Archive for Life - page 33

Since we are on the subject of guitarists

Since we are on the subject of guitarists

As you know I think that Steve Howe is one of the best rock guitarists of all time.  Seems I never shut up about it.  Notice I sad ONE OF.  There are other greats as well and don’t pretend there aren’t.  Anyhoo… if you are a fan of Jimmy Page (who isn’t?), The Edge (of course) and Jack White (who?) you will want to watch this video which I came across at Ace of Spades HQ.  It’s a documentary featuring Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White and it’s called It Might Get Loud.  You have to settle for a link because embedding is disabled for this video. So you get an introduction to Jack White instead:

 

Pretty Crazy.  Also – Go Read Ace.

Another music post? Yes. Yes I think I will…

Another music post? Yes. Yes I think I will…

…write another music post with the sublject this time being Yes.  The English rock band YES, that is.  Founded in the 1970’s, they have undergone several incarnations and are still active today with most of the original members.  When I first heard of them they were regarded somewhat as a “stoners” band since in those days top 40 am radio still ruled and their music was definitely not top 40.  It was a little on the psychedelic side, maybe and so it was assumed you had to be stoned to appreciate it.  I will admit that I did appreciate it a time or two in that condition (including one out-of-body experience), but I love it just as much today and I haven’t been stoned in decades.  They did have a song make the charts in 1972, which was “Roundabout”.  For many of you that may be the only YES song you have ever heard.  Anyway…this music is, as they say, an acquired taste; which I guess means not everyone likes it at first but if you give it a chance you will.  I liked it right from the first time I heard it, but at that time, I was already a big fan of the Moody Blues and Pink Floyd so it wasn’t much of a leap for me.  YES’ music had the same kind of almost mystical lyrical qualities but with a little more edge.  Below is the YouTube video of a live performance of the song “And You And I”.  The song was released in 1972 on their album “Close to the Edge” and did reach #42 on the Billboard Top 100 in that same year.  This particular liver performance was recorded in 2001.

 

Interesting intro by Jon Anderson who obviously has a poets heart.  One other side note: Steve Howe – awesome guitarist.  I have seen him play that same yellow Fender Sho Bud pedal steel guitar on several videos as early as 1976 (!).  I wonder how many miles that thing has logged?

In Vino Veritas

In Vino Veritas

This is another one of those Latin sayings that seems to have stuck around for a few thousand years.  It means “there is truth in wine” or “in wine there is truth” and dates to the first century A.D.  Guess there must be some truth in it – In Vino Veritas Veritas.  We know what it says, but what does it mean?

People are seldom completely open with one another.  That is not to say that all people are dishonest, it’s just that nearly everyone will put a facade between themselves and others except for those we are most intimate with.  It is just a question of degrees.  To be completely open is to be vulnerable and to be so with another person requires a great deal of trust that the other person will accept what they are presented with.  To present oneself openly and suffer rejection could be devastating and so we are afraid to risk it.  And as we are afraid to risk it, we hide behind a mask – sometimes just a little eyecovering, or for others it is a full suit of armor.  We thus protect ourselves as we move about our daily lives, only shedding our disguises in moments of complete and guaranteed safety.

As the wine is sipped, the mask is slipped

Most likely from the time that fermentation and then distillation were first discovered, it was learned that the consumption of alcohol lowered inhibitions.  And what is inhibition?  It is a fear – fear of looking stupid, fear of being rejected, fear of being disliked.  As the blood alocohol level rises we lose our fear, our fear of the truth.  We can say what we want, be who we want and let the chips fall where they may.  We sometimes regret it later, but while the wine is in charge it’s fine.

 

You can't handle the truth

The truth hurts

 

When we let our guard down we lose our fear of the truth.  We’re not afraid to tell it and we’re not afraid to hear it..  In Viking cultures drunkeness was mandatory at civic meetings because they believed it was impossible to lie while under the influence.  If only our current politics were so interesting.

Of all the fears that exist in the human condition, I find that the fear of the truth is the strangest.  Perhaps it’s a fear of being rejected by reality.  Or is it just a fear of Things As They Really Are?

 

 

Viking Rat invades Swedish Kitchen – is Dispatched to Valhalla

Viking Rat invades Swedish Kitchen – is Dispatched to Valhalla

According to this story  in the U.K. Daily Mail, a Swedish family was terrorized by a 15 inch (not including the tail) rat that made it’s home behind their dishwasher.  Their first clue that there was trouble afoot:  the cat refused to go into the kitchen.

Artist's depiction

Artist’s depiction

 

The pros were called in and got out the “industrial sized traps”.  The rat took the bait, the trap snapped, and the rat took off with the trap around his neck.  According to the homeowner, the rat crawled under a plant and “choked himself to death”.  So apparently a suicide.  I’m not sure if that will qualify the rodent for entry to Valhalla.

Never Mind The Dog…Beware The Volcano

Never Mind The Dog…Beware The Volcano

Most likely you know of Pompeii – the city buried by Mount Vesuvius’ eruption in 79 A.D.  It lay buried under volcanic ash for some 1500 years when it (and other sites in the vicinity) were rediscovered by construction in the late 16th Century.  Here is a wikipedia link if you would like to learn more.  The excavations have continued since the 16th Century but began in earnest in the mid 19th Century.  They continue to this day.  What I learned of today and found interesting is this:

"Cave Canem": Beware of Dog

“Cave Canem”: Beware of Dog

 

This was the decoration on the floor in the vestibule or entry to a house.  It seems they may have had burlgars in those days, too.  This was discovered at a site known as “The House of the Tragic Poet”, a tragic poet being a poet who writes tragic poetry or poetry in the vein of tragedy.
The actual name of the house’s owner is unknown.  Should my home be excavated 1500 or so years from now they will more likely find something like this:

 

The cat's not trustworthy, either

The cat’s not trustworthy, either

 

Canis Numquam Animum Curam Monte!

How Can an Airliner Just Disappear? (PartVI)

How Can an Airliner Just Disappear? (PartVI)

Today, Malaysian Authorities officially declared Flight 370 lost at sea with no possible survivors.  Based on close analysis of the attempted communications between the plane and satellites it was determined that the flight was on the southern of the two possible courses and this would have put it 1500 miles west of Australia in the Indian Ocean when it’s fuel would have been exhausted.  Since there are no possible landing sites, the lost at sea declaration was made.  The search continues though now as a recovery effort.  Conditions in the area are such that it is believed no one could survive for what has now been two weeks even if they had survived a crash or ditching.

australia-flight370-search-map

Still unanswered are the questions of how or why this happened.  Authorites have all but ruled out an accident because of the circumstances surrounding how the plane “disappeared” from communications and radar, and because the flight’s behavior afterward indicated that the deed was done with purpose and some skill.  There is speculation as to who was responsible and as to whether one or both of the pilots may have been involved, though to what end is not known.

It was a dark and stormy night…

It was a dark and stormy night…

Imagine a place….put yourself there….let your imagination take over….relate your experience to yourself, someone else or no one at all.

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night...

It Was A Dark And Stormy Night…

 

One obstacle to writing is the same obstacle that I have come up against many times in life: fear of failure.  Writing is an act of creation and as such the very commission of the act is success.  Others who see my work will judge it based on their own biases which I have no control over.  Nor can opinions destroy my work, once realized it exists as an object in it’s own right.  I resist the urge to edit and re-edit my work over and over again in the pursuit of perfection and generally only revisit it to correct factual or blatant grammatical errors.

This blog is part of my attempt to dare to live the life I have dreamed for myself.  I have imagined a place and  now put myself there.  My imagination is working and so you read these words.

Steely Dan…transition

Steely Dan…transition

In 1978 Steely Dan released their album Aja.  Since the band’s founders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen were influenced by jazz fron their very beginnings, this album was somewhat of a milestone in that (to me anyway) it marked their transition from a jazz influenced rock band into a rock influenced jazz band.  This live performance of the title track Aja was uploaded to youtube in 2011.  I don’t know when it was performed but I assume it was somewhere around that time.

Serious jazz chops all around.  Dude.

Free speech for me, but not for thee

Free speech for me, but not for thee

UCSB professor assaults pro-life activists in University’s Free Speech Area resulting in misdemeanor charges. How tolerant.

Full story here, but the short version is that on this past March 4th, some members of a pro-life group called Survivors of the Abortion Holocaust (hereafter referred to as “survivors”) were at The University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) at what I guess you’d call a “protest”.  There were a few of them staked out in the quad area of the campus known as “The Arbor” handing out literature and holding graphic pictures showing the effects of late term abortions.  You know what I mean, dead babies.  A UCSB professor named Mireille Miller-Young (Feminist studies) came along and was incensed.  First a heated verbal exchange began between the professor and some students, and the survivors.  Miller-Young then ripped one of the signs out of a survivor’s hands and ran off with it.  Two of the survivors, sisters Joan and Thrin Short, followed after her trying to get their sign back while recording video on a smartphone.  In the struggle for the sign and as one of the students tride to take the smartphone from Thrin the altercation got physical.  The professor and the few students she was accompanied by got in an elevator with the sign which was later found in the professor’s office destroyed.  The UCSB Police investigated and later determined that Miller-Young had broken the law.

You Need To Hear This

 

I will say up front that I am pro-life and so I am pre-disposed to being sympathetic to the pro-life side here, but that is not my point.  If you believe in Free Speech then you believe that the people you disagree with have the right to express their opinions.  I find it ironic that on a University of California campus where are offered courses of study in all manner of nonsense (i.e. pornography, sex work, feminist & queer theory) in the name of academic freedom that the exercise of free speech is not welcome in a so-called free speech area.  How tolerant of them.

What nice climate we’re having today

What nice climate we’re having today

Here in Northern California today it is sunny and in the 70’s.  Not trying to brag, just making a point.  If you live in another part of the country or the world it may be warmer or colder, wetter or drier.  The weather will change wherever I am or wherever you are.  It’s going to happen, only Bond villains and certain Superheroes can do anything about it.  By that I mean no one can do anything about it.  Where am I going with this?

Here’s where.  I am a Anthropogenic Global Warming Denier.  Just call me Galileo Galilei.  No, I did not say simply Global Warming Denier, I added Anthropogenic which means “induced by man”.  In the title and the opening paragraph I used climate and weather interchangeably when technically they are two different things.  HOWEVER…the weather is a microcosm of the climate and they share charactersitics.  The Climate is a system made up of many smaller weather systems.  So Climate = big picture; Weather = lots of small pictures that make up the big picture.  And here are some of the dots I have connected to arrive at my opinion.

The single greatest influence on earth’s climate is that big yellow thing in the sky.

IN THE SKY!!  I said big yellow thing IN THE SKY!

IN THE SKY!! I said big yellow thing IN THE SKY!

 

That's better.

That’s better.

 

Not happy with the weather?  Don’t worry, it’ll change.  Not happy with the climate?  Same thing.  Things change.  The earth started out as a hot ball of gas then cooled on it’s own.  The dinosaurs were not responsible for their own demise.  Nature will take it’s course and as it has been shown the creatures that are capable of adaptation will survive, those incapable of adaptation will die out and become extinct or if a situation devlopes that is impossible to adapt to then it’s curtains for all.  Man did not invent the processes – they have been going on long before we arrived (evolved? sprouted? were dropped off by aliens? whatever.) and they will continue regardless of our continued existence.  Indeed, if it were possible for mankind to influence the climate by varying carbon emissions then the result of limiting emissions could also catastrophic if the earth were entering, unbeknownst to us, a (natural) cooling period.   A reduction of our carbon footprint would exacerbate (if the carbon theory is correct) the cooling perhaps causing an ice age which would have a devastating effect on agriculture and food production possibly leading to global famine and economic collapse.  So we’re screwed either way.  I say let nature take it’s course.  And if anyone tells you the solution to any problem is communism and higher taxes, you should mock them mercilessly.  

Did I mention that it’s nice and sunny here today?  I believe I did.

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