Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: sober

Showing posts with label sober. Show all posts

Monday, November 2, 2026

Do punks, metalheads, 'n rockers vote?

Fugazi "Waiting Room" (no girls allowed) Cleveland School of Rock - Waiting Room (1988)

Rage Against the Machine (live)

If only Rage Against the Machine would take a stand | Woodstock ‘99

Minor Threat "Stand Up [and be counted]"

Straight Edge is in my eyes
LYRICS ("In My Eyes"): You tell me you like the taste [of drugs]/ You just need an excuse/ You tell me it calms your nerves/ You just think it looks cool/ You tell me you want to be different/ You just change for the same/ You tell me it's only natural/ You just need the proof/ Did you f*cking get it? [CHORUS: It's in my eyes, it's in my eyes/ It's in my eyes, it's in my eyes/ It's in my eyes, it's in my eyes/ It's in my eyes, it's in my eyes] And it doesn't look that way to me/ In my eyes/ It doesn't look that way to me/ In my eyes// You tell me that nothing matters/ You're just f*cking scared/ You tell me that I'm better/ You just hate yourself/ You tell me that you like her/ You just wish you did/ You tell me that I make no difference/ At least I'm f*cking trying/ What the f*ck have you done? [CHORUS] And it doesn't look that way to me/ In my eyes/ It doesn't look that way to me/ In my eyes/ Thanks a lot, friends.

Rock the Vote?

Rock the Vote is a US non-profit. By registering new young voters, it aims to "channel the energy among young people around racial, economic, and health justice into one of the most powerful actions they can take: voting" [2]. The organization was founded in 1990 by Virgin Records America Co-Chairman Jeff Ayeroff to encourage young Americans to vote [3]. It is geared toward increasing voter turnout among voters ages 18 to 24 [4, 5] to join forces with mature adults ages 25 and up. Rock the Vote is known for its celebrity spokespeople and its partnership with eMpTV [6]. More

Vote yes on Data Centers to destroy environment and humanity

(The Vergecast) Will ~~data centers~~ compute campuses rock the vote [or will Anthropic, Nvidia, and Apple A.I. kill off humanity unimpeded by democratic processes? GTA VI is going to need all your computing power when it comes out in a few days]

Rock the Vote 2026 edition

(Rock The Vote 2026 | Live @ Southern Lights) It's election time. Youth are underenrolled. It's time to do something about that. The Ōtepoti youth music community is going to. Together the community presents: ROCK THE VOTE live at Southern Lights Yard (outdoors) 18 Devon Street. It's an all-day music festival, reminding us that our vote counts, and our views, opinions, and voices matter. Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026, featuring: Bunchy’s Big Score, Coward, Deaf Raccoon, Dolly Possum, Grace Gemmell, Motheaten, Rheumy, Seek Help!, Sivle Talk, Sogg, Strap, Talking Furniture, the pink opaque, U-No Juno, Vagina Dry with DJ Selectors curated by Tina Turntables.

(Minor Threat) "12XU" (defending LGBTQIA+ in Flex Your Head)

What kind of radical college nerdowells did these goodfornothings become?

After Minor Threat, Ian MacKaye's Fugazi dared to oppose US wars

Saturday, June 27, 2026

Alcoholic? Shut up! Drinking is fine

(Oldfangled Film) The Alcoholism Film (Rod Serling, 1974)

Liquid ignorance in a bottle

In Buddhism, the fifth precept is to abstain from intoxicants like alcohol (beer and liquor), drugs, and other [12, 13] things that occasion heedlessness. Early Buddhist Texts nearly always condemn alcohol, and so do Chinese Buddhist post-canonical texts. Smoking that leads to craving is sometimes also included here.

Right action is an important start on the Path

In modern times, traditional Buddhist countries have seen revival movements to promote the basic Five Precepts the Buddha pointed out as longstanding sources of grievous suffering (karma or deeds producing unwelcome results). As for the West, these precepts play a major role in Buddhist organizations. They have also been integrated into mindfulness training programs, though many new mindfulness specialists do not support this because of the precepts' religious import. Lastly, many conflict prevention programs make use of the precepts. Five Precepts

VIDEO: Precept motivation: Don't touch alcohol

Drunk and high at the same time

Cross faded Kanye West "Mercy" (explicit) ft. Big Sea, Pusha T, 2 Chainz

(Kendrick Lamar) "Swimming Pools (Drank)" (by the Strawberry Girls)

"I can quit anytime I want!"

“Put the glass down” theory: Stop stress before breaking

(Tool) "Sober" - "Sober" (song) - Kids sing it (O'Keefe Music Foundation) - Ultra Lyrics

"Sober"

Why won't they stop, Mom?

LYRICS: There's a shadow just behind me/ Shrouding every step I take/ Making every promise empty/ Pointing every finger at me/ Waiting like a stalking butler/ Who upon the finger rests/ Murder now the pattern, must we/ Just because the son has come/ Jesus, won't you f*cking whistle/ Something but the past and done?/ Jesus, won't you f*cking whistle/ Something but the past and done?// [CHORUS] Why can't we not be sober?/ I just want to start this over/ Why can't we drink forever?/ I just want to start this over// I am just a worthless liar/ I am just an imbecile/ I will only complicate you/ Trust in me and fall as well/ I will find a center in you/ I will chew it up and leave/ I will work to elevate you/ Just enough to bring you down/ Mother Mary, won't you whisper/ Something but the past and done?/ Mother Mary, won't you whisper/ Something but the past and done?// [CHORUS]// Trust me, trust me, trust me, trust me, trust me// [CHORUS]// Why can't we not be sober?/ I just want to start things over/ Why can't we sleep forever?/ I just want to start this over/ I want what I want/ I want what I want/ I want what I want/ I want what I want

Friday, May 8, 2026

LA punk rock FUN with Social Distortion

(Jimmy Kimmel Live) Social Distortion "Born to Kill"

(Rock N' Roll True Stories) From heroin and homeless...to a punk rock masterpiece: Social Distortion's REBIRTH

(Eyesore Video Channel) W5 TV report on punk rock in 1980's LA (Social Distortion) M-C?

(Hard Detox Official) "Tuna Dick Punx" (modern homage band with official music video)

Poseur? Fashion wannabe? Successful punk influencer? - Kids who would love to be Avril

(Rolling Stone) Social Distortion's Mike Ness on history of Orange County punk rock

Lewd Lude Boy Mike Ness

Television report from W5 about the early 1980's punk rock scene in Los Angeles, California, featuring Back In Control Center (hilarious) and Mike Ness' band Social Distortion.

As a kid in a punk rock garage band many years ago in LA, we once opened for Social D. It was a house party at a squatter's flat in Highland Park, where runaways and heavy partiers stayed. With electricity piped in from a long extension cord, we did what we could. Then came the house band Detox followed by Julie's SIN 34 from Santa Monica before SD headlined. If Hollywood makes a version of that night, it looked a bit like this (and nothing as cool as the first video):

Flipside (fanzine) - Dave Markey's We Got Power

Social Distortion – "Lude Boy" and "Telling Them"

(ANWE) Detox

On way to Social D show, we pass LA's 'open air drug market' (MacArthur Park)

(FOX 11 Los Angeles) TAKEDOWN: Feds sweep MacArthur Park in massive drug raid on May 6

A girl from SM can't be punk rock.

RIP Julie Lanfeld-Keskin (SIN 34)

I remember thinking, "Who does this guy think he is with makeup, way more than guyliner, and where can I get some?"

Even then Mike Ness was a powerful presence if only because it seemed for all the world that he did not give two S's, very in line with the Tao. Who knew he had a drinking problem?

Mystic Dharma Buddhist Temple, LA

The strange thing was, this being LA, there was a massive and mysterious Buddhist building (Mystic Dharma Temple) just down the street on Figueroa St. Rather than drinking, like the fictional character Kwai Chang Caine (Kung Fu), I was drawn to visiting it and learning to meditate from Ven. Chao Chu, a Sri Lankan Mahayana-Theravada polyglot hybrid monk and his snooty American assistant Dana.

Hardcore, alcohol free, vegan...straight edge

How did I get so lucky? Years later, visiting Sri Lanka and Malaysia, the senior Theravada scholar-monk Ven. K. Sri Dhammananda sighed a copy of his Dhammapada (verses and backstories), writing: "One who protects the Dhamma is protected by the Dhamma."

Punk could be very smart (DKs)

It seemed profound at the time, but instead of magic, what it really seems to be saying is very basic: Imagine working in an industrial factory and instead of a sign that reads how many days since the last accident, the bosses were to put up an inspirational note that read: "One who protects [keeps] the safety rules is protected by the safety rules." Rule No. 5 is "to undertake to abstain from alcohol and intoxicants that occasion heedlessness." I could leave the hard drinking to Mike Ness, Detox, and all the followers. I could be straight edge before that caught on on the west coast. I was already listening to east coast Minor Threat, British anarcho punk vegans Rudimentary Peni, and the Dead Kennedys, which was a start.

L.A. PUNK 13 (documentarian Lou Elovitz)

Karma being what it is, we eventually ended up getting advanced degrees at UCLA, but not before Chao Chu and I attended the local community college to make up for a wasted youth in high school. There we started the college's first Buddhist club. The temple, the monk, and Dana eventually moved to Rosemead.

Mayor of the Sunset Strip

Karma, it makes for a long strange trip. So, as the saying goes, "be careful who you step on to move up in the world; you'll be seeing them again on the way down" or some such. Brad Warner was nowhere to be seen, but Noah Levine might have been around as well as Steve Pfauter. Maybe L.A. PUNK 13 knows all of this in greater detail.

The scene, the rise of punk rock in Los Angeles and Southern California was ignited by KROQ's most significant DJ ever, the pervy Jewish Mayor of the Sunset Strip Rodney "On the 'ROQ" Bingenheimer.

Swami Vivekananda at Mead sisters house

Strangely, this House of the Rising Sun (aka Haunted House, S**t House) was very near the Self-Realization Fellowship Mother Center above us on Mt. Washington (the privileged enclave Billie Eilish and Finneas O'C lived in when they got mega famous), the Southwest Museum of the American Indian on the side of the mountain and Lummis House next to the concrete LA River, not too far from the Victorian Mead sisters house in South Pasadena Swami Vivekananda chose as his center on the west coast when he declared Pasadena the "Varanasi of the West."

(flesh86) Detox live at the Olympic Auditorium [DTLA] Los Angeles

Live fast, die young...or the opposite

One of the strange things about living in LA is its proximity to Hollywood, the throat chakra of the West, like the larger Bollywood is for the East (or India at least) is running into stars. We were at the radio station (KROQ.com, 106.7 FM), at the Audacy Corporation in the Miracle Mile district celebrating Cinco de Mayo at the cantina Descanso. Across the street, legendary punk pioneers Social Distortion was going to play a secret show at the station's new Sound Stage. A few maneuvers later, we were in! But what a strange trip. Standing next to Punk Rock Girl to see cancer survivor Mike Ness, once the epitome of tough guy drunk (now 40 years sober in AA), looking like some kind of gavone from the Lower East Side of NY or some TV gangster mobster as Megan Holiday and Kevin Ryder roll him out for an interview. Nice guy, learned a lot from AA, but he can barely talk or think or comprehend what's going on. The crowd loved it, having won tickets for the coveted show over the past few weeks. Flagging, failing self-proclaimed "punk influencer" Punk Rock Girl (Erin Micklow), who was persona non grata at the Queen Mary punk show and has been banned from Punk Rock Bowling at the Punk Museum in Las Vegas, we hear, weaseled her way in. "Who does a girl have to sl**p with to get into these things?" she might be asking. We would tell her if she asked us. But she seemed to enjoy herself as much as the Ozempic crowd largely in attendance. Punk rock never died, but it sure has been through a lot. Social D has a new album, Born to Kill, coming out after 15 years, and heartless corporate entity KROQ is doing them a solid due to all the fans they still have.