Why?

I'm pretty sure no one reads my blog....I was going to say bleeds my rog.  And now I did.
It's fine.  It's art.

More (boring) on email and (yay!) Dogs

There is SO much evidence that dogs are better.  First, they don't generally live as long as we do.   Initially this troubled me.   But look:   they live their perfect dog lives more efficiently than we do.
They get along without silly "abstract thought."   I'm sure there's research on this, but though it makes sense to say "My dog thought your dog was going to hurt him,"  there was not a "thought" involved.
(And "did he draw blood?  oooh,  sorry")

All the best things bypass the brain.   I am currently having a great deal of trouble understanding the value of the brain, the "thinking" part.

Dogs do not, as far as I know, use email.   So they don't have to wonder "Should I send this??"   I think it's very very important for us who do use email to have this thought.   Do I really need to send this?
You see, you know, I hate getting email.  Nothing to do with reason.  Email feels like an assault; and the ones meant for me are the worst, worse than any spam, because they are ALL calls to action.  Well, most are.  And I have to digest them, wade through misspellings, poor syntax, all that, and then....ewww... reply.  But it occurred to me that if I really believe all emails to be assaults, then if I reply, I am assaulting back.   I have vowed to wait at least 30 minutes before sending ANY email.  And ask that question several times:  "Really, really does this person need this reply??"   Likely not.

While I was musing on these things, my email server went down --  for most of a day ---   and I couldn't send anything, nor receive.  I felt neutered.   The dogs, one of whom is already neutered, felt and thought nothing.  His tail was not between his legs all day, like mine was.

More 'What's Better?!"

Back by popular demand.....

What's worse?

Fleas or bees  (fleas)
corncobs or hay futures
hey or hay

See, What's Worse? is not as funny as "What's Better."   Try it yourself.

I guess what makes them funny is that some are what used to be called "category mistakes"(as in Aristotelian) and some are not.

lacking an appendix or lacking an index
or lacing a tenny shoe

Lacking a tenny shoe is not a category mistake, but lacing an index pretty much is.

your finger or my thumb

good brakes or bad breaks

I give up or I don't give up

This is silly or this is really really silly

modern music and the carnival of the animals

Modern Music
by Junkmenudo

This paper will prove conclusively that.... nothing.  I was wrong...

dot dot dot

Modern music is loud and virtually omnipresent.  That's because music is essentially sound, and sound, like rats and snakes, can slide up and around and down and into your bedroom!

Not mine, thank you.

Sound doesn't care.

The huge music festival going on in my town (?) 4 miles from me is quite audible in my house.
Lucky me.  Tickets cost hundreds. 
I guess the sound just hops down into the creek bed and floats upstream, happy to be in the park today.  
But what is the cost of this omnipresent snake-rat?

I don't know.  I just have to face the fact that I'm old now, and all the music I hear coming out of speakers large and small is in fact noise (since I am the ultimate arbiter of such things, being old and wise).   I should be grateful I can still hear, right?

My two dogs' have different music preferences.  Music coming out of speakers is mostly a non-entity to both of them.  They seem not to hear it.   As for live music:  the ornery, cagey one loves cello and piano. Clearly loves them, even played less than well.    The neurotic one (bad family of origin issues) seems to love the fiddle.  He sings along, especially to double-stops.  His singing sounds like deep distress, but in that way it is superior to much of the singing I hear in speakers.
Especially, the chick singers almost all suck.   No, it's all the singers.   (Do something!)
The reaction of both dogs to live trombone was to head for the doggy door at great speed, collide there like Laurel and Hardy, and then quickly reach the most distant corner of the yard.

My dogs don't like bones.   The ornery one will kill a rat, maybe even a snake.

What's Better?

uranus or neptune
fickle people or dogs
snot or jazz
superintendants or lieutenant colonels
big big boxes of doritos or a lack of muscular coordination
sex or gender
filibuster or dave and buster
nasty nasty residue or the presidency
fisticuffs or ice cream scoopers
forks or spoons
going forward or turning around
having a vasectomy reversal or a gig
42 or 4,566
sending missals into the stratosphere or sending missiles into your neighborhood
Good Friday or Yom Kippur
mexican food or vomit
stories about you that are true or stories about you that aren't true
friendly neighborhood leaders or sophistication
stopping or continuing
feet or yards
gas or liquid
gas or electricity
gas or poo
gas or bummer
gas or gals
gals or ALS
ALS or BPE
answers or questions

Narcissism

Now for a little religion!  No, really not.  Just....
Why AA works ..  is really the title

The 12 steps (capital S Steps if you're a believer) of AA are a guide for spiritual living.  A guide that echoes wisdom of the ages from, well, all over the place.  The Holy Bible for one.  Buddhism.  And on and on.  Koran...
  I am certainly not proselytizing.   In fact, where the word God was a problem for the founders of AA (they knew it would be a turnoff for a lot of drunks -- atheism abounded in upper class America in the 30's), I'm afraid the term 'spiritual' carries some stigma lately.  Smells like hippies and aromatherapy.   Mere spirituality was more innocent and odd in the 20th century.  So let's not say 'spiritual' living.  Let's say "a thoughtful, caring, and as sober as possible ...life   one day at a time,"  A pledge to watch out for selfishness, self-centeredness, dishonesty and fear.
 You should try it sometime.  If you want.  Just a suggestion.  (chuckle)

So I've divulged that AA is not merely about "putting the plug in the jug."  There is power in the Steps, in the literature, and in 'the rooms.'

The rooms work because what entertainment!  A roomful of sociopathic narcissists (redundant?) pretty much sort of trying not to be.  They say "egomaniacs with inferiority complexes."   Look at me Look at me!  I'm sober today, I'm grateful, I hate my boss, I forgot that the Steps are in order for a reason...I try to let people share their experience, no matter what, and I really try not to judge.  But I am judge and jury.    I forgot that the original AA's did the 12 steps initially in a matter of hours or at most a few days.  And then pretty much kept doing them for the rest of their lives.  Many died sober.

My goal.  That.   To die sober.  But I'll forever be a narcissist.  My name is [name], and I'm a self-centered insomniac.

Slow Current

Let’s all get old and die later.

Or

 Let’s just die.

The quirks of the elderly are not necessarily part (not parcel) of the disintegration of the various systems.  I face my defects every day, now.  Now that I am seeking remedies for the slowly encroaching discomforts of age.   It’s really about time.  (I am 65)

There is a thought that stays in the conscious but seems to take up little time or space --  the thought that I have worked hard and accomplished something (not sure what, progeny? --  and I use this word in the warmest sense).

And for my work I am rewarded with

Medicare

Urinary disorder

Wrist pain

Time to practice

Practice

Time to teach …  teaching

Time to eat

Etc

The world is not eager for me to be responsible for it.  I surmise.  Mainly, I have little motivation to be active in the world.   I have grown used to my own company.  Not the LLC.   To which I will never be used.

But how does this play out?

I am a bit afraid of 70, 75  -- they look really implausible.

Which reminds me of the other reward of the rapid, quiet, cold ticking of an older person’s clock:  there’s time for some serious discussion with God

Which should have been going on all along.

Yoga might help all this too.

And there is the upside, the view from the mountaintop, and all the people look like ants.  Fire ants.

Was it SO Bad?

When the distance between the train track rails was not standardized?

Yeah, it was pretty stoopid.  Lay 1000 miles of track meant to join the existing 1000 miles of track but....No!  Off by 3 centimeters!   Can you just bend it a little?

Similar, the auto-upgrade features of software.  These are constantly improving, but so are the Big Brother aspects of our (internet) world.  It's the opposite problem:  The track is all standardized, but the trains aren't running.  Or are running so fast they are hard to see, let alone board.

People do what they can.  Thus we have:  high-rise condos, new potent alcoholic drink fads, popular books that are 325 pages long but can be summarized in one paragraph.  And spouses.

Currently I have no spouse.  I remember having one.  I remember having some one else's, in some sense.

The plural of spouse seems to be but is not spice.  Spice are the people in black trenchcoats who steal nuclear secrets.  We are all members of the nuclear family, and this is so not reassuring.

But is it so bad?  Malaria in Panama.  My addictions.  Your addictions.  These things seem bad.
But so?   So bad?   I have said before What doesn't kill you still might hurt, or something to that effect.
But is pain so bad?  I mean after all there's aways pain medication.  So sad when the opiates die, after only a half-life too!

Definitely not Email

Here it is folks;  a summary of email "rules" derived from internet wisdom (not mine other people's)

 RECOMMENDED DO NOT USE EMAIL SITUATIONS

1  breaking bad news (your mom died just now)

2  canceling a meeting that was supposed to start in 6 minutes

3  negotiating a price (phone or face to face best)

4  when something has to be done NOW

5  when the subject is complex and you have a lot to say

6  marriage proposal (really, ANY important proposal)

7  any kind of negotiation that will call for a lot of back and forth, or a lengthy interview

8 to express a complaint or criticism

9  when you do not want a permanent record

10 when it's 1 or 2 people you want to reach, and you are not geographically distant from them

11 complicated instructions

12  when the message has to be in any sense LONG

Boring mostly.  But right really.  Except of course if you get frozen in the tundra in northern Greenland and you have to share a sleeping bag with your best friend's wife just to survive.

Similarly, if you are - odd but I suppose possible -- at some point able to communicate ONLY by email, the rules can be broken.  But the email won't be very effective.  And it will not keep you warm.

They NEVER do.  Bring much warmth, heat, rage.  They convey emotion dismally.  And they engender way more emotion than we think they will.   Really pisses me off.

I have one work situation where they seem useful.  Every week a small team gets identical instructions for a group project.   Works okay.  Worked a lot better when we got together for even an hour to discuss the project.  Like people.   The instructions are a songlist, the project is to play a gig, the getting together was rehearsal.  It's been a couple years now.  I don't want to rehearse.   Wait.  yes I do.

How do I get to Carnegie Hall?   ..........   from Brooklyn?

What is the most frustrating thing?   Oh, there are so many.

The emailer who has little command of the language she is using.  I know it's probably just me, but the typos and poor word choice and non-grammar throw me way off.  I am disturbed and don't trust any information I feel was supposed to be conveyed.

My best advice to avoid the painful regret that can immediately follow hitting Send ---  is to often NOT send.  So what if I've spent an hour a day for two weeks trying to craft the perfect words to convince Jill Schmo to dump her longterm BF and shack up with old me?   A diamond and lots of flowers could work.  Or at least get the ball rolling.  (ahem)

Emails are chickenshit.  Often passive aggressive.  Truly regrettable more than 50% of the time.  And always wrong.   In some way.

Thus, a voluminous waste of time.   (where are my glasses?)

Do not email me.   Text if you must.  Call anytime.

Next week:  Blogs are all bad!  (but not as bad as emails)

Bebop and Chops for a Snack

Less all cerebrate.  I say narcissism, you say business.  I say narcissism, you say everybody's doin it.
I say narcissism.  What's the big deal?  Let us self-aggrandize! Let the aggrandizing continue!  You see, there are almost 7 billion human or human-like creatures on Earth.  Each one needs a real active URL (or 3).
And about 10 domain names.

This is mathematically no problemo.

On my PDN (my page de narcissism), I have let the world (world?) know I think it would be cool to actually be able to play 20 Bird, or Dizzy, or Monk, or Mingus? tunes.  Preferably on all 3 instruments I claim to play.  My theory was that, like contest fiddlin, bebop is a discipline which can be mastered in a few simple finite bursts of effort.  Say an hour a day for a month or two.  Contest fiddlin actually more like a year or 4.   Why?   First, although I could scrape through "Scrapple" when I was 26, I can't anymore.  It's taken about 3 days to get "Groovin High" back and then down on the cello and the piano....It's short!  Fiddle tunes are a whole lot longer.....and in them harmonic rules appear fuzzy and/or arbitrary ---  (in a good way; the stuff is beautiful when well played, and can be potent).

Boring.  Everything is hard, except if it comes easy to you.  Lately music comes a bit easier, is pure joy, even though my left hand hurts (practicing too much).

These styles are equally languages.  A fellow named Marc Cohen told me this about bop in about 1977.  It's a language --  you learn the grammar, get a bit of vocab, then start speaking it.  Same goes for Texas style (aka contest fiddlin').  A language.  
Initially all those bop tunes sound alike. And I am disappointed at the apparent low ratio of musicality to difficulty.  I'm saying it seems like a lot of work to speak this language of bop, and nobody seems to want to hear much of it.

Still, like the contest fiddle route, great discipline, and in its way a lovely language.   And great for your chops.  The fiddlin language is like Hungarian to me.  (Harder than Greek).  But I have been pecking away at it for close to a decade.
A breakdown, a waltz, and a Tune Of Choice.  I need to go to a real contest, and see if anybody plays "Night in Tunisia" as a tune of choice.

Chromaticism DOES occur in Texas style, when notes are real out of tune.  Bebop is danceable if you take designer drugs.

J Gimble, my hero, says "How do you tell those fiddle tunes apart?   .....     By the titles."

I don't want to take the time to massacre "Ornithology" on the cello.  What's the point?  Oh yeah, chops.  I suspect your grandmother would much prefer "How High the Moon?  which is an excellent question.

Life

I can do this real quick.

Life is suffering.  That couple over there, the two who are dressed perfectly, smiling, seem to be healthy, loving, maybe even wealthy.   They suffer.   If they care about the clothes, they have to take care of them.  Okay, perhaps this is a joy for them.  Doubt it.  Anybody can smile.  It means little.  Good health is at best temporary.  Bad health is almost guaranteed in anyone's future.  (It can be avoided by getting t-boned in a small Honda by a large Dodge Ram running a red light at 80 mph --   this almost happened to me yesterday).   Failing to achieve the extremely rapid demise, we all get to look forward to bad health.   And love.  HA!   If you love somebody and they're not doing fine or even don't seem to be just right and happy or whatnot, then you will more than share their misery.   That is, if you are not a sociopath.   And it seems so hard to achieve a feeling of security in love ....   Etc.

To live is to suffer.  So we might as well all be reasonably compassionate and look for the best in each other.  Until we stop looking altogether.   People who don't try to be decent most of the time really piss me off.  I know it's hard.

Dissertation on Recording Technology and the Rise of Lay Composers

Wowsers.  I just managed to login to this blog for the first time this year.  There is hope for a less dim future!
It is well-known:  when new technology or even just a new product arrives, it will quickly be exploited by some folks and, later, by some very professional folks, for financial gain.  This is something we can count on.  Nice.    It will probably have some use in the sex realm as well.  It's just the way it is.   I try to see how the new cool taxi service is "disruptive."  But not really.  It's just swell, sometimes.  But not really all that innovative.   Good exploitation of something is going on tho (people are making money, and tips)

"Anyone can make music now."  I give this a 9 as in 9 out of 10 people who can more or less operate a computer can yes make real music.  Music someone might want to listen to.

Old folks like me who have made music for a long time  --  the good old way (they have to keep their nails trimmed, or most of them)  -- often are fearful that their lifetime of experience and hard-fought gains in chops of various kinds (tricks and secrets too) has been all for naught.  And they will starve and no one will like them.    Nup.  They may be shunned and detested, but it won't be because they play the banjo, say.  Not any more.

Recording studios still have their flavors and odors and emotions.  Of course, the hopped-up-happy kids who get miked up and anticipate the thrill of the red light (red light?) bring a great deal more of all that with them.  My point is that I'm sad to have lost many of the big old studios, but my house (it's 79% a studio now) has some pretty nice odors.
Artists important to me and at least 45 other people have said "I love workin there."  (Don't check the syntax of that too carefully)
I'm not sure we're making real records here, but we're working at it.   And so are a few tens of thousands of other folks, old and young.   Some use "construction kits."  Know about these?  Just what the label says.   Pick drum thing from column drum loop, bass from bass lines (it's not spelled base by the way), etc.   Then close-mic your cranium and overdub yourself scratching your scalp (see earlier dandruff blog post), in no particular rhythm.  Feature your scratch in the mix, even if it sux --  maybe you can use it as the intro....

Source of the Fear (that technology renders us obsolete and we will starve):    A few people, a few thousand, have gotten very wealthy off ideas lately.   Those people!  They think they're so cool. And they have amazing houses and more than one.  Damn, I want to be them....   But yer not!   BUT you are somebody, and 9 out of 10 people can make music.  In their kitchen if they want!  (Not my fave place)

Today's big haunting question:  To what extent did Beethoven actually pick up a fiddle or bang on a piano as a way to compose?   Not much in his last couple years, that's for sure.
I suspect that the big difference between our modern "composers" and many of the old dead "masters" is that we new millennium guys generally play our pieces or have them played first.  Then we write 'em down.  If we even bother.   They are usually sound ONLY.   Watch out ears, here I  ------------->