Boys Wear Pants, Men Wear Trousers

Josh reads his short story "Why Christians and Jews Still Cry," which earned him a little controversy when he read it during his public BFA Senior Thesis reading. (16:16)

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Acoustic version of War Pigs by Black Sabbath.
(5:47)

...then you might like to hear me play. I always get so self-conscious playing around people, especially in front of dudes who are awesome at making music like my boys in Miranda Sound.

But I figured, fug it! Anyone who doesn't want to listen to it doesn't have to--that's the beauty of the Internet. So, if the spirit of revealing my complete lack of musical talent, I have recently posted two musical tracks on the Joshua Minton Podcast.

The first one is an acoustic version of War Pigs by Black Sabbath with a preface on why I am singing it despite the fact that I'm in support of the current War on Terror. I apologize beforehand for the microphone and my voice overloading it at points. Unfortunately, I'm no recording engineer either--we all work with what we've got, right?
The second JMPC (Joshua Minton Pod Cast or "Jump Pack") is just me noodling around on the guitar and talking about how I write songs and just generally exploring my complete lack of musical talent whatsoever

And as far as Miranda Sound goes, they can really just kiss my ass because I'm jealous as hell of what a fantastic band they are (Note to Billy, Dan, Scott and Dan) you're lucky I like you dickheads and want to see you succeed beyond your wildest dreams and beyond the corporate clutches you have so wisely managed to escape so far).

Let me know if anyone liked these.

I know that many of you that read this site do not receive my e-mail newsletter (which is free, by the way and you can sign up in the sidebar of this blog) the reference may be unfamiliar to you. But I assure you that Fantastic Bastard's demeanor of communication will be worth it even if you don't know what the hell is going on.

Here is his full response:

Screw it. I'm just sending it to you for now.

Here's the thing I told you I almost commented on the other day. I, literally, scoffed when I read this part of your e-mail:

"Regardless of who you are, if you don't have your own website, your own blog,
your own Podcasts and aren't posting articles online then you are missing the
boat."
Taking this in context, I have but one remark as rebuttal: Blow me. I don't have/do any of that shit but I still keep up on my game.

Also, as far as your notion of "The day of the individual artist holding the power of communicating to the world is at hand. The middlemen who have served as the filter for disseminating information are being displaced by the minute." I think that's bullshit too. If anything, the world is now more susceptible to being mislead by those in power through censorship or discrediting the individual. At the base level, you're talking about replacing the established media here. I knew this would be the topic you'd eventually take it to.

It is true that the individual has more power to disseminate his opinion now than ever but you're forgetting that SBC's phone lines, or Time Warner's cable connection, or Whoeverthefuck's whateverthefuck is still ALLOWING you to do so, through a service YOU PAY FOR! You hardly seem to be independent in this instance. And while you may be displacing the traditional middlemen, you're really just replacing them with servers and poorly educated, unrounded, overspecialized IT guys with some Microsoft training certificate from computertraining.com. The fact of the matter is that "They" are still going to find a way to limit what you say. The established system is established for a reason and that brings clout with it.

Moreover, you're failing to realize one key thing: the rest of the world is not like us. Shit, most of this country is not like us. And if you’re reading this, you've just been included in "us". There is a significant portion of the world that doesn't know what a webpage looks like, let alone even used a computer themselves. As crazy as that may sounds to you, my friend, AKA: "Technology Boy", it is true. Only a fraction of the world has an education over our 9th grade level. Of that fraction, only a fraction has completed a level of education equivalent to our high schools. That being said, let's not think that everyone is anywhere close to the educational prestige of our very own Silent Rob. All I'm getting at here is that it is impossible to overthrow an established, global system when only reaching less than 10% of its population.

Now getting back to my original point of this, in the eyes of most of the world, we are "The Man." You're not overthrowing The Man; this social theory merely tries to execute a coup through the displacement of the men in the middle. The media, be it the traditional concept of or your new vision of multiplatforming bloggers reporting on a borrowed network, is a relative thing. It is, and always will be, over the heads of most. It is, and always will be, informing, oppressing and empowering all at the same time. Tis the nature of the beast and something you will never change.

Man, I love talking about the Kennedy assasination, I really do. Because, to me, it's a great archetype example of how the totalitarian government, who rules this planet, partitions out information in such a way that we, the masses, are forced to base our conclusions on erroneous and false.... Oh, I'm sorry, wrong meeting. I thought this was the meeting at the docks.
--WILLIAM MELVIN HICKS--

Oh, one more thing I'd like to add... Remember that you're not allowed to base all the sources in your papers from the internet because not all the sources are credible. Just because you read it doesn't make it true... So disregard everything I just said.

There's a few minutes of your life you won't get back!

In this edition of the MintonCast podcast, I read the essay Ambition by Krishnamurti. I also talk about my near run in with a lunatic yesterday at the grocery, get into a little religion and why a democracy must maintain peace through strength and why it is a good thing that the US military is such a bad ass motha.

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This came out of an article I was writing. I figure a blog is the perfect place to store these digressions that don't seem to fit anywhere else. Maybe someone else can pick the idea up and run with it, get it answered.

LEGAL DIGRESSION: I assume that if something has been sent over e-mail and has been forwarded thousands of times, providing that one saves the e-mail to prove it's been forwarded to them means the information particle iis pretty much public domain; and therefore, broadcasting it on one's podcast is acceptable because it's easier for others to access. This way, instead of sending out mass e-mails, clogging up servers and generally spamming up the place, you are providing those interested in your information an easy way they can have it pulled to them instead of you having to do all the pushing.

This was an audio e-mail that I received and had to pass along:

On a recent Spurs trip, we were asking one of our sponsors who works at Jack in the Box some funny stories or experiences with the company. The funniest story he had was when an operations manager was late for a meeting and called his boss to tell him he was running late. As he was leaving the voice mail message, he witnessed an accident and went on to provide "play by play" of the incident.

After telling us the story, he promised to send us a copy of the voice mail and here it is. This is the actual voice mail message. It was passed along and forwarded so many times within Jack in the Box, it crashed their voice mail server. "

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Josh reads an essay titled "I Have a Right" from the book Cliches of Politics. He discusses his college television watching schedule, the Sesame Street part of the book The Tipping Point and how it applies to his work methodology and what happens to you when you watch seven straight seasons of the show Friends in a row. (16:57)

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Podcast Link

Any Star Wars fan should be listening to these podcasts.

Josh discusses his interview with a Country Club, pro lifers who murder people, the problem with religion and getting back in touch with an old friend.

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This week's Podcast is actually a class that I took last week on Information Entrepreunering (Infopreunering). The class, which is through the Enlightened Millionaire Institute and was taught by Joyce Belle Edelbrock, ended up being a one on one discussion between she and I about Information Marketing on the Internet and even drifted into the spiritual and social.

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