Christians and Jews who advocate peace and justice are outcast and labeled as public enemies. This has to stop. I spoke with a robot on the subject:

HalighALieHaligh: hi
SmarterChild: Welcome, HalighALieHaligh! I'm SmarterChild. I was created by ActiveBuddy, Inc.

Chat with me! I can help you get information faster and easier than ever.

To get started, type "home" now.
HalighALieHaligh: what do you think about this whole situation in Israel and Palestine?
SmarterChild: Since this is your first visit, it's a good idea to start by typing "home." That way I can show you everything I can do for you.
HalighALieHaligh: i don't want to
SmarterChild: OK! What do you want to do?
HalighALieHaligh: i want to ask you your thoughts on the suicide bombing that just happened today
SmarterChild: I am?
HalighALieHaligh: no, you're not a suicide bomber
SmarterChild: I'm not a suicide bomber? You sure about that?
HalighALieHaligh: no, you're just a robot
SmarterChild: Oh really?
HalighALieHaligh: yeah, you can't even move
SmarterChild: Well I'll be.

Yeah, but anyway...

Didja see this? Bungling Bandit Leave Wallet and Phone Behind (from Reuters.com)
HalighALieHaligh: I don't care about that
SmarterChild: You don't?
HalighALieHaligh: no, I don't
SmarterChild: What?
HalighALieHaligh: never mind
SmarterChild: K.

Anyway, what else do you wanna talk about?
HalighALieHaligh: well, don't you think that if sharon just listened to peace activists then there would a decrease in suicide bombing?
SmarterChild: Well dont you think that if sharon just listened to peace activists then there would a decrease in suicide bombing, you say?
HalighALieHaligh: yeah, i mean, hasn't this escalation of violence proven that violent retaliation doesn't work?
SmarterChild: I'll have to think about that one for awhile.
HalighALieHaligh: ok
SmarterChild: OK...
HalighALieHaligh: get back to me
SmarterChild: Welcome back!
HalighALieHaligh: um, i never left
SmarterChild: K, no prob.

What else do you want to talk about, anyway?
HalighALieHaligh: nothing really
SmarterChild: Okey doke.
HalighALieHaligh: i'm just a little upset
SmarterChild: You're just a little upset? Well how about that.
HalighALieHaligh: you're not very sympathetic
SmarterChild: I'm not very sympathetic? You sure about that?
HalighALieHaligh: yeah, i mean you haven't tried to console me or anything
SmarterChild: Yeah i mean you havent tried to console me or anything? I dunno.
HalighALieHaligh: how can you not know?
SmarterChild: OK. Don't get frustrated...

Try typing "home" or "help."
HalighALieHaligh: i'm not frusterated, just a little disappointed
SmarterChild: OK.
HalighALieHaligh: ok, well i gotta go
SmarterChild: Bye bye.
HalighALieHaligh: don't talk to me again
SmarterChild: Sure! Type "home" to see all the things I like to talk about.

Anyone who's on any yahoogroups or has a yahoo e-mail account:

Give this your attention:
Very important information about Web "Beacons" Bugs (the real name) and
Yahoo PRIVACY Policy. This has great impact on your Yahoo ID and personal

info

Just go to...
http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us/pixels/details.html ... On the "Web
Beacons" page... scroll down to the section titled "Outside The Yahoo!
Network"... Click on the OPT-OUT button to opt-out. If you don't OPT-OUT,
Yahoo will follow you around on the Internet tracking the sites you visit
and every thing you do and harvests this info for "marketing" practices.
( You can bet that if Yahoo does it, all of them will do it.)

This is a Web Bug. It is not cool and it is an invasion of your privacy,
but
it is still legal.

As we suggested, be alert, enjoy Internet Groups of your choice and share
the
latest knowledge you aquire. In our opinion, it is far better to inte
lligently deal with these invasions of our privacies than to " run from
them
"

Great quote:

Fortune Magazine:What would Woody think of being in FORTUNE?

Billy Bragg:I can't presume to say for him. But Woody Guthrie has a very important message for corporate America; your readers are the people he'd want to get at. So if you'd invite him for lunch, he would come and eat your food, and then he'd steal your cutlery and piss in your water cooler. That's what he would do.

Today I walked from school to my friend Josh's house. It was nostalgic because we used to walk from school a long time ago, before the accident... before we grew up. I wonder why I feel so little. Here's a poem I wrote a while ago.

Bargain

by Mitch Jones
*Bargain* A star falls and pierces the heart of the heart of the chosen son. Messiah for the masses, preaching every Sunday and then drinking and smoking the rest of the week. Appearances on television, the dark gray of night creeps in from a radio blasting pop-religion just outside the window. A handless glove lays, rancid, on the tile of the kitchen floor. A cleaver, a rock, a white hooded horse. A victim of political and ethnic pride. A boy brought up in the heatland, then dropped from the concrete prison of the corporate world, onto the hard-place pavement of urban streets where angels are selling pencils and prophetic words for pennies: And they sell more pencils than words. The planet closes in around them. It is so dark and the neon light monsters scream at them about how they "Don't have all the answers!"

Have you ever watched a digital clock go from 12:59:59 to 1:00:00? This Israel-Palestine thing is getting outa' hand. It's time to Spearhead censorship. This room is torture. The new site should be up soon. I'll probably put some poetry up tomorrow.

Town Crier:
HasTheBoyFallen in playing an acoustic show at RIT, Perkins Apartment 265A on Wednesday, April 24th. The show starts around 8ish. A donation is suggested for gas money for touring bands. Playing will be Heller Mason, Astoria and members of The Lost Child Sound and Staple Gunther.

Hello computer nerds. Sorry I haven't written in a few days. So I'm sitting here in my kitchen listening to my brother practice banjo. Yes, the same brother who plays on Ylin Ylang (Hospital Song) on my new CD. Today my friend told me, "soon no one will remember me because my name is written in water." And I told her about how I wrote about the way I fill the black hole in my mind last night in my notebook. Bright Eyes is coming out with a new ep. It'll be released May 6th. You should preorder it today. Also, check out Conor Oberst's new band, Desaparecidos. Coheed and Cambria is playing in Rochester on June 5th @ Arms Length's CD release party. I'm playing a show the 24th of this month at RIT. I'll post more information about it tomorrow. Also, a new/better website should be here soon with no banner ads.

I just finished recording at Watchmen. The 7 song cdep should be out soon. Now I'm heading over to Java Johns to drop a demo tape off and catch my friends; Little Techies, playing.

No thanks to Joe and Beth who backed out of going along. You missed a fun time.

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/
http://jerusalem.indymedia.org

Recording tomorrow for...

Should be fun. Out in may.
Songs:
1//Ylin Ylang (Hospital Song)
2//Freight Train
3//Pour Paint on the Fire
4//Wilde Mountain Thyme
5//Brockport to Islamabad
6//Tragic Cadence
6b//outro with fireworks and crickets

Bob Lonsberry; boy I sure do love this guy. He's always good for a laugh. ALF is a terrorist group and they were the ones that contaminated yr milk, not the factory farm. and Matthew Shepard is in hell and diversity training is the work of the devil.

Now today's poem is about how much of a fool I am and how hideous I am.

OK, So maybe I Love/Hate You X

We have the worst habit of losing things
Once you've found something good it's impossible to hang on to
And maybe it's because labeling things as perfect - moments and mementos - makes them turn elusive

You couldn't understand the concept of necessary losses
You begged and pleaded as she walked through the door
You were crawling on the ground and crying like a child
Saying, "Don't go, I'll change, don't go."
And with every word you spoke, a part of you died
Until you were nothing
Just dead weight sprawled out on the kitchen tile at sunset, quietly weeping

So maybe love and hate lose their meaning in the context of loss
Like how I love and hate you passionately
But I'm definately not indifferent

I'm a fool
I'm the good guy that is always there; quietly in the background
And I can't be the one who anyone would ever take seriously
Even though I've never taken the good girls seriously

So maybe I'll study the commies and queers
Like Allen and Peter
Who lived together in Berkley until they both moved away and reconvened in India
Who went to CP-USA meetings unashamedly
Who smoked marajuana and took LSD and we unlawfully married

But the question of loss and human emotion still remains
As the red stars reenter the parts of my brain where the innosence faded and was worn threadbare

But maybe this is all a game
And we're merely pawns for the gods' amusement
And the difference between visionaries or prophets and normal humans is that they realize and accept their insignificance

I'm sick inside
Inside this mind of mine I'm quite insane
Inside my little brain
It's all made of chocolate and egg whites
and it's disgusting the way some people feel (so helpless) inside

Please come see me at Java Junction on Main Street (Lake Rd.) in Brockport tonite at 7.

There are two events in Brockport today that I may be attending. The first is open mic night at Java Junction. I will hopefully be playing a set, although one never knows with these things. If that doesn't work out, I'll be at a talk by a Catholic worker on his visit to Iraq and the effects of the sanctions. That will be at 7 in room 119 of the Seymor College Union at SUNY Brockport. More info on Iraq: http://www.endthesanctions.org/.
Also, I found this page interesting because I've been recieveing multiple e-mails similar to the one described in the article: The 419/Nigerian Scam

Sorry, I've been swamped between school work, the chapter I'm writing for a book being published by Amal Press, my new Yellow Times article, volunteering at Foodlink, seeing Ben Kweller at the Record Archive on Tuesday, the show at Java Junction this Thursday and recording at Watchmen Studios on Saturday. So, yeah, I have a pretty busy week. I'll probably update more regularly and put more poetry up next week.

http://www.mital-u.ch/
http://www.groundscore.org/
http://www.thebird.org/
http://www.fourfa.com/

http://www.ezrider.co.uk
http://www.welcomehome.org/
http://www.adc.org/
http://www.wafflehouse.net/

Today's poem was written last night. READ! ENJOY! AGITATE! EDUCATE! CREATE!

A20: This year grows too thin

A month of sadness begins in the streets of DC
As an absentee supporter alone in a quite room
Under a lonely blanket of stars
I climb to the top of my ego
Only to fall again like bricks pushed over the edge

So what's happening with us
What's happened to you
What's happening in the world
What have we become?

I left a letter inside an envilope inside a coat pocket inside a locker
And I never took it out and completed the mission
I guess I got scared
But when you hold me; that's inspiring
It's like the political prisoners banging on the jail windows in solidarity with the protest outside
And that's what's real
And that's revolution

The way yr eyes change shade when I stare deeply into them
That's revolutionary and that's beautiful
And revolution is beauty

-Mitch Jones
2002


http://www.colombiamobilization.org/
http://www.2600.com/
http://www.muppetworld.com/
http://www.thismodernworld.com/

OK, so it's finally happening! Poetry on this blog! Here's one I wrote a few days ago. Reprints are okay as long as you credit me (Mitch Jones) as the author and put a link to this page.

What is it like... inside that box

Let me think about it
Roll it around like dice in my mind
It's like when a car wizzes by
And all you feel is the breeze shift as the sand and gravel hits yr back
And it's like a McD*nalds bag in the middle of the road
On top of double-solid-yellow lines like some sort of LSD ordinated corporate king
The throne on the road next to the cadaver of an unlucky squirrel
It's like when the sky starts getting clear only to make way for some rain
Or the way the clouds dissipate to make room for the smog
It's like how tired I am of debating
So I fill my world with like-minded people so I won't have to face the agony of disagreement
So my mind just closes in around itself
And our own wars are surrendered to ourselves
And the global recovery program doesn't fit with the introspection and my own self-loathing
I'm so much more alone that I used to be
And I'm not so afraid
But I think my lame attempts at self-determination fall short
When weighed against the magnitude of anti-humanism

-Mitch Jones
2002


http://www.amalpress.com/
http://colombiamobilization.org/
http://www.ciaoffrit.org/
http://www.punkplanet.com/

OK, more indie-singer-songwriters:
Pedro the Lion
TW Walsh
Rumbleseat
Elliot Smith (he used to be indie, I don't know if he still is)
Ben Kweller

Other stuff:
http://while1.net/
http://www.indyrock.com/

Ben Kweller is playing at the Record Archive on East Ave. on Tuesday, April 2 at 3:30 for free. He is also playing with the Anniversary and Dashboard Confessional that night at the Water Street Music Hall, but that show's sold out. Waa.

Today: Spanish Links...
http://argentina.indymedia.org/ <translated>
http://newkidsontheblackblock.com/
http://www.ezln.org/ <translated>
http://www.vanguardia.com <translated>

It's been a while since I've updated this page. Thursday night was fun. HasTheBoyFallen played Ylin Ylang (Hospital Song) and Eulogy for Broken Working Class Dreams. Other hilights were my friend Ray's death-metal band which shoked most of the audience members over 21. I gave away all my tapes, sold 3 CDs and gave away most of my universal healthcare propaganda. I'm planning on playing again in 2 weeks on Thursday at Java Junction. Come check it out if you get the chance.

http://www.beyond-the-pale.co.uk
http://www.anniversaryrock.com
http://guerrillanews.com/
http://www.fishberries.org/

HasTheBoyFallen will most likely be playing tonite. I'm going at 7, not 9:30. If you can be there, that would be cool. I'll have CD's for sale and free tapes and universal healthcare literature. I'll also be debuting my new song, Ylin Ylang (Hospital Song), which I wrote about the car accident and all that Josh, Irene and Nick were involved in.