Grape Nuts

Daniela Rossell - Untitled [Ricas Y Famosas: Paulina On Her Father's Desk] (2000)

I found out today that Phillip Morris, convicted corporate racketeer, profits off my daily breakfast of Grape Nuts, the Philadelphia cream cheese on my bagel, my constant snacking on Cheese Nips, my occasional "ethical" statement of choosing Boca Burgers over factory-raised animals, and my nostaligia-fueled bias towars Miracle Whip. The operative word here is "choice" and the operative concern is how impossible it is to make choices in daily life without supporting large-scale structural evils.

I guess I don't know why I continue to be suprised that everything in my life sits in a morally-bland marinade of someone else's ownership. The whole situation reminds me of last week when I tried to eat Grape Nuts with a headache. Though they tasted fantastic, the reverberations of crunched dissonance made it a horrendously painful experience. With each bite I convinced myself that I could somehow put more thought into a gentler masticative pressure and successfully mash the joyous granules without reaping the negative effects. Of course I ended up with an empty bowl and a migrane. Grape Nuts can no longer be eaten with the pervasive headache of corprate irresponsibility or we'll all just keep chomping away and hurting ourselves. What does a society have to go to eat its breakfast in peace?

Nellie McKay - There You Are In Me (mp3) : Nellie rushes around in a dissonant, confusion-induced neural brainstorm until she breaks through a realization that she and her memory will always exist as having once existed.

The Ladybug Transistor - Splendor In The Grass (mp3): A twanged retropop ballad of firsts, complete with an angelic chorus esteeming the proverbial perpetual pasture.

The Slip - Poor Boy (mp3): These guys played Madison's Cafe Montmartre last night with a restrained unshaven swagger that almost disguised whitebread whiteboy pitfalls of sprinkling jammy guitar with harmonica solos and ending every song in broken summary chords.

Foreign Islands - We Know You Know It (mp3): The annoyance of the dissonant guitar that starts this track is second only too how played out guitar dissonance is. Luckily the heavy beat and Le Tigre vocals restore its relevance.