I got turned on to rock music almost by mistake when I was seven years old.

Especially in local elections, because hardly anybody pays attention to those - but it's really important who's mayor and who's on the city council, county commissioners, sheriffs, district attorney, and of course the school board.

I was the kid in the class who was looking for the angles to question things or make wise-ass remarks, not knowing enough to be afraid of being myself or showing intelligence. But I wasn't the only kid like that in my classes because of where I grew up. I'm really thankful I grew up in a town where there were a lot of other mutant kids. I'm from Boulder, Colorado, which went through a lot of dramatic changes when I was growing up.

From the beginning, there was so much pressure in the early San Francisco punk scene for everyone to be different than everyone else, to flaunt your intelligence and insights instead of every band sounding alike, like what plagues punk music in particular today.

Patriotism does not mean giving blind loyalty and a blank check to George W. Bush.

That's the way both they and I travel sometimes. Pick road at random, and when it's time to pull over, you pull over and hope you can find a place to crash.

When my sixth grade teacher opened the class with subtle praise for the guardsmen shooting four people to death at Kent State, I'd given up arguing with her by that point. But I was very riled up inside and vowed that I would never forget that.