If you've read the recent Forbes.com article Attack of the Blogs (subscription required), then you believe that the blogosphere is a giant attack squad just waiting to destroy your brand credibility online.

I don't want to downplay that part of the blogosphere because there are definitely those bloggers out there without scruples and who have an axe to grind--and they can destroy you if they want to; just ask Dan Rather and Trent Lott. But the article is a little over the edge on the fear factor. At one point, they actually state that bloggers differ from mainstream journalists because mainstream journalists put their credibility on the line with every article.

I think this distinction is totally unfair because there are plenty of bloggers who put their credibility on the line with every post (many times a day compared to once a week for most journalists). And keep in mind that most bloggers post without an editor snipping and shaping their posts to conform with an overall corporate vision.

In other words, just like in mainstream journalism, there are good bloggers and bad bloggers and it's up to the reader to figure out which is which and who is whom. So, the burden of proof falls far heavier on the individual Internet surfer's shoulders in the blogosphere than the page-turning Sunday Times reader who is reading what has been neatly packaged for him under the corporate vision of whichever major corporate conglomerate happens to own their local paper.

Now, when I think of credible bloggers who are serving the community they have built, I think of Darren Rowse over at ProBlogger.net who teaches bloggers how to shape their blogs into a community-building and money-making machine and how to do it ethically without stepping all over people.

I think of Major Nelson whose blog and blog casts are building up a sidebar community to the X-Box Live community (Major Nelson is a Director at Microsoft working with the X-Box Live team).

I think of Antimedia, who has dedicated his site to exposing the lies and obfuscations that take place daily in mainstream media.

Each of these bloggers operate their sites with integrity and they have been my mentors and teachers whom I have deliberately shaped my own blog and blogging behavior after.

And like many of these great bloggers, I have created my own Blog Disclaimer Policy which discloses my own ethics to the Internet surfer who I hope continues to come back to my site daily for the insightful social commentary and creative writing that I work very hard to put out day after day.

For example, I do not name companies that I have worked for or that I presently work for in my blog posts. I don't name people or discuss proprietary information simply because doing so woudl be inherently against my ethics. I don't want to build my success upon the backs and failures of others.

I have summed up my views on this with the following statement:

I do not want to reach the end of my career and look back down the ladder of my success and realize that the steps I used to ascend were actually the bodies of those who got in my way or provided easy targets to take advantage of. I like to be more creative in my solutions and build upon the synergy created through solid relationships with others.

But not every blogger shares my ethics and many have built reputations based on destroying those in power and setting themselves up as some kind of champion of the people (think virtual Bill O'Reilly); therefore corporations would be wise to consistently monitor the blogosphere for brand-slams that need to be dealt with immediately (and I'm not talking about threat of legislation because that won't work).

If you are the victim of a blog swarm attack, you need to get out there and confront it immediately. If there is incorrect or slighted information being posted about your company then someone in your organization must contact the webmaster of the blog either through e-mail, directly in the offending blog comment section, through trackbacks to your own blog post or, better yet, through all three methods.

Despite what the Forbes article says, reputation is everything online and when someone targets you, there isn't even time to call and consult a lawyer on the phone. The opportunity cost spent waiting on hold for your lawyer is enough to destroy your brand credibility online and would leave you with a mountain of litigation fees which amount to nothing more than swatting a fat hand at a mosquito swarm who regroups and attacks after every swing. And like the camper without Skin-So-Soft, you'll end up bloody, scratching, and broken.

But most companies are totally ignorant when it comes to operating online; they are fighting this online war like the British fought the Americans in the Revolution and how the government fights the War on Drugs--like mindless cogs lined up in bright clothes shooting at phantoms while rebels in the trees with high power rifles pick them off one by one.

Paying a company to monitor your brand online is only the first step of protecting your company brand image online. You must develop your own online personality in the form of a corporate spokesperson who has a legitimate blogging presence in the blogosphere as well as inside your own corporate Intranet community.

According to a recent post by Rich Ottum over at e-StrategyOne Buzz:

In a survey of corporate marketing and communications professionals conducted by Guidewire and iUpload, 55 percent of corporations are blogging. 91.4 percent of these use blogs for internal communications and 96.6 percent for external outreach as well.

Now my question is, "Where the hell are the rest of the corporate bloggers?" None of the managers, directors, vice presidents, or CEOs of any of the companies I have worked for during the past two years have ever used the term blog or podcast in any conversation, private or public.

I once even gave a presentation to high level managers and directors at one company about the benefits of offering access to and encouraging associates from every level of the organization, from CEO down to the frontline people, to establish and build their own blogs and communicate their personal viewpoints on what is going on around them in their company. I further encouraged them to adopt and encourage the use of RSS feeds to distribute blog posts, podcasts, and videoblogs throughout their organization.

When the presentation was over, most of the people in the room looked like Malcolm Dowell in A Clockwork Orange after his "rehabilitation treatment."

Sure, there are risks involved in such a bold release of responsibility but just imagine the organization that has the guts and foresight to adopt this vision. Imagine a company where the CEO subscribes to the blog of a frontline employee and discovers a customer service issuewith a major client before that associate can even address it with their supervisor and calls the other company's contact to let them know that the matter has been settled before the contact has even been made aware there was an issue at all. Now that is customer service!

Imagine this same CEO following another frontline employee who is having serious harrasment problems with their manager. The CEO puts their own feelers out into the situation, finds it to be a volatile and collects enough informational proof to fire the offending manager before they can do any more internal damage.

Imagine being able to record a CEO's quarterly corporate speech to the board of investors, edit it with a software program, and put it out as a podcast or video blog cast on the CEO's blog (whose RSS feed all associates are obligated to subscribe to) that same afternoon. This same CEO can set up a three hour block of time the next day to entertain questions or concerns from employees all over the organization through blog comments, instant message, or a conference call depending on the size of the company.

The possibiliites are endless for removing traditional barriers within the organization which prevented the unleashing of human potential across the organization.

The power to destory online is far overshadowed by the power to create and it's a shame that more companies aren't rushing to hire a blogger or team of bloggers to become their virtual face online and protect the interests of the company online.

Companies in the future must be willing to apologize and explain when valid business mistakes happen (as they inevitably will). I just hope that fear of the blogosphere doesn't keep companies away from using the enormous potential for much longer because those that come to the well first are going to get the freshest water and the biggest share of the information market gold rush that is occuring online before our eyes every single day around the world.

TAGS: Blogs, Podcasts, Video Blogs, Business, Corporate Blog, Corporate

*This post is actually a reprint from posts I made back in the early Summer of 2003 which have been combined into one longer piece.

Expectations of My Ten-Year Reunion

It’s supposedly a milestone in one’s life. In the John Mayer song No Such Thing he sings:

I want to run through the halls of my high school.
I want to scream at the top of my lungs.
I just found out there’s no such thing as the real world,
It’s just a lie we’ve got to rise above
I just can’t wait for my ten-year reunion
I’m gonna bust down those double doors.
And when I’m standing on the table before you,
You’ll find out what all this time was for.

And that, I think, is what we would all like—to be able to walk in to that banquet room in the Marriott and have our decade of accomplishments stream out behind us as silent and obvious as the ribbons on the handlebars of a little girl’s bicycle flying down the hill on West Chester Road. And some of us will. Most of us will most likely schmooze and smile and laugh and toast and show pictures of our kids and talk about our houses or the horror stories and epiphanies of the travels we’ve made. We shouldn’t talk about politics, but probably will once a couple of drinks have settled into the collective bloodstream. People who used to laugh at the fat Rush Limbaugh when he was on television the year we graduated now listen to him daily with religious solemnity. And some of us who shouted “Eff tha police,” are now thinking about running for office. What’s the old saying, “If you’re not a liberal by the time you’re twenty, you’ve got no heart. But if you’re not conservative by the time that you’re thirty, you’ve got no brain?”

Four years that began with words like wigger and ended with phrases like "Just Let it Ride" are such a small of part of who we were and, more importantly, who we now are. The temptation will be to sell ourselves to each other two weeks from Saturday, but I would like to warn myself against it. Not many of us walked around unmasked and our high school days were so innocent in the pre-Columbine era that the idea of someone packing heat in the classroom is laughable even now. Let’s not make this an auction block of pulchritude; we should all bust down those double doors and if some of us want to stand on those tables, there are others of us that will toast them and laugh as they are carried from the room cursing. I’ve given enough stoned sermons in the rain to know when to speak and when not to; it’s all about targeting the audience, you dig?

But there are a few observational rituals that should be performed:

• There’s a video yearbook that’s bound to be projected onto a large screen, embarrassing those of us who’ve put on twenty pounds in the last ten years (although my wife says I wear it well, like Anthony Michael Hall in his USA show The Dead Zone).
  

• The specter of those two state basketball championships will still have a gossamer hold in our minds as the two greatest basketball games ever played before our eyes, one of them teaching us the painful experience of loss and the other the glorious high of victory.
  

• And what about the lunch boycott that we all thought was going to change the world? Packing my lunch was as alien to me then as holding the baby that now sits rested against my chest as I type this would have seemed to the 17 year old young Minton. Now I pack my lunch every day—take that Mr. Craig Ullery with your evil syndicate lunch cartel. I’m still stickin’ it to you with every spread of mayonnaise I make.
  

• Or maybe we should play a "Get to Know You Again Game" like the old under the chin orange pass. That might allow some of us to fulfill our entire ill sated chin to high school breast (aged 10 years) fantasies; but then again, our wives and husbands might not appreciate such emotional and physical fulfillment.

In the end, I suppose we shall each bring our own expectations or lack of them with us as we walk into that banquet hall. Some of us will lug the same chips on our shoulders that we had ten years ago, the same only heavier like Jacob Marley’s chains forged link-by-link, year-by-year, and minute-by-minute. Others will float in with no cares and no responsibilities.

Personally, I’m looking forward to closing this chapter in my life. Sometimes I try to step back from the immediacy of life as myself and think about where I would be in an hour-long episode of my Biography on A&E (yes, I’m that audacious and grow more so with age). I figure that I’m working on about 15 minutes in, with commercials. There’s not much to say yet, except I miss seeing everyone, look forward to seeing them again in a couple weeks and look even more forward to hearing about your accomplishments in the future (failures never seem to be reported with the same efficiency and almost never appear in obituaries, so pardon my lack of concern with the downfall of others).

If my life were a biography that began with “I was born,” like David Copperfield, then this would be Chapter 3, a chapter that began with my thumb on the keg hose flip, gravity bong hits, careless encounters of the flesh with the inevitable next day residue of guilt and spent satisfaction, and fraternity hazing with me crying out the Founding Fathers names until my voice gave and tears stung my eyes like Isopropyl alcohol. The chapter ends in a monogamous relationship that has lasted longer than Jr. High and High School combined, an infant son who looks more and more like me every day, a new home with a 5%, 30 year fixed rate mortgage, 401K statements, a closer relationship with my parents and my parents-in-law than I ever thought would be possible, and my writing skills sharpened and heated into adamantium claw butane torches that slash and burn like Sherman through Atlanta.

The first sentence of the last paragraph of Chapter 3 will read, “I walked into the banquet hall with the dizzy ambulation of a surgery patient who has slipped away from the operating table still under the effects of anesthesia.” And the last line will read, “I walked out with a smile on my face, waving a salute to everyone I saw, missing them already and looking forward to facing the future that tomorrow only brings at crossroad moments such as this. Scarlet O’Hara, eat your Southern Belle heart out.”

Well, I’ll see you all there and don’t expect me to stand on tables or be this charming in person; the best writers are good liars before they are good human beings.


Reflections on My High School Ten-Year Reunion

It went great. Better than great, it was life affirming (now I sound like Maya Angelou, let me stop). But seriously, it was everything I hoped it would be and if you'll let me take you through the literary equivalent of a Springsteen song, I'll tell you why. Rip the sleeves off your thin T-shirt, snarl, and hum, "…Pass me by/In the wink of a young girl's eye/Glory Days…"

When I got there, I was hit with a sudden bout of shyness and decided to play the man on the side routine by sitting at a table out of the center of the action with my wife. We had a good conversation about adult things we hadn't been able to talk about since the boy came in May. But in between those fits of spousal laughter, I was watching you all, taking you in.

Man, you all looked great.

Almost the entire cast of my pubescent masturbatory fantasies was there, dolled up diamond divas, smiling and strutting around in full knowledge that they still had it. Old stories were exchanged, and usually talking incessantly of the past bores the shit out of me, but it was different. As people spoke, I could actually see the negative effects of a decade drain from their faces and we were all teenagers again. It was like the dance contest in Grease and my still flaring bout of shyness made me the nerd who dated Frenchie.

But I continued watched you all do your thing, man, still pros at schmoozing; it's an art I've never learned to turn on. With myself, when I am on, you can't stop me. When I'm on, I'm like magma oozing into Pompeii, destroying any semblance of decent civilization. But when I'm off, I'm shy like the naked white guy in a locker room of naked black football players. Sorry, gang; it was an off night for me. But I was able to catch your run-off and I became drunk with it (it was free, unlike the $4 beers).

Right before dinner, my buddy Lape came in and I have to tell you guys that there are few people in this world that I am closer to than Chris Lape. I could, at that point, feel the age slipping away from me also. Before I knew it, I was excited to be there. Hell, I even looked down Nicki Dracakis's shirt when she was bent over looking at a picture of my newborn baby. I was suddenly the same old sick and skinny asshole pervert I was at sixteen. It was good to be back.

I caught a picture of me with my senior year neophyte mohawk in the slideshow (Sorry, guys I couldn't even use the excuse of dope because that was before I started smoking it in college) and happened to look around the room and caught a flash; it was like a white wisp that was running through the crowd. Now, maybe I've been playing too many video games in the last ten years, but I know a Power-Up when I see one and this ghoulish wisp wasn't something malevolent. I didn't figure it out until later, but it was growth. True growth. I saw a decade of leadership in that room. I saw people laughing, smiling, and drinking, just like we used to. And dammit, it was sweet. If you could bottle that feeling and sell it, we'd all have profit share in the next Microsoft. But, like all great pleasure, there is the bitter flip side of the coin and it set in almost immediately as I kissed and hugged my good-byes.

I had a few disappointments that I will mention here:

1. No Kari Gerscheider. The girl had legs as long and mysterious as a backwoods Florida State route. She was always a sweetheart to me and I helped her pass Algebra (because she always wore those daisy dukes and gave the greatest panty shots I ever got as a teenager). I was really hoping to see how she turned out.
   

2. No John Foley. Foley and I had some good times. I would've liked to have seen him again and caught up.
   

3. No Sean Johnson. This kid said and did some of the stupidest shit that I laugh about to this day. Here are two classic Johnson stories:

   • When he faked falling off Courtney Smitha's trampoline and made like he had broken his neck, causing her babysitter ("Ashley Asshole") to go into a panic where he started guffawing and was promptly asked to leave the house.
     

   • Here is a discussion with Johnson in the car coming back from Midnight Bowling at Kenwood lanes. Me and Johnson were discussing the sexual habits of a famous couple in our class:
     
     Me: He fucks the shit out of her.
     
     Johnsons: No he doesn't.
     
     Me: Dude, I'm telling you; he fucks the shit of her.
     
     Johnson: Well, he doesn't fuck the shit out of her...
   
   
   

4. No members of the Black Enhancement Club. It was a very white affair, my friends, at least from what I saw. It's a shame that there weren't more people of color to help us meet the national quota recently set by the US Supreme Court. If there were people of color and I didn't see them, blame it on my hive-like bout of Wallflowerism.

I only said goodbye to a handful of people; this was because we had to leave early and assume our adult roles again, driving the 2 hours back up to Eastern Columbus to be with our son. But here's what I wished I could've done. I wished I would have had the courage and the inclination to walk up to each of you, hug you, put my palm to your faces and tell you that my world would not be the same without you in it, no matter how insignificant you think you were in my life. We could have never spoken and I still mean every word I just said. If someone were to unstring one of you out of the tapestry of my life, like some divine dressmaker who thought they had used the wrong color, it would be like someone removing Louis Armstrong from the history of American music. Everything would fall apart without you.

Hopefully, I've given you all a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. Hopefully, I've made some of the girls cry and wish they had slept with me ten years ago because I wish they did, too. I want to give a special thanks to Theresa Ruck (no hyphens in my world, sweetheart; we still live in a nomerical patriarchy), Nick Ruck, Jena Burns, Mike Burns, Courtney Woody, Will Woody, Brandae Ertel, Donna Kasten, Rina Patel, and anyone else who I have forgotten that helped plan this thing; you guys did a hell of a job and should be congratulated. Sorry if I messed up anyone's name; there's no spell check for old friends with new surnames.

I had a wonderful time and want to thank each of you who came for allowing me, one more time, to stand in your light. Now it's time for the rest of the world to stand in mine. Here's to conquering the Earth by the 15-Year reunion.

TAGS: Joshua Minton, Lakota High School

...this is the coolest thing ever!

...is not to hold overexaggerated benefit concerts that call for the cancellation of world debt (there is no such thing as cancellation of debt--in fact, what these drugged out washed up numbskulls are asking for is for the Western World to eat billions of dollars in goods and services in order to placate inefficient and corrupt regimes so they may become even more inefficient and corrupt).

The answer to Third World Poverty is to teach them the value of preserving and defending private property rights!.

Consider the following quote from page 200 in Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One (Affiliate Link) by Thomas Sowell:

Those who do not think beyond stage one often think of property rights as simply benefits to those fortunate enough to own property. This ignores the role of property rights as a key link in a chain of events that enable people without property to generate wealth for themselves and the whole society.

One implication of this is that some Third World countries could gain the use of more capital by making property rights more accessible within their own borders than by a ten-fold increase in the amount of foreign aid they receive. Moreover, the increased capital would be in the hands of millions of ordinary people, while foreign aid goes into the hands of the political elite. In short, although property rights are often thought of as things that are important primarily to the affluent and the rich, these legal recognitions of existing assets may be especially needed by poor individuals in poor countries, if they do not wish to continue to be poor.

So, the next time some burned out hippie starts to lecture you about foreign debt over power chords, please point them in Dr.Sowell's direction and tell them "Fug you very much."

TAGS: Live 8, Poverty, Thomas Sowell, Third World, Economics

...a store rigged up a waterbed so that it explodes on anyone who lays in it. The best is the two fat ladies at the end.

Watch the video here.

Hat tip to Leenks.com

ARTIST	ALBUM	COMMENTS
Eric Clapton	Unplugged	This album actually came to me when I was seventeen. I had just gotten my first CD player and joined Columbia House (didn't we all?). This was my first monthly selection that I forgot to send my card in on. I was naive enough to have opened the box and actually played the damn disc. I was blown away. I had grown up listening to "Cocaine" and "Layla," but Clapton on the acoustic guitar was like Angels singing. This was the album that made me buy an acoustic guitar and try to save the world with it (it turns out that the word processor was much more powerful in my hands than the guitar, but it still sits on a stand behind me and I'll pick it up and noodle with it every now and then, trying to be Clapton). Anyway, the rumors are true--Clapton is God.
Bob Dylan	Time Out of Mind	Sure his voice sounds like he gargles with gravel. Sure, he tends to ramble on like Bill Clinton in any of his tortuous state of the union addresses, but Dylan still has it and this album is the best one he's ever done. Oh, you may say that you hate Dylan, but you've never heard him sing "Tryin to Get to Heaven." This is an album that will grow on you with every listen (either that or it will make you shrink like a Shrinky Dink until your mind is small enough to appreciate it.)
Fleetwood Mac	Rumours	This album is history in the making. It was like a soap opera, with both Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham breaking up along with Christie and John McVie ending it. Songs were written to hurt others, but the music is still effing fantastic. The key songs on here are "Second Hand News" and "Gold Dust Woman," which will always be on the most kick ass songs ever. But there is also one of the best acoustic songs ever played on here by Lindsay Buckingham titled "Never Going Back Again." And you can't forget the gorgeous McVie ballad "Songbird," which should bring tears to your eyes if you are or ever have been in love and if you still have a beating heart in your pathetic chest, you schlep. If you don't own the album, get it from your local library, buy it, or steal the shit. But everyone needs a copy in their collection.
Pink Floyd	Animals	It was a real toss up as to which Floyd album to pick and two actually made it onto my list and they were more for sentimental reasons than great music (although they are both great). But what I mean to say is how is one to choose from the pickings of one of the greatest artistic collaborations this past century? Roger Waters and David Gilmour are at opposite ends of the expressionary spectrum, but they made it work for eight albums and what an eight album run it was. This one, though, hit my literary soft spot with its reference to Orwell's Animal Farm (You know, "Two legs good, four legs bad," and "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.") The best song on the album is "Dogs," with its sixteen minute length, it almost demands good pot (with red hairs in purple buds) to truly be appreciated. Damn, I miss those kind bud college days. But don't underestimate the opening and closing salvo, "Pigs on the Wing, Pts I and II," because their simplicity and masterful acoustic work will knock you on your ass when you're not looking.
Paul Simon	Graceland	How can you resist this album with its African influences, catchy rhythms, hypnotic choruses and refrains? And the lyrics--don't even get me started on the genius of his lyrics. Want a taste? Consider this verse from the title track: She comes back to tell me she's gone As if I didn't know that As if I didn't know my own bed As if I'd never noticed The way she brushed her hair from her forehead And she said losing love Is like a window in your heart Everybody sees you're blown apart Everybody sees the wind blow And while the lyrics are good, the delivery makes them ten times better.
Roger Waters	Amused to Death	While I love and respect David Gilmour for his simple vocal delivery and mastery of the guitar, my writer's heart will always lie with Roger Waters. The man has an unbelievable grasp of what a "blooded" metaphor is and his vocal range was right on par with his message. It is this trick that allows songwriters whose voices aren't the greatest to become legends (for further examples, consider Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and Geddy Lee). This album is pure concept like all of Waters's albums, but this one has something that applies to all of humanity. From the opening salvo of "What God Wants, Pt. I" through "The Bravery of Being Out of Range," (a nix at the modern warfare tactic of lobbing cruise missiles from a hundred miles away while drunks in bars cheer the war like a soccer match). The two best tracks are "Watching TV," which deals with a young Chinese girl's death as televised by CNN. I actually learned how to play this song and played it for my Chinese language teacher at BGSU who was a student and revolutionary in Mao Tse Dong's Cultural Revolution. In the sixties, she participated in defacing Buddha statues and helped defile her parents' generation for that tyrant. She broke into tears after I played the song and confessed to us that she would never rid herself of the guilt from the horrible things she did. The last song and title track is about an alien species coming to earth after humanity has destroyed itself and determining that our species died from over stimulation and amusing ourselves to death. This is not a make out album or something to play on a happy family excursion, but it still has great artistic validity.
Beastie Boys	Paul's Boutique	This album was so far ahead of its time that we've barely caught up to it. This is a pure work of art, perfect on every level of presentation. The lyrics are sharp, the beats snap and the songs never get old. I remember hating it the first time I heard it and loving it the second. I have nothing else to say about this one but that everyone who ever loved anything about hip-hop should own this album.
Counting Crows	August and Everything After	Who doesn't remember "Mr. Jones?" This CD reminds me of my freshman year in college (the first freshman year at the University of Cincinnati in 1993). My best friend Paul and I went to The Waterfront and saw an old buddy Frankie Arnwine down there. We listened to this album on the way back and I fell in love with it. It holds memories of the buxom Italian dame that I lost my virginity to and it also holds other memories, some painful, of dealings with the opposite sex throughout the 90s. Now, it just holds up as one of the greatest albums from one of the most poetic and musically talented bands that would go on to produce several high quality albums. But this was their first and it reminds me of my first...and everything after.
Sarah Mclachlan	Fumbling Towards Ecstasy	My wife introduced me to this album and our mutual friend Dan Gerken introduced her to it. Every song is a masterpiece and I could listen to it at any time. The reason why this one made the list is that every time I turn the pages of my CD collection and see it, I think of what a great CD it is and wish that I was listening to it right then and that is about the perfect definition of what one of the greatest CDs is.
Nirvana	Unplugged	You can't find this kind of raw emotion in many albums nowadays, but take it for what it's worth. This is Cobain's swan song. I'm not one of those pathetics that actually went out and bought this jag off's diary and treated it like some fifth testament from the Bible, but what Nirvana had to say perfectly defined the culture of the American teenager in the early 1990s. They brought the grunge thing in and killed it. You have to give them that. That being said, the album stands completely on its own musically as one of the most powerful performances by any band playing acoustic guitars and hitting miked up percussion in a small studio.
R.E.M.	Automatic for the People	This is actually the first R.E.M. album that I every heard and I bought it on a whim. Sure, I'd heard "Shiny Happy People" and "Losing My Religion," but something made me want to purchase this album. Maybe it was that depth charge or whatever the hell was on the cover, but it turned out to be a tour de force of mellow and poignant ballads that stay with me today. I'm a fan of R.E.M. after the period of this album and nobody can prove to me that they aren't better today than they were in 1982. Stick "It's the End of the World as We Know It" up your bisquick squirter; I'll take "Nightswimming" any day.
Seal	Seal (1991)	I bought this album in 1991 after hearing the song "Crazy" on MTV. The song is still bad ass to this day and Seal remains an artist that creates on his own level. Every song on here is great, but my three favorites are "Whirlpool," a great acoustic ballad that I can still hit every note on; "Show Me," which I sang karaoke to in a redneck bar when I was nineteen (I brought the CD and the guy phased the vocals out.) I blew that room away and ended up hooking up with one the waitresses from my restaurant that I'd been trying to get with for awhile. And the final song, and possibly the his best ever is "Violet," perhaps the most mellow song ever written (leaving out anything by Simon and Garfunkel, of course).
Sublime	40 oz. to Freedom	The greatest waste of talent in America in the late 1990s was Brad Nowell. The guy was an ace guitar player, had an uncanny knack at putting across a social and spiritual message in hip language that appealed to the youth of America across all demographics. But he was a junkie first and foremost and his talent was pissed away in a heated spoon. This album is a party on plastic from beginning to end. It's got all the emotion, all the anger, all the vibrations of youth and I feel ten years younger every time I listen to it. And with every listen I get one level more pissed off that this prick wasted his life and talent on bullshit.
Tool	Aenima	Nothing has ever scared me as much as this album. My buddy Carl Rich introduced me to Tool and I give him props for it. Back when I was the Prophet Joshua and I heard the song "Eulogy" for the first time, I actually experienced my own mental crucifixion. Here the words: Jump down/get off your fucking cross/We need the fucking space/to nail the next fool martyr and You claimed all this time that you would die for me/Why then are you so surprised when you hear your own eulogy? Listen to those words and still try to save the world. I dare you! Maynard James Keenan is the number one top vocalist in the world today, in my opinion. And beyond that, he has a vision that pulses and spurts out of every lyric and vocal incantation. There is no band like Tool and there never will be. This album has magic in it and it is played in my home during certain ritually appropriate times. It is most definitely one of the greatest albums that ever was or ever will be made. Need more proof? I have never heard a "hard metal" album played at a college party, but this one was played at more than a dozen that I went to in the Spring and Fall of 1998.
Miles Davis	Kind of Blue	Ah, the quintessential Miles. This is the album that all fraternity rats have in their collection for the old bump and grind after Tuesday night meetings and drinks at the bar. Mellow, mellow, mellow. Every note hits and Coletrane delivers for his part. This is the perfect introduction CD for anyone interested in opening themselves up to jazz. Miles Davis had the hands down best names for his albums of anyone I've ever come across. Need proof? Birth of the Cool and Bitches Brew. Enough said.

TAGS: Greatest Hits, Music

Previously classified documents being released Monday show numerous misuses of FBI surveillance, including improper searches and seizures of e-mails and bank records, The Washington Post reported in Monday's editions.

Later on, the article goes on to say that the FBI claims that "most of the violations were administrative errors."

Couldn't all monumental Eff-ups be boiled down to administrative errors? Because aren't administrative errors really leadership errors?

And while there are some excusable leadership errors; what happens when they become so egregious that they violate the safety and privacy of the very citizens the leadership has been entrusted to protect?

Heads should roll over this right after they roll for allowing 9/11 to happen in the first place.