Scrabble and Sounds

I'm not unaware of the calamities befalling the world, it's just that I've been so immersed in my own misery that I haven't felt like re-visiting my old theories about Pakistan,  Global Plagues and World Wars Three, Four and Five...um. Er...I hate to mention this, but what I once thought were histrionic, contrived and overtly paranoid rants are now called headlines.  It is time to make peace with your gods,folks.

Fortunately, there are many options available for people seeking to make peace with the supernal nebulosity of their choosing- yesterday I traveled a 150-mile stretch of Virginia countryside and I swear that I must have passed at least one church for each and every mile. I stopped to take a picture of my favorite non-town, Scrabble (above), and didn't notice that a Baptist church had intruded on my snapshot until I uploaded the pic the next day.

Here (below) is Scrabble's bustling South Side...I really should have closed and locked my car door -I would hate it if a Scrabbleland gangster stole my broken cassette deck- I mean , the clock still works and I'd miss that. Anyway, I managed to take a few pictures without getting robbed, vandalized or arrested- a small victory, perhaps, but one I will cherish nonetheless.

Scrabble may have seen better days, but not far down the road there is a new (to me anyway) cluster of Pod People tract housing that seems to be built around a huge 'Mega-Church' . It looks like a cult compound of some kind but I think the proper term is 'Gated Community'. Ick.

The rise of religious fervor in crazy people scares me, regardless of denomination. What is the difference between a delusional maniac who murders a doctor in the name of 'God' and a brainwashed psychopath who blows up a kabob stand in the name of 'Allah'?

Hmmm...at least the 'Allah' asshole has the decency to kill him/herself in the attack,  thus sparing us a lot of hand-wringing about the death penalty.

 Are we to change seats at 10:30? I obviously wasn't driving at the moment I snapped this picture, because I'm pretty sure God doesn't want me to change seats while I'm behind the wheel-  printing 'In God We Trust' on our money is bad enough- it doesn't mean I want it printed on my steering wheel, too.

After one hundred and thirty miles I finally found a view without church pollution:

Beautiful countryside...and my 1997 Corolla gets nearly 40 MPG on the open road, nearly twice that of my beloved , departed Volvo. Sometimes I really miss the acrid smell of burning oil and the warm glow of the Volvo's Check Engine light...I'm kidding! I miss the Volvo because it's the only car I've owned that I've had sex in. Leather seats, a working stereo and thou...

Unwritten note to anonymous MG owner,circa 2000: Look, I'm sorry. We thought the convertible top would hold more weight and it didn't...we would have left you a note with our contact info but we were both on probation at the time of the 'accident'  and were afraid of  getting into more trouble.

Back in the city, I'm working on a new project: I'm recording the sounds of construction, destruction  and mayhem that occur outside my window on a non-stop basis. Here (below) you will see a demonstration of the proper way to close-mic a dumptruck. The proper method is to close-mic it from thirty yards away, which isn't really close micing at all...in any case, it's plenty LOUD, so just point the mic at it and hit REC, it'll work fine.

This weekend I'm going to record the sounds of the drunks as they roll out of the neighborhood taverns after last call. If I'm lucky, I'll get some usable blackmail material,  but the real goal is to send these recordings (along with some noise of my own devising) to an ultra-double-plus-top-secret laboratory that is disguised as a pastoral Old World dairy farm. In an acoustically-treated chamber buried 54 feet below the cow pasture, a highly skilled team of alchemists will convert the diesel noises and atonal guitar malfunctions into sylphonic diplivits suitable for airplay and sharing with friends. Stay tuned.

Other positives:

- My new dentist is a beautiful human being. He fixed a tooth for me a month or so ago and Tuesday another chunk of it fell off (not the part he fixed). The initial repair last month cost $400, but he performed the second one today- free of charge- it took him ten minutes and I didn't even need Novocaine for the filling-best dentist ever!  It was huge weight lifted, happy, happy! I need to think up a nice thing to do for him or his office...fix a broken PC, file stuff...something useful.

- My father was sober when I arrived at his house. There are a thousand and one gripes and grievances that I have with him, but I didn't have the heart to be angry, I actually felt sorry for him...an odd emotion for me.

He can manage a lucid conversation and is still somewhat personable when dry, but he doesn't seem to care what he looks or smells like and that bothers me. It is sad, but at least he was able to keep it together for an entire afternoon while I moved some boxes for him. That might not sound like much, but to a practicing alcoholic a dry afternoon is epic in length.
He is going to go through the boxes and look for antiques that  we can sell on-line. I enjoy the virtual 'Sanford and Son' gig, but it only works when Pop isn't drunk on Ripple. It's iffy.

-Radio Fund Drive went well, we are gonna be around for another year! I had a total of FIVE shows, two as DJ and three as Engineer, so please pardon me for not posting the playlists- I plan on bringing that feature back in the very near future. Posting playlists is Good Karma of the best kind...I'll explain that later.

- I have four or five paid days of work coming up. The Bureau called me and asked if I was available on some specific days...gee, you laid me off, which kinda cleared a lot of room on my calender ...I , of course, said yes. After agreeing, I asked what I would be doing...HR didn't know, so I called one of my spies. My spy told me that the Bureau was doing test runs of the  network infrastructure and they needed people 'working' on all the Bureau computers simultaneously in order to test the bandwith capabilities...I pointed out that by the time we do the actual Censored, most of the population will be shut-in at home with influenza and all of those bored homebodies are gonna be surfing the net and this huge  trafficspike will  more than likely crash the Intertubes, or at least make them unsuitable for high-speed telecommuting on a national level. A worse case scenario leaves millions dead, but on the positive side, it is easier to count dead people than living ones, so our work would be simplified in one respect. There is considerable downside to my theory, but I'm in denial and it seems to be working fine so far.

What's that? How many killed?

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