Rocket Number 9 Take Off for the Planet ... To the Planet ... Venus!

I have only heard one song by the Sun Ra Arkestra, and I just gave you a line from it. Technically it doesn't count as my Sun Ra experience because the version of "Rocket #9" I heard was a cover by NRBQ. Well, on Saturday the Fifth of February, Sun Ra is coming to my town. I've called my dad up, just to tip him off to the concert, and he sounded quite enthusiastic about going. That was not what I expected. Of course, when it comes to anything musical, my dad is quite enthusiastic about it. (One of these days I'm going to have to talk him into retiring from construction and home repair to pursue that music career he wanted when he was nearly 12 years younger than I am now. He has, however, been in his current field for close to 35 years now. It would be hard to walk away from that kind of dedication.)

On Speakers, Number 1. Make It So!

I listened to this post myself. So, if anyone else doesn't quite understand what I'm saying, I have to say this; yes, I know I was talking pretty fast, and that if I hadn't been the one who had recorded it, I would understand only every other word.

By the way ... The part that goes something like "It's been three (*^)% since I've tried this ..." the missing word is 'months.' Upon listening, it almost sounds like 'weeks,' but it could've gone either way. (Now, who else out there can say the word 'months' and have it sound like 'weeks?' At least it's an original screw-up!)

New Link! It's Going to Go Onto the Sidebar. (Eventually!)

The Exploding Gopher

I clicked on this link over at Tinmen Don't Dance. Just the name of it intrigued me. Something about the combination of small furry animals and spontaneous combustion strikes me as downright hysterical! Ok! So I'm a sick, twisted f*cker. (Can't use the 'u' or Google will remove my advertising banner. I put the thing up there so it would make me some money. Has anyone clicked on it? NnNnnooooooOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo!)

Humpday Quote of the Week!

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

Benjamin Franklin in a Letter to Josiah Quincy, Sept. 11, 1773.

Revenge Return of the Humpday Quote of the Week!

"Of physiology from top to toe I sing
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the
Muse,
I say the Form complete is worthier far,
The Female equally with the Male I sing."
-----Walt Whitman from One's-Self I Sing in Leaves of Grass

Post Moved to Different Blog

Hello, again! If you were expecting to see my Martin Luther King Day post, I've moved it to the Road from Demockery.

Yeah. I thought I'd stopped writing to it, too. Truth is, I want to stop writing politically charged articles. I really do. There is no greater waste of energy right now than to write about politics. I know I'd be labeled as "too liberal" even by people who belong to the same affiliations as I. What that label might mean is far beyond me ... It's almost as if people don't want gigantic corporations like Enron, Tyco, and Worldcom to have to answer for their questionable practices. Sure, cheat thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people out of millions of dollars. Just don't get an abortion ... (In case you're wondering, I think that if you're going to allow for either thing to happen, you might as well allow both. Ban either one, and ban the other, too. Morality is morality, so don't pick and choose. Gah!)

Tsunami Relief

I read the local paper today, and it said that there will be a Tsunami Aid concert at 8:00 P. M. (In my time zone, at least. I read through the list of acts that are to be performing. There are some big names involved, and a few great musicians, too! The two that surprised me were Roger Waters and Brian Wilson! I didn't expect either of these guys to be out for this night! I thought everyone had forgotten about them. Good thing that hasn't happened. I love being wrong about things like this!)

On a similar note, the Good Foods Market in Lexington, Kentucky has set aside January 22^nd and 23^rd to send 15% of its café and hotbar's profits to the American Red Cross. I encourage Lexington bloggers to go and buy at least one cup of tea from them. Bring your friends and family! Make a nice weekend brunch or dinner date with them at the Good Foods Café!

Mosaic Taken from Natural Bridge (Fall 2001)

A photo mosaic I took nearly three years ago, long before I had access to a scanner. I finally got around to scanning these nine pictures, and now I have a better idea of how to get a better panorama. (Get a digital camera with a large memory card ... and I've since done that!)
 

SMiLE!

For all the years I've been able to remember, I've hear people talk about records they can listen to all the way through without skipping from one track to the next. In all that time, I've never had an album to which I could do that. I've never bought an album I can sit all the way through on the first listen. Todd Rundgren's stuff has come pretty close, as has Alan Parsons' and Aimee Mann's. But, no matter how good it was, how much I liked it, I've never sat so transfixed by what I heard coming out of my speakers that I could let the rest of the world wait.

This year, however, marks the first time ever I could do just that. I'm listening to the album right now. I'm just as transfixed by it now as I was the first time I played it two weeks ago. I've listened to it every day since. Every time, I've listened to it all the way through.

That album is Brian Wilson's SMiLE.

Long thought lost forever, it has been the stuff of legends (and many bootlegs.) From the first track (Our Prayer/Gee, a title vaguely reminiscent of a Turlough O'Carolan piece), I was hooked. This sixty-two year-old former Beach Boy still has captured the spirit of the music, and he doesn't hold back. Three or four tracks into the album, I found myself thinking "Hey! Didn't I hear that snippet of melody in another track?" I don't know the technical term for it, but this album does that a lot. I'd be listening, and a melody, or even a line of lyrics from an earlier song will pop up out of nowhere ... It's just magnificent! (I call it a 'theme and variations.' That is, I think that's what they used to call that sort of thing in my music classes when I was younger.)

In other words, he's put out a wonderful ... I don't know what to call it. It seems as if (and this is probably the case) he and the new band with which he has teamed (the Wondermints) just wanted to do some good music. The words "concerto," "opera," or "symphony" could be combined with words like "rock," "pop," or "modern," but we've all heard that before. Yes, Brian and the Wondermints have done pop/rock music. Yes, they're considered modern. Yes, concertos, operas, and symphonies have movements in them. But, instead of combining any of those words from the two lists I've just given, I'll simply tell you that it's moving music.

And, I must say that hearing Good Vibrations as Brian Wilson intended it to be is quite good! The "new" version makes more sense.

I, I love the colorful clothes she wears
And she's already working on my brain
I, I only looked in her eyes
But I picked up something I just can't explain

If you want to hear the rest, go get the album yourself! You won't regret it at all!

To The Celtic Association Meeting I Go!

Since this one was rescheduled from last week, I've been told that no one knows what to expect. The people who attend this thing regularly tell me that the past couple of meetings have been lots of fun. They've told me that there are musicians there that simply jam in Irish/Scottish style folk music. I like that kind of stuff anyway. I'm really looking forward to it.

Cafè Hopping

I spent the better part of this afternoon trying to get Outlook Express to work with my Insight BB e-mail address. I might stick with Yahoo. I'm already familiar with the interface, and I'm waaaay behind the curve on the updated OE 6.0! I might like it better, but I don't know. Yahoo's pretty easy to manage (unless I get more mail filters through Insight, I won't bother changing.)

On the subject of e-mail ...

Last night, someone from the Good Foods Market contacted me to say that they were going to have a weekend either this month or next where 15 percent of their food services profit from that weekend goes to the tsunami relief effort. They will be working with the Red Cross and the Mayor's Office. I'll be happy to pass along the details of that weekend whenever I get them. I'll propose a local bloggers' meeting there for that weekend, if there are any local bloggers reading my mishmash.

As for my own personal efforts, I've resolved to have yard sales this winter. I'll see if there's a neighborhood association for my street, I'll check to see if it's alright with them to have it. (It's sad that I've lived there off and on for four years and I still don't know if one exists.) My street's one of those wired ones that, if you're not really expecting it to be otherwise, you'd think it was a court. It has a bulb, and I live in the curve of it ... But, where my house is on the left-hand side of the bulb, there's another bulb directly across and about 90 meters away. (Why meters, you ask? Because there aren't 90 yards on this little street of mine, and I'm too mentally lazy to multiply 90 by 3 to get the number of feet, therefore avoiding confusion and staying in non-metric measure!)

I do have other people to reach out to in this effort ... When I meet with them, I'll post more details. I may even set up another blog for this purpose.

So, to get a feel of how much money I'll need to participate in this aspect, I went to the Good Foods Market tonight to just hang out and read. The first person I saw there was the lady that runs the Irish Import shop I've linked on the sidebar! (She'd burned her fingers on something today and was in the pharmacy aisles looking for a pain relieving salve as I was making my way to the cafè. Poor lady; her second job is bartending, and it was the middle two fingers on her right hand that were bandaged. Imagine having to twist open beer bottles 'til the small hours of the morning with burns on your dominant hand! I'll have to ask her how she made it through the night the next time I see her.)

After reading a chapter in a book I brought with me (Celtic Wonder Tales by Ella Young [1910]), I left the Good Foods Market for Dink's. Let's just say that I'm going to be budgeting to be able to afford the cafès! I think they're both very much worth it, though. There are neat people in both places, and to me that's the ultimate draw. If you can go somewhere and feel welcomed, as if you're among friends you've never met before, it's a worthwhile place. Of course, you all know that already!

Message Received

Thanks to a tip from Pua, I've found out that the UN and the Red Cross (as well as other aid agencies) are preferring financial donations, so they can handle acquisitions. What I've chosen to do is to set up a collection drive somehow. I need to research this so it can be made a reality. (I checked to see if my local Co-Op grocery store had any sort of a drive going at all. I may wind up working through them, as I got a meeting set up with them next Tuesday.)

There isn't a whole lot I can afford to do on my own. What I can do is see if I can gather as many people together as possible.

I'll check the websites of both the UN and the Red Cross before my meeting next week.

I Read the News Last Week, Oh Boy

Millions of people in the world right now are too dumb-struck to cry. Even though I live nowhere near the region in ruins, I count myself among them. I don't know what to think. I don't know what to feel. I don't know what to do.

No one alive today would've expected to be around when a superlative is reset; The worst natural disaster on record.

Destruction and death on this scale are hard to wrap one's mind around. It's been running around my head lately to find something I can do to help the people of the Pacific/Indian Ocean region in some small way.

But, what can I do? Pray? Some would say that would help, but I think that only helps me; makes me feel better to simply acknowledge the suffering. Send money? If I sent the entirety of my next few months of paychecks out to help in the recovery, it might not help anyone buy enough materials to rebuild a single house.

Dear readers, if any of you out there are still reading, do any of you have any ideas what we can do? I'm completely at a loss.

Once Again at Dink's

I have returned once more to that not-so-little cafe around the corner from my house. It's oddly quiet here. There are, once again, a lot of people in the darkened side room playing games. But, even the whirr of the cappuccino machine seems subdued. There is an oldies station playing softly on the intercom.

The Beatles are on; it's "Day Tripper." When I came in, it was Hall and Oates' "She's Gone." Then followed "Midnight Train to Georgia." I'm blown away. None of the young gamers seem to care. Take note media moguls, because these kids will listen to any kind of music. Their tastes aren't so narrow as your current programming standards would seem to indicate! (Besides ... I like some of the stuff targeted at them! But give me oldies, lots of them, and make it heavy on the Motown. Through in some Young Holt Trio and Isaac Hayes, too. Soul! That's what I'm talkin' about!

It seems odd to open up with random, nothing type thoughts. I figure that I've not been writing much in this or any of my other blogs lately, and I just want everyone to know I'm ok. I've just been busying myself with anything I've felt like doing these past few weeks. For example, I like hanging out with the people at the Irish Import shop (and I think I'm going to finally link to their site ... I can't believe I've overlooked that for so long.) They're wonderful people, and one day I plan on getting more involved with the Central Kentucky Celtic Association. I have a vacation day today, and it would normally be meeting. A lot of people are still out of town, though, and it's been moved to next week. I have next Monday off, too. I covered my bases. (In case anyone's wondering, no I didn't get that first shift job I thought was a slam-dunk. But, that's alright. I'd be loosing sixty-five cents an hour to go to that shift anyway. I've already told my boss that I'm going to get more involved with my life outside of work. I'll be taking at least one vacation day a month to be in that group!)

Right now, I think I'm going to do some window shopping. I'm chuckling to myself ... It's going to be Microsoft Windows shopping.

I'm wondering now why no one's beaten me to that combination of words. Or, have they? I don't know how to look something like that up. In case you haven't heard it before, well ... I claim it! (I wish I had written about the "Governator" the first time I thought it. I would've beaten everyone else to it by about three weeks.)

Back to the (Microsoft) window shopping. I'm looking for a fairly good, cheap laptop with a wireless card built in. I don't want any more bells or whistles than that. I don't need a whole lot of peripheral hardware or software involved; just a web browser, a word processor, and maybe a rudimentary soundcard. If, however, I do get tempted into the world of LAN gaming, I might want to upgrade. Heck. I'll just bite a bullet and shuffle my finances around to find eleven hundred bucks to spend on it. It will come in quite handy when I return to school next semester. (Yes, I missed that deadline too. I'm tired of that happening, but I've learned to roll with that sort of punch. Try again next year. No regrets really. My dad was 32 when he started back to school, and he hadn't had any college experience at all.)

Well, it's time for me to go. Everyone, have a good day, and pick up a good book! (Drop me a line about what you're reading. I'm looking to do some of that, too! I'll take all recommendations!)