The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

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  • Review: Counting Crows with Maroon 5

    Counting Crows with Maroon 5
    Also with Sara Bareilles
    Thursday 2008 Aug 7
    PNC Bank Arts Center
    Holmdel, NJ

    My usual way to review a show would be to give the playlist and say what I did or didn’t like about each. That’s not going to work this time for a host of reasons. First off, I don’t really know the body of work for either Sara Bareilles or Maroon 5. I wouldn’t be able to name almost any of their songs, and it wouldn’t be fair to give an in-depth review of material I was hearing for the first time, under concert conditions. I can say that I was impressed with both groups, enough that I’ll probably plunk down some cash and check out their studio work. Ms. Bareilles has tremendous range and an endearing quality to her voice. Maroon 5 also covered a lot of ground stylistically, from hard rock to something that sounded a bit like late Police work.

    I do know most Counting Crows songs, and I will be posting their playlist. But it really isn’t meaningful to analyze each in detail, for reasons that will be made clear below the fold.
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  • I Didn’t Know

    For all the regular readers — both of them — wondering what’s prompted the past week of short bursts of happy posts, a hint. It’s about as subtle as a bowling ball and not nearly so good as it should be, but for what it’s worth, it is earnest. Further details, alas, are embargoed for a short while.

    (An aside: It is surprisingly hard to rhyme “breath” without dragging in the morbid. I didn’t pull it off.)
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  • One incredible week

    It’s been an amazing seven days for me. In the grand scheme of things, perhaps it doesn’t quite take first prize for Most Significant Week Ever. But in my little world it’s running a close second. As of yet I’m not at liberty to document why, but I’m hoping that will change shortly.

  • Echos of Sins Past

    Regular readers of this blog, were there any, would know that in early June, The Mongrel Dogs That Teach was high-jacked by people of malicious intent who inserted “invisible” code into my text to direct people to infected sites and to sites offering badware. This resulted from my neglect of the infrastructure of the site, specifically, from failing to upgrade regularly. Let that be a lesson to you!

    Anyway, the malefactors pulled off their dastardly deed using a glitch in WordPress (since fixed) that allows one user to modify the posts of another. So the creeps created a spurious account, leavened my site with their crap, and (as far as I know) moved on. Following advice I found on the Net, I deleted the fake users (instituting user moderation for the future) and purged their comments, after upgrading the WordPress installation. This, I thought, solved the problem; but I was wrong.

    Today, browsing to my own site, I was blocked by Firefox, which told me that Google has deemed the site unsafe. Further investigation made clear that many of my posts were still harboring the vile iframe and noscript tags that causes the problem. I discovered admin tools that simplified my search-and-destroy mission, removing the offenders from every post and comment.

    Now I’ve submitted a request that Google check the site again and clear it. Let’s hope that works out.

  • Six days and counting…

    … and it’s still all good.

  • Regression to the mean…

    … has not yet set in. Maybe it’s a new mean.

  • The streak…

    … continues, with today topping even yesterday.

  • As for today…

    … even better than yesterday, which I would not have thought possible.

  • Just wanted to say…

    … that today has been a very good day.

  • The rising South?

    Reading through Lawyers, Guns, and Money today, I was eventually directed to the US Army site on the service of African-Americans throughout history. The lead line of the section on the Civil War really raised my hackles: “When Federal troops invaded Southern states….” This bothered me so much I was motivated to actually write the webmaster (and my Congressman). Since I believe anything worth writing is worth using twice (at least), I’m just going to quote what I said to them:

    I visited your site on the service of African-Americans in the US Army. I must admit to being extremely disturbed by the section on the Civil War, which opens with the line “When Federal troops invaded Southern states…”

    Federal troops did not “invade” the South. Federal troops are free to move throughout the nation, subject only to concerns of Posse Commitatus. Federal troops redeployed to areas of the nation engaged in active insurrection, which to me seems the appropriate use of them. Secession by the Southern states was illegal and thus void, and carries no weight. Surely the official record of the Army of the United States should reflect this reality.

    Likewise, without belittling those slaves impressed into frontline war service, it was not possible for them to serve “with honor” the Confederate cause — not through failings of their character, but because the South stripped them of their honor and forced them to support a rebellion dedicated to suppressing them.

    I know that it’s becoming popular to sympathize with the Confederate cause, to focus on their “honor” and “chivalry” while downplaying or ignoring the brutal reality of four million people in chains for no better reason than the color of their skin. I am, however, shocked and dismayed to find such a pernicious lens deployed by the historians of the Army who fought to break those chains.

    With respect,
    -=-Bernard HP Gilroy

    Pro-Confederate revisionism is on the rise and it really ticks me off.