Music. I was right about Starr’s “Photograph”, a tune he released in 1973. It fits all the parameters for a solo bass line. (I’m a month late getting the drum box because I spent the $100 on something else that was unexpected.) Maybe I’ll give that dog groomer guy a call soon. He sort of looks like Roy Orbison. The question is can he learn my material? I tend to explain to all new people that until we are up and making money, we do things my way or the highway. New groups are such a heavy investment in time that any distraction becomes the enemy.However, the fact that he can barely play guitar is a plus. I’ve already had the chat with him about the bleak prospects of trying to custom learn each tune, Hippie-style. Instead, that all-important drum box lays down the track, the bass plays “in the cracks” and the guitar becomes mainly a stage prop. He is okay with that, recognizing it as a shortcut to stage work.
He may not understand the strains are enormous. We will wind up hating each other a hundred times over before we get anywhere—that is the part about success that nobody can truly comprehend in advance. The only way around the clashes is to hope everybody sticks around long enough to develop a rapport. Hell, the Hippie let me down a hundred times and I’ll still join in, noticing Cowboy Mike is also there.
As Winston Churchill might have said, “The only thing worse than playing in a band is not playing in a band.”
Next, I address the problem of myself not making enough money these days. I mean, I make just enough for me, what working three jobs and all. Apparently I waste my “disposable income” on business expenses, instead of on necessaries like cat food and tobacco. I hear a few voices saying that I should start sticking my nose into the other person’s affairs, but decent folk don’t do such things.
Which reminds me to present a “Hero Criminal” award to a newcomer. That’s Criminal, not “Crimnal”. Two-bit losers like the kind who work for ComCast are crimnals. But Scott Levine is a true criminal fully deserving of the title. Scotty got eight years for swiping over a billion and a half (that is correct, 1,500,000,000+) database files. He is a hero for alerting at least a few concerned citizens that sinister companies like Acxiom are keeping so damn many records—and you can bet they ain’t your credit reports.
Acxiom is the database company that has slowly been amalgamating all the tiny scraps of information about your whole life into one massive file. They already know you spent $4,364.77 more last year that reported on your tax return, more than enough for a 25 year prison term. Acxiom loves club memberships and grocery cards. These are the wonderful people who made all your high-school marks available on the Internet and who are pushing for the National ID Card, supported of course by their system.
Now don’t go considering Scotty a brainiac who hacked into the software. He used an ordinary maintenance contract to run off a few extra copies, type of thing. So he isn’t in the class of Jason Derek Browne, plus, Scotty got caught; Browne is still thumbing his nose at Big Brother.
Scotty, by the way, hails from Miami, Florida, home of the security fraud industry.
