Most Iconic Guitar Solo?

I was listening to Prozzak’s “Sucks To Be You” (Spotify link) the other day, and musing how I thought it had one of the most perfectly fitting guitar solos ever.  Not that I’ll defend that choice; it’s a quirky little song, and the flamenco-style solo is just weird and somehow fitting for me.
But then I thought: what’s the most iconic guitar solo of all time?
“Stairway to Heaven” came to mind instantly, but then I realized that I couldn’t bring the whole solo to mind.  The end weedly bits, yes, but I think for a solo to be iconic, the whole solo has to be something so memorable you can pretty much sing along with it.  So after thinking for a bit, I settled upon “Hotel California.”  You might not like the song, but I think pretty much anyone who grew up in the 70s through the 90s can sing along with that sucker.
But I could be wrong.  Remember, we’re not looking for the best guitar solo here, but the most iconic – as in, the guitar solo that almost everyone knows, the guitar solo that is the most legendary.  I was toying with one other choice here, which to me is incredibly obvious, but I’ll see whether I get swamped with that one in the comments.
(Cue Bart Calendar’s strong opinions.)

On Tarot Cards and Good Friends

Those of you who’ve been reading me for a while know that I don’t believe much in woo-woo superstition.  (I believe in God and Christ, yes, but I’m of the firm belief that you start praying only once it’s your last option – do all the prep work before you bother the Big Guy.)
The one place I do place some faith in mystic potency?  Tarot cards.
I usually don’t get them read, because the few readings I have done turned out to be eerily accurate, correctly predicting the sad arrival of my first girlfriend, a breakup with the girlfriend I was with at the time, and the future of my writing, among others.  Sure, it could be coincidence (or, as Alan Moore suggests, “magick as the unconscious mind finding a way to express itself”)… but I now save my tarot card readings for major, major events.
And if I had to trust my tarot card readings to anyone, it would be Miintikwa.  (Which, in fact, I have.)
She’s currently finishing up a book on the tarot, and is in a situation where a little extra cash could help her.  So I’m telling you that if you feel like having your tarot read, she’s done some darned good interpretations for me, she’s sensible, and her rates are quite reasonable (starting at $5 for a simple three-card draw).
As she says: “I have been reading the tarot for over 20 years.  The last 10 years, I’ve been doing it professionally.  I have a knack for helping people find their totem animals, and I enjoy discovering past lives with my patrons.  I have also developed readings with the explicit purpose of healing and guiding people to find their highest good.  I also have readings to help people find love.
“My patrons have given me a lot of great feedback, and I apply myself to finding ways to do better with every reading.”
She approaches it seriously, with sincerity and wisdom, and so if you’re considering new life paths, check her out.  So sayeth the weasel.

Aaaand Back To FetLife

So over at FetLife (theFacebookforKinksters!), I chronicled a rather important journey in my BDSM life, as I bottomed for the first time during knifeplay in a public scene:

She was beautiful, and she held a knife.
I’d done some work with [X] before, standing in as part of a class she was teaching, and she had cut me as part of a demonstration about loving sadism. The cuts stayed for a month.
I love to be cut.
One of the most intense sexual experiences I’ve ever had was with Abby, a pouty-lipped sensual girl of eighteen, on the summer before she went off to college…..

Anyway, not to discuss it overmuch, but it’s here if you want it.  I learned some interesting things about bottoming != subbing.

A Spoon Full Of Good Faith Makes The Medicine Go Down

Do liberals demonize conservatives?  As a liberal, I rather think so.  And at least one scientific survey agrees with me:

They asked two thousand Americans to describe their political leanings (liberal, moderate, conservative) and fill out a questionnaire about morality, one-third of the time as themselves, one-third of the time as a “typical liberal”, and one-third of the time as a “typical conservative”. The clear answer was: self-described conservatives and moderates were much better at predicting what other people would believe. Liberals, especially the “very liberal”, were by far the worst at guessing what people would say, and especially bad at guessing what conservatives would say about issues of care or fairness. For example, most thought that conservatives would disagree with statements like “One of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenceless animal” or “Justice is the most important requirement for a society”.

Here’s the thing, you lovely lefties; I am one of you.  And holy God, if I ever disagree with you, it’s usually because I’m an evil asshole who’s out to repress and destroy everyone you love.
The assumption that “Hey, we share the same goals of equality and justice” usually doesn’t get brought up.  If I don’t think something is X-ist, or think that the solution to solving X-ism isn’t the one you’re currently flouting, well… the proposed reason I disagree is often because I’m a big fat X-ist, and a jerk, and clearly a big secret hater.
Not because, you know, I think your solution isn’t going to work.  Or because I think you may be jumping to conclusions.  No, it’s gotta be that I am against equality.
I know, I know – the conservatives do it, too!  But they don’t claim to be inclusive.  We do.  And further, looking at my cocktail party history, I’ve had a lot more productive conversations with right-wingers where they’ve pish-toshed my views as hopelessly naive – which is irritating, certainly, to be told that I don’t really understand the world.  But at least they give me the benefit of the doubt of wanting to change it for the better.
Whereas a lot of liberals assume that if I disagree with them, I’m basically a little mini-Hitler.  You know, someone who doesn’t mind hurting defenseless animals.
Conservatives get a bad rap because, well, a shit-ton of them are actually goddamned crazy.  Yeah, all the Tea Party racism and hatred is fucked-up, and certainly Rick Santorum’s ugliness can’t be excused.  They’ve been getting batshit crazier over the years as they’ve been preaching to the choir and reducing their message to a soupcon of “all taxes are evil” and “all government is always more incompetent than free enterprise!”
But most of them mean well on many issues.  They don’t want to make the world into starving orphans; they genuinely think that handing out welfare leads to making people flabby, dependent, and reliant on the government, which hurts people more in the long run.  They aren’t against universal health care because they want gramma to die in the streets, but because they feel that all of these pesky rules and regulations are keeping us from having the cheap and clean health care that you can get in, say, India or Mexico.  They’re not slashing funding libraries for libraries because they hate free speech, but because they think that free enterprise will handle education better.
Those are differences of opinion.  Yes, some conservatives are deep in the pocket of Big Industry and paid mouthpieces, but most of the line-item soldiers want the same things you want – they just don’t think your way of doing it will get there.  It’s a big difference, yes, but the goals are the same.  And you liberals often have a stiff-necked, inflexible, unarguable morality that’s the equal of anything a right-winger can give.
And here’s the thing: a little good will gets you a long way.  I know, it’s a crazy thought, but giving the benefit of the doubt whenever you can afford to allows you to meet in the middle and potentially change someone’s mind.  As I’ve said over and over again, yes, 99 out of 100 people aren’t reachable, but a single percentage point in an election can make all the difference.  Accusing someone of ill faith off the bat is just going to teach them that yeah, liberals really are crazy moonbats.
(Note the “whenever you can afford to” in that last sentence, by the way.  I put that in there for a reason.)
Like I said: I’m a liberal, and there are too many days I’m accused of ill faith for what is just a different viewpoint, and that bothers me.  Assume your opponent wants justice and doesn’t want to go kicking kittens in the gutter.  Is that too much to ask?

A Thought Too Long For Twitter

I know the Florida cops seem a bit sketchy in the Trayvon Martin case, but I gotta say – between Spike Lee exhorting his Twitter-followers to go harass the wrong Zimmerman, forcing an elderly couple to move, and a bunch of racist assholes hacking Trayvon’s email address (and changing the default passwords to the charming “niggerniggernigger”), it seems that the private methodologies aren’t any better.
Look, I don’t know what happened between Trayvon and Zimmerman.  I’m watching the news, but the news is frequently fucked and often provides the wrong evidence – those of you too young to remember the OJ Simpson case as it went to trial won’t remember the tons of “breaking news!” that turned out to be absolutely false, and that was in the days before Twitter gave rumors lightning-speed.
Now, I have my suspicions about what happened, but that’s why I want a full court investigation.  With due process.  And lawyers reading all the evidence in to be debated by professionals.  And procedures to make sure that fairness on all sides is mandated.  I don’t necessarily trust myself to be fair and objective.
This is why there are courts.  In the aftermath of a murder, there’s going to be emotions spilling out on all sides, both on the side of the murdered and the person accused of murder.  And just as I want Texas to grant the benefit of the doubt to its death row cases, I want the benefit of the doubt to go to George Zimmerman.  Specifically because I do believe he’s guilty, and I don’t necessarily trust that a bunch of long-distance reporting will get me the information I need to determine what really happened (or at least not enough to feel comfortable making calls that will affect the rest of his life).
This is why we have all the systems in place to force an objective look at it.  Because as humans, we’re all flawed.  Hopefully, between the existing rules and enough public outcry, something resembling justice will happen.  It often does.

A Year Deep In Kink: A Semi-Retrospective

So I started doing my “sex blogging” over on FetLife (theFacebookOfKinksters) about a year ago, when I started exploring some of the dominant sides of my sexuality.  Which, despite Fet’s often-depressing adherence to “traditional” sexual roles (OH GOD HOW MANY LEATHERY MASTERS AND WAIFY SUBS DO WE NEED?), has turned out to be a good idea.  I’ve made some nice friends there, and gotten some really useful advice when exploring some delicate stuff that I’m not ashamed of but don’t want to throw out to the world without an invite.
(There’s a fuzzy line between “being dominant with female partners” and “being a misogynist asshole” that’s often entirely based on context between a partner who’s agreed to things, and this blog is often very context-free.)
That said, I wrote somewhat of a retrospective today called “The Once and Always Vanilla,” where I discuss the changes that have been wrought in my life over the past year, and where I may (or may not) be going, and how I may still have the label “Vanilla” on Fet.

“You are so not vanilla any more.”
It’s been about a year since I set out on my exploration of BDSM, and my whole life has shifted to fit that. Even my “vanilla” sex now has overtones of kink to it – more hair-pulling, slapping, a bit of brutality in the softest of places….

If you’re interested, get an account and check it out.  And if not, pass on.  Not everyone wants to know what I do behind closed doors… but I can crack ’em a bit for those who want to watch.  (In case you’re interested, I also wrote up some erotica, some essays on fire play, and a few others that I didn’t link to, but they are still there.)