guess this'll be the last song that I post by TJC for a long time.  It's from their only commercial release, their CD EP called EP 1, recorded in 2004 and released in early 2005.

The drumbeat and bassline pound along incessantly, but near the end they suddenly pick up in tempo and threaten to speed off the rails.  The opening guitar feedback and harmonic plinking is quite epic; dig that little space-rock solo at about the 2:23 mark.  My only peeve is that this song is directed to a specific person, someone named Ellen.  Specific names in song titles / lyrics is my ultimate musical pet peeve, especially female names used in songs by male singers.  Is "Ellen" a slang term for some drug?  Jeff Garber sings "She collapsed into my vein," which seems to be a drug reference, and lotsa drugs have such nicknames: Mary Jane, Betty White, etc.  And the song's first line, "X's on the hands," is a reference to the straight-edge lifestyle, which eschews drugs.  (Pitcher C.J. Wilson is straight-edge, and started for the Rangers in the World Series just a week or two ago.)

I had an mp3 excerpt of this song for several years that I played to death, and then finally bought the CD on eBay in about 2007.  The cover art, three long fluorescent lightbulbs aligned vertically in a row, is really impressive and eerie.  It reminds me of the VHO (very high output) fluorescent bulbs I used on my reef tanks, which costs about $30 each and only lasted a year or two before they started to put off too much light in the red end of the color spectrum, which makes undesirable brown algae grow too much.

The song "Secret Fires" on this EP could have been a huge hit single, but this band never released any singles, probably because that's pretty expensive for a band that self-releases its own music.  But man, that song would've started a big-time bidding war if any major-label execs had actually heard it.  I chose "X's" simply because it's edgier and more viscerally thrilling.  A website called Silent Uproar posted on 5/31/05 that The Joy Circuit had broken up.  They added that "The upside to this new is that National Skyline will be reforming and recording the followup to This = Everything."

I've read two stunning articles in the last few days:
CD-format to be abandoned by major labels by the end of 2012
The sudden death of film

I was pissed when film cameras essentially died off almost a decade ago, but I thought movie film would be irreplaceable.  What Ebert says about the 3D scam ("The distracting gimmick of 3D was used to fuel this campaign") reminds me of how New Coke was a scam to intentionally get customers to revolt and demand their regular-old Coke back.  So when Coca-Cola returned regular-old Coke back to the customers, they were able to swap corn syrup into it in place of sugar.  No one really noticed because their taste buds were so offended by New Coke.  Americans are very easily fooled.
To summarize:
a.) Coke (with sucrose) was sold and enjoyed for untold decades.  (This is the best-tasting version of Coke.)
b.) New Coke (without sucrose) was briefly introduced despite its worse taste.  (This is the worst-tasting version.)
c.) Consumers ask for their "Old Coke" back
d.) They get it back, but with corn syrup instead of sugar.  (This is the second-best tasting version.)

Voila: The company put a cheaper-to-manufacture* sweetener into its drink, and tricked the public into thinking it had had a say in a massive marketplace "victory."  So Coca-Cola manufactured two "wins" out of thin air, and has raked in the profits ever since.  Americans are fucking stupid.  Sugar-sweetened Coke is still sold in more tropical markets like Mexico, so lots of cola enthusiasts buy their Coke at the border.

*Sugar cane only grows in warm, wet climates, whereas corn can be grown in far colder and drier climates.  Sugar beets can be grown in cold, dry areas, e.g. Russia, but are not practical for mass production.  Sugar is immediately taken up by the bloodstream, whereas corn syrup (fructose) has to be sent to the liver; hence it has a lower glycemic index, which is a good thing, but it causes fats to build up in the liver, which can be fatal.

Related to this is the 9/11 scam (yes, our govt. knew it was coming but decided to allow it) and the Pearl Harbor scam (yes, our govt. knew it was coming but decided to allow it), and countless others throughout history that were designed to convince the public that we had to go to war against overseas enemies, in order to enrich the military-industrial complex via endless wars.

On a related note, I permanently eliminated sucrose (table sugar, a.k.a. sugar) from my diet about two weeks ago.  I tried this in 1999, but I also eliminated all other sugars, so I felt pretty sick.  The body does need some sugars (anything ending in -ose) to keep running, or else you suffer from hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) and your metabolism can permanently slow down.  Hence why people who go on crash diets always gain back even more weight than they lost while they were anorexic.  See: Christina Aguilera.  I will continue to get my sugars from dairy (lactose), fruits (fructose) and simple carbs (glucose).  By the way, the only thing that cancer cells feed on is sugar in the bloodstream.  Read that sentence again and understand how mind-bogglingly important it is.  Now you know why diabetics (people whose bodies lack the ability to control their blood sugar levels) (since they lack a hormone called insulin) are so susceptible to various diseases, including cancer*.  So the cancer-medicine industry is probably totally in favor of Americans being pumped full of sugar all day long.  Doctors in general don't want a country of healthy people, because that would put all doctors out of work, so doctors prefer to treat symptoms rather than the underlying causes of diseases.  My point is, take control of your own health, because it's a minefield out there, especially your local grocery store's aisles, which are the most potent form of population control ever devised.  Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but I've studied this kind of thing in depth for over a decade, spurred on by Coast To Coast AM (formerly known as Coast To Coast with Art Bell, before Art was replaced by the charisma-free George Noory).  Listening to that show every night on my radio starting at midnight has completely opened my mind and changed my life.

*By total coincidence, Joe Frazier died yesterday at the relatively young age of 67.  He was a diabetic and died of cancer.  Coincidence?

I know this all sounds rambling, but to me it's as simple as pie, since I was a biology / pre-med major and have studied this sort of thing so much that it's just second nature to me by now.  Learn your sugars and your life will be so much better.  I was briefly up to 235 pounds in 1999, when I was a vegetarian, and have stayed at around 175-185 for the last decade even though I pig out on carbs whenever I feel like it.  (I'm 6'2" or 6'3".)  I have a ton of food insensitivities, so the grocery store really is a minefield for me.  I can't eat rice, chocolate, whole grain wheat, pitted fruits (peaches, apricots, etc.; they contain a hard-to-digest sugar called sorbitol), cinnamon, potatoes, and some other things.  So I pretty much ignore about 95% of the items in the grocery store.  Yes, that's what we call them here in the South, though I think most people use the term supermarket.  Learn your good fats (e.g. the ones in olive oil, grapeseed oil) and your bad fats (the ones in meats).  Learn what the "caveman diet" is, and figure out how you can eat a diet that more closely resembles it, since that is what our bodies evolved to be able to digest over millennia.  It's really only over the last few decades that America's food companies decided to infuse everything with phenomenal amounts of sugar, fat and sodium, making us the fattest country in the world.  To say that I think the CEOs of these companies should be hanged for mass genocide is an understatement, but that will never happen, so avoiding their products is the only real way to get revenge on them.  Living well is the best revenge, as someone much smarter than me once said.  For what it's worth, I wrote this entire editorial in about 20 minutes off the top of my head.  And I just realized that it was exactly a decade ago (either Nov. 6th or 7th, 2001), that I planned on killing myself, due to all my health problems, which turned out to be caused by food allergies / intolerances.  I've never said anything about this in public, and I'm not sure why I'm saying it now, but it's not like anyone actually reads this.  I have pretty much cured myself, with zero help from a single doctor, who all insisted it was psychosomatic.  To quote another intelligent person: "Patient, heal thyself."

A video which has just gone viral:

For an enhanced experience, watch it at the same time as this:

Planets with similar climates: U2 - "Bullet The Blue Sky" (1987), The Comsat Angels - "On The Beach" (1980), Poem Rocket - "Small White Animal" (1995).