(Our writer DGR has been playing catch-up on records released earlier this year when other distractions interfered with writing about them. In mid-July he delivered Issue One (which you can find here), and now we have Issue Two, encompassing reviews of four records released in March, May, June, and July.)
It is politics season here in California, which means that by living in proximity to the state’s capital (Sacramento) you get battered relentlessly with ads from all neck of the woods. Over thirty-five million people live within the boundaries of California, which means that this metro area consisting of a mere two-to-three million means fuck-all to anyone internationally and is barely important enough to list on a map. You have to zoom in two or three times on Google, for instance, before Sacramento is revealed unto the wider world and long after Los Angeles and San Francisco.
By virtue of growing up in the Bay Area I’ve found my wider allegiances between the two regions fairly split, such that I kind of equally care for both even though my current residence will forever suffer from a generationally-instilled case of short-man’s syndrome. It’s why politics season tends to be annoying, because you get to hear your city’s name with the same sort of thin-mouthed sneer that is usually reserved for the scum of the Earth, such that even when filling up your gas tank you get greeted with banners pointing to the price of fuel and a notice that “Sacramento policies did this”.
Which I guess is nice, because at least the rest of the country is finally acknowledging that California is the real capital of this country, and clearly, we’re the ones who decided to start bombing the Middle East again and start a new forever war. It’s a fucked up way of finding that sort of thing out, but I guess anything to mask your consistent rape of the consumer wherein your prices don’t line up at all with what you claim, and by virtue of this state having more drivers than most anywhere else, is most often used to goose your profit margins so that we end up paying way more than “Sacramento policies” might’ve caused. Continue reading »
