[Author's note 2016-02-08: this post is a Dragon Naturally Speaking transcript.]
Ah, look at the little kitty. Um, I mean puppy. Ha, you were also wrong – it is not a puppy. This is a fully grown Yorkie and the newest addition to the team. She is destined to become a pampered model. If nobody steps on her first. For a small dog, she sure is quiet, even I got to like that.
News for today is a contact from France. Want to see what an expensive web sit looks like? Check out CanalPlus. I could not read the screens but I can sure read big bucks spent on that page. They have contacted Ruth to see about being first to feature the doggie hairpieces in France. I’m all for it. Especially if I have to go to France, one of those places I’d likely never go at my own expense.
I dunno, Europe has always seemed to me to be one of those places where a misplaced focus on tradition passes for culture. Their history of non-stop violence shows there is no European culture whatsoever. Yet, if you like castles and cathedrals, maybe there is something to see. I already understand French cooking. Take a quarter portion of anything, pour a pale sauce on it and charge an outrageous price. That’s culture. See, you thought I was a total rube.Wallace wrote today about his newest plan to meet a blonde. There is a nearby shopping center that has a “singles shopping night”. He gets a shopping cart and goes to the pork and beans section, where he loads up 50 to 55 cans. The purpose of this, he reports, is to “emphasize my plight”.
Myself, I have to get back into any kind of a band. It is getting to the point where I also need the money. I’m used to making money on weekends, not spending it. Spending to be entertained is for schmeebs. I did the books and I’ve lost $59.31 in music this year already. I truly miss the women. Music is how I meet my blondes, and you know how rare blondes are in Southern Florida. I’ll also mention that my blood pressure has climbed steadily since I stopped playing regularly. Extra practice does not help, I need stage work.
Anna's daughter, Loran, had her first guitar lesson tonight. She is sailing right along and has already caught on that there are no other teachers like me. The older daughter, Becky, also wants to learn. We arranged for the lessons to be back-to-back, so that will keep me busy once a week. By older, I mean like fourteen. Music-wise, that is leaving it to the last minute. I’d been organizing and playing in four- and five-piece bands for [just under] two years by that age.
When I see Loran’s enthusiasm, I have a hard time believing that I could possibly have done it on my own. She is twelve and already has resources, examples, and family support on a scale I could not have prayed for. (You cannot imagine the hardships I faced, but let’s just say where Loran practices in an air-conditioned living room, I had to hide in a frozen basement hoping I would not get caught. There were times I had to run through snowstorms to hide equipment or hide from getting beaten up by my father.) I guess I’m having a hard time figuring out how on Earth I managed it when I realize I was just as much of a little kid at that age. Yet, I did start a band. Two of them, actually, by the time I was 14.
We were called “Ides of March”, nothing to do with the Texas band of the same name much later. I pulled together people of limited or no musical talent, often whose only qualification was that they had parents who would buy them an instrument. Guitar was Barry W., Drums was John K., Bass was Gerald S., and I held down the organ keys. Since none of us could sing, we had to get an “older” girl of fourteen or fifteen, named Wendy R. to sing. She was okay, but this brought in unwelcome influences [like country and western music and the dreaded “Last Kiss” song] and I quit my own band within the year, to form a second group called “All The Kings Men”.
These bands lasted and made money only as long as they did not forget who was in charge. What I remember most of the era was the incredibly long delays in getting anything done because nobody would help out. We played only 26 “dances” in four years, most of them in a church basement. Mind you, it was truly amazing to see how a small town of 2500 plus my entire family, not a damn one of whom had ever played in a band, suddenly became overnight experts on the matter. Truly, utterly, amazing. A sight to behold.
Of course, the lesson brought up the topic of Limewire. Anna was unaware that the site would share plenty of files besides music. I don’t know if Net Nanny works on Limewire, so the only method I know of to control the usage is to only let your kids use it while you are in the room. This means installing it on your administrator account only. Anna lamented the fact that all the boys her daughter’s age had access to this material – her daughter’s chances of meeting a decent and well-adjusted boy are somewhere between nil and zero. Respect? Intimacy? What’s that? I see her point, but the contrast with her children is not that much different to what the generation before us thought we were. When I was in college, the parents of that age were convince all was debauchery, yet the reality was, most guys I knew were not getting any. Same as today.
Anna Nicole Smith croaked about six miles from here [at the Hard Rock Café over on 441]. It was [mark my words] a drug overdose, although that will become well known long before they admit it. Forty year old women don’t drop dead in motel rooms without some kind of excess going on. Isn’t she the one who married some 80 year old guy for his money? If so, she would have wanted to go that way. Sorry peeps, no mercy on that one. OD-ing to me is tantamount to suicide and to make her an even more pitiful wench, I understand she had infant children. Way to go there, Ms. Smith.
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