I Missed That?

Wouldn't it be great if there were a screensaver that looked like an aquarium? Somebody should invent that.

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You know what else would be cool?
A post about blog statistics.
That would be cool. Especially if I wrote about my own blog. What could possibly be more interesting?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THIS!

My blog had it's fourth birthday last month- May 21st- and what did I post? Nothing. I sat there like a virtual lump. No cake.

I passed the 1,000 post barrier a long time ago. A looong time ago. Did I celebrate? No...I didn't even notice.

I overlooked visit number 30,000 and forgot to acknowledge #31,000...I expect # 32,000 very soon. Perhaps it will be you. When I first started blogging, my blog would go days without a single visit, gradually I started getting the 'hang' of things, with some help from Lyzard and Susanne, two of the first blogpals I made, two blog veterans who probably remember the old days when one was forced to learn basic HTML coding just to add links to Blogger, still a useful skill for doing this and this the hard way...don't get me started on "old-school" template changes- they were not for the faint-hearted neophyte. I had to be rescued from my first template change by a teenager...horrible, it was.


It's weird going back and reading old posts where I wrote about drinking-or was obviously drunk. When I blog, I tend to change names and details to protect the guilty; as a result of my blackouts, there are entire posts that I don't remember writing and conseqeuntly I'm not wholly certain if they are accurate and who the characters are supposed to represent...there's a specific date when my posts suddenly stop and when they begin again , it's the day after I was released from the hospital .
Those, I remember.
After my hospitalization, I think the whole tone of my blog changed- I certainly became more prolific, if nothing else- 397 posts in one year?
Sheesh.
If I could afford a therapist, they'd probably tell me that I used my passion for blogging as a substitute for drinking. I'd agree with that. Sublimation , it's called.

When I started talking about it , I found that some of my bestest blogpals have similar stories...the blogworld is full of survivors who have a way of finding each other. I've blogged quite a bit about my 2005 crisis, but it wasn't the first medical disaster of my life...

Late in 2001, I was diagnosed with a severe neuropathy of the Ulnar nerve in my left arm ;I was expected to lose it and no one could say why, just that the nerve was dying and taking my hand with it and amputation at the elbow (to avoid necrotic decay of my dying hand) was the first option- the insurance company made me see a doctor not my own; after one set of tests, it was decided that I'd get a quick chop-off, a one-time pay-out and a prosthesis and then they'd be done with me, avoiding the hassle of paying for expensive surgeries and months of physiotherapy.

I found this to be extremely discouraging news and when I told my regular doctor he nearly flipped out. He's the gentlest man I know, but he got mad as hell and somehow arranged for one of his friends-Dr. Kenneth Bowers, a man who, in my considered opinion, is one of the finest orthopaedic surgeons alive- to save my arm.

Doc even convinced the insurance company that this was not "elective" surgery, as Trigon first tried to claim. Trigon really wanted to apply the bonesaw...I don't really know why. Doc said it was cheaper for them...after I lost my arm, he said, I'd lose my job and I would become the Gubbermint's problem. I wasn't very sanguine about relying on Federal care...I was on probation at the time and I was convinced that they would rather lock me up than pay for my SSD. In hindsight, I was probably right...



It took almost a year after the operations, but I regained complete use of my hand. I can still play guitar. Better than before, I think.
While my left hand was recovering, I discovered that the trick to really cool guitar-playing is what the right (or picking) hand does. It was enlightening, but I digress...Sling knows what I mean.



Number of neuropathy-related surgeries: 2

It's getting close to three years since I last took a drink. Before that, I was drinking 12 beers and a fifth of liquor almost everyday. My hands trembled in the morning and I pretended no one noticed my lunch breaks- a breathmint hides everything, right?

I had no idea how unhappy I was.

That knowledge came later. In the fall of 2005, I had been feeling poorly for a long, long time and I decided to lay off the booze for a day or two and see if my stomach settled down.
It didn't.

Instead, I went into full-blown alcoholic withdrawal, which is a very bad place to be.

Number of grande mal seizures in 36-hour period:3

Number of alcohol-related surgeries in same period:3

Number of seizures while in surgery: 2

The second seizure should have killed me. No one present expected me to survive , I lost more blood than a body can hold. I'm glad I was unconcious for that.

While I was in hospital in 2005, I kept getting visits from shrinks and therapists who tried very, very hard to get me to admit to "suicide ideation" and depression. I reflexively lied about this..."of course", I said, "I never, ever think about suicide...in fact, I'm hardly ever depressed at all, I drink myself into oblivion every night because I love life. Now can I PLEASE have some Valium in my IV?"

I didn't believe myself and I'm not sure if the shrinks did or not, but I didn't give them enough info to have me institutionalized; I was released after nearly a week of "observation".

One of the nurses said, without much compassion, that she expected they'd see me again in a few weeks. I was told that most people who arrive in the ER in my condition don't live for more than a month or so...usually the liver fails...or the heart...or the kidneys. Or a stroke. Sometimes it's suicide...was I sure that I wasn't going to kill myself?

It was something to think about.

After the hospital I started enjoying things that I had long ago forgotten or overlooked- get this: at one point before I got sick, our Music Director tried to talk me into accepting a prime radio time spot, but I turned it down because it meant I'd have to stay sober until seven PM, something that I couldn't imagine doing willingly...damn.
What the hell was wrong with me then? Today, being a radio DJ is one of my all-time favorite things- I passed it up in favor of drink? That's a powerful demon at work.

Number of broadcast hours logged since I quit drinking: 196.

Number of months I had to wait for another chance at a good time spot: 24



Oh hell. It's tomorrow now and I missed visit #32,000. It came from France and was someone I don't know looking for info on Gong guitarist Steve Hillage...someone in France likes good music.



I recognize most of my friend's IP 'signatures' on my Sitemeter but sadly, my pals only comprise a small percentage of my traffic, an awful lot of strangers pass through here, looking for Godzilla-only-knows what...



Percentage of blog traffic generated by one specific post: Seventeen.

I can't seem to add links (or pics) from work, if you don't believe me, go to Google Images and type in "tying lois", without quotes...you'll see. My sitemeter lists visits by entry page- one out of eight visits begins at that particular post, driven by that trio of images. It has been viewed over 4,000 times...not many comments though. Puzzling.

Number of worthless perverts on-line: Infinite.

But this post isn't about useless perverts. It's about...statistics? I dunno what it's about. I'm writing between batches of paperwork and it's hard to stay focused...one last statistic and then I'll be done:



Number of cherished blogfriends made in the last four years: Finite but priceless.

AVG 8.0: A Warning

UPDATE: I've seen posts on user forums that have the same problem as outlined below- some of the posts date back to 2005, so I doubt AVG is the culprit. Still, you might wanna leaf through some of these forums before updating.



Do you use AVG 7.5 anti-virus software? If so, good. I used to use AVAST!, but after losing my entire hard drive to a Trojan that AVAST! missed, I switched to AVG and I have been quite happy with it...so when they offered a new version- 8.0- I was like, hell, yeah! Sign me up!

Um.

First, I noticed it includes a toolbar. Toolbars tend to be viral as fuck-all, they are to be avoided whenever possible...I also saw that it includes a 'safe search' feature, which is supposed to alert you before you visit a web-site that is infected with drive-by download.
This feature, according to user comments on the AVG forum, works by temporarily downloading and scanning all the pages returned by your Google search. I have a very old PC and it sloooowed waaaaay down as a result. Blogs and sites with photos and/or video took forever to load, often missing elements...aaargh!
My CPU usage went from 0%- 3% up to 15%-25%
Note:You can see your CPU usage by opening Taskmanager, (clt+alt+delete)

It got worse. When I tried to do a Google search (for song lyrics), I received a 403 Forbidden Error Message- Google accused me of being an automated spambot program and/or a virus and I was forced to enter a CAPTCHA (word verification) before conducting the search...I followed all the instructions- I ran scans (all clean!), deleted my cookies and my browser cache, re-installed Firefox, cleaned my Temp files...and I STILL got that goddamned 403 Error.

Ah-ha...I read a forum post where a user speculated that the program AVG uses to scan your search results is seen as 'mass-spambot activity' by the Google engine; this makes sense- it IS scanning 10 or more sites at one time, after all.

So I looked all over the web for a reliable download of AVG 7.5 in order to switch back. Not to be found- the links for 7.5 all led to 8.0.
Fuckity.

Ah-ha! I had sent the 7.5 installer to my Recycle Bin way back in March! I disconnected from the Web, deleted 8.0 and re-installed 7.5, then re-connected my DSL and updated AVG.

Google has re-opened it's gates to me! My PC is smooth again!

So, if you are considering updating, I strongly suggest that you save 7.5 before you do so.

I hope a patch or new version is coming soon, but for now, I'm sticking with 7.5. I also hope AVG keeps updating it.

__________________________

Today is the debut of my newest Radio Program: Elastic Rock.
I'm now on Saturday afternoons at 1 pm EST, a truly prime-time spot!
Stream it here, if you wish. Two-hours of diverse musical excellence and oddities , played for you, ,my beloved Oddience.

(Tip o' the scalp to the redoubtable Donn for the term 'Oddience'...I can certainly use that word! Thanks Donn!)

In Defense Of Blog (#96 in a series of 2)

It seems that hardly a day goes by without another lurid internet scandal hitting the news. This hoax led to the suicide of a young girl- it is especially heinous because it was perpetrated by adults, not by other kids. It was done by neighbors.
One cannot help but conclude that the adults- who passed themselves off as a teenage boy- enjoyed the cruel emotional destruction that they wrought on the poor girl- there doesn't seem to be any motive other than pure evil meanness and sadism.

Cable news has created a new "reality" genre- one in which the lowest life-forms on the planet (Internet Trolls) are lured into fake trysts with underage decoys that they met in chat rooms; when they arrive at the meeting place, they are met with TV news crews and , later, the police. Strangely, many of the men (it's always men) have seen these programs, yet they can't resist the trap...and there seem to be an endless supply of these 'predators'. It's disturbing, to say the least.

All of this negative attention makes me increasingly reluctant to discuss blogging with my non-blogger pals, so I'd like to take a minute and point out a few of the positive things that blogging has brought into my life:

Yesterday I had something that I wanted to discuss with somebody- but most of my local friends know each other and this town has an amazing ability to distort gossip- so I called a long-distance blogpal and had a long talk about football, sex, politics, religion and stuff...it dawned on me that I was watching NFL football while talking on the phone with a woman about sex (and football!)- for free! A lot of men would pay for that...

...speaking of paid, I made honest money last week, and I couldn't have done it without my blog. A while back, I got a comment or two from a fellow music fan who had found my blog by googling obscure bands... we exchanged a email or three and it turned out that we live in the same city, so he came down and sat in with me one morning during my show- we found that we live exactly one block apart, small world, eh?
Last week I fed his cats for him while he moshed across England- upon his return I was rewarded with cash, a tin of travel sweets from London and assorted music-related geegaws not typically found in the US.

Honestly, I'd rather clean catshit than work for lawyers again, but I do need to find a real job soon...

Blog also helped me through the long painful months after I got sick and had to quit drinking. I quit cold turkey without any outside help, which is probably the hardest possible way- I started writing about my experiences on my blog and I soon found that I wasn't alone, which helped a lot during the worst of days.
I got hurt a few times too, but that's part of life, ya know? Stronger for it and all that...yeah.

I've been blogging nearly four years, which is a long time by blog standards. There's a big world out there that doesn't involve blogging, and I've had a slow, difficult time adjusting to it since I quit drinking- that sort of change just doesn't happen overnight- things have been really rough lately but I haven't started drinking again, so I feel like some real progress has been made...but I've also started slacking on my blog as I get more involved with real life; it's as if blog is a sort of therapy for me ( I know I'm not alone in this) and maybe, just maybe I don't need therapy as badly as I once did.
At least I hope that there is some truth in that.

Anyway, this isn't the end, not yet...I've come close to deleting this blog many,many times... something always keeps me from doing so. I've had at least a half-dozen other blogs over the last few years and never formed any sort of attachment to or from them, but this one has survived every purge, weathered every storm...and there's an election year coming up, so I imagine my political outrage will keep me on-line to some degree, but things are changing for me. There are things happening I don't feel like blogging about- perhaps they'll be fodder for future posts, perhaps not...

I've been becoming more interested in writing fiction, but I find that blog is a terrible platform for long, serialized fiction- the chapters are presented to the reader in reverse order- and the reader, unless they are well-versed in the logistics of blog, often doesn't realize this, entering in the middle or at the end...one of the first blogs I read was like that.
It wasn't until the author printed out the entire blog in manuscript form and mailed it to me that I caught on- it was excellent...that seems so long ago , but it's the sort of thing that keeps me coming back to blogworld- one of the finest unpublished writers I've ever read once sent me an entire manuscript- that never woulda happened without my own blog.
Strange things can happen- sometimes that includes good things.

Hmm...it occurs to me that I am giving myself a pep talk- and that means :

Puppies!

See ya soon.

Your Comment Is The Most Fucked-Up Thing Ever

Yesterday I got a phone call from a friend of mine who happens to be a blogger. They were a little agitated. What's up?

"Do you wanna see the most fucked-up thing, ever?"

"Um, I'm already watching that. It's on TV right now."

We were thinking of two completely different Most Fucked-Up Things Ever. That's part of the diabolic nature of MFUTEs- they should be singular but in reality they are infinite. I'll post about my MFUTE later, but my buddy's MFUTE took the form of a comment left on their blog.
Could I take a look at it?

If you took an infinite number of monkeys , gave them an infinite amount of bathtub-grade LSD
and made them fight each other for the right to randomly type on a single keyboard, you'd get a more coherent text than the nigh-infinite comment that was my friend's MFUTE.
It consisted of dozens of paragraphs of Unibomberesque rantings - it made my eyeball hurt to look at it, but I did note that it had absolutely nothing to do with my friend's blog. In fact, it looked exactly like the kind of lunatic spam that my old pal Jerky used to get on his sorely-missed website, the Daily Dirt. He'd get dozens of letters like this every week, but his site was extremely political and in the wave of post-9/11 nationlistic hysteria, the simple act of criticizing Dubya was 100% guaranteed to garner at least a few ALL CAPS DEATH THREATS, not to mention dozens of schizophrenic manifestos such as the one my friend received. There's no shortage of avoidable lunacy on the web, but it's never fun when it seeks you out.

"I have never seen anything this insane...why would they put this on my blog? "

"This is some crackpot's personal agenda- I'm sure it makes sense to him , but I'm glad it doesn't make sense to you. It's probably on his clipboard and he's hopping blogs and pasting it everywhere he can. I bet if you spent sometime trolling other blog's comments, you'll see this rant posted over and over again."

Sure enough, a cursory morning skim of some of my fave blogs revealed that some of them had been gifted with the mystery jeremiad. It's probably grabbing URLs from our blogrolls and spreading itself, so there's a good chance you have already received it.

I got mine at 2:13 am. The weird thing is, the 'hit' didn't show up on my traffic counter at all. The Unispammer is using some sort of proxy or software to mask his tracks...anyone got any info on this? It puzzles me.

I hadn't planned on posting about this- my drafts are piling up-but after seeing traces of the Unicomment on other blogs, I'd thought I'd toss it out there- please note that the title of this post does not refer to your comments.

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Shameless Plug: Get your fix of obscure 1980's music by streaming my radio show, Songs From the Big Hair, today from 3-5 PM, EST.

Five

Cruel Virgin has started a sort of personalized meme; she is providing bloggers- on a voluntary basis- with 5 custom "interview" questions. I will pass the meme along to the third blogger to request an interview (hey, I'm a DJ, I like caller #x stuff ).
Below are the 9 questions that I received, along with my replies, which may or may not constitute answers:

1. Is there another human being who can equal or even top you in musical knowledge (professional musicians excluded)? What would they have to do to know what you do?

A) I am not sure exactly what "musical knowledge" means (rock trivia, musical prowess, theory etc) , but in any case the answer is a resounding Yes. There are DJs at the station who have encyclopedic musical memories that shame me and I have friends who can not only play more instruments than I , but they also play them better. Some of the DJ's concentrate on one or two specific genres and are deep experts in those fields- I am more of a dilettante. I know almost nothing about music from 1995- 2007.

B) Do? I don't know. It's not something you "do" consciously, It's a passion that finds you. You have to really enjoy listening to music. I do. I think a lot of it comes from growing up in the era when the release of a new album was a social occasion and people would get together in person and listen to new records together in a party atmosphere. Perhaps this still occurs and I just don't have any friends, but I suspect that one of the unfortunate drawbacks to digital musical ubiquity is that music can lose it's virtue - art becomes corrupted, even usurped by commerce and henceforth falls into decay. I have heard songs by band like the Buzzcocks, Stranglers and Jimi Hendrix used in adverts for products and service affordable only to the upper-middle class and higher- today it seems as if hit songs are hyping product as soon as released, if not sooner.

2. You once wrote on my blog that if you believed in God, you would keep it a secret. Would you explain that statement?
I can't recall the context of the comment, but this sounds like an allusion to my opinion that many, if not most, Christian "leaders" who publicly proclaim their faith ( meaning mega-churches and gov't podiums- not community temples, homes, personal blogs etc) must certainly be atheists at heart, because their actions belie their professed values - if they were true believers, they'd be more careful with their souls.
I should have added "unless specifically asked under proper circumstances" to that statement- I generally try keep my ideas about faith publicly muted for the same reason I don't tell most people what I think would really happen if Superman fought Thor- people tend to get bored and/or offended and it makes me sound crazier than I already am.

3. What really pisses you off about American society, minus the current governmental regime (I know that does limit you.)?

The acceptance of mediocrity as the norm bothers me. The celebration of the insipid and the vacuous outrages me. Incurious makes me furious. Why are we, as a society, only now waking up and smelling the dog food that we've been eating for six years? If We the People had been paying attention we would already be minus the current regime.

4. If you could sit down and have a heart to heart with the President, name three questions you would ask him? What do you think would be his reply?

The trick here would be to ask questions that he might actually answer. Any direct 'tough ones' (was the war worth it?, etc) will be spun into deflective rhetoric. By appealing to his egocentric, baser self -the dominant aspect of his personality- it might be possible to gain some insight into whatever it is that happens between his ears.

A) What would you name as your single greatest accomplishment as President?

I ask this because I can't think of a single positive example. His pick would be telling...vetoing legislation supported by the majority of the public? I doubt that he'd pick Iraq.

B) It is well known that you have a history of alcoholism and as a fellow alcoholic I would like to congratulate you on your personal recovery. Well done.
How long has it been since your last drink?

Feint with the empathetic kudos, then riposte with the real question. I imagine he'd stumble, indicating dishonesty.

C) The 8th step of the AA recovery program states: "Make a list of all the persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all". This is based on the Christian idea of Redemption. If you could only be forgiven for one sin, which sin would you choose to be forgiven for?

I doubt that Chucklehead is capable of admitting to any sin, which is in direct contradiction to his professed faith, which states that we are all sinners. I imagine I'd be waterboarded at this point.

5. You live in some part of the South. What do you think of us Yankees? Is it true that the South is talking about seceding from the Union again? (Just a nasty rumour I heard.) Is there a state in the US that you wouldn't miss if it said bye bye?

First, I must take some umbrage with sweeping generalizations like "us Yankees" ; my own biases and prejudices are much more specific. I dislike New York but not New Yorkers and I consider Chicago as my home away from home...to choose one generalized difference between North and South, I would say that Yankees have a sense of urgency that I sometimes find frustratingly lacking here.

Second, were the South to secede again, I wouldn't know until it was too late. I am not in that loop.

Third, no. Washington D.C. is not a state.

Got Schmooze?

I'd like to thank my stalwart blogpal Sling for this award, even if I'm a bit mystified as to what I did to earn it. A 'community involvement/schmoozing' award is an odd thing for a self-professed subversive, reclusive, anarchistic, iconoclastic and downright anti-social Intertube crackpot to receive...or is it? Up is down, war is peace and American Idol is entertainment, so I suppose that by following that logic, I must be a pillar of strength in the blogosphere; a regular paragon of virtual virtue.

My award-winning humility is one of my myriad superlative qualities, but my rockin' modesty prevents me from listing them all- one of the drawbacks to being the Most Humble Man on Earth is that it doesn't come with bragging rights...but I can boast about some of the people who are lucky enough to have 'met' me online, er, uh...I mean that I have been fortunate enough to meet.
Yeah. That's it.

#1) Whim: Last year, quite a few bloggers with whom I had a passing acquaintance received emails regarding me from a shamelessly self-important blogger with a marginal messiah complex- he was warning them of my nefarious plan to commit suicide on-air during my Sunday morning radio show. I was one of the last people to hear of my own plans, very few folks took the time to write to me and ask me what was going on; most simply accepted this self-appointed arbiter of Blog behavior at his word.
I frequently point out the perils and folly of believing unsubstantiated claims without checking the sources, but a few readers did write to me and ask WTF? Whim was one of them. Whim understands what it feels like to be a survivor, and although we both get depressed at times, neither one of us is in need of a suicide watch. I quit drinking in order to live, not die- that's a major theme of my writing since my illness of 2005. Whim, who has fought to survive as hard as any human can possibly fight, understood this and after a short time she became one of my favorite penpals of all time. Her support during a period when it felt as if nearly the entire blogiverse had turned against me - for no reason- was invaluable in keeping me 'in the game'. I sure hopes she gets back on-line soon.

#2) Jackie Sue :Yellowdog Granny isn't old enough to be my grandmother, but she's cool enough to be my mom. Even her bad moods are funnier than 10,000 sitcoms, and when she starts dissecting the news and adding her own observations, you can see well how she uses humor to cope with a world that she is unblissfully aware of. I am glad she is my friend, because she'd be a formidable adversary. You absolutely DO NOT fuck with her.
Freya watches over this one.
'Nuff said.
(Under those big Texas Titties beats a heart of gold- see her latest post for details.)

#3) Angel: Like Whim, I was introduced to Angel by a blogger who no longer talks to me, but that's OK because Angel still does. She's a unique woman with a heavy load- but she bears it with dignity, humor and just the right amount of outrage. She is active in many blogging groups and has won so many awards that I fear her blog may tip sideways from the weight of all the trophies on her sidebar, but hey, what's one more? I am out-of-my-territory when it comes to child-rearing, but Angel seems to understand parenting and she knows how to get involved with web-networks of parents with similar situations and understands the importance of the support these groups provide. For that alone, she deserves this 'community' award.
(It's a secret fantasy of mine to start a communal ranch and raise domesticated mythological beasts. Angel would be my Dragon-Keeper)

#4) Skeet: I honestly don't know Skeet all that well, but she is an extraordinarily prolific blogger and I especially enjoy her observations on living in Hawaii- it's not what you get from the travel brochures. At one point -perhaps even now- she had numerous blogs on various hosts- like Angel, her sidebar is choc-a-bloc with accolades and blogger community widgets - Skeet does do some 'Post-for-Pay' work and she has been back-handedly criticized for that, but I would like to come to her defense: Life is hard and expensive, her blogs are well-written and she has told me she would not endorse products she found distasteful- I say if she can make a few extra bucks by doing something harmless that she obviously enjoys, then she deserves some respect- a few paid posts, contrary to the opinions of some, will not ruin blogs, blogging or the blogosphere. For all I know, those paid posts might be what pays her Internet bills and make the whole blog possible...always check your facts and sources before you presume to attach motives to the actions of others. Oh yeah, she has some great pics too...except maybe the fried food...that looked nasty, heheh.

#5) Cruel Virgin, AKA, Enemy of the Republic: Anyone who can get 71 comments and answer all of them must be doing something that involves the 'blogging community', the fact that she manages to upset, piss-off and generally outrage some truly stupid commenters indicates that she must be doing something right- she's spiritual, but not dogmatic- I suspect that it's her never-ending critical examination of the Divine that upsets the nutjobs, at least one of whom seems to really, really want to sleep with her, despite her frequently mentioned marriage . That thinly veiled desire is about the only comment from that person that makes sense to me. Smart women are sexy as hell and EotR is very smart.


#6) CS- CS has picked up on the usefulness of blog as therapy, she's had some major turmoil but manages to find some peace and beauty -or at least insight and irony- in nearly all her works. I think she's be a fun person to hike with..."ooooh, look at this" would be a phrase heard often, I imagine. Did I mention that smart women are sexy?
There is a cleansing, transitional quality to her recent posts, which seem to appear every sixty seconds or so, complete with photos that bring vicarious joy to my precarious state of mind.
For these brief moments of beauty, I have added one more blogger to the mandated list of five.
I never was very good at following rules...some are better broken.

#7) Craig D.- CD understands the beauty of truly cheesy LPs and he is an unabashed punster. I find these to be admirable qualities. It wasn't until recently that I found out that he also has a history of Rockin'...on the trombone! I think he eventually switched to MIDI banjo or something...in any case, he's almost as famous as I am, so you better treat him right. Don't misunderestimate the trombonist -or bassist or whatever- if you can play original music in front of a live audience, you are already ahead of 9o% of people who merely own a musical instrument. Keep on 'Bonin'!

NEXT: Bridges, and how to burn them.

Potential for Steam

My car came perilously close to overheating this evening. In the space of a mile or so, the
thermostat goes from it's normal '12 o'clock vertical all the way into the far-right red zone, not quite clipping it, but close.

Can't drive like that without wrecking my engine, so I park in a 'reserved' spot in a nearby apartment building.

Under the hood, greenish-gray spray is everywhere...a coolant hose has split and the antifreeze is squirting into the fan and the belts, which are spraying it downward and aroundward...there is a puddle forming on the asphalt...damn.

Well, I can patch the leak with duct tape and put enough coolant in to get home, but first I need to wait for the engine to cool...it's too hot to stick my hand inside.
(Note: find the fuse labeled 'radiator/turbo fans' and remove it before sticking your hand anywhere near a radiator or turbo fan. Important.)

So I sit in the sun and think. I was thinking about how I was recently forced into discussing my alcoholism in real life, and how uncomfortable that was for both me and my interlocutor.
I was asked about my "support system"...I don't go to AA or any other group, but I do have other things, things I think work. I'm somewhat proud to have these things but not so proud I can't be grateful for them:

1) The radio. I have to get up every Sunday at 5:30-6am and do radio. I love doing this so much that waking up is never a problem, although sleeping beforehand often is. If I started drinking again, I would lose my ability to function in the morning. I'd lose my show.
Radio is part of my support system.

2) My grandmother. She is proud of me. To her, I am the one who beat the odds, she can talk about me at church without eliciting sympathy. To me, she was my anchor in a tsunami childhood. She did everything she could, and I'm here now when I otherwise might not have been.

3) You. My blogpals. You accept me despite knowing things that I haven't told many of my close friends. (Perhaps some of you don't, but you aren't reading this , so it's a moot point. )The real point is: I appreciate all the kind thoughts. (Some of you have marvelous timing...uncanny! )
I write about things that are hard for me to explain and that must be difficult for others to read, but sometimes it reaches someone who reaches back and that makes it worthwhile. Contact.

The thing is, I explained this to someone who has a history of dealing with drunks. They seemed to think it was reasonable and they especially thought #3 above was an interesting alternative to AA. I had never looked at blogging quite like that before, my idea was more along the Isle of Misfit Toys...

Was she wrong? I see some truth in it, but I don't think that's bad. I think it good.

Anyway, I patched the leak (for now) and got home, but I did get some thinking done while I waited for the engine to cool.

I'm thinking it's gonna work out somehow.

Call Me It

I wanna thank Enemy for taggin' me. It's an easy meme- basically it just says: "blog."
But there are some rules:

Rules Are:* each blogger starts with eight - ten random facts/habits about
themselves…* people who are tagged need to write posts in their own blog about
the tag and post these rules…* at the end of your post, you need to choose
people to get tagged and list their names… *

Sounds simple, eh? It's not. How does one "randomly" choose facts/habits about oneself? The Exquisite Corpse method comes to mind- surrealist Max Ernst called it a "mental contagion", which is, to me, a decent and workable definition for "meme"...so. I shall mentally shred my personal trivia and toss the bits into an imaginary hopper. Spin the barrel. Reach inside:

1. I have embraced my baldness. I started losing my hair before I was 21. When my mom was doing chemotherapy, I shaved my head as a gesture of solidarity. I still 'bald' myself on a daily basis, using a disposable razor and the cheapest shaving cream available.

2. My most secret fantasy doesn't involve sex.

3. My not-so-secret fantasies do.

4. In the spring of 2000, I predicted that John McCain would lose to Al Gore in November and that Mr. Gore would literally be my new boss. Instead, Bush stole the election and my Commerce Dept. career vanished faster than Bush's National Guard records.

5. In the absence of literature, I become constipated. My bathroom has it's own library.

6. Coffee is the cornerstone of my nutritional pyramid.

7. I recently obtained my Passport. There are places I want to see and people I want to visit. (See #2 and #3 above)

8. I am quite shy in person but I never experienced stage fright during my long and failed musical 'career'. When I was on-stage, I always knew what I was doing and why I was doing it.
This is not always the case off-stage.

9. I haven't performed in front of a live audience since New Years' Eve, 2001-2

10. I didn't own my first automobile until I was nearly 30 years old.

11. I am not very adept at following rules.

Hmmm...who to tag? Howzabout:

-Angel. She lives in an amusement park and raises dragons.

-Hawkwind_555. Too cool for words. Just number your paper from 1-10 and mail it to me. I'll treasure it forever.

-Invisible. More than meets the eye.

-JP. Queer, bitter and Nebraskan. Makes Omaha interesting.

- Sling. Whenever I hear Dylan's 'Days of '49', I think of Sling. Sling would've been a cool hitch-hiking buddy, back when hitching was possible...1849, I think.

Honk

I have an early childhood memory of riding in a car with two of my adults, but without my brother. I think I was four or five and it was probably 1969 or 70, but I'm not sure and there's no one for me to ask.
We were winding our way through the West Virginia mountains and were forced to go very slowly because the car in front of us was barely creeping along. The steep mountainous roads were narrow, full of cutbacks and blind turns and it was impossible to find a passing zone; there was nothing to be done other than to follow the slow car at it's own pace. In hindsight, it had to have been going pretty slow; we were in a VW Beetle and I don't think that little car was much of an uphill racer.

I was in the backseat, reading comic books and I wasn't really concerned about going fast or getting anywhere. During my childhood I moved a lot. I was always going somewhere I didn't want to, often without any warning at all, so a slow ride to nowhere was fine with me.
I had my books, that is where I wanted to go.

My adults were considerably more tense.

"Goddamn son-of-a- fucking bitch, get off the fucking road!", screamed the male adult behind the wheel.

Where? How? There's a forest on one side and a cliff on the other.

My driving adult started honking the horn. Honk! Honk!

The car in front of us maintained it's sluggish speed.

"You stupid fucking asshole! Drive, you dumb motherfucker!" Honk! Honk!

Then he started tailgating the car, pulling to within a few feet of it's rear bumper. I looked up between the two seats to see what all the shouting was about and saw that the car in front had two elderly people in it and the female passenger had turned around in her seat and was looking at us.

It was a look of fear. She was trying to mouth some sort of message, a plea or explanation.
She ended with a weak, apologetic smile and held up her hand, palm facing us.

Calm down please. Stay back a bit, OK?

"Goddamned stupid fucking wrinkled old cunt," yelled my adult. Then he gave the old lady the finger. She blanched , turned around and said something to the gentleman who was driving. His panicky eyes reflected back at us in his rear-view mirror. He reached for something with his left hand.

In front of us, the car's Hazard lights started flashing.

Inside our vehicle, my adult was screaming bloody murder. He was preparing to throw a half-empty beer bottle forward through our open sunroof.

"Don't," said my other adult, a woman whose name I cannot recall.

She reached for the man's arm and our car swerved, almost colliding with a Ford Econoline coming the opposite direction. The driver of the van honked his horn, cursing us with his finger.

The two adults started yelling at each other and I went back inside my comic book.

After some time, we came to an overlook and the car in front of us pulled off the road, allowing us to pass. My adult cursed some more and flung the now-empty bottle out of our car as we sped by, the tiny VW engine revving in the trunk behind me.

I don't recall where we were going or where we were coming from, but I do remember one thing: I remember what I was told after we got there.

My female adult found a moment to talk to me alone. She thought that the man's violent display of anger and rage might have upset me and she wanted to comfort me. This yelling and throwing wasn't anything unusual in my experience, but she didn't know that, so she tried to explain an idea to me. An important idea.

"Allan, I want you to remember something. I want you to remember how [ my male adult] acted when we were on that road. When you are old enough to drive, you will be stuck behind cars just like that and I want you to remember this. This is important."

Important enough to stop reading Spider-Man?

"Yes. Put the book down. You see, sometimes cars break down and they can't go very fast. Sometimes cars get tired or sick or wear out and when they go up and down hills it is hard for them to go the same speed as the cars around them. But unless you are in that car, you can't tell what's wrong with it. There might be nothing wrong with it at all and it might the hill that is the problem, but you can't know that. Yelling and screaming at it isn't going to help it move any faster, the car can only go as fast as it can go. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?"

Yes, I lied, and returned to Spider-Man's world.

Today, I am ashamed to admit that I do not know who this woman was. I feel a sting of guilt and humiliation because she was trying very hard to teach me something and it took me over thirty years to understand it. Back then, I had no idea what she was talking about- all I wanted to do was read my comics. I didn't care about cars, all I knew of cars is that I seemed to live in them nearly as much as I lived in houses.

Like cars, houses sometimes broke and stopped working and the proper adult thing to do in either case was to yell, scream, get drunk and break things- in no particular order. That's what grown-ups did.

And when I grew up, that is what I did. Because I had forgotten what she said.

It wasn't until I found myself driving a fucked-up old Plymouth station wagon up a long, steep grade on a very similar stretch of road that I even recalled her words, much less understood them. The old beater was straining and it still wouldn't do more than 35, which was the posted limit, I believe.
It wasn't long before a trail of vehicles had queued up behind me, honking and flashing their headlights. I'm sure there was cursing, but I had one eye on the road and the other on the thermostat and couldn't hear them over the engine's death rattling...my car was struggling.

When the road widened to include a third lane, the parade of cars that passed each took their turn at cursing me .
Some of them yelled.
Some of them flipped the bird.
Others did both.

Every single driver had a deep and personal anger, hatred really,and it was directed at me- just for being on the same road as them. I was going as fast as I could and I wasn't breaking the law. I was just there and they hated me for it. It was mean in spirit, and worse, it was cruel. It reminded me of the past and that is always cruel. To some degree, anyway.

I wasn't in much better condition than the car that I was driving at that time. Circumstance and addiction had put me in a dark and haunted place, and by the time the last car- a BMW convertible driven by a woman who would have been beautiful if she hadn't been yelling "motherfucker!" at me- passed by, I was devastated. I arrived home in tears and went straight to the bottle and stayed there until all thoughts of screaming, all sights and sounds of honking cars and women who hated me had been blotted from my mind.
I was forgetting when I should have been remembering.

A lot of time has passed since then, but I remember what the mystery woman was trying to tell me. I know those words. I don't recall when they started making sense to me, but they do now.

It's not complicated.

It's simple. It applies to everything we do and since what I am doing right now is blogging, I will try to apply her wisdom to that.

Imagine that blogging is a sort of road- an internet highway, if you will.
Catchy metaphor, eh?
Let's consider blogs as cars and bloggers as drivers.

Imagine that there are thousands of lanes on this highway- more lanes than traffic could ever need. Most of the lanes are clear in both directions as far as the eye can see.

Now picture a sedan plugging along on the shoulder of this vast road. Maybe it's going as fast as it can, maybe not; in any case it's off the main lanes and it isn't blocking anyone. There are no flares or SOS signs.

In a passing car, another driver sees this, peels off the highway and slides onto the shoulder behind the slower vehicle. The driver follows the sedan at a distance of less than five feet.

From that close it's easy to read the bumperstickers on the leading car.

The stickers identify the politics, spirituality and sexuality of the car's driver, as well as a half-dozen other traits and opinions specific to that person.

They aren't the same as those of the driver of the second car.

So the driver of the second car starts cursing at the car in front. Personal words based on information scanned from stickers - words of hatred and rage, wielded like a weapon; a full-auto, hi-capacity handgun of hate. Aimed at the back of a stranger's head.

They honk their horn: HONK! HONK! GO FASTER!

And they curse: MOTHERFUCKER! I HATE YOU!

In the first car, the driver looks behind them and wonders: Why don't they just pass me?There are a hundred empty lanes. Why the hell are they yelling at me?

Meanwhile, back on the highway, cars roll by.

Some of the drivers look over and ask:
-What is that asshole yelling about?
-Why don't they just get back in their own lane and keep moving?
-Don't they have anything better to do?

When I see hateful, harmful and even abusive unsolicited comments left on the blogs of others, I tend to form a very low opinion of the person who left them.
Do you see them too?
What do you think?

It makes me think of a mad driver, too preoccupied with someone else's bumperstickers to notice that they themselves are driving erratically, swerving dangerously close to the cliff on the far side of the shoulder.

YELL! HONK!

Swerve.

There's a squeal of tires, a shriek of metal as the guardrail gives way.

10,000,000 lanes to choose from and some will always choose the cliff.

And they will honk all the way to the bottom.

" Success is not no violence."

UPDATE: This is just a piece of political 'filler' I did because Dubya's incoherence, wrong-headedness and incompetence fills me with great pain. This blog really isn't about politics anymore, but thanks for visiting anyway.
___________________

I guess my willpower isn't as strong as I thought.

Somehow I fooled myself into believing that I could just walk away and never look back- but it's never that easy, is it?

So here I am. Alone with the cable news and Godzilla help me I'm gonna do it because I can't stop it.
Lou Dobbs is my enabler.
I'm writing about politics again. Just a quick one, then I'll quit again. Promise.
Oh hey, sorry about the last time.

No one can see me if I don't hit publish, I think, and my battle is lost. Another tab opens, another set of headlines are scanned...and I wait for the rush.

And wait.

It's a rush alright. A torrent of sewage loosed from the cancerous bowels of Hell.

I can't believe I used to enjoy this. But it begins again:

The 222-203 vote to override Bush's veto fell far short of the two-thirds needed, effectively killing the $124 billion supplemental appropriations bill.

George Bush is still President? How is that possible?

He just said this when asked about the ongoing collapse of Iraqi society- I quote:

" Success is not no violence."

My shame and despair deepens to an almost unknowable depth.

I feel the need to hurt myself.

" Success is not no violence."
" Success is not no violence."
" Success is not no violence."
" Success is not no violence."


I guess it's only fitting that he describes his goals using a double negative.

"" Success is not no violence." =" Success is violence."

Mission Accomplished.

He continues:

There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it.But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve. And that’s what we’re trying to achieve.

What level of "comfortable" violence is acceptable to you? Your family? I'm hoping none.
Were the Va. Tech shootings "comfortable?"
Worse things happen in Baghdad every single day-
why is it acceptable there but shocking here?

Some Kinda Code

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

A big hand to Invisible for providing this distraction. It helped a bit- thanks 'Vis!

Dreamer/ Escape Artist:
This is fairly accurate, I think. I dream of escape almost as much as I dream of Art. At one point in my life I had lost my dreams and my Art, and with that loss went all hope of escape.
But my dreams are back and they are better now than ever. More on this later.

Back to Basics:
I can make things as simple or complex as they need to be; at the present I prefer simplicity.

Love Bug:
See Dreamer above.

Weekend Report

Saturday morning I was listening to the radio and I heard my DJ pals play a couple cuts from this album-Harper and Jugula- a 1985 collaboration between Roy Harper and Jimmy Page.

It made my bulb glow.

Seriously, as soon as I heard that, I had this brilliant flash- bright, but not blinding, if you know what I mean. I must have that album.

I called the station and spoke with my DJ pal Gene.

"Gene", I asked, " do you have that album?"

He said it came in with a batch of old records he was sorting through at work.

Gene has the second-worst job on the planet. The poor guy runs a business that sells records on-line. I think he has six million albums. Anyway, about the only thing worse than selling records is playing them; and Gene, on top of all that , is also a DJ- which is the worst job on the planet. The poor man just can't seem to catch a break.

It about broke my heart listening to all the great music he was forced to handle, so I thought maybe I'd see if I couldn't ease his burden a bit.

"Why don't you give me that record?", I offered. "That way you wouldn't have to own it anymore."

"Well...uh, er..." Oh. I see. Gene is one of those businessmen who thinks his company should actually make money. Capitalist!

"OK. How much are you asking for it?"

"...I bought it for myself. I'm not selling it. I've never seen it before either."

"Gene, stop toying with me. How much?"

"Not for sale."

Begging isn't pretty but it works.

I have the LP for one week. I played it this morning, in fact.

Here's the rest of what I played this morning:

Joe Jackson- Sunday Papers
I used to listen to this on a shoebox-sized cassette Walkman while I delivered the Sunday papers in Columbia , Md. Now I'm playing it on-air. Yeah!

P.J. Harvey- Send His Love to Me
The sound of a woman yearning turns me on. This is some seriously yearning music.

Steve Hillage- Palm Trees (Love Guitar)
He's a dippy hippie but he's no fool when it come to guitar FX- that's analog delay, not digital. Analog sounds better and Steve knows it.

Roy Harper & Jimmy Page- Elizabeth
When this winter is over Elizabeth
I will come for you
Bearing songs on the wings
Of great happiness
-Roy Harper


Loreena McKennitt- Mystic's Dream
The first time I heard McKennitt sing I was done for. This is beautiful, eyes-closed listening music.

Golden Palominos- Pure
This would be a great song to make out to. At least I think it would.

The Beatles- Don't Let Me Down
Beatles.OK? OK?

Claanad- The Hunter
I play this band a lot. It's because I like them.

Quiet Sun- Mummy was an Asteroid, Daddy was a small non-stick kitchen utensil
I've already blogged about this record, but ya gotta love the title to this instrumental.

Led Zeppelin- Down by the Seaside
I could do a whole show just playing all four sides of Physical Graffiti and talking about how great it sounds. I'm not kidding.



Be-Bop Deluxe- Ships in the Night
Would someone please give Bill Nelson some props? The dude helped invent New Wave. It didn't suck when he played it either.

The Stranglers- Ships That Pass in the Night
Gutter-punk with naked mohawk chicks or elegant New Wave ballads with classical finesse? Depends on which album you're listening to.

Pretty Things- Come See Me
"Baby, I'm your man...I'm your man-n-n-n-"

Nina Hagen- Wir Leben Immer Noch (Lucky Number)
I really like Nina Hagen. You either do or you don't and I do.

Pere Ubu- Worlds In Collision
One of my favorite bands. I met Dave Thomas when he visited the station. I said "hello". He said "what's up?"

Brice Woodall- Control Freak
Richmonder who moved to Chicago. I love the way this disc sounds. Dude has a voice and an ear and both are awesome.

Damien Dempsey- Celtic Tiger
Another random internet love-at-first-listen; now a regular on the show. Great songwriter, fookin' brilliant, really.

Mike Watt- Against The 70's
Ex-Minutemen bassist sings a song warning kids not to buy into baby-boomer sentimentality for the 1970'S

Jethro Tull- We Used To Know
Jefferson Starship - Devil's Den
Lou Reed- Vicious
Three baby-boomer songs from the 1970's, played for sentimental reasons.

Paw- Seasoned Glove
This song is sung from the POV of a little boy whose drunken father never comes home at night. I know, kiddo, I know...

Crack The Sky- Lighten Up McGraw
If this guitar riff doesn't kick your ass you don't deserve ears.

The Kinks- Top of the Pops
The music industry has always been full of shit but the Kinks were the first band to do entire albums about it . I love the Kinks.

Robert Anbian and the UFQ- Haikus for the White House
Example:
Haiku Condi
No one so smart
She can't be stupid
Black or white

This disc is brand-new on Edgetone Records. Go buy it.



.....


In this photo (by DJ Charles Williams) the text reads: "Independent Radio Just Got Stronger", but it sort of looks like it says "stranger", not "stronger".

I'm cool with that.

********

Here's the station blog from my turn at the weekly1980's show:

Back in the early 1980's one of my high school teachers brought up the idea that an infinite number of chimpanzees equipped with an infinite number of typewriters would eventually re-create an existing literary classic, such as Shakespeare's Hamlet.

I didn't know what sort of point he was trying to make- it seemed obvious to me that the result would be an infinite number of broken typewriters and the decimation of the rainforests from the production of all those infinite reams of typing paper.

Perhaps, I added without being asked, the Reagan Administration feels that if it provides an infinite number of weapons to an infinite number of chimps, then eventually one of them would write the Peace part of Tolstoy's War and Peace.

Well, I got kicked outta class and spent the afternoon in the woods listening to The Clash's Sandinista! on my boom-box and wondering what the future would be like.
I had no idea how much it would resemble the past.
I'm even listening to the same music.

Oingo Boingo -Wake Up !(It's 1984)
XTC- Wake Up!
Stranglers- Let Me Introduce You to the Family
Listen to that guitar...that's insane...truly whacked.

Keith Levene- Cops Too
The Proclaimers- 500 miles ?
Bernie Krause- Jungle Shoes
The Clash- Police on my Back
This song takes me back...some good, some bad.

Dave Stewart/Barbara Gaskin- Henry and James
Troublefunk- All Over the World
Snakefinger- The Golden King
Snakefinger is one of my all-time guitar heroes. After his only Richmond show, I got high and hung out with him and his band for hours...they were genuinely nice people who couldn't believe that this skinny little kid knew all their songs- I got them to autograph my albums and gave Snake a giant bud for the road. A month later Snakefinger died. I haven't gotten over it yet.

Ozzy- Mister Crowley
Kate Bush-Running up that Hill ( A Deal With God)
Devo- Jerkin' Back and Forth

The only thing that's more fun than playing Ozzy back-to-back with Kate Bush is using Devo to illustrate the irony. Honestly, life really doesn't get much better than this.


Neil Young- No More
It's Neil Young. It's about addiction and the guitar sounds amazing. Mmmmm...

Husker Du- Never Talking to You Again
Dream Syndicate- Until Lately
Grace Jones- Everybody Hold Still
The Damned- Grimly Fiendish
Dukes of Stratosphere- Have You Seen Jackie?
Lou Reed- The Blue Mask
This song is twisted, like totally fucking bent. But it doesn't have any cuss words, so I can play it. Twin feedback guitars, panned hard left and right. It's why Godzilla gave stereo two channels.

Peter Tosh- Bumbo Klaat
You can't even say "Bumbo Klaat" in Jamaica without getting murdered and/or arrested. Seriously. Peter Tosh was a bad-ass motherfucking guitarist, but he wasn't bullet-proof.

The English Beat- Spar Wid Me
King Sunny Ade- Synchro Reprise
Magazine- About the Weather
Played from a 12" 45 rpm record. What an artifact! Nothing sounds better than 12" 45's. Seriously. (78's don't count)

Elvis Costello- Less Than Zero
X- White Girl
Tupelo Chain Sex- The Revolution Will Be Televised
Yello- Desire
My Bloody Valentine- Take My Breath Away
And how.

I Take Pride In My Humility

My very good blogpal Whim has tagged me with an award. It's about goddamned time someone did.
I mean, I get awards all the time in real life, what's up with the blog snubs?
In 2005 I was named Radio Volunteer of the Year, mainly due to an incident in which our studios were washed into the James River during a flood- with the power still on! The late, legendary DJ V.U. Meeter was on-air at the time; I could hear his SOS in the headphones of my Sony Aquaman as I swam out to rescue, but the 10,000 foot extension cable connecting the transmitter to the city's power grid dipped into the rising water before I could reach him .

There was a blinding flash.

V.U. was killed by shrapnel from an exploding RE20 microphone, god rest...by the time I pushed upstream through the raging, debris-choked river, poor VU was toast, but I did salvage two Orban transmitters, a burlap sack full of wet kittens and a mated pair of Siamese fighting fish before the entire building sank like Atlantis.

The Award was actually supposed to go to V.U., but he was dead- so I took it, er, accepted it for him. It's in my kitchen.
Just last week , the City Police gave me an award for being so good at parking.
So I get lots of awards.
I should, because I am such an awesome person.
I really am.
I'd tell you all about it, but that would be bragging, and part of my perfect character is my unsurpassed humility- I have the sort of modesty that disallows boasting.

Besides, it's unseemly and it makes lesser mortals feel inadequate.

So it's a good thing Whim sent me this award, because I was gettin' exhausted just thinking of new ways for me to be great...maybe I should take a break from working on the screenplay for my memoirs- negotiations have bogged down. I am unhappy with the Lucasfilm studio decision to have Jason Alexander cast in the leading role as myself...I have lost a lot of weight and worked out more than a little bit and I was really hoping for Vin Diesel to play me.

OK...enough of my troubles. If I wasn't so busy being humble, I'd read some other blogs. I do try to read a lot of blogs, though with varying regularity. There really isn't much pattern to it...sometimes an exchange of comments or email will dictate my visits, sometimes I'm looking for a laugh, a smile or soothing picture from a faraway land. Sometimes it's just random. Some are daily.

I was asked to pick five blogs that make me think. Some of the blogs I like have already received one or more such awards, so I'll point out a few that haven't. Not that they need them, they are good blogs , awards or not.

I'll approach this from a DJ's perspective: When doing a show, just because I play five songs , it doesn't mean I think those are the best songs ever, and my favorites tend to change anyway...I like different songs for different reasons.
Easy peasy and in no special order, some blogs I like and what they make me think of :


1) Eye of the Storm. This is Crispin Sartwell's blog. I first encountered Sartwell during my early blog days. He turned me onto Voltairine DeCleyre , DeCleyre became my first internet crush, which didn't work out so well since she died in 1912.
Our failed love would be a harbinger of things to come, but I still thank Sartwell for the introduction.

He writes (mostly) brief rants, sometimes just a single statement or observation that sounds sometimes crazy but makes a point - he also writes great books. Pictured here is Six Names of Beauty, a collection of essays on aesthetics and what beauty means to different people and what it means to us all.

He makes me think of elegance and anarchy.




2) Crows and Daisies:
This is Polona's blog, and it features beautiful pictures accompanied by poignant haiku that are updated quite often. She lives in Slovenia and once corrected me on an article I had pasted from the U.S. news about the change in Slovenian currency. Our news had the facts wrong and I was able to get the correction direct from a local source. That made me think the intertubes might be useful after all.
Her photographs sometimes take my thoughts away. Like drugs, but without the harmful side-effects.

3) Dialogic.
This is Thivai's blog. Thivai, like Sartwell, gets paid to educate people. In my brief attempt at college , I never had a professor I liked, but if I'd had teachers like Thivai and Sartwell I might have stayed in. If I read very slowly and take lots of breaks, I can always learn something from the articles, essays, opinions and observations offered here. Again, here's a link to the excellent on-line magazine , Reconstruction, which provides a look at blogging from many different perspectives.
He makes me think of ideas and how they all fit together if you look for the patterns.


4) HI-WATT cha doin?

This is the newest blog on my list. At first I thought I was lapsing into fugue states and writing another blog under the identity of a Canadian woman. Her blog is chock-a-block with loving posts dedicated to music, pop culture and best of all, guitar pedals. Guitar pedals! How much cooler can it get?

Reading about all the great music and gear helps me think of all of the truly wonderful things music has brought into my life and helps remind me that without music, life would be flat. The author is also a drummer - so I imagine she'll understand the album scan above- for some reason her exuberance reminds me of the way Robert Wyatt played drums on this record. (That's a compliment for those of you who don't know Robert Wyatt. )
Any gal that calls herself a 'gear slut' is OK in my book.
She makes me think that I'm a humbucker on a vintage Les Paul.

5) CityMouse:
Citymouse is one of two bloggers that I have actually met in real life. We had lunch in Chicago on my 40th birthday. I have seen her blog evolve from a somewhat subdued start into a journal of what are often very deep and personal insights told in such a way that the reader can easily relate- sometimes she's just silly, which is good too, but I am partial to her more edgy posts.
And I have a weakness for red-headed Scorpios...I imagine one day a red-haired Scorpio will stab me to death in my sleep but it's unlikely to be Mouse. She would probably use a garrote.
I have always admired her practicality. "Spelling doesn't count"!
The story of a Swiss exchange student's stay with her family offers some enlightening insight into the hidden side of American prejudice and parenting.

She makes me think of strength.

----------------------
UPDATE: Info and rules for the Thinking Blog meme can be found here.

----------------------

OK. Are we done yet? Can we go back to talking about me now?

Third Birthday

I almost forgot.

This is my blog's third birthday.

First post was 3/21/04.

I feel old.

Sick and Tagged

I am tagged, nauseous and ashamed.

The tag is from Thivia. I am to list five things that most people don't know about me.

The nausea , I believe, is from the stomach flu or perhaps arising from something that I ate.

The shame is a result of the realization that I haven't yet linked this:

Reconstruction: Why We Blog

Why We Blog is the work of Thivia and many others , and it examines...well, the reasons people blog. Duh.

A number of bloggers were consulted as well. This was my humble offering.

-----------------------------------------
So. The tagging thing.
Five things most people don't know about me:

#1: I am six minutes older than my twin brother.


#2: I once sold a comic story for real money. It was about vampires, a subject that bores me to undeath. It was a long story...here are some pictures.
The title, Destiny Angel, didn't scan very well- in several meanings of the word ...it was a female vampire character created by the publisher, who really wanted to publish a book about female vampires.
His character's background?
She is a female vampire- surely you can come up with one hundred pages based on that, said the publisher.
For a grand? No problem.
The cover title is in red foil print, a common comics-industry 'collector's item' ploy. What it really meant is that a crappy comic that should have cost a buck or two actually cost $4.50 !
In 1996 dollars!

It was awful. Even the fine print sucked. My publisher couldn't spell and was too proud to let me proof-read his copy. "Concent", anyone? Sheesh...



#3: If I am lost, someone will inevitably ask me for directions.



#4: I don't perform routine maintenance on my equipment as often as I should.


#5 : My next-door neighbor is plotting to kill me. She is going to drop a flowerpot on my head as I walk underneath her porch on the way to my car.

More Blogging Secrets

It's easy to make money blogging. First, find a job with an Infernal Blog Machine (IBM). An Infernal Blog Machine looks like this:

You probably have one like it at home, except the home versions will let you play video games and show you dirty movies. The kind at work usually don't let you do that sort of thing- they are pretty useless for much but blogging.
The only game mine has is some really bad text-based role-playing game (RPG) where you assume the persona of a legal document inside a box- you might be a real estate purchase contract, a deposition transcript or even a medical record. In the game, you move yourself from one virtual location to another and make a written note of when you do so. Sometimes an NPC will email you and ask you where you are and you get points for knowing the correct answer. If you give the wrong answer you lose and the game is over.
It's a really boring game but since I always answer the questions correctly , I can blog between RPG sessions. It's not much of an RPG, really. You get put in a box and sent to a warehouse and don't do anything for years. After seven years, your character gets shredded but that's OK. You have 6,500,001 other ones just like it.

To keep my wits sharp between gaming sessions, I like to read and drink coffee. I wish I could do both at the same time, but I can't.
I read books on the bus on the way to work, but you are not allowed to drink coffee on the bus.
I drink coffee at work but I am not allowed to read books on the clock.

In some ways, my commute is the best part of my day. I get to sit and read for two 30-minute periods each day, which I find simultaneously stimulating and relaxing. Lately I've read a great Kafka translation (seated below), a trio of Jim Thompson crime novels (Pop. 1280; The Killer Inside Me and Taking Texas by the Tail) and a deceptively brilliant novel of dark comedy , Damned If You Do, by Gordon Houghton. It's the only book I've read of his, it being a gift from a friend.


It's a sign that someone
knows you and cares about you when they give you books that you like, even if you've never heard of the author.
(Thank you to my lifelong pal 'Sco')





So you read a little , ingest some hot bean squeezins' , play a little bit of the RPG and take a break. While you are on break, you might as well blog. If you're like me, you probably hate it when your boss and co-workers read your blog over your shoulder; so I came up with a solution for the privacy problem. I build a wall.
These boxes are the 'real-life' equivalent of the document RPG that's installed on my BM at work. These boxes have just advanced from first to second level.

I didn't get much blogging done at work today. Instead, I went to a lunchtime anti-escalation demonstration at the State Capitol. Due to my vast fame and incredible good looks, I was placed behind the podium- I was all set to make a fiery extemporaneous denouncement of all things Dubya - don't think I can't- but I was just up there to make the pictures pretty for TV. Aw, shucks. They already had good speakers lined up, including one man with two sons in Iraq- multiple tours I think. I was behind him and the wind flapping the signs made it hard for me to hear everything.

After work, I engineered a live performance by In Fervor, a talented and very likable duo doing a Radio Tour- how cool is that! After that, we had a Music Director's meeting. It was short and sweet- major progress is being made at the station- there have been some bad things happen but we are correcting them- running a listener-supported all-volunteer FM station takes a lot of work,but we've been on-air for over two years now, something almost no one thought was possible and we are getting pretty good at what we do. It's a group effort.

So tonight I'm blogging for free, on my own time. I had planned on writing something depressing but I had such a good day I wrote this instead. Maybe next time.