Saturday’s Theme Music

I read that The Beatles’ album, Abbey Road, was released fifty years ago. It’s not a surprise; it came out when I was thirteen, and I’m sixty-three. The math was straightforward. It’s more astonishing not for time’s passing — hey, that happens every day — but for the shifts that it signaled in pop music, the world’s ever-changing politics and alliances, and the monstrous technological surge recorded during that fifty years.

I won’t say it was all peace and love in 1969 because it sure as hell wasn’t. Older people were lamenting the youth, and the youth was out to change the establishment. Major civil rights advances had been achieved. Bottled water existed but wasn’t the ubiquitous commodity that it is today. Corporations were gaining power but we hadn’t yet witnessed the emergence of the super-CEOs of now, compensated and treated like they’re dictators of small countries. The U.S.S.R. and Warsaw Pact countries, and Communist China – the P.R.C. – dominated movies and novels as the U.S.A.’s greatest threat. Computers were still big machines and novelties. VCRs, DVD players, cell phones were all creeping over the future’s horizon.

History update completed, when I contemplated the release of Abbey Road, the song that popped into my stream was “Oh! Darling”. I like its bluesy sensibilities and active bass so I thought I’d push it on you.

September 7, 2019 0

Low Priority

Snark time.

We receive our credit card statement by old-fashioned (in this era – it was modern in another time, I swear) snail mail. A personal check is written to cover our charges, and then it’s mailed back, with a stamp. Each month, the credit card company then sends me an email, verifying that the payment has been received and the bill is paid. They also tell me, “Next time, quickly and easily pay your bill using any checking, money market, or savings account – at home or on the go – ”

Yes, because one BIG priority in my life is to PAY MY CREDIT CARD BILL MORE QUICKLY. Because that benefits me…how?

I think we know who benefits from paying my bill by an e-process or app more quickly, and it ain’t me and my wife.

September 6, 2019 0

Spoiled

I know it’s another Princess and the Pea complaint, but don’t you hate it when the ‘net is so slow that you can click a link, go make a cuppa coffee, drink half of it, select new music, peruse the newspaper, and then return to the computer in time to see the page load?

These things always trigger corollary suspicions: is it just my provider, or this location, a flawed router or modem, a computer issue, DDoS attack or virus, the web site, the browser…?

Bah. Too damned spoiled, aren’t I?

August 28, 2019 0

Monday’s Theme Music

Guess I remain in an introspective mood. Childhood rock spills into my stream, coloring reflections and expectations, although today’s choice came out during my childhood’s end.

Today’s theme music, by Lou Reed, was another vinyl record that was played and worn down until it was too distorted to appreciate. It’d be hard to explain to people who only experience digital music how the vinyl could become warp, or the static that you sometimes heard through songs.

This album, Rock n Roll Animal, was one of my favorites in 1974, lasting through my high school senior year. I stopped listening when I joined the military and went away. Like many, my favorite song off that album was “Sweet Jane”. The guitar work on the extended entry, and then the stinging, fast high note work later, epitomized the emerging rock sound for me as much as Eric Clapton’s work with Cream. Lou Reed’s vocals often reminded me of Bob Dylan, and Mick Jagger later, as he often delivered this broad, inflected flatness that seemed like a vocal shrug.

August 26, 2019 0

At Your Disposal

Well, I finally did it. I pulled the plug. It was time.

My garbage disposal was a decent enough Badger 5. Not pricey, it was a half power workhouse. It had some issues. First, it’d been a leak from the sink flange. I fixed that, twice, vowing the second time, NEVER MORE! Meanwhile, god forbid a lemon seed or popcorn kernel were dropped into it. Either would immediately jammed it, calling out the need for the hex key to unjam it. Lemon and veggies would often rumble around for a few days before finally succumbing to the blades and disappearing.

Then, though, the seals began leaking. After assessing it and confirming it was the seals, I put a bucket under it. I’d monitor and empty the bucket as required.

There’s no-how for you.

Sorry, I mean ‘know-how’, of course.

Finally, though, a day came when the disposal didn’t want to work any more. It made humming sounds but the cogs weren’t jammed. It just didn’t want to play any longer. A new one was required.

That took me into search land, the perfect occupation who tends to overthink stuff. Size, price, horsepower, noise, reputation, issues…over and over I read, compared, and studied. It came down to Waste King and Insinkerator. Love those names, gotta say. They could easily be pro wrestlers or transformers. The Waste King won. I ordered it Wednesday, and it was waiting at the door when I came home from the hospital Friday.

Perfect! The next day, after I came back from writing and walking, I set aside time to tackle the garbage disposal. Getting the old one out was harsh duty. Like a loyal soldier, it didn’t want to leave its post. I’d mentioned that it’d experience some leaking issues. Those led to some rusting issues, which trickled into removal issues. That bear took a sweaty hour to remove it.

Installing the Waste King, though, was a peach. Fifteen minutes, and boom, done. I’m not a handyman, so you know it was a well-engineered product if I installed it in fifteen minutes. Running it for the first time, its volume disappointed me. It’s a one h/p brute, though, and anything put into is liquefied in seconds.

Did I make the right choice? Probably as good as any of them. We’ll see, right.

Meanwhile, anyone need a used garbage disposal? It has no miles on it at all.

August 15, 2019 0

Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s music came from thinking about the struggles with writing April Showers 1921. During a conference call with the muses, they advised me to trust them and go with instinct. “Everything zen,” I replied.

That introduced the old Bush song, “Everything Zen”. Released almost a quarter century again, it came out the same year that I retired from the military. I enjoyed this song, but the entire album, Sixteen Stone. “Everything Zen” joined my daily commute tape, used in emergencies when I couldn’t find anything on Bay area stations, while the album was put into the CD player’s preferred section.

Thinking over those words, it’s remarkable how technology has changed. Sixteen Stone was on CD. Two CD players served me then and now. One is part of the Bose Command Center, and holds six at a time. The other player is a Sony two hundred disc player, which can be organized as eight sections of twenty-five CDs. I rarely use it now, as music is so readily available via digital sources.

While I know the words to “Everything Zen” and like their play, I wasn’t aware of their references to other songs until recently. Now that it’s all been pointed out, I was dismayed that I didn’t recognize any of that. Songfact explains it well.

Have a great life, whichever day or night it is for you, wherever you reside on this spectrum of existence. Cheers

August 11, 2019 0

Here We Go Again – A Microsoft Rant

Microsoft has done it again; they’ve “improved” their Word product.

Three features that I’ve grown used to are suddenly no longer functioning correctly after the latest MS “update”. As a writer, I liked the recently used files, pinned files, and the bookmarker that lets me pick up where I left off the last time that I was in a document. Stupidly of me, I like them so much that I trusted Microsoft to leave them as they are.

No.

I’ve been dealing with Microsoft products for over thirty years. Their updates and improvements regularly ripped up what I’m used to using, slowing me down, wasting time, and adding unnecessary aggravation.

My latest used files, according to MS Word, was in September of 2016. This is from a program that I use every day. The pinned files? All unpinned. Thanks, Microsoft. You’re a fucking peach.

After finding the files that I used yesterday, the bookmark for where I left off is absent. I know where I was working, etc., but what the hell?

Of course, I must laugh. I must release long, bitter peals of angry laughter because, while Microsoft taketh away and fouls things up, it urges me, “Look! Look at our bright, shiny, NEW stuff. We’re improved, not like the sucky old product that we used to be.”

Why should I look at your new and improved shit when you just removed my normally used shit, Microsoft?
Why can’t I keep using the old, sucky shit.

(And yes, I recognize that the MS Word features that I’d grown accustomed to using were themselves new features, once upon a time. It’s great that they created an provided them. But can’t they see how it builds distrust when they do this sort of crap? It’s like good ol’ Charlie Brown trusting Lucy to hold the bowl. She always pulls it away, and he keeps believing that THIS TIME it’ll be different. Then, Lucy, like Microsoft proves, nope, we fooled you again.)

It’s the world’s way, innit? Don’t know about that, but it sure as hell is the Microsoft way.

GRRR.

August 7, 2019 13

Sunday’s Theme Music

With all this Apollo 11 hoopla going on, naturally I thought of moon songs, and ended up streaming The Police and “Walking on the Moon” (1979).

I’ve read many account of Americans who decline to categorically embrace that humans walked on the Moon, despite NASA’s evidence. Ryan Newman, a NASCAR driver, isn’t ready to embrace it; he’s only seen photographs. Photographs, videos, rocks, etc., can all be faked.

I know how he feels. I’ve never met him. I’ve only seen photographs and videos of Ryan Newman. He might not exist outside of CGI. For all I know, he may not have said the words attributed to him. So really, if a fake person who only exists on photographs, videos, magazines, and newspapers claims that another event is faked, does the first cancel the second?

It’ll take some giant steps. If humans ever get to Mars, I wonder how many of them will believe it?