It is finally starting to cool down enough to be comfortable, at least indoors. So I watched yet another show I’ve never seen before, “The Colbert Report”. (Say “kol-BAYR”.) He has some excellent writers and a rapid delivery, although he tends to talk a lot about politicians of whom I know nothing. Best item today was some lady who staged a banquet presenting herself a fake top nursing award, even convincing her doctor to make a speech. Good one! Sure, she’s dishonest, but the rest of them are stupid. Stoooo-pid. Knuckleheads.MS is pushing bing as a “decision engine”, claiming it solves the problem of “search overload”. Those who’ve been around know I identified this problem six years earlier, and called it “search bloat”. I’ve tried bing and it is your typical egghead solution, trying to plaster over the problem rather than solve it. The Internet has spawned a new generation of people who make their living by feeding you bad results. Like telemarketers. If you get what you are looking for on your first search, my oath, you must be useless.
What is needed is a system of categorization guided by the users, not by a company such as MS. When a result appears in the wrong context, it gets bleeped. Unlike flagging, the number of bleeps is based on a system of earned credits. When you find a correct result, you must tag it to gain a bleep credit. Of course, this will pose a hardship on those who rely on taking advantage, but so what? Sheer numbers will prevent the crooks from simply going in there and overwhelming the place. I’ve even developed an outline for a book I’d like to write that touches on this process [of small groups taking advantage of any system]. Sure, I’ll give you the idea for free.
Tentatively titled “Planet 107”, the premise is that in the year 2048, long-distance space travel has become economical to private industry. Hundreds of inhabitable planets have been discovered and some exist is clusters, where the worlds are numbered sequentially, hence 107. There is a massive exodus from Earth due to terrorism, pollution and Jonas Brothers re-runs. Because the flights are chartered, different “classes” of Earth people each go to their own planets. These “classes” are not races, and Planet 107 winds up being settled by atheistic, privacy-minded individualists who honor self-reliance. Politics and taxation do not exist because nobody will stoop to the job.
Here begins the conflict. All the charter companies go bankrupt and don’t return for another fifty years to discover some changes. Planet 51 was settled by religious fundamentalists who are now burning each other at the stake. Planet 93 was populated by welfare cases who agreed to resettlement and are cannibals given that nobody will grow food. Planet 68 of homosexuals who claimed they were “born that way”—did they thrive (disproving the birth theory) or go extinct? Buy the book and find out.
At first, all the other worlds mock 107. Look, the 107s are so foolish they have no police, no army, no biometric databanks, not even birth certificates. The book dwells on the logic of the other planets that 107 deserves to be invaded and forced to share. For example, Planet 3 is inhabited by tribes who claim 107 should be theirs because it exists in the same galaxy and the 3s had arrived a month earlier. What the others don’t know is that 107 has developed a “genetic force field”.
I got this idea from attending a town council meeting when I was 22. We’d been taught in school that the political basis of town councils was to allow every point of view a fair hearing. In real life, the first thing the town council did was make anyone who attended [the boring meetings] wait until the very end before allowing them to speak. That meant sitting through a four-hour meeting which left no time to debate the council’s inevitable rebuffs. If you left planning to come back at the end, they would call your name as soon as your back was turned and hurriedly close your issue. When questioned about this contortion of democratic principles, the junior council member (Scott Fitzgerald) expressed horrified shock at the very hint of wrongdoing. I wonder if, with that attitude, he every became mayor.
Did I just use “hurriedly” in a sentence?
Much later today, after a successful rehearsal, it is not certain my duo will be ready for this year’s tourist season. I say successful because of the ground covered while here. Most of tonight was spent on duo presentation techniques and keeping the total sound in check regardless of how the studio recording goes. Eddie definitely has west coast band experience. A lot of it is case-hardened experience but at least there is no permanent damage.
In fact, we spent 2/3 of tonight’s time practicing something unheard of in Florida: stage compression (the art of balancing total musical ambience rather than straining to duplicate the original studio sound). While our experiences are bafflingly opposite, we tend to draw the same or similar conclusions. That is in contrast to those who draw the opposite conclusion from the same experiences. You know, the New Age crowd.
Musically this is amazing, we finally played several tunes with just bass and vocals, something I have not done in 15 years. He surprised himself by carrying it off without a hitch, not even having to be told in advance what tune. That is, he was instantly able to guess the correct song from my non-melodic bass line. Remember, these are customized bass lines developed by my theory, not guitar lines played on the bass. (Can you imagine my former guitarists even agreeing to try such a thing, much less learning by it or admitting it sounds fine?) I am certain once Eddie breaks the habit of over-strumming the rhythm, he will prefer to perform some bass-only tunes.
This does not disguise the fact we are two months behind schedule, which translates into 48 hours of lost stage time in addition to learning the material. That is real mileage lost from our chosen venue. The only thing worse is to waste time in some coffeehouse with a stranger on the bongos. The biggest advance this week is that we are finally starting to sound like a duo, and I was right. This town needs a break from the dry solo guitar act. Now that I’m back in charge, practices are fun again.
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