Carter Says (Rightly) U.S. is Just an Oligarchy (video)

The video is a segment of an interview of Jimmy Carter by Thom Hartmann.  There's some annoying music on the end of it but Carter gets his position out there quickly.  It's the same thing I've been saying about SuperPACs corrupting Washington but that's not surprising as he is one of the sources from whom I learned the truth of it.

If you want a step more cynical and, in my view, more realistic, the country has always been an oligarchy as it's the nature of governments to form such structures but the difference the SuperPACs made was to turn it into a plutocracy.  America can be bought and sold like ham hocks on a Chicago meat market.  That's great for the dealers but not so good for the ham hocks.

Carter worries it may come to a violent confrontation.  He doesn't say that explicitly but his meaning is clear.

That's such a questionable call as the French knew what to do with the rich and they really did come out of wasting them with a real democracy ... which is now just as corrupt as any other.  The Bolsheviks knew what to do with the rich as well ... and they ended up with a corrupt government as well.

However, what's consistently left out of that story is Lenin who was one of the great leaders of the modern era.  The general conservative premise is Russia is Stalin is death to us all.  If you mention Lenin to conservatives, they will stare at you like goldfish but he was a revolutionary whereas Stalin was a vicious bureaucrat.


Given the reasonably good success of revolution in France and the same, prior to Stalin, in the Soviet Union, the revolution Carter fears doesn't seem such a terrible thing.  The turnover of power is what failed in the Soviet Union as Lenin died in 1924, only two years after the Soviet Union was founded. Stalin took over after Lenin's death and held the position for thirty years until 1953.  Because of his long tenure, Stalin came to characterize the Soviet Union but Lenin and Marx were the real theorists.

(Ed:  after a revolution in the U.S. the same thing would happen as it would become like the Middle East with another power grab every time someone births a new camel.)

Cadillac Man may have a better run on this but my thinking is your revolutionaries need a Constitution in-hand or a solid idea of what it needs to be or their revolution will only replace one crew of blackguards with another.

"Officer, the Cat Ate Me Bacon" - Silas Scarborough (audio)

The police emergency number in England is 999 and there are many things one can do when your girlfriend's cat eats your bacon.  Calling 999 is just one of them.  (Ride the Dragon podcast:  "Officer, the Cat Ate Me Bacon")

The original 999 recording is reputed to be real or as real as anything else on the Internet.  I thought I might embellish it a bit as this struck me as a story which needs music.

(Ed:  don't you go to hell for using samples?)

Yes.


Q.  What would you like us to do, sir.  Arrest your girlfriend or the cat?
A.  Both

On the Dangers of Shooting Armadillos

Armadillos are natural carriers of leprosy and some say that's not a problem these days but I don't know if it's not a problem before or after parts start falling off me.  This seems a good enough reason to stay well clear of armadillos.

But nooooo ... not in Texas

Texas man shot after bullet ricochets off armadillo

My first thought on shooting an armadillo is what the hell would I do with a dead armadillo.  It seems this guy had a reason and the bullet ricocheted back to hit him in the head.  He was talking after the incident so his head is not apparently used very much.


There was an even better stunt when a Georgia man wounds mother-in-law after bullet ricochets off armadillo.  There may be a worse pick for someone to hit with a bullet you bounced off an armadillo. We can't think of one but still one may exist.


So then I have to know.  What does one do with a dead armadillo.  Are these trophy armadillos.  Is there a reason.  There's only one thing to do.  Google for recipes.

What do you know:  Armadillo Fricassee at Cooks.com

In English that means stew and it only needs one armadillo.  It doesn't say whether the armadillo should be a big one or a little one.


Now you know.  After the Armageddon, you can, in fact, survive by eating armadillos.

Getting Through Alabama Without Getting Shot or Arrested (video)

MAN LOVE RULES is not likely the be the most popular statement one can make in Alabama, one of the most free and freedom-loving of the free Southern free states.

This situation can be made worse with two other cars, one reading COUNTRY WESTERN IS RUBBISH and the other reading HILLARY FOR PRESIDENT.  Fortunately, they did have two such cars so the question was whether the drivers could get across Alabama without getting shot or arrested.

Americans know already this can't possibly turn out well and they will probably get shot for this.  Euros may wonder so welcome to the South.  Y'all ain't from around here are youuuuuuu.  (The clicking sounds are the safeties being switched off on their guns)

What they failed to realize is, unless you have Alabama plates, you will probably get shot or arrested anyway.  Louisiana even arrested Willie Nelson and we've never heard him say a word about man love although we're sure he doesn't care who you take for cuddle buddies so long as you're not a jerk about smoking reefer.

Because Hedgehogs

Well, yes.  I do feel pretty good.  Thanks for asking.

White House Petitioned to Extradite Walter Palmer

There were 100,000 signatures needed to petition the White House to extradite Walter Palmer to Zimbabwe to face charges for killing Cecil the Lion.  The petition has 147,000 signatures and presumably is still climbing as Walter Palmer made it to the top of the Most Hated Human roster faster than anyone in recent memory.  (News4JAX: WH petition to extradite lion killer at mark)

Zimbabwe has called for extradition of Palmer already.  They say the hunt was illegal and they want him for trial.  (ITV: Zimbabwe calls for extradition of hunter Walter Palmer)


Likely what got Palmer to the top so quickly was it took Cecil the Lion forty hours to die, all with an arrow hanging out of him.  There is also a picture of what they did to him after he was dead and it was so horrid that Walter Palmer is well-advised not to show his face in public for a long time.

WARNING:  don't go looking for the picture.  I've seen it.  I wish I had not.  That someone calling himself human could commit such savagery for no greater purpose than collecting simple souvenirs isn't comprehensible.  So don't try.  Don't look for that pic.


There is whining about Palmer needing police protection wherever he is hiding but tell that to Sam DuBose in Cincinnati ... or you could if some campus cop hadn't capped him a couple of days ago.  Why should the rich white boy get protection Sam DuBose did not get.


It's interesting watching the Internet destroying this guy and I can't say I particularly care as he wanted to kill 'a large elephant' after he killed Cecil.  He's obviously an asshole but this is a place where a looney will dye his hair red and shoot up a movie house full of people, Palmer is almost certainly at risk for his life.

That sort of extremism doesn't help anything as I would like to see Walter Palmer have his day in court.  The part of that he may not like is that it would be a court run by lions.

Philae Finds Hydrocarbons But Not Much Religion

Philae is an ancient city of Egypt and it has an obelisk with bilingual inscriptions which was very helpful for translating old languages.  This made it a good complement for the primary Comet 67P spacecraft which was named for the Rosetta Stone which has also been crucial for translating ancient languages.

After a hard landing on Comet 67P, Philae went to sleep but reawakened some weeks ago.  Philae, Egypt, is unlikely to reawaken as it was flooded by the Aswan Dam project so you might want to skip looking for it until the next geological age.  (WIKI:  Philae)

Temple of Isis from Philae (relocated to Agilkia Island in Lake Nasser)


Some of the latest pictures from Philae have just been published in "Science" and they show extraordinary detail.  The one below is from a range of nine meters or almost thirty feet.  (ESA: Space in Images)

The pictures from the New Horizons fly-by of Pluto were spectacular but all of them were at a range of thousands of kilometers whereas the range for this image is about the height of most suburban homes.


(Ed:  it looks like dirt)

Thanks, Oklahoma, but we're interested in the content of the dirt.  The reason for the interest is the presence of molecules of high significance toward the synthesis of life.  There's not much sound on Philae but if you listen closely you will hear the sound of fundamentalist religion disintegrating.

The biggest revelations of planetary research haven't been so much a matter of a difficult search for precursors to life but rather finding them all over the place.  Where space had once seemed infinitely sterile, it gets more organic with each research project they conduct.

Maybe it looks like dirt or it's all that's left of any idea that God made man in his own image.  The new evidence from Philae is intriguing but the sheer number of stars destroyed the concept a long time ago.  Either God made all those stars just for filler and humans are the only living beings or there are two other possibilities.  Either all the creatures on the other stars look like humans as well or the Universe has one shitload of infidels.

I Can't Get Any Respect

Even my computer ...

The desktop pic is Stonehenge and what happens.   I'll tell you what happens.  Even that flips me off.

I can't get any respect anywhere.

Staccato is the Missing Element

For normal musical notation, a bar may have four quarter notes and this will tell you which notes to play and the duration for each one.  The bar is one full note so a quarter note is a quarter of the bar and the actual duration in time will depend on how many beats per minute for the piece.

A popular timing for music is 120 beats per minute.  Take it down to make it a mushy love song or take it up to make it rock.  The beat is commonly-used and probably has all sorts of biological and psychological associations.   We haven't pursued the science of this but we're guessing there's a lot of it in terms of musical beats and actual biological rhythms.

At 120 bpm, the bar will take two seconds so each quarter note will be half a second.  The intention is to get an appreciation for how long half a second lasts and it's not so unusual if you think of some song and the notes of the melody.  Many will be about half a second long.


Staccato comes into this to identify whether the note will really be half a second.  In the actual notation, there may be a dot next to a note and this means to sustain it.  However, the dot has a different meaning when it is over the note and this is what indicates staccato.  In function it means to shorten the note.

If you're playing normally (i.e. without staccato), each note will come as it does in this sentence, it flows as you expect.

How
ever

staccato
is
terse

it
may be
tense.


And hopefully you get the idea.  The point of writing is the style of play is not common, most likely because it can be unnerving by creating the feeling of unpredictability.  It's of interest as usually the way rock gets more exciting is to make it louder, more lights, more bimbos ... but staccato is a different kind of excitement.  It might even be terrifying at rock volume.

The first name coming to mind for me for staccato is Dave Brubeck as he played extremely tight and maybe you can amuse yourself wondering what would have happened if he had ever been able to get his hands on synthesizers.

Prog rock bands love staccato.  They will build some beautiful, lush arrangement and then throw some bang, bang, bang fast changes into it.  Those high impact changes are almost always staccato and switching back and forth from lushness to that makes it fascinating ... or annoying as hell, depending on your taste for it.


It's the absence of the technique in a lot of things which is noteworthy to me now.  As a guitarist, my greatest focus is almost always to get more sustain from a note rather than less.  For me and many guitarists, that's where the soul of the note lies.

But what if you're playing about something which has no soul.  This isn't going to be beautiful as some beast eats children or some such horrible thing.  As to why portray such an awful thing, one word:  Guernica.

You can continue the journey with where did staccato go and why but, here at the Rockhouse, we're ready for the movies.


Note:  if you are not familiar with "Guernica" and why Picasso painted it, consider yourself now in possession of an assignment, young grasshopper.  Appreciation of what one does in the face of a really awful thing may well feed back to your own grasshopper art.  One day Picasso had to be a grasshopper too.

Brain-Eating Amoeba in Louisiana - Don't Worry Says Jindal

In the latest thing which will kill us all, there's the brain-eating amoeba.  The creature has turned up in the water in Louisiana.  (WDSU News:  DHH confirms brain-eating amoeba in Ascension Parish water system)

Bobby Jindal said not to worry but obviously he doesn't worry, he has nothing to lose.


Of course it's easy to get a cobra into a luxury apartment complex in Houston.  That wasn't the problem.  (KHOU Houston:  Cobra caught inside luxury downtown high-rise)

Frankly, we don't much care if a cobra bites rich people.  After the way Walter Palmer the Lion Killer has behaved, richies are accountable to a whole lot of critters.  Go ahead and bite them.


First you're good enough to give up some panda welfare and what happens ... the panda throws it right back in your face.  It's how pandas are, see.  (International Business Times:  Panda in Taiwanese zoo accused of faking pregnancy to get better living conditions)

If they tell you they need cars to get to work, don't believe them.


In a story which could only come from New England, a man has been arrested for having sex with a shrub.  The article did not advise as to how this is even possible but we're quite sure we don't want to know.  We're just glad there was no poison ivy ... or maybe there was.  We don't know.  (Hartford Courant:  Stratford Man Accused Of Performing Sex Act With Shrubbery)

Before long, these perverts will be sending pornographic pictures of plants over the Internet and storing them on their cellphones.


Rick Perry has challenged Donald Trump to a contest doing pull-up exercises.  If he were a real tough guy, he would challenge Lindsey Graham to a contest doing push-ups to see who comes out on top.  (CNN:  Rick Perry's tough guy challenge for Donald Trump)

Surprise us with what else your mind can devise, Rick.  How about a hot-dog eating contest for the Presidency.


Since relatively few of the conservative candidates completed high school, perhaps it would be best to settle the Presidential contest with a spelling bee and a test of geography.

Mucking with a Mackie Mixer

The mixer is a Mackie ProFX12 which has eight channels, four of which can be jiggered to get four more channels.

There's a Gain knob for the incoming signal on each channel and there's a Level Set LED associated with it.  For the optimum, bring this up until it flickers and this will send the best signal to the channel's pre-amp.

The level set by the Gain knob is also what will go over USB to any DAW for recording, streaming, etc.

However, in play maybe the volume sliders for the channels will change and the problem is that won't be reflected in what goes outbound.  In actual practice, the volume slider is the first thing I'll reach when I want to change the mix.

To have a sound going outbound over USB is not the same as that which is heard is not logical.

(Ed: imitating Spock?)

That is Spock.  It's not fookin' logical.


Each channel also has a Peak LED to indicate clipping but the Gain knob has to be pushed well past Mackie's recommendation to trigger it.  Previously I had backed off the Gain controls to do it 'by the book' but that blows.  The signal is not strong enough for recording without pushing the Gain until it's not just flickering, it glows.

If you're geekish enough to want to see for yourself, here's a look at the mixer front panel.  #19 is the Gain knob and #20 is the Level Set LED.  #28 is the Overload (i.e. clipping) LED and #30 is the volume slider.


All this comes up-front because of re-recording "There Will Come a Time" and the pursuit of sexy waveforms.  I'm starting to hate the song so the next move is to do something altogether different with only the Galaxy Guitar and a looper, no tracks, drums, etc.  There was something from a few weeks ago which turned out really pretty.  I remember the chords so that could use a bit of attention as this will also test record levels.


There may be a need for another Galaxy Guitar.  For all the hundreds of sound patches I could use with the Boss GT-100, I require only two: one for distortion and one clean.  Maybe she has some more sisters.  I would play with this more except for the part about really hating electronics.  It would also be a terrible heresy to change the distortion sound as I've tuned that one over a long, long time and that's what the Galaxy Guitar sounds like.  Getting her to sound like something else is almost being unfaithful to her.

(Ed:  is there a moral to this Mackie mucking?)

Mondo
(world)

(Ed:  wtf?)

Mondo ... as in mucking with a Mackie mixer is mine.

Cincinnati Makes the List for Black Lives Don't Matter

Samuel DuBose is a black man who was murdered by a cop in Cincinnati some days ago.  The cop has already been indicted for it but, as we've seen, cops get indicted all the time and they frequently waltz away without so much as a fine.

No need to run the video as you can find it anywhere and it's yet another story of a cop shooting an unarmed man without provocation.

What the story doesn't emphasize is the shooting was by a campus cop.  These ones are the worst of the worst as they always have bad attitudes because they couldn't cut it getting into a primary police force.

Samuel DuBose was shot on Rice Street and I lived there a few years ago.  This place is nowhere near the campus so what was a campus cop doing down there anyway and why is he hassling some guy over a license plate.  This had nothing to do with University business, it was not on University property, and the man was not a student.


I've seen it in Cincinnati when the National Guard comes out.  That's what happened after Martin Luther King was shot.  It's a strange thing to see Jeeps running the streets and the vehicles have .50-cal machine guns mounted on them.  They can get that stuff on the street at incredible speed and there's vastly more military hardware available to them now.


Some think there's an active conspiracy to force a race war in the country but my view is it's nothing more than incompetence.  Second-rate campus cops create yet another echelon of cops in a country which has too many cops already and, what do you know, more dead people.

They have a specific 'shoot to kill' policy because cop management believes it's safer for cops.  I'm sure it is safer for cops.  Too bad it isn't safer for anyone else.


The above is not to deny rampaging racism in cops as there's been abundant proof of that.  However, some go beyond that to suggest it's all deliberate toward provoking a race war.  I can't buy it on any Charlie Manson Phenomenon in-play, tho.  Could make for one whacked Sam Peckinpah movie but I don't see it playing for real.

No-one wants a race war.  It looks dramatic on CNN but the idea of it is just one more thing to keep people afraid of each other.  We're all terrorists, racists, pedophiles, or generic loonies who talk to rabbits.

The one guy asked why can't we all just get along ... but most of the time we do all just get along.  The balance of things is completely screwed but that's a different article.

The Tragedy of Oregano Potato Chips

There isn't an overt tragedy in Oregano potato chips such as being born into the Kardashian family and being stuck with those people for life having to pretend what they do is interesting.  Oregano potato chips are inherently interesting because of their oregano goodness.  However, there is a fundamental imbalance in the world:  Kardashians are all over the damn place whereas Oregano potato chips are only in Greece.

One immediate solution is to trade the Kardashians for the chips but there's a problem with that:  I like Greece and sending any Kardashian there would be tough to explain.

But I really want those chips because, as any discerning consumer of potato chips already knows, Oregano potato chips are the best potato chips in the world.

They're the best but good luck finding them.

Mostly Yank chips offer different levels of heat but that's the easiest taste to get.  If you want a hot chip, slap a jalapeno on there.  Your chip will get just as hot as you want.

If you really want a hot chip then put a ghost pepper on it but be sure to get video as the idiots trying that look so ridiculous on YouTube.

Feed a ghost pepper to a tough guy and turn him into a TeleTubby in sixty seconds or less.  This is a pepper so hot they measure its heat in roentgens.


But we don't care about ghost peppers.  We want Oregano potato chips.  Where are they.

"There Will Come a Time" - May Be Judged Pop and Have to Die

"There Will Come a Time" started saying to me 'I am a pop song and should be murdered' but I don't want to do it in large part because Thunder did such a killer drum track for it.  They're completely demonic and absolutely are not to be wasted.

Really the problem is I hate back tracks.  I don't care that much about using them but I hate recording them.  Everything that's cool about making music sucks when it comes to recording.  Pfft.

There are three guitar tracks and three or four synth tracks, one of which is a four-bar sweep.  There's over-produced and then there's taking a bath in petroleum jelly.  This would be the latter.

It's not dead but I've heard it so many times I just want to stab it.  Even so, I know there's a song in there and I'm determined to pull it out.  But that means listening to myself ... again ... and again ... and again.


More likely it's dead as tracks are such crap for live.


Dunno.  Can't sort the negative waves as I don't understand what anyone gets out of coming around here just to see it fail.  If it's not to support what happens or the idea of it then what twisted need does it serve.

How To Get Netanyahu to Shut the Fuck Up

Or maybe Seal Team Zero with Boehner, McConnell, and the rest of that pack of yokels.  Here's a helmet.  Have a ball.


It's perfect as it doesn't matter if they come back.  It's better if they don't as that increases disinclination to send more.

Jones Good Ass BBQ and Foot Massage (video)

When you're tired of preaching politicians, political preachers, or just plain tired, what you need is a foot massage.  Even better with a foot massage is some BBQ.  Even better than that is some good ass BBQ.

Let Toby Jones tell you:

The number appears to be a mobile phone somewhere in Illinois.


It's looking like it's real.  Good luck to Toby Jones with his Good Ass BBQ and Foot Massage.  The world would be such a boring drag if you were not in it!

What do you know, it's real.  Jones' Good Ass BBQ and Foot Massage (Facebook link).

119th & Old Cicero
Chicago, IL

708-224-6191

Rape, Racism, and Rhubarb - Three R's of the GOP

In one of the most astounding efforts to intellectualize politics in generations, the GOP has brought to the forefront of American thinking some of the most bestial aspects of human behavior ... but the best part is watching them making a rhubarb pie out of it.

Between the raping, the racism, and Huckabee talking about marching Jews into ovens, we've got a display of style which should be on a runway in Paris ... just before a jet lands on it and smooshes these twisted maniacs.


Meanwhile Clinton says she will put a billion chickens in every crock pot or a billion solar panels to cook chickens ... or something like that.  We're sure it involved a billion of something and, with her, we're quite sure just about everything is a billion of something and we're just as sure we won't see one of them regardless of whether they're chickens, solar panels, or crock pots.

She earns again the title of Shiftless Political Skank by failing to take a position on the Keystone pipeline thus guaranteeing she's already been paid off and she will just double talk until it passes.  Clinton is so stuffed with graft money that she won't need a botox treatment for years.


There's got to be some dirt on Sanders.  Maybe he was late with a library book or something.


Two notes for Andras:

I slash any politician who sucks ... which is most of them.  If you don't like it that I slash Republicans as part of that then you have two choices:  either find some better Republicans or stop reading.

Walter Palmer Kills Cecil the Lion in the Most Painful Way Possible

It's bad enough when these selfish, self-absorbed trophy hunters go to Africa to find beautiful animals and kill them.  It's substantially worse when the hunter is too incompetent to kill the animal and instead wounds it with an arrow such that it takes at least twenty more hours for Cecil the Lion to die.  Cecil's blood was tracked and then he was finally shot.  That's when Palmer claimed his prize and cut off Cecil's head.

Here's the head which should have been removed:

Walter Palmer - Masquerading as a human


There are enough aspects of savage, selfish brutality in this to amuse even the Dallas Safari Club (i.e. the ones who raffled murdering a black rhino).

Cecil the Lion has been on protected land for thirteen years or more but he was lured off that land specifically so Walter Palmer could kill him.  Cecil has a black mane and Palmer thought that would look cool on the wall of his house.  Palmer paid $50,000 for a local hunter to set up the kill.  Now Cecil is dead and his head is on Palmer's wall.  Palmer, not surprisingly, says he didn't know anything about it.  (CNN:  American dentist says he regrets role in death of Cecil the lion)


Palmer says now 'he regrets his role' but what did this moron think would happen.  The lion should get back up again and go off to play happily with Perry the Squirrel and all the other Disney creatures.


The killing of Cecil is not the first time he has used the excuse 'I did not know it was illegal.'  He did the same thing after the killing of a black bear when he lied to a federal agent about it.  (Fox KMSP:  A look into the past of Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer, killer of Cecil the Lion)

He was fined $3,000 and served probation but it didn't change his behavior.  He was also charged with sexual harassment and presumably he didn't know that was illegal either.  He paid that one off for $127,000.


Walter Palmer can be found in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, and I'm sure he would be overjoyed to hear your views regarding his killing of Cecil the Lion.

River Bluff Dental
10851 Rhode Island Ave S
Bloomington, MN 55438

(952) 884-5361

Here at the Rockhouse, we have a simple solution:  if any house has an animal head hanging in it then torch the house.

Secondary solution:  make a pheromone to put on hunters which makes it easier for lions to find them.  It's too easy for those wimps to sneak up on lions otherwise.  With the rifles and scopes these gutless hunters use, the lion doesn't even have to be in the same country.


Update:

Doesn't look too good for his dental practice, the web site for which has already been taken offline.

Flying into Los Angeles, Bringing in a Couple of Keys

We can bring in as many keys as we like so long as you, Mister Customs Man, believe the synth is really there.

Note:  except A.  A2 is still broken.


This may go some distance to explaining why there are so many crashes on the final approach to the Rockhouse.

(Ed:  have you considered using lights?)

It's a problematic situation when the couch is on one side of the room and the lamp is on the other.

(Ed:  here's a wild idea.  Move the lamp.)

But then I have to consider the second and third movements.  Would they recapitulate the first movement or go on to something else altogether.

(Ed:  you're right.  Falling over is better.)

How Do Mermaids Make More Mermaids

We had to know and this is what Google, the Great Provider, gave us.

Best Answer: 

Merfolk [sirenus marinarus] are sea going mammals. As they are mammals, similar to dophins, whales, etc they need to return to the surface to breath, mate, and give birth, and they nurse their young. Their tales are not covered in scales, but in skin similar to that of a dolphin, though colours may vary and certain subspecies are capable of changing colour to match their surroundings. Unlike other seagoing mammals they cannot endure the high pressure of deep water, and are most commonly found in the shallows or on coral reefs. The female must return to the shore to give birth and care for her young until they are old enough to swim, which is about 2-6 weeks after birth. Males and Females bond for life, and the male builds a nest on land, for preference a cave which can only be reached via an undersea entrance, and brings the female fish while she nurses the young. Like whales, males are particularly well endowed, and they mate in a similar fashion to blue whales – the male swims 500 feet in one direction, the female 500 feet in another direction, they then swim at each other, leap out of the water, couple in midair, and drop to the water's surface, where they remain joined until the mating is complete. 

Source(s): I'm a biologist... so sue me, I've given this some thought

To review:  they leap out of the water to mate in midair.

In midair.

And you thought you were cool when you mastered a snowboard.  Pfft.  It will take much more than that to impress a mermaid, Surfer Bob.

(Ed:  there aren't many mermaids in the mountains)

You only say that because you never met one.  The powder has snakes but it also has mermaids.

Michi and the Kiss of a Mermaid at Cat's Art MusikCircus

Perhaps you're unaware of the power of the kiss of a mermaid, many are.  Anyone at Cat's Art MusikCircus last night knows that power although not as much as Maestro Michi Renoir.  We do not actually have a picture of the mermaid kiss but we do have this.

Left to right:  Samanta the Mermaid, Michi Renoir, Silas and Cat, Kasandro Barony

Immediately strange powers were unleashed and Maestro Michi played with a great fervor.  He uses only two keyboard, one for piano and another for synth, and yet he sounds like he has so much more. All manner of mysterious magic was afoot.

Along with a number of explosions.

The woman growing out of Maestro Michi's head is not the Mermaid.  Frankly, we don't know who she is but we're impressed nevertheless.

It was a good set and more people were hearing Maestro Michi's music.  This is always good as anyone who gives it a chance will almost always enjoy it.  Part of the enjoyment last night was through Michi as he could see more people out there plus some outstanding explosions and that made it more fun for him.  That came through in his play and this keeps going around.  That audience phenomenon is an extraordinary thing, particularly when it makes bubbles, lasers and fires.

And there's nothing more romantic for rock than explosions.

The Cosby / Trump Rape Club

Unlike "Fight Club" in which a bunch of gay guys got together to hit each other, the Rape Club by Donald Trump and Bill Cosby is for trading QAALUDEs and other drugs for the purpose of beguiling women chemically and then having their way with them.

You too can join the Rape Club although the admission fee is rather high at ten million dollars but getting away with rape in America is expensive.  We can't have any cheap asses in the club or that risks us all going to jail.  Naturally, we can't have that as we're rapists, not criminals.

For additional details, contact Michael Cohen who is Donald Trump's lawyer and, judging by performance, the sorriest excuse for a lawyer who ever entered a courtroom.  If not for that fool, Trump probably could have kept the rape charges buried but all he can say now is, "Do you want chicken or beef in your burrito?"

Said Trump, "Republicans get away with every other crime.  What's the big deal about a few rapes."

The Predictability of Americans

That the Iran deal is being shot down is no surprise and there's nothing which comes after it that will be surprising either.  That gives a predictability for decades with the general result of no improvement in anything just as it has been stopped for so long already.

The most powerful country in the world is held back by the least imaginative people within it.  There was a time when it was amusing in Vonnegut's satire but that always had the implicit assumption it was an extreme and reality would one day get sorted.

So much for assumptions.

If this is the best mankind is capable of doing, it's less than impressive and the Earth is well-deserving of a comet strike any time now.

They have been doing this for a thousand years and this should be sufficient evidence they won't stop until everyone is dead.  Why wait and why would you want to be in the company of such evil anyway.


Let's see ... good things about Christians:

- they kill fewer people than mosquitos

- they can amuse lions although usually not for long

- they lower the number of hookers in the world.  Usually it's by dismembering them but the effect is the same.

- they don't burn as many people as they once did


So what good things are there about Muslims:

- they're excellent at breeding horses

- they reproduce quickly and make good scapegoats


And some good things about Jews:

- they seriously believe they will get to keep Israel after all this is over (Boobie, it's just real estate.  Get over it.  Think how good it will look with a TRUMP logo over the Temple Mount luxury hotel.)

Good-Bye to the Next Century

For another vote in favor of walking in front of a truck, it appears Congress will destroy the nuclear deal with Iran and the pattern in the Middle East will continue for another century thus guaranteeing global austerity measures to pay for it.  Welcome to the neo-Dark Ages.

It's a right wing world and there's progressively less entertainment value in watching it destroy itself. America is like a set in "Bladerunner" except it's not raining all the time.

The music means nothing.  I mean nothing.  Andras will keep busting my ass until I die.  Even when a demon already has the win, he's too dense to know it and still won't stop.

The only thing which matters to the world is destroying the Middle East and it's been that way for a thousand years.  Humanity has even less ambition than Vonnegut credited to it (i.e. not very much).

It's not going to change but a truck will.

"There Will Come a Time" Grew By a Minute Less (tracks)

This is what "There Will Come a Time" looks like just now ... although it probably won't continue looking like that five or ten minutes after I start screwing around with it again.

Actual size is about twice that so there's nothing in particular to be learned although you may notice the two top tracks are quite similar and at this range look the same.  The green lines at the extremes of each track show how they will be panned.  One goes to the medium far right and the other the medium far left.  The result is the same apparent volume but with an increase in the space within the sound field.  Your sound field isn't like a laser beam going straight forward so it's best to spread sound within it.

The song has dropped from 4:40 to 3:40 which is a huge chop but it works better.  There's an unusual guitar lead in the break and it survives because it's unusual but I'm not sure if it will stay alive on that basis.  The last part is where there will probably be more arranging.  The guitar doesn't get to do any grandstanding so she's got to get into it somewhere.


(Ed:  isn't this thing turning into High Production?)

Yup

(Ed:  isn't that a disease that makes songs so they only play in Wal-Mart and Apple Stores?)

Yup

(Ed:  ok.  Just wanted to get that straight.)

Cosby and the Great Qaalude Denial of 1981

Bill Cosby has got a solid lock on the must dumb ass excuse for a cocksman in many years but he's not going to make the cut as a rapist because some of us remember how it went with Qaaludes ... as in how women would practically beg for them.  Qaaludes and cocaine worked about the same as you better have some in your pocket when you step out or you won't get laid.

Don't believe me?  Ask anyone who ran the discos back in the short time they were actually cool.

QAALUDE was freedom for a woman as she can chuck the inhibitions she didn't really want and do all that dirty nasty stuff she has wanted to do all along.  There was no need to sneak a QAALUDE to a woman, they were begging for them.  The really feisty ones would want to do a line or two of coke and then she becomes one bouncy house of sexual hi-jinks.

(Ed:  my mother didn't do this.)

Um, Dagwood.  If she was running the discos then she was doing this.  Rock was about music but disco was about fuckin', a whole lot of fuckin'.

Personally, I never saw the point of it as nailing a woman on QAALUDE struck me as not much different from sex with a plate of pasta ... cold pasta.  So Cosby got all this sex ... and it wasn't even good sex.  Maybe the pasta was ok after.  We don't know.

Who knows ... maybe Cosby likes Italian.  But as to him being the Sexual Anti-Christ, I doubt it.  He does make a good scapegoat, tho.

Holiday Inn and Hucksterbee Compete for Title as Most Despicable Candidate

Holiday Inn has got a solid lead as there's nothing to get a bigger reaction from Republicans than bare-faced racism and slashing McCain was ok because no-one takes that little bald-headed Arizona dork seriously anyway.  If you want to waste Mexicans, the GOP will follow you home and Holiday Inn has got that march covered with music and dancing girls ... but zero Mexicans.

Hucksterbee proved conclusively his own value will only come when his body is processed to make glue.  He suggested the only purpose to a peace agreement with Iran is to 'march Israel into the ovens.'  Even Adolf Hitler didn't use the death chambers as an advertising gimmick.

These rotters are not only despicable relative to the other candidates in this campaign but this sort of material may well serve to elevate them to the status of most despicable candidates of any campaign.


So, uh, tell me again about American exceptionalism and be sure to confine it to the context of these two fine, upstanding members of the political community and potential leaders of the world.  I'm sure you would be just as proud as I to call them Big Brother.

Marquess Andras, Sixty-Third Demon of Solomon

The Marquess Andras is the winged demon with the head of an owl who always rides a powerful wolf while bearing a sharp sword.  His greatest strengths are in sowing discord and inflaming the anger of men.  He has been in great demand by military leaders to fortify troops against possible enemies.

Note:  Bill O'Reilly is not Marquess Andras but rather he's the equivalent of a plastic demon blow-up doll Andras uses when he will be out of town.

And so it is with Andras in the Comments as his only purpose is creating dissent through focus on a narrow interpretation of the content and ignoring altogether anything about music, etc with the latter being the only thing he's really saying (i.e. everything else here is crap).

Everything stops.  Eating, music ... anything.  This time there's less inclination to try to pick it back up again than ever.

Hail Marquess Andras.

Dear Prudence, My Straight Pride Rally Needs Viagra or Something

Dear Prudence,

My name is Danny Rebello and I worked very hard to set up a Straight Pride Rally in Seattle, putting all of my heterosexual energy into it.  I thought it would be a good opportunity to meet chicks plus show faggits they are crawling instruments of the devil.

The trouble is no-one showed.

(PinkNews:  Man organises ‘straight pride’ parade, blames gays when no-one turns up)

Prudence, my campaign would have worked and I would have met some chicks but gay people screwed it up for me.

What can I do?

Signed - Danny, the Sleepless Virgin in Seattle


Danny, in your case, we will have to give advice we have never given to anyone else:  join the Foreign Legion.  Maybe you can get something going with a camel.  Good luck.


Here's another Danny Rebello in Massachusetts and he doesn't seem to have much luck with girls either.

ACPAD - MIDI Controller for Acoustic Guitar (video)

Ableton Push and Live are various demented twists on MIDI controllers so how about you imagine a flexible Ableton controller and then put that on the body of an acoustic guitar.

Well ...

They call the device ACPAD and it will be coming up on Kickstarter as they try to market the beast.

On first thought, this thing looks incredibly difficult to play but this musician is knocking out some virtuouso moves to impress you with the device's capability.  Unless you're playing shows for thousands, your songs may not be that elaborate and there may be more application to this device than it seems from the demo.

My second thought is what would Voodoo Shilton do with one of these.  It's not something I want to do as electric guitarists don't typically 'work the body' as much as acoustic guitarists.  It would be a much more natural move for acoustic musicians to be touching this or that location on the body to get a particular sound or effect.  This device takes that kind of play to another star cluster.


It seems it should work just the same on an electric guitar but there would be too many obstructions on the body of the electric to permit fitting it properly.  The top part would likely be ok but the bottom would bump into volume / tone controls, etc.


Be exceptionally careful with how you proceed as the logical move, seemingly, is to embed these devices and associated circuitry in the guitar.  However, these things come with a whole lot of switches and there's one thing about switches, eventually they will break.  There's another thing about the device in that it needs power so now you need a battery.  The beautiful body of your guitar which was designed purely for sustaining a note as perfectly as possible winds up getting routed, gouged and mangled for this gimcrackery.

The acoustic approach looks highly smooth as the device just sits on the body without out mutilation of the guitar.  Quite an extraordinary thing as, done well enough, the guitar becomes a different instrument.

And So Was the Higg's Bonsai Discovered

Now you too can experience the moment of the first look at the Higg's Bonsai.

Pluto - What NASA Did Not Show You (video)

Some say this isn't really on the Moon and it was a film shot in Arizona but I fail to see what relief is expected from knowing there are giant pink monsters roaming around killing people down here rather than up there.

From Boy Scout to Baphomet

In one of the most extraordinary transitions of modern times, Hank Gilder, a young lad in Wyoming, experienced a change which is now revolutionizing Detroit.

Due to an unfortunate accident while trying to get the Boy Scout merit badge for hunting, young Hank lost the use of the ring finger on his right hand.  (In truth it was caused by excessive masturbation at a jamboree but we don't want to know how he broke his finger doing that)


After the accident, it was only a matter of days before the change started ... first the wings and then the horns out of his head.

Now he weighs over a ton and has brought the salute to Detroit.

He emerges as Hank "Baphomet" Gilder, the Satanic equivalent of Spiderman.  We don't know what happened to Baphomet's ears.  We think they could have used some work.

Identifying the Wings of CRoWS - Crazy Right-Wing Shooters

CRoWS are responsible for almost all of the mass shootings in the United States.  Since most of the world's mass shootings take place in the U.S., CRoWS are the most dangerous criminals anywhere.  They don't have to know you to kill you, it doesn't matter to them.

Crazy Right-of-Wing Shooters can be identified in the sky or by the shadows their wings throw on the ground.  If there is even the suspicion the wings you see look like CRoWS, take immediate cover.

Note:  do not contact authorities as many of them are CRoWS as well.  Take cover alone and when it is safe immediately determine where you put your passport.

Public Service Announcement from the Committee to Help Ensure You Don't Get Wasted By Some Looney Gunner Who Can't Get a Date

The Thousand-Year War

The first Crusade was in 1096 and the aim was to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims.  That early effort set the standard model of using a religious jihad as the cover for an attack against Byzantium, the Persian Empire, the Ottoman Empire and always the Arabs.

The empires took up generally the same areas over the last thousand years and all of them shared one delight:  the West wanted to waste them.

The battle with the Ottomans continued until their last gasp in the Battle of the Dardanelles in World War I.  This was the time of Gallipoli and it was an incredibly violent battle which no-one really won because it was so destructive.  In any case, after WWII Turkey came into the NATO fold and the Ottomans were nothing but a memory.

The biggest intervention in post-WWII Iran was through the Coup of 1953 instigated by Eisenhower after Iran nationalized oil production.  The oil companies wanted it back and Uncle Sugar overturned the government.  The blessings of that move are still being felt in resentment today as the Shah's policies up to that point had not been that bad.  So much for any semblance of dominion within the Persian Empire.

Based on a plethora of ineffectual wars in the Middle East, we conclude it's all the same pattern and it hasn't stopped in a thousand years.  Whether it's ISIS, Saladin, or Omar Sharif really doesn't make any difference.

So far, our favorite for the most ludicrous war was whatever Saudi Arabia did to Yemen as they were bombing the hell out of it but never seemed to follow with anything.  Presumably that made some point although we leave it to you what it may have been.

It really is just a deck of cards and it's been the same one for a thousand years.  It may be the most perfect statement of war in history as not one damn thing has been accomplished by it.

Holiday Inn Extends His Lead Among Republican Candidates

Each day it looks like Holiday Inn will wind up as the recipient for the Republican nomination for President.

In the case of a tie with Doughboy, there will be a run-off, as in a physical race of twenty meters, to see which can run it without a heart attack.  If both vapor lock then America smiles happily knowing it will be four years before Federal legislators can do anything and there will be peace for at least that long.


Meanwhile Yosemite Sam down in Texas is saying people should take guns to movie houses.  I'm thinking he's right and it's especially important to take guns to matinees for animated cartoons for children.  Let's protect those little tykes by surrounding them with paranoid lunatics with heavy weapons.

Here at the blog, we think the best way to protect children watching the latest Disney movie is with a row of Hero Guards in the back, all equipped with AR-15 assault rifles.  We also think it should be legal to buy ammunition at the concession stand in moviehouses.

Yah, yah, a large buttered popcorn and a box of NATO rounds.

7.62 millimeter?

Of course.

Armor-piercing?

Yes, please.  I want to be like the cops and shoot through doors.


Note:  The Hero Guards don't have anything better to do as they were going to stand guard around military bases but the Army doesn't want these whackjobs either and told them to piss off ... or we will shoot you.

For Perry Mason in the Comments

There may be a safe bet as to the identity of Perry Mason in the Comments but that would be judgmental and we would just hate that, wouldn't we.

Perry Mason wants to make the case I'm not much of a pacifist if I want to run over the Republican Party with a lawnmower.

That does engender a certain measure of guilt as I remember Gandhi telling me about when he thought of the British soldiers.  They made him think love, love, love and how he wanted to personally give oral sex to all of them for savagely beating the shit out of his friends or killing them.  That was one of the lessons and it's come to this now, all I have learned from the Master.  I want to run over the Republican Party with a lawnmower.

(Ed:  it would be more ecologically sound to recycle them)

Good point.


There seems to be some determination to prove I have some need to go out to kill people or at least ensure their feet are well-trimmed.

Perhaps I really should have some guilt because I can imagine savage things but it doesn't exist as it doesn't matter if you think of such things, what matters is whether you master them.


This shouldn't have to be spelled as you're not Dumb Fuckers or you wouldn't have lasted this long but there's a parody of judgment because there's so much of it.  Anyone making a judgment assumes it means something and that's the absurdity of democracy.  As Mark Twain said, "If it made any difference, they wouldn't let us do it."

Judging me, judging you, doesn't amount to a hill of fire ants at a Texas barbecue ... although the fire ants might amount to something, this judging won't.  The individual is supreme and what better as a holy mantra in words of fire in the sky.  The individual is everything.  Communism is Satan.  Praise be.


Except Communism got run over by a lawnmower (its own) about thirty years ago.  The GOP gets all brave about that but all it showed was Russians are even more incompetent financially than the GOP and the Soviet Union went bankrupt first.  The interest on the U.S. national debt is just another tax and maybe there's some Grand Economic Theory to predict when the taxation on the people reaches the Implosion Point.

(Ed: only about a hundred or so books which predict the collapse of the US economy on exactly that basis)

So, if you want to know when the GOP will be run over by a lawnmower, read one of those.

(Ed:  there are hundreds more books predicting how the U.S. will be attacked and destroyed by the Mole People)

Read them all to be sure, I guess.

Hip Hop and the GOP Sex Beat

There's good hip hop and then there's the kind which goes boom-rest-boom-boom-rest ... and repeat ... at maybe eighty beats per minute or less.  This is sex music for old, fat people (i.e. Republicans).

Every boomcar anywhere has this beat blasting out at a thousand decibels or so to advertise the fact the driver could not possibly be having any sex at this time and is not likely to ever have any sex.

Then the DJ started talking and related the color of smoky amethyst in terms of underwear which didn't quite come clean in the laundry.  ("The Morning Show" in Fort Worth.  Unknown which call letters.)  This was when I decided I had heard enough radio for this year.  Five minutes was sufficient.


There was education as I learned Nicki Minaj is a clear warning to the world of what things would be like if toilets could talk.  With the foul way this baggage writes, you still have time to criticize my language.  Two words:  fuck you!

(Ed:  now you hate her more than Taylor Swift?)

Nah, I don't hate any of them.  They're just so fookin' boring.  Keith Moon drove Lincolns into swimming pools.  Taylor Swift gets into a little Twitter tiff with Nicki Minaj.   That's boring with modern amplification.

The biggest rebel outrage we have is Justin Bieber throwing eggs and getting speeding tickets.

These people are sexy like a Donald Trump after-hours party with old, fat, pasty, rich white crumpets rolling around and sweating ... all to a hip hop beat.  It would be like a croissant orgy at a bakery.

Boom ... rest ... boom boom ... rest ... and


There is good news, however.  The boomcar people across the street have finally attracted the interest of the law and drew three police cruisers ... at three in the morning.

Boom ... rest ... boom boom ... rest ...

It's a novel situation to be smoking a bowl while you watch cops busting someone else.  Life can be unusual like that.

Boom ... rest ... boom boom ... rest


Throw snare hits wherever you like.  The audience is all on crack and can only tell if the music is on or off.

Boom ... rest ... boom boom ... rest ... and

I fookin' hate that beat worse than Brussel sprouts, fire ants, and people who come to your door with a Bible.


Historical note:  Adventist missionaries destroyed a native culture in Peru some days ago.  The tribe had never been previously contacted but the missionaries 'reached out' and left religious paraphernalia along with possibly infectious disease.  The Peruvian government will now intervene with the tribe to ensure they stay healthy as they are vulnerable to infection from outside contact.  This guarantees acculturation of the tribe and the Adventists are directly accountable for destroying it.


Boom ... boom ... boom ... boom ... boom

(Ed: What the hell was that?)

M-60 machine gun - Still the best solution for bad hip hop and/or missionaries

The Two-Person Jihad to End All Jihads in Tennessee

This is what happens when you mix a Tennessee AAA Tourbook, a failed journalism student, and a small number of facts.  It is about an article in which you can learn about Beale Street blues in Memphis or Islamic symps who will kill us all.  If you don't really know what you want to do when you get to Tennessee, this single article is all you may need, whether it's learning about fishing or jihad (Politico: Tennessee is the Capital of the American Jihad)

Revel in the splash page for a moment.

OMG!  Red and black are the violently schizoidal colors of a nightmare!

Note:  we do not dream in color so there are no colors in a nightmare.  That sort of writing is what happens when you give drugs to sportscasters.  They think they've become poets.


Since we really don't care where one can go fishing in Tennessee, we will skip the travel report and get to the actual jihad ... with two people ... one of whom didn't do much of anything (i.e. Carl Bledsoe).  The other was the walking mindrot, Nidal Hassan, who shot up an Army base and killed some people in Texas.

(Ed:  how did they determine this was the center of the jihad?)

It seems to be process of elimination as the author saw zero jihad activities anywhere else so Tennessee must be the center of them, if they were really there, which, unfortunately for the journalist, they were not.

(Ed:  what about the Pamela Geller shooter?)

He didn't even hit her.  What kind of crumby jihad is that.  Besides, all he managed was to shoot one guy in the foot.  Any damn fool knows you can't kill Pamela Geller supporters unless you shoot them in the ass.


The article, not satisfied with trying to create a jihad out of less facts than the average girl fight, went on to rationalize the killing by drone bomb of al-Awlaki, a cleric said to have influenced them.  The article does not explain, however, why it was so easy for al-Awlaki to convince two spineless American jellyfish to go home and kill their friends.

(Ed:  isn't that America-bashing to call them spineless American jellyfish?)

Fair enough.  Every country has spineless jellyfish and that's what permits people like this to thrive.

Relax, Dick.  It won't be much longer and then you can kill something.


What we conclude from the minimal number of facts, the sweeping nature of the conclusion, and a graphic which would make a porno site proud is that James Kitfield has a glorious future at Fox News.  Look for him next for a revealing expose on whether Santa Claus is really white, what really happened in Benghazi, and did any of those women ever actually enjoy sex with Bill Cosby.

"There Will Come a Time" (lyrics)

Lyrics are as the song was originally recorded plus some more repeats of the Waiting part at the end.  Likely I will shorten the lyrics but the way they appear here is about what they should be.  Likely best to combine last instrumental break and eliminate one Waiting part.

Bold marks the Big Deal part.  I'm not only saying peace will come but I swear it will come.  It's all very well to say in the blog I think it would be best to run over the Republican Party with a lawnmower but there's no jacking around with lyrics as they're real or they're crap.

By my rules, I can't use the lyric if I don't believe it and I do.  What I don't believe is it will come about as a result of anything the military industrial complex is doing.  I do believe eventually people will work up the gumption to put an end to the depravity of one bullshit war after the other, none of which ever accomplish anything except a lot of dead people.


There was no Angeline when I wrote this as I was already doing it or how could I invite her so I wasn't real either ... unless you already know it's possible to dance in sunbeams.

There's no evidence of lyrics anywhere else but maybe there's something written in one of the notebooks.  It's an unusual thing going back and, in effect, covering my own songs in listening to the lyrics and trying to figure out what the hell I was saying, blah, blah.  This article was written by listening to a bit of it, writing down the words, and repeating.

(Ed:  it might have been better if you took some notes when you wrote these things)

I've been noticing that.


Chords, sometimes with passing embellishments

Am - C- F
Am - C - G
Am - C - F - G

F - G - Am x infinitum


Angeline
would you like to go sailing
Angeline
would you dance with the wind
Angeline
would you like to go flying
lift on golden wings
dance with the sun

There will come a time
when the sun shines forever
There will come a time
when there's peace everywhere
There will come a time
of peace, I swear it
I don't hurt no-one
yeah

(Instrumental break)

Angeline
would you like to go sailing
Angeline
would you dance with the wind
Angeline
would you like to go flying
lift on golden wings
dance with the sun

Waiting
waiting for the day
and waiting for the night
You're waiting
waiting for the dark
and waiting for the light
You're waiting

(Instrumental break)

Waiting
waiting for the day
and waiting for the night
You're waiting
waiting for the dark
and waiting for the light
You're waiting

(Instrumental break)

Waiting
waiting for the day
and waiting for the night
You're waiting
waiting for the dark
and waiting for the light
You're waiting

He Made Some Bad Decisions

First, he decided to be a dope smuggler.

Tip:  anything that may get you shot ... probably not a good career choice.


Next, he decided to go international.

Tip:  it's always a good plan when you can get the Feds involved.  Maybe you will even wind up on TV surrounded by a bunch of cops who look like they just busted John Dillinger.


Then he made the product choice of marijuana.

Tip:  always make sure as a smuggler that you will try to hide something big, bulky, and smelly.


For his final bad decision, he decided to smuggle the marijuana into Mexico.

(Ed:  are you fookin' serious?)

Dat's a fact, Jack.  (El Paso Times: Border twist: Men arrested smuggling marijuana from El Paso to Juárez)


In the Parables of Dumbassery, there's really only one person who can tell this guy what an incredible dumb ass he was with power commensurate to the dumbass nature of this venture:

(Ed:  no grand sociological theory from this report?)

Nah, can't work with the Fucking Idiot class.  It's the same with the one who shot up the moviehouse in Louisiana.  Fucking Idiots frequently kill people or get them killed but there's not much to make of them as they're busted, the wires aren't plugged into the right sockets, they're defective muddafuggas. They're not crazy, tho.  Just ask the Colorado court.


Speaking of defective muddafuggas ... someone told me today if guns were not available then the shooters would bomb the schools instead.  We assume this refers to the history of school bombings in the U.S. (i.e. zero school bombings).


There's nothing to be done with gunners so we're happy to add them to the Fucking Idiot class and feed them all to wild animals.  This approach has major advantages:  while the wild animal is eating the gunner, said gunner cannot be shooting you.  The second major advantage is the wild animal will also be too busy eating the gunner to start eating you.  The immediate advantage is a reduction in the number of gunners but it's secondarily beneficial to wildlife and thus has ecological merit.


Nope, can't do much with this one as mostly the thinking is going toward the guitar line for "There Will Come a Time" as right now there is a line with bits I've kept which also means there are bits I've chopped out of it.  For a studio mix of a song, that's fine.  For live, that's complete crap.  (These are my rules.  What you do in yer own studio is yer own bizness.)

Voodoo Brings the Hoohoo to Cat's Art MusikCircus

We're really not sure what 'hoohoo' means but it sounds like it might be a word they use to refer to sex on late-night television.

So, we don't know what it means but if anyone can bring it then we're thinking it would be Voodoo Shilton.

If you don't think jazz is sexy then you've obviously never heard Voodoo play.


All of Voodoo's music seems a continual painting and he may go back at any time to a piece because he sees it needs another color.  Sometimes he will speak of it and at other times he is happy to leave you to make of the sound what you will.  There are always surprises in a Voodoo show.

In case you missed this one, best chance to hear him again is in two weeks or find his group in Second Life and find out where else he plays.


There are two key words for this in orchestration and arrangement.  Orchestration refers to the instruments you will use and arrangement refers to how you will put them together.  Maybe for orchestration you decide you need a tuba and a flute.  For the arrangement, the tuba plays one bar, then the flute plays one, and then the tuba comes back for another to crush every possibility of life out of the flute.  That's an arrangement but probably not one the flute will like very much.


Often you will hear of Voodoo's versatility but how did he get that way.  If you're interested to find out, listen.  Check out the orchestration and the arrangement as he plays and listen for how he brings things in and out of it.  He doesn't use every instrument for every song and his songs will always go through a variety of changes during their courses.

It's not my purpose to turn anyone into a musicologist as I'm not one but I've learned various things and they may help me hear things other people may not.  The risk is any discussion may get overly technical and I consider that in Chat in-world because many times people don't want to analyze anything, I just want to listen to the music, man.


For understanding arrangement, there are BSWD songs (i.e. birth-school-work-death ... nothing ever changes).  Maybe a song of that nature will have three chords and someone sings while they are played.  They're good for singing around campfires and that sort of thing.  There may even be high art in them sometimes but this type of song nevertheless has a simple arrangement.

It's the arrangement which changes when you add a chorus as now there's a section in which the chords probably change and different things happen.  This is when people will start talking of an A part and a B part as the verse is A and the chorus is B.  Then you can use a shorthand for the arrangement of the song in saying it is A-B-A-B-B.  That general arrangement of verse, chorus, verse, chorus, chorus is quite common.

An arrangement is anything up to a symphony and whatever is beyond symphonies.  If you listen for this in Voodoo's work, it may give a greater appreciation of what he plays.  The same is true in listening for the orchestration as he won't throw the udu up there in your face, you have to listen for it.

The reference to symphonic music is not specious as imagine Voodoo's musical challenge in tracking the music to be played on half a dozen instruments.  This is not so different conceptually from composing a symphony as the latter has a violin section, bassoon section, etc but the composer isn't writing a chart for each instrument in each section.  The composer needs to visualize the relative sounds of each instrument or section and balance them ... and somehow remember how it went.


At some point, I wondered out loud how much of Voodoo's work is on charts.  He answered over the mike that he keeps some notes for settings for hardware but I heard zip about charting the music.  What that means is he carries it all in his head.

Someone told me a story once and it may have been Voodoo.  Pablo Casals was at a concert by Django Reinhardt and Casals thought this was some highly excellent work.  He inquired about a particular piece with Reinhardt after the set as he was interested to see the chart for the music.  Reinhardt just tapped the side of his head.

Well ... Voodoo does that too.  How about that.


Important note:  Voodoo Shilton does zero grandstanding.  Any grandstanding you're perceiving is because I wrote it that way and that's an accurate rendition of my enjoyment of the set.  I'm a fan.  Is it so wrong??  (larfs)


(Ed:  so, what does hoohoo mean?)

No idea.

"There Will Come a Time" Report

There are many things about recording which Cat does not want to hear (i.e. practically everything) as most of it is about turning knobs and watching dials.  These things do not bring joy to Cat's life and I suspect they will not bring much to yours ... but ... there is significance for live.

There's no need for a pic of each one or to know its name but there are many knobs on the audio paths for the instruments and multiple affect the volume and gain for it.  The end result of changing the volume is the same as the instrument gets loud but where you do it has enormous importance for where it will get loud.

(Ed:  maybe try this before you smoke the joint??)

Roll with it.  This makes sense.  There is the subjective sound of whatever I play and that's what comes from standing here in the Rockhouse.  It is the objective reality if you're in the Rockhouse but a subjective reality for anyone who is not because you can't hear it.

The knobs come into it in making your subjective reality the same as the one here and this is where it's crucially important to turn the right ones.  The objective reality here does not change as it gets loud and it stays loud but how it gets that way can change substantially and where that came into play this morning was with "There Will Come a Time."

Recording is all about capturing an objective reality and, for now, we can skip the philosopher on a rock part as he wonders how objective is it really.  The problem was the recording levels looked good but the track I recorded was so low I had to bump it twenty decibels just to hear it next to the other instruments.  By turning different knobs, the recording level came up but the objective level didn't change (i.e. what I was hearing didn't change but what the computer was hearing changed a lot).


The knob twisting is also a part of live as the constant neurosis with live is whether the audience hears what I hear.  It's the same for anyone performing online and it's all about subjective / objective reality.  For a real world concert, you can be reasonably sure the audience hears the same thing you hear but that's not even close to true when you perform online.  All of this about different realities may sound like stoner crap but it's an in-yer-face problem for anyone starting out in online performance.

Note:  if you're starting out now, the problem is solved by setting some time with a good venue owner who has the patience and love of music to work with you as the levels are set to what you need for live.  In this way you can shake out problems with clipping, which instrument causes it, etc, etc.


(Ed:  does this actually deliver anything or is it just yap?)

Partial delivery.  The guitar lead line was recorded at an almost good recording level.  It's taken a day or so of twiddling knobs to get that way so it's a real, if somewhat invisible, success.  This is also a partial delivery for live as it gives greater accuracy to knowing what goes outbound to the net when I play.

The biggest part for me is rolling out the song as it's not quite five minutes so it won't eat up much of a set but it's got some power.  It's one of the few in which the level of my voice is raised rather than lowered as it's right for this one for sure.  There is no pitch shifting on it although I might like to add a harmony track with the Vocalist.

Note:  the Angeline in the song did not exist.  I like the poetic twist of who she is but instead maybe she's a mutant Freudian Oedipal symbol of my mother.  So, the Freuds can have a ball with that and I'll get back to twiddling knobs.

As to who she is now ... well ...

Angeline ...
would you like to go sailing?