And Nothing Is Real

Today is national unfriend day, so I thought I’d post my Top Ten reasons NOT to unfriend me:

10. I sometimes wear a monster mask.

9. My son and I both wear stylish goatees:

8. I do NOT post pictures of my penis, unlike some prominent sports figures COUGH:brettfarve:COUGH

7. I smell nice:

6. The infrequency of my tweets and facebook posts is matched only by my apathy, so you can rest assured you won’t be bombarded by a constant barrage of useless drivel (oooh, i had pancakes for breakfast. mmmm yummm).

4. My past history of excessive alcohol consumption has not impaired my ability to count. Or speell.

3. 9 out of 10 dentists recommend my music during a root canal, and choosy mothers choose me (not that cheap slut Jif).

2. I make stupid movies of my pet fish, mini docu/dramas that I narrate with a phony French accent.

And finally, my number one reason to not unfriend me:

1. I give away tons of free music!

And here is a bonus reason, which brings the total to 12 (see #4 above): Why would you do anything this guy tells you to do?

It is for me again, when I see how much Muggy loves things like this:

I found these rocks, wouldn’t it be cool if they were dinosaur bones? Dinosaur bones from the Jurassic period – just joking, if anything they would be late Pleistocene. (Click on images for full size):

This looks like this egg found in China:

This looks like the head of a femur, and it even looks like something gnawed the bone:

This looks like an egg cut in half, and it almost looks like a skeletal embryo inside:

I changed a setting on the website feed parameters yesterday during the static front page change, so everybody’s RSS feed got truncated – sorry about that. I changed it back to normal . (BTW I haven’t actually done the front page, it’s currently just a blank placeholder so don’t waste your time going to check it out.)

The whole point of a feed is so you don’t have to go to the website just to see what’s new, duh.

My bad, it’s fixed now.

Something that’s bothered me for long time is that when people go to my website for the first time, they typically go, “huh?”.

I don’t think I make it clear enough that I am primarily a musician, and what the main purpose of this site is for is to have a central repository of all of my music that people can download for free.

Having the “blog” on the root (or as the home page) of daveryder.com is cool in a way, because whenever people come here they see the latest blog entry (something new). But if it’s the FIRST time a person comes here, I get the feeling some people see something like Dog Pees For A LOOOOOONG Time and say “fuck this. I’m outta here.” and click away never knowing there is a ton of great free music just waiting to be downloaded.

So I changed the website: Now the Home Page is a static front page telling people what I’m all about and where to download the MUSIC, and the blog posts (including this one) are in a directory imaginatively named Blog. Everything else is the same (by which I mean lame heh) but my friends like it, so I guess I’ll keep it like this.

Why? Why not? It’s funny.

By Dave Ryder and Don Cole – angry about the oil spill disaster, we wrote this protest song as an indictment against the greed and failure of BP and ALL big oil corporations that failed to install proper safeguards on offshore drilling rigs. It is dedicated to the 11 men who lost their lives in the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

>> The MP3 can be downloaded by clicking here.

>> Here are the lyrics. (The ASCII art is from this free online generator)

>> Here is the link to the video.

The really sad thing about this whole deal is that it all could have been avoided by installing an acoustic safety switch on the rig. These switches are mandatory on rigs drilling offshore of Norway and Brazil, but apparently “big oil” successfully lobbied (read: bribed) congress to not have to install them on rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

They cost less than $500,000 – half a million bucks.

That kind of money is NOTHING to “big oil”. NOTHING. I bet Tony Hayward’s yacht cost more than that.

Here is a video explaining how Dick Cheney under the Bush administration fucked America over by letting the oil companies drill without these safeguards:

Here is the link to the video:
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77pBcf0o444

Finally I want to post some facts I got from Wikipedia:

1. Up to 348,000,000 gallons leaked (and some people believe that is a conservative estimate) – that’s enough oil to fill the Rose Bowl stadium to the brim over 4 times.

2. The spill area covers as much as 9,100 square miles – here is satellite imagry:

3.The area closed of for fishing covers 36% of the gulf. Here is a map of the “No Fishing” zone:

4. Researchers have identified oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots.

5. On 24 May, EPA administrator Jackson said the 700,000 US gallons of chemical dispersants already used was “approaching a world record”. Stating she was “dissatisfied with BP’s response” she ordered the EPA to conduct its own evaluation of alternatives, and ordered BP to scale back dispersant use.

6. As of 16 July, 2,624 dead animals had been collected, including 2,095 birds, 467 sea turtles, 61 dolphins and other mammals, and 1 reptile. Also, dolphins have been seen which are lacking food, and “acting drunk” apparently due to the spill. A reporter kayaking in the area of Grand Isle reported seeing about 60 dolphins blowing oil through their blow holes as they swam through oil-slick waters.

7. As BP was reported to be offloading billions of dollars in assets in preparation, some estimates suggested the total liability could amount to as much as US $100 billion (UK £67.5 bn) by the conclusion of the disaster.

$500,000 is starting to look pretty cheap, dumbasses.

Wow, I hope I look this good at 70:

Emily Singer writes a terrific review of his birthday bash all-star concert, you can read it here.

Apparently it was pretty special, his all star lineup was:

Wally Palmar – guitar, bass, harmonica, vocals
Rick Derringer – guitar, vocals
Edgar Winter – keyboards, saxophone, vocals
Gary Wright – keyboards, vocals
Richard Page – Bass, vocals
Gregg Bissonette – drums, vocals

Then his son Zak Starkey took over on drums for the classic With A Little Help From My Friends, and some long time friends joined him on stage: Yoko Ono, Joe Walsh, Angus Young, Nils Lofgren, Jon Bon Jovi, Mick Jones, Steve Van Zandt, Brian Johnson, Max Weinberg, and Jeff Lynne to name a few.

It all culminated when none other than Paul McCartney surprised everyone when he came out onstage, gave Ringo a hug, and the band (with Ringo playing drums, of course) launched into Birthday!