Garbage - Strange Little Birds - Reviewed 3½

Garbage - Alt-Rock Legends Venture Into the Dark Again With Strange Little Birds

This their sixth album is worth buying or streaming, despite it's chart performance. Very quickly I'd point out that it's a solid 3½ Stars.

Shirley Manson's harrowing vocal bleeds with sadness throughout. The band says that the album was written and recorded over a two year span. The songs deliver a signature sound of guitar-orchestration blended with industrial textures. You might even think you're revisiting the 90's while listening.

The songs are all good, and the instrumentation tightly fits with prominent vocals. The track listing is perfect in allowing some tracks to stand out more. The overall here is that this is really a good album, and a change of pace from much of the sloppy drivel getting produced these days.

Shirley Manson says: “I feel like the musical landscape of late has been incredibly happy and shiny and poppy. Everybody’s fronting all the time, dancing as fast as they can, smiling as hard as they can, working on their brand. Nobody ever says, Actually, I’m lost and I don’t have a fucking clue what I’m doing with the rest of my life and I'm frightened.”

Shirley Manson is our gloomy mysterious alt-rock diva, and here she, and her partners in time, deliver us from a sickly overly happy, poppy, pop landscape, and for this, we are grateful.

Garbage rocks...and this album lets you know loud and clear who they are, and what they're all about.

Best Tracks: “Empty” - “We Never Tell” - “So We Can Stay Alive” - “Teaching Little Fingers To Play”

#ALT-ROCK

#ALTERNATIVEROCK

#ELECTRONICROCK

#GARBAGE

#INDUSTRIALROCK

#STRANGELITTLEBIRDS

John Boehner's Name is Boner!

For years many often wondered about the correct pronunciation of John Boehner's last name. Now, there's no need to worry about that any further. Good ol' Johnny Boy corrected a reporter who accidentally called him "Mr. Camp" by telling him his name is Boner "It's Boner."

Now you know!

Here's the proof everyone's dying to see.

This is a short Blast From The Past that occurred February 27, 2014

Niagara Falls - Honeymoon Bridge Collapse January 27, 1938

Here's an FYI Slice of Americana

Niagara Falls - Honeymoon Bridge Collapse January 27, 1938

A wind storm from Lake Erie pushed massive amounts of ice over Niagara Falls. Our friendly tour guide says that more than 90 feet of ice crushed its way through the gorge, and the pressure buckled the girders and mangled the bridge base foundations on both sides. All of the moving ice and pressure caused the bridge to collapse.

Having witnessed this ice movement with the Erie storm in prior days the imminent collapse was predicted, and the spectacle drew thousands of onlookers. This collapse made big news and was filmed for broadcast news.

According to our tour guide the bridge came down in one massive piece at 4:20 PM on January 27, 1938. He said, that the collapse made international news and that it was even filmed. From news archives the following clip was found, and posted on YouTube.

The same video is re-posted here.

The Honeymoon Bridge was also called The Upper Steel Arch Bridge and Fallsview Bridge. It crossed the Niagara River, connecting Canada with the USA, and was located about 500 feet up from the present day Rainbow Bridge.

The original video posting on YouTube was at this link

Niagara Falls Bridge Collapses Under Pressure of Ice - 1938

Here are some old photos of that bridge.

Plan Your Road Trip - Cost To Drive - TravelMath - AAA Fuel Calculator

Does your summer fun include road trips...one tank trips? With lower gas prices these days, that is exactly what many people are going to be doing. AAA expects more than 50 million will hit the road for some destination this coming weekend.

If you are among these reveling travelers you might want to know about what it might cost you. Not to worry, there's an app for that...right?

Well, sort of, it's more like there's too many apps and web apps out there to choose from. Of all the apps out there, I highly recommend using these three. All three allow you to compare and see what differences there are among them. This may give you a better idea of things. In fact, I would use them all, not just one, to compare all of the information. Being better informed, means you'll make better decisions.

Cost To Drive is a web tool that does just one thing: estimates the cost to drive from one place to another. Cost To Drive is simple to use. Enter your starting point, and your destination (address, city, state, zip code). Select your vehicle information, click a button, and that's it.

Do the same thing with the other apps. Enter starting point, and then your destination along with vehicle information and you'll find similar information. There may be some small differences, but you'll find that the information is all very close. Travel math offers you more types of calculations and I recommend that you thoroughly check out your route before heading out to some unknown place.

That’s it folks, these three apps will calculate your travel distance, approximate driving time, and give you an estimate of your fuel costs.

Plug your destination point into google maps as you head out and along the way click on the “explore” part of this app to find interesting things along the way.

Have fun. Stay cool. Be safe.

Rock On!

Cost To Drive

AAA Gas Cost Calculator

Travel Math

Read mobi Files on Chromebook

eBook Viewer and Converter

This Free app will surely come in handy if you happen to have mobi files that did not come from Amazon. This app opens files from Google Drive, and also allows you to upload files to convert, open and read from your local drive.

If you have been having trouble opening mobi files on your Chromebook this app will cure those blues.

You can get this app here from the Chrome Web Store

eBook Viewer and Converter

Once installed it will be located in your Chrome Apps Tab.

It will help you open and view the contents of eBooks. This app also supports bookmarks, and table of contents. You can easily convert a file and download to the EPUB format. The app easily connects with your Google Drive, so you can open files to view from your Google Drive offline or online, if your files are synced to your local drive.

This app works best with the Chrome browser.

*Formats Supported
epub (Electronic Publication) azw/azw3 (Amazon KF8 eBook File), fb2 (FictionBook 2.0 File), lit (Microsoft eBook File) lrf (Sony Portable Reader File), mobi (Mobipocket), pdb (Palm PDB ebook format), prc (Mobipocket eBook File) chm (Microsoft Compiled HTML Help), txt, plain text file, wps, pub.

Axl Rose Singing to Google...Take Me Down Etc.

These are the images that Axl Rose is demanding Google to take down. They are from a live show he and his band played long ago...way back in January 2010. The article that covered the show reviewed both he and the band well. Stating that all was in fine form and that the show was a spectacle to behold. Nothing negative whatsoever was mentioned. This show was the first of that tour and everything seemed to go well.

Since that time the photos has been misappropriated and used in many derogatory memes, and this is why Axl Rose has sent Google a “Digital Millennium Copyright Act Notice” claiming ownership of these images, and has asked Google to remove them from the internet completely!

These now famous “Fat Axl” photos were taken by Boris Minkevich from the Winnipeg Free Press. They are from a January 2010 Guns N’ Roses Show at the MTS Center in Winnipeg, Canada.

According to Rose, all professional photographers at Axl Rose performances must sign a release, which cedes copyright of their photographs to Rose. Not sure if this is true or if this happened in this case. Regardless of the ownership of these photos, there is legal leeway when you take into account the photos are of a public figure and the good ol' trusty fair use doctrine.

I've seen worse memes of President's, other Public Officials, Celebrities and even the Queen. Like it or not I don't think these photos are going away anytime soon.

*Note – The best way to make something like this disappear is to do something more outrageous, or to ignore it altogether. The worst thing to do would be to have a public tantrum over it and draw even more attention to what most were never even aware of.

This post is for reference information.

The photos are from this original article By: Rob Williams
Posted: 01/14/2010 6:44 AM on the Winnipeg Free Press

Guns N' Roses show a massive rock 'n' roll spectacle