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I first joined Youtube in May of 2006 and have since watched thousands of videos, favorite-ed about 150 of them, and seen everything from a robot playing John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” to The Goofy Movie re-imagined in the style of David Lynch. Even with all these things in mind, I have no problem saying that my Youtube experience reached it’s climax when I stumbled into links for downloading two Nick Drake Bootlegs on the website.

One of them is titled Second Grace, which to me sounds like home recordings of the artist before visiting the studio. Since Drake probably couldn’t afford to spend a lot of time in a “real” studio, it makes sense that he had so many takes of the same songs before recording it professionally. The album presents many tunes from Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter in a stripped-down, minimalist arrangement reminiscent of Pink Moon which allows for Drake’s supersonic finger picking to shine through the mix. I liked this because I have always thought the horns and strings suppressed Five Leaves Left and Bryter Layter from being in the same league as Pink Moon. A highlight on this album is a track titled “Early Morning Dialog”, 3:15 of spoken word from Drake in the wee hours of the morning. It’s quite a novelty to hear Nick Drake - who was never captured on video in his adult life, let alone on television- do something that almost resembles an interview.

The other is a home recording called Tanworth-In-Arden 1967/1968, which I prefer over Second Grace. Unless the title of the album is misleading, this was recorded before Nick Drake ever stepped foot in a studio and during his brief stint at Cambridge University. On this album he plays cover songs of blues songs by artists like Blind Boy Fuller (I don’t recognize most of the songs) and contains a cover of the Bob Dylan classic “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright”. Although not the prototypical Blues musician, Nick Drake does deliver sadness in his voice as well as anybody else and he compliments the songs very well.

But these two albums are not without their faults. Second Grace has several repeats of the same songs and both albums have poor quality sound. Good listens they are, but not necessarily on the same level of necessity as Drake’s 3 studio albums. And worst of all, the links are no more.

The original provider has stated :

Since out of over 100 people I generously shared these bootleg albums with not one has posted a thankyou, yet instead I get idiots saying things like “If this was unreleased how have you got it!”, I have removed all mediafire links.

I guess some people will go out of their way to punish ungrateful people. I’m planning on putting them up myself soon, but not today because I’m busy.

It’s Monday afternoon after school but I am not yet pressured enough to start my homework. On an ordinary week, I would be listening to the new Smodcast.

Smodcast is a weekly podcast show hosted by writer/director Kevin Smith and producer Scott Mosier. These two have been in the film making business since the early 90’s with Clerks, a 30 thousand dollar black and white epic about working at a convenience store. Clerks quickly became famous for being funded independently by the artists who maxed out a dozen credit cards, and featuring actors with no experience.They have made many more movies since, including Chasing Amy, Dogma, and Clerks II. In Smodcast, the two heroes sit down to talk for 50 minutes every week about their childhood, jobs, psychology experiments, their gay friend Malcom, and pose elaborate theories and sometimes even conspiracies based on their inaccurate knowledge of history and geography.

Unfortunately the production of their next movie, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, has temporarily halted the production of new Smodcasts and helped produce the only boring Smodcast to date, Episode 44. This episode’s featured guest Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith were seemingly uninterested and exhausted from the filming the movie. Luckily, I enjoy old Smodcasts enough to grant them a re-listen. Smodcast features very obscene language, and (I’m guessing) does not cater to those who don’t find films like Clerks funny.

Scott Mosier and Kevin Smith are both gifted storytellers, and it comes as no surprise that Smith wrote all of the genius dialog in his movies.

Smodcast can be heard through http://www.quickstopentertainment.com/ as well as iTunes for free.

has afforded us the opportunity to see that manatees have weird looking mouths.

Now we know.

There are millions of species in the animal kingdom, thousands of mythical creatures, and hundreds biblical figures in our world today. Of all of these, I don’t think that a school can possibly think of a mascot more inappropriate and insensitive then Seoul Foreign School’s “Crusader”.

Crusaders were religious fundamentalist, mass murderers of the middle ages who waged over a dozen wars against several ethnic groups. Human rights were flagrantly disregarded in these crusades, killing thousands of Islamic civilians as well as utilizing child soldiers to fight their “holy wars”.

Some may argue that to a group of people, the crusaders represented and still stand for being “god’s soldiers” and contend that the crusades were heroic events where god’s servants fought for their beliefs.

But one could make the same argument about Jihadists and Nazis. That doesn’t mean they are appropriate as being high school mascots.

Seoul Foreign School is an international school that travels to internationally in academics and athletics with other international school throughout the world. Most of these schools, unlike SFS, are non-denominational.

The school has every right as a privately funded institution to patronize the crusades and take pride of the history, but to interact with multi-ethnic groups and engage in friendly competition internationally with such a name is not only arrogant, but highly offensive as well.

Like most Ron Paul supporters, I was introduced to Ron Paul by reading about his ideas on the internet. At first glance, I was highly judgmental on the congressman because of his lack of media coverage and the idea that electing a Republican candidate might be no different than extending George W. Bush’s term by 4 years in terms of policy.

But after reading about his ideas and studying the issues, I am now very passionate about my support for Congressman Ron Paul.

Ron Paul has pointed out many things terribly flawed with the United States today, and regardless of the outcome of his campaign, Ron Paul has successfully spread through the internet and to the young people his ideas of liberty and small government.

Adam Smith defined in Wealth of Nations that a government’s role in a nation should be minimal outside of protection, preservation of sovereignty, and erecting public institutions. I think that Smith, as well as the forefathers of America, would support Dr. Paul.

These are the reasons why I support Ron Paul:

1. His stance on the Federal Reserve & it’s attack on capitalism.

“Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States” — Sen. Barry Goldwater (Rep. AR)

2. His opposition of empiralism & his proposition of non-intervention. Dr. Paul opposes preemptive and unconstitutional wars, and sees that the IRS would be unnecessary if the trillion dollar American Foreign Policy- consisting of 700 bases in over 100 countries,- changes it’s practice. For example, the Yongsan Millitary Base in Seoul is highly sought after by Koreans entering the army because of it’s reputation for doing absolutely nothing. Yet, it receives a tremendous amount of funding from tax payers to maintain.

3. He is the only candidate that values and respects the Constitution.

The media treats him like a holocaust denier. Left out of some debates and neglected in those where he is present, Ron Paul is a candidate for 21st century voters that don’t rely on television for their opinions. Ron Paul understands that overextension of empires and a valueless currency are top reasons why great nations fall, and that these very problems are deeply and unconstitutionally integrated in the United States today.

I always wondered how amazing it would have been to have grown up with David Bowie’s music career. Hearing “Space Oddity” on the radio for the first time, seeing Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust in theaters, being introduced to Iggy Pop and Lou Reed when Bowie collaborated with these then-obscure artists, wearing out the entire Berlin Trilogy on a record player, and then seeing him on Television again with hits from Scary Monsters(And Super Creeps) are all memories I would love to have.

After seeing Björk in concert yesterday, I decided that I have something very similiar with Björk.

I love Björk. I think Debut and Post are amazing pop albums, and that Vespertine has some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard. Her videos are always interesting and the ones directed by Michel Gondry are nothing short of amazing. In Dancer in the Dark, she puts on one of the most charming performances I have ever seen from an actress. In fact, as far as I know, Björk hasn’t missed yet.

Björk is Bowie-esque. They avoid typecasting themselves with a recurring sound, and maintain a great balance between mainstream and experimental. When Björk got sick of the techno/dance music she had perfected, she put out Homogenic and Vespertine (her most interesting albums) the same way Bowie changed the course of electronic music with the Berlin Trilogy when he became weary of his Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke personas.

It’s all really exciting, and if she’s anything like Bowie, she’s not anywhere near the end at 42 years young.

I just hope she doesn’t pull a Let’s Dance.

In cased you haven’t guessed, I really like the Beatles.

I was listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band today because I’ll eventually need to learn the title track for the school band, and it reminded me of how much I love the album and it’s anchor “A Day in the Life”. The song, as fate would have it, was playing on my iTunes when kiswrites refused to let me register without a blog title and thus, in the same fashion as the Summer of Love, my blog’s theme is initiated by Sgt. Pepper’s.

But from experimenting with this website and reading the blogs of my peers, I’m so far failing to see blogging’s potential as a teacher. I fancy myself to be quite a fan of the internet, and I definitely prefer this over writing a diary, but I don’t think blogging offers anything new to an extremely well-wired student body (especially not in the field of American Literature), at least none that I have found yet.

But I am definitely open to being proven wrong.