Kivus’ Neighborhood

Religion of Peace

Have you heard or read from a Muslim, a Muslim apologist or a kafir who has befriended a Muslim a statement similar to this:

“Islam is no different than Christianity or Judaism. They both have bloodshed – one in the Quran and the other in the Bible. Muslims worship the same god as Christians and Jews.”

I have heard this often from friends and family who question my criticism of Islam (Mohammedanism is a better word) as being hate-speech or racism.

Bill Warner of Political Islam has posted the best rebuttal to the accusation my blog(s) are full of hatred toward Islam and Muslims.

JRH 11/7/09

What are your favorite web or mobile apps? Which ones do you use everyday?

Sponsored by Yahoo!

Tweetdeck  for organising all my twitter stuff

Har Mar Superstar - Game Night Har Mar Superstar Tour Dates 11/08/09 Aquarium* Fargo, ND 11/09/09 Waiting Room* Omaha, NE 11/11/09 Brick Kansas City, MO 11/29/09 Oxford O2 Academy 3, UK 11/30/09 Relentless Garage London 12/01/09 Thekla Bristol, UK 12/02/09 Wedgewood Portsmouth, UK 12/03/09 Cabaret Voltaire Edinburgh 12/04/09 Bodega Nottingham, UK 12/05/09 Brickyard Carlisle, UK 12/06/09 King Tut’s Wah Wah Glasgow 12/07/09 Ruby Lounge Manchester, UK 12/08/09 Plug Sheffield, UK 12/09/09 Academy 2 Dublin, Ireland 12/10/09 Stiff Kitten Belfast, Ireland 12/12/09 Concorde 2 Brighton, UK 12/13/09 Barfly Cardiff, UK * with Bang Bang Eche Read More Har Mar Superstar http://weheartmus... Har Mar Mall - I mean Superstar - is back, after five years of absent since 2004's The Handler......

Parking in the college area known as "Dinkytown" in Minneapolis can be kind of hard, especially when the meters on 4^th Street runs until 10pm. I didn't mind walking a few blocks to the beautiful Varsity Theater as the weather was nothing less than perfect that Friday evening.

Opening up for Har Mar Superstar are three very different genre and acts. Starting with Koo Koo Kangeroo (official / myspace), whose music styling is that of hip hop - for toddlers. Their songs are dead simple, like "AOA" (sample lyrics: "aye oh aye oh aye") and "Cheh Cheh Chi" and "LMNOP", but they're catchy and easy to sing along. The highlight of their set was when they threw down a white tarp-like covering and the audience was dancing under it like a party fort.

Wow, Bang Bang Eche (myspace) are young. Someone told me that they're about 18 years old, but they certainly look much younger. Their music is very punk high-energy and reminds me a bit of Arctic Monkeys influenced. My easily favorite song from their set is "Fist Full of Dollars", perhaps a reference to Sergio Leone classic film? They ended their setlist with "Die Hippy Scum". Oh, also, it's worth noting that bassist T'Nealle sported a three keyboard cat moon t-shirt. Adorable.

The odd group on the bill was two-person group, Lookbook (myspace). The band is basically guitarist Grant Cutler, who plays guitars and handles the pre-recordings, with vocalist Maggie Morrison. Their music sounds like 80s pop, not exactly the "body-moving" type of music that you'd think Har Mar's audience would demand. Not really much to say, except I think Maggie looks really cute and I will be talking about them in further detail on my "book"-theme news on Sunday.

Har Mar Superstar ♥ Varsity Theater, Minneapolis (11/06/09)

Compared to the last time I saw Har Mar Superstar, which was basically a man and his undies and boombox - he now has a full band, all dressed in white with a red cross on the back. Also, the last time I saw him, he basically stripped down after the first few songs - this time, he started off very heavily dressed with an African cover, hat, etc.

After the first song, he took off his hat. After "DUI", he took off the overall to reveal a Prince "Purple Rain" shirt. He kept taking off articles of clothing as the night went on. From "EZ Pass", to "Girls Only", to "Creative Juices"... the audience was loving it all.

Har Mar and Melinda Park singing "Powerline"

By the time "Brothers & Sisters" was played, he inevitably took off his shirt. The pants disappeared with "Apple Sauce", followed by "Turn it Around". The finale song was "Tall Boy", which Zach, from Bang Bang, and some woman called Melinda Park (or was it Mindy Park?) joined on stage to help sing the song. Park would later turn up again to help sing one of the encore, "Powerline".

The very last song, Har Mar sang an a cappella version of Boyz II Men's "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday". He would pretend the song ended and everyone would clap... only he would continue to sing the refrain. After the third false ending and after he said "goodnight", he came back and sang some more.

Har Mar's latest album is Dark Touches, available from Dilettante Recordings. Read Andrew's review of the album, pick up a copy at amazon

 11/07/2009 04:22:06 ♥ vu () ♥ harmarsuperstar.com ♥ myspace.com/harmarsuperstar ♥ twitter.com 

Didn't quite hit my double quota before midnight like I needed to catch up for nanowrimo, but I should get there before I go to bed tonight. Currently at 6,120. Need to get to 6,668 before I go to sleep. (Though I really should be at 10,002 if I were caught up.)

In the story today: a gnome named Hollaby, a gnomide (that's a female gnome), an injured rabbit who got some healing and is now being chased by a kunal trow flying about on a bulrush. But the rabbit's in good hands in my main character's saddlebag....

I wrote over 3300 words for NaNo today, but I'm still 5,000 behind due to my late start! But if I can write double the daily quota for the next three days I should catch up.

In the story so far: a shapeshifting woman, a very dark cavern, and a garden built by gnomes out of rock, moss, and non-native plants....

I spent the first few days of November at my mom's in Michigan, where there was only dial up internet, no cell phone signal, and adorable nephews to distract me. So I'm getting a late start on my writing. The daily quota (if you write every day) is 1,667 words. I'm about 7,000 behind.

Here I go!

I haven't been writing nearly enough over the past year or two, as my sparse blog can attest. I mean, I've been thinking about my writing a lot for months now, but mostly in terms of research for my big ole epic young adult fantasy series. But nothing that I've really been writing down.

So a couple months ago I decided that it was time I finally attempt NaNoWriMo. I've known about this crazy thing for years. Even bought the book way back when. But never really gave it a good shot. Too busy, to dried up of ideas, too much of a first draft perfectionist.

But this year is the year. With all the research I'd been doing I hit upon the perfect idea of what to write about. Okay, I still have no plot, just like my epic has no real plot. But while that is a hindrance for the epic, it is not a problem for NaNo (in fact the NaNo book was purchased for just that reason, what with its title of 'No Plot, No Problem'.

I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to come up with the back story for one of my minor, yet key, characters. I know where the story it has to end up, and I know a few things that need to be included. But other than that, not only is the storyline fair game, it is totally unnecessary to my larger ideas. So I don't need to worry about getting locked into something or messing things up. If I just come up with one tiny bit of a useful event or one clever description of something, it will have been worth it.

It may even help me to knock out some of that perfectionism I get when I write. I'm the type of writer that seems to have trouble concentrating during the revision process, so I tend to try to get it perfect the first time 'round. I often won't move on in my first draft until each sentence is perfect. How liberating to say: "It doesn't matter how crappy this is!" In fact, the crappier the better! Since the single goal of NaNo is word count and word count alone, I can write crappy lengthy wordy sentences - on purpose!

So last night, as I was posting a little update to my facebook status, it occurred to me that it might be nice to use NaNo as an excuse to make friends with my lonely vox once again. I'm going to try to put my NaNo updates here every day, though they may only be copied straight off my facebook... But since you probably can't see my facebook, I figured you wouldn't mind.

So, wish me luck!

(p.s. I'm going to go ahead and be a dork with my first couple updates and put them in seperate posts, since they were seperate days. And I'm going to lie about the dates, too since they were really posted to facebook earlier...because I can. I can and I feel like it. ...*thpppttt*)

• 06:02 Almost ready to go to the airport a half hour early. Surprisingly, my plaid flannel pajama pants and a zombie shirt from @teefury look great #

Kymberlie's Tweets automatically shipped by LoudTwitter. Blog comments are welcomed and encouraged!