MORNING
The malls are reporting a disappointing Black Friday. And up in Ferguson, MO, they really know how to have a "Black Friday". Did you see the mall protests? Insert joke here about how since they were all lying down, nobody could tell the difference. The south is always amused to see the type of events that northerners consider newsworthy. Like this announcement [in the Miami Herald], of a couple who “met and fell in love” in Chicago. Can you just hear all the “oohs” and “aahs” from working-class Florida as they get all congratulatory over this? What? Well okay, maybe that’s over the weather.
What’s this, oil prices are dropping? Let's see if that's true at the pumps. Sounds like a CIA conspiracy to bankrupt Venezuela, so what if it does the same to Canada in the process. They've been getting a little to comfortable up there anyway. We need the world dependent on America again, we like playing “Masters of the Universe” for those forty years after WWII. It was fun while it lasted.
Music. After going over the alternatives for an hour, I arrived full circle to custom learning each tune I intend to play. (Hey, that’s an hour longer than most guitarists.) Since I have no guitar background, my question is what could I do in the short term to compensate for that? I can tell you these things take time for talentless Joes like me. The path of least resistance says I apply my old bass technique of “capturing” the essence of each tune.
This involves paying just a tad more attention than just listening to the music and emulating the guitarist. I have found in every tune (no embellishment there, really, 100% of the time) there is always something that strictly copying the instrument leaves out, even if it is only the implication of a missing beat or note. Classic example, “These Boots” (Sinatra). No instrument in that song, in isolation, plays the beat everyone hears. What’s more, I have noticed this is a factor in every major hit and, get this, to a lesser degree in the minor hits, and it is never there in the flops. The human ear tends to fit something in that isn’t really there--the golden bullet of hit music.
Since I don’t have the window needed to learn fancy guitar strumming, I think my best move will be to do what it takes to play each tune with a strum that emulates this feature—and it makes the vocals significantly trickier. A couple things to note before making any conclusions at this point. One, I would not try this if I did not have some idea what I’m up against. I did it with the bass (sing and play) and that is known to be far tougher than guitar. Two, it is more demanding to play what the audience hears than what the musician hears. And yes, there is a hefty difference.
My years of playing with “Not Half Bad” taught me the value of playing what the audience expects to hear. Oh, it works, alright. That’s why I’ve had ovations, Glen, and $100 bills in my tip jar—as a bassist. (Three in my life, pal, 3x$100 bills, read and weep.) Can I cash in on this with the guitar? Am I loony to try learning something like this at my age? I’ve decided that even if that slows down what Trent and I are doing, I have to give it the college try. As ever, I will report the wins and losses, and you can decide if it’s worth anything. Just hold off deciding until later.
NOON
This is it, you get one tiny section on genetic food modification. There is a ton of material on the Internet which you should be reading, so this is not the forum for the dangers of gene splicing. It is wrong, period and you should be very afraid. This blog is mentions diet, not the evils of genetic cross-contamination. And to me, diet is real food, which is getting harder to find all the time.
For example, Kellogg’s spends about a million dollars a year just in California to fight GMO labeling. These companies argue that if people saw GMO labels, they would not buy the food. Duh. And Monsanto is the company that assured you DDT, PVCs, and Agent Orange were perfectly safe. You should read food labels anyway, particularly Kraft, Dole, and every cereal box before you buy it. There is mounting evidence that allergies and side effects do not emerge until three months after you eat GMO food, and that is long enough for most people to forget there may be a link.
A while back I mentioned the number of suicides in India over genetically modified crops. There was some mistaken reaction about food, so let me point out it was not. It was cotton, which raises the question of how do people die from planting cotton? It works like this. The small farmer in India buy their seeds each year. Monsanto moved in and bought all those traditional seed plants, leaving only Monsanto seed for sale, I believe it is called BT cotton.
BT seed costs three times what the Indian farmers could pay, forcing them to the money lenders. To make matters worse, genetically modified crops require fertilizer and pesticides that traditional plants do not. Basically, one bad crop year and the farmers could not pay back the loans. Preferred method of suicide? Drinking one liter of Monsanto’s “biodegradable” RoundUp herbicide.
I stress that I am not anti-Monsanto, although I would be very much against private corporations using illicit methods to influence politics and the greedy politicians that allow it. It is a matter of personal preference that I strive to eliminate GMOs from my diet. It would be impossible to eliminate pesticide residue. My research was for my own purposes, to find out how much GMO there is in my regular diet that I was unaware of. You can eliminate the largest source by cutting corn products and bi-products. Like dextrose and maltodextrin.
Recently I became aware that most sugar is no longer from cane, but from modified sugar beets. I’m not a big buyer, but I will now look into secondary sources like bread, cookies, and fruit drink mixes. Those mixes were part of my disaster food because they keep. The labels don’t generally specify the source of what sugar is in there. I am further curious about reports of transgeneric contamination. In Mexico, ancient crops have been found cross-pollinated with American GMO strains.
The sum total here is: Do your own research.
NIGHT
On the back wall I found many of the postcards sent to the club over the years. You know, I was entertainer at that place half as long as I was at the phone company? Normally a night club would not be on my mailing list, but it’s different if I work there, although that’s a loose definition of work. Plus, there are always the naysayers that you didn’t really go on these trips unless you prove it. And handwriting is fairly distinct.
Here’s a spread of the cards from Colorado and one from Savannah, it says a lot that the club saved these items. It’s been a lot of years in some cases, these cards are fairly recent by comparison. I recall the one that slayed them was “Nederland”, they said, I’ve been to the Nederlands. This, if I recall, was on my trip through a place called Neversummer, yeah, yeah, it’s coming back to me.
Now before I say completely goodbye to bingo, there is already talk about another place up on 441 that is starting up on Mondays and Thursdays. And while I’m paying attention to rumor, apparently the caller is some guy who works there. I shall wait and see. If it’s who I think it is, how should I word this?
Um, okay, I’ll make it a double-whammy. In the first place 80% - 85% of the clientele at that bingo will have seen my show. In the second place, I’ve been there and nobody in that joint can begin to hold a candle to my show. And if the caller they intend to have is who I think it is, my prices just went up. There, see, I can be nice about such things. Yes, that is me being nice about such things, okay?
Same to you, Hector.
ADDENDUM
So, some don’t believe me about censorship. Have you found any videos yet of Beiber being booed at the hockey game? Got to this website and see if you can view any of the anti-Monsanto videos. (To find them, you must scroll to the bottom of the page.)
However, I view on-line censorship as a problem of the Internet, not disrespect of rights. I have a right to learn anything I would like to learn and any impediment on that is censorship. There is no such thing as forbidden knowledge, but there is personal privacy. The problem is the Internet was better when it was a free-for-all. Now, censorship by and large is only possible when the Internet is controlled by a few large companies. In this case, the search engines. If Google doesn’t want it found, well, go figure. I know hoards of people who think Google is a browser.
If you are using Google, either the browser or the mail service, you are not as smart as you are supposed to be. Your browser should be ixquick, and your e-mail anything but g-mail, or Hotmail, or the dreaded Outlook. Especially if you think you are the only one reading your mail. And when you delete your inbox, which you should do weekly, remember you have to clear the “deleted” file as well, and also get rid of your “sent” folder contents.
If you send or receive e-mail with information you want to keep, cut and paste it to a word-processed document and delete the e-mail. As usual, 99% of you won’t do this until it is too late. Trust me, all your e-mail is combed for keywords. This is the reason there are codes and ciphers. Think these things through.
Today’s Togla Treat
This is gross, but you gotta see it. The picture, I mean.
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
