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Because I found “Invincible” to be a enjoyable album, I decided to give “Archangel” a try as well. It’s evidently their third publicly released album.

I’ve reviewed Two Steps from Hell before, but they began as a production company doing music for movie and game trailers. Some of their more successful demo tracks were compiled to create albums for general release.

It appears that I’m not the only one that wished they would write something a little longer. Most of their tracks were around two minutes long, which in many cases is only enough to give you a single iteration of the melody. Perhaps they started remedying this in “Illusions”, but it’s clear they’re fixing that here. At least half of the tracks come in above three minutes now.

Beyond that there’s not much more to say about it. They still trend strongly toward “power songs”, like music for action movies. There are a few exceptions to this, but largely it’s in the same vein as “Invincible”, only “Invincible” did it better. That’s not to say there aren’t some excellent tracks; there are. But the over-all lack of variety does get a little tiring after awhile.

If you really like TSFH, you’ll like this album. It was still worth getting, but if you buy only one album, I’d recommend “Invincible” (Or “Skyworld”, but I haven’t reviewed it yet).

I have a passing interest in popular culture. I like to know what’s going on, what’s a big deal at the moment, etc. Just enough to be able to say I’ve heard about it. It’s almost like being a trainspotter. What the train cars are used for is nearly irrelevant. They could be carrying ball bearings or brusselsprouts. They could be on their way to get melted down. It doesn’t matter. The thrill comes from being able to spot cars you know.

In spite of this, I really couldn’t care less about “Awards Season.” Golden Globes, People’s Choice, Academy Awards…big flying whoop. Perhaps I might care more if I felt that the opinions of those voting actually reflected any of my values, but it’s clear they don’t, as often as not. Most of the time I haven’t even seen the movies they’re voting on. And usually, when I have, I really can’t see what the fuss is about.

I care slightly more about the actors. Win or lose, they’ll be fine. They get to be seen, get to make a little news, get to further their careers by planting themselves in a chair for four hours. Good for them. We all have our particular rows to hoe in furthering our careers. Putting on an elaborate costume and going to a big—probably hot—hall and pretending to be excited about everything and everyone—even the people you can’t stand—for four hours sounds like work to me. At least when I have to spend four hours in a hot room it’s usually in more comfortable clothing and with nothing more to do than take a lot of notes.

Oh, there may be a few actors out there I’m more interested in than usual. Jennifer Lawrence seems to be one of them right now, though she’s starting to wear a bit thin. Mark Wahlberg, as you’ve probably noticed, is growing in my estimation nearly every time I hear about him. Paul Walker seemed like a nice guy and all. But for the most part I just want to know what’s putting them in the news this time and I’m good. Won a Best Actor/Actress award? Yay.

It’s kind of like the Superbowl, really. Do I know who is playing this year? Nope. Perhaps that’s not even decided yet, for all I know. But I’ll know by the time it comes around. I’ll know what the watercooler-chat commercials are by the time I get to work the day after. I’ll know the “important” details without ever having to take the time to actually watch the events that generate those details.

Perhaps that makes me the Cliff Notes on Pop Culture. Sure, why not.

This article on Wired.com about skip tracer Michelle Gomez is the stuff novels are made of:

Gomez, the proprietor of a one-woman operation in Lockhart, Texas, called Unlimited Recoveries, is one of the best skip tracers in the world. A combination bill collector, bounty hunter, and private investigator, a skip tracer finds people and things that have disappeared on purpose. Gomez specializes in “hard-to-locate recoveries”—she prefers cases others can’t solve. To track down the fleet of Caterpillar wheel loaders taken by the Peruvians, Gomez reached out to the estranged wife of the family’s patriarch, telling the woman that she was pregnant with her husband’s child. The ruse worked: Eventually the wife told Gomez that the heavy equipment was on its way to a construction site in South America.

Read the whole thing. Fascinating stuff.

In recent days we’ve seen more op-eds and blog posts accusing people of the unforgivable sin of “imposing their beliefs on others.” Let me just remind you that is one of the most assinine charges…ever. People who keep insisting on bring this up really should be dragged out into the streets, covered in spray-on whipped cream, have a cherry added on top, and then thoroughly laughed at.

Identify any aspect about the influencing, writing, reviewing, repealing, revising, or enforcing of laws that does not involve imposing someone’s beliefs on someone else.

The very idea of government depends on the imposition of someone’s will on someone else, and there is no government yet that governs only by unanimity. If we’re lucky it’s the majority imposing their will on the minority. That will at least result in the most people being happy…we hope. Show me a form of government in which no group imposes their will on others and I’ll show you anarchy. That’s it. Any other form of government depends on one party or another imposing their will.

Now obviously some forms of government do this more gently and considerately than others, and imposes less harsh penalties for resistence. But the fact remains unchanged: no matter who is making the rules, someone else is not going to like it. The defining factor in any government is not whether or not someone dislikes the rule made, but whether that person had a voice, whether their opinion was able to be voiced in some form in the making of that rule. Being heard does not obligate being obeyed.

So few people seem to understand this these days. They are perfectly happy if they are getting their way, but when they don’t their first instinct is to find someone to blame for imposing their beliefs on them. If the Supreme Court upholds a controversial law they favor then they are the most wise, august body in all creation. But should they ever decide contrary, then it’s obviously because Justice X is a Y, and they are just trying to impose their Y beliefs on the rest of us.

The error is two-fold. First of all, it is seldom so easy that a single factor in that person’s makeup guided their decision. Second of all, imposition of belief is what they do! Law is almost never “settled”, and most bodies of laws are constructed from a structure of beliefs, not indisputable truths. Therefore it’s a given that someone’s beliefs have been forced on all of us.

So be intellectually honest and admit that you just don’t like the that someone else is getting their way and not you. Stop pretending it’s all someone else’s fault, because sure as daylight you’re more than happy to have someone’s belief imposed on others when the belief is yours.

The other day I followed a friend’s link to a site called something like “The Good Men Project” or something along those lines. I’ve not yet been back, but I intend to go check it out in depth sometime. Based on the one article (not a good sample, I know), it seems to be a site dedicated to supporting a balanced definition of manhood. I’m not sure I entirely agree with their angle, but it’s a start.

Just what a man should be is much in debate these days. Many women writers seem to want men to be women with chest hair. A lot of women on Facebook want men to not be clueless Neanderthals. A certain subset of men (possibly as a counter-movement to the former group of women) wants men to be self-consumed users of women. My particular church encourages men to be focused on providing for and being actively involved in family above anything else.

The particular article I read discussed how a father can best be there for his daughter. I can see some of the points raised as provoking outrage from some feminist groups, insisting that the writer is saying that women need protecting. I think they’d be wrong. I think what the author is saying is that a good father helps his daughter learn to not need him anymore—but be there anyway, just in case.

But in light of all these things I can’t help but decide that a real, good man must learn to tell the world “Shut up and leave me alone.” I think that could go for women, too. We’ve got a lot more groups and sources insisting they know what we need to be—and how to get there—than any of us have time to listen. And much of what they have to say is total dreck, frankly. Free advice is usually worth everything you pay for it, and so much advice these days is not only free, but completely unsolicited. Even Camille Paglia, who recently bemoaned the cultural effort to stamp out manhood, probably should not be relied on to give a solid definition of what men should be like. It’s like the Aesop’s fable of the man, his son, and their donkey: If you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one.

Manhood seems to have adopted the same anecdotal definition as pornography: “I know it when I see it.” But perhaps that’s the problem. Do we really see it anymore? Is there a clear definition of manhood we can look up to, emulate, and pass on to our sons or teach our daughters to expect? No one knows how to be a Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart any more—and a large portion of society would step forward to denounce them if they tried to show their style of manhood these days, not because they actually put down women with their gentlemanly ways, but because a whole generation has been trained to perceive that intent in every act of graceful manners.

So I say to heck with them. Why should we let women own the definition of manhood? It’s not too late to re-establish manhood—not the fake, metrosexual man-child version rapidly gaining ground today, but real manhood: Men who love their wives and children, value fidelity, integrity and hard work, think for themselves, and believe in doing the right thing.

To heck with television and its continual portrayal of men as either bumbling, incompetent, laughingstock fathers or sly, smooth, womanizing libidos-on-legs. Enough of Hollywood and its stream of foul-mouthed, gross-out, semi-primates and bicep-bulging, bullet-proof super-soldiers who are fast with a gun and faster with a woman. There are so few role-models to be found in modern entertainment that it’s not even worth the search.

It’s time we men searched our souls and our history and recaptured all the good about manhood that got thrown out with the bathwater. It’s time we stopped apologizing for not being more like women and instead learn to value who we are. Like it or not, men and women are different, no matter who tries to insist otherwise. Enough with those people who try to shame us all for appreciating the differences that unite us.

Listening to those people will never allow us to be happy. Being happy is not what they want for us, anyway. It’s not too late to recapture true manhood. There are a lot of real men still around. They’re just keeping quiet, going about their business, and trying to figure out if they still fit in somewhere.

I think Rudyard Kipling may have held up too lofty a vision, but it’s not a bad goal:

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

(I’ve posted this before, I know. Some things are worth repetition.)

I’m probably not willing to pay the money for one, but I’d love to have one of these!

I read fewer books last year than the year before. If you count the ones I started and abandoned I read as many, but I don’t think that counts. However, part of the point of allowing myself to abandon books was to free up more time to read books that I would enjoy more. And yet I read fewer books. And several of these were not exactly long books, either. I even counted a web-comic volume, for heaven sake (though come to think of it, I didn’t count the Calvin & Hobbes collection my son gave me for Christmas….Hmmmm…).

I would feel better about that if I’d accomplished more in my writing instead, but I’m still puttering away on what was supposed to be the best, most fun novel I have written to date. I did finish the second draft of the novel I wrote the previous year, but this one has taken far too long for being just over 50k words into it. There are some good moments, to be sure, but it’s been work for the most part, and I’ve nearly given up several times. Will I be a better writer for having persevered and finished it anyway? Beats me.

Twenty-nine books is less than two and a half per month. I suppose in that light it’s not bad. Every month I’d invariably finish an audiobook, so that was a book and a half at the same time. I should be more pleased about that than I am, I suppose.

Or I can stop whining, end this blog post, and go pick up one of the five books I got for Christmas and work on setting a new record this year.