Strawberry Hill (2013Oct28)

Wrote another poem today:

 

Poem (?)

Argffth! Spttoo-o-o-o-o-o-o! Yaughck!

Augh, I can’t.. Hack-Hack-spurtle..I can’t Breath! cough

cough

cough

Where’re the others?

O my god (cough)

What happened?!

 

                 -by XD

And then my lovely Claire came home (with a whopper jr w/cheese–the bestest) and I played for her–It came out kinda romantic, so I named it after those Spanish-language soap-operas they call ‘Novelos’:

Improv - Novelo

Improv – Novelo

…As you can see, today’s graphics theme is ‘Strawberry Hill Gothic’, a old, brief fad in architecture. I couldn’t say what connection to the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields” there is, if any–I always figured the Beatles did Strawberry Fields for the same reason the Kinks did “Ducks On The Wall”–because it was something their parents liked, and they hated.

All these pictures are examples–I guy named Walpole got rich from writing Halloween stories, and this was his dream house style–I read about in a post I shared earlier today (You can go on my Facebook page and find the one called simply ‘Halloween’) and I Googled images of the style…

so, here’s a few more:

Graphics Explosion

Okay, two new improvs and a look at some of the artwork contained in my video uploads:

GRAPHICS:

Back in the I-beginning, museum sites had no restrictions on downloading graphics of their paintings, sculpture, etc.

Back then, it took minutes for a hi-res graphic to download off a phone jack ISP, but I knew that someday the doors would all be locked–so I downloaded graphics like an obsession. Nowadays, security on graphic image files is pretty tight. It’s all ‘information’ now, and information is ‘owned’ now, too.  But I don’t commercialize my sites, so nobody looks too closely. Also, there are special programs like that of the Rejksmuseum in Netherlands, which allows a user to download graphics of their masterworks for non-commercial use. I still grab stuff off the Google-Image search, but I have to be more careful about snagging something off of those new ‘graphics by fee’ sites–one of them threatened me with legal action a few weeks ago!

Anyhow–here’s some of my latest ‘artwork’ in service to my YouTube channel uploads, and the original files I used for graphics backgrounds. You’ll notice that I over-lighten or over-darken these paintings to make my Text stand out and be legible.

20131019XD-Improv-GYup_01_Art-HorseLexington-1968-Good

20131019XD-Improv-GYup_02_200_Currier_&_Ives_Ready_For_The_Signal

20131019XD-Improv-GYup_03_No_Known_Restrictions_Horse_Racing,_Currier_&_Ives_Lithograph_1890

20131019XD-Improv-GYup_04_Trotting_Cracks_on_the_snow

20131019XD-Improv-GYup_05_english_hunt_fence

20131019XD-Improv-GYup_06_Hunter

20131019XD-Improv-GYup_(CreditsCARD)

20131019XD-Improv-GYup_(TitlesCARD)

20131019XD-Improv-HYup_(CreditsCARD)

20131019XD-Improv-HYup_(TitlesCARD)

20131022XD-FitzWllmVrgnlBk_XV_Robin(TitlesCARD)

20131022XD-FitzWllmVrgnlBk_XVIII_BarafostusDream(TitlesCARD)

20131022XD-FzwlmVrgnl_17thCenturyEnglishMusic_01

20131022XD-FzwlmVrgnl_17thCenturyEnglishMusic_02

20131022XD-FzwlmVrgnl_17thCenturyEnglishMusic_Barfastus_s_Dream_01

20131022XD-FzwlmVrgnl_17thCenturyEnglishMusic_Barfastus_s_Dream_02_Baschenis_Musical_Instruments

20131024XD-Improv-Factory(TitlesCARD)

20131024XD-Improv-PrototypeX(CreditsCARD)

20131024XD-Improv-PrototypeX(TitlesCARD)

20131026XD-Improv-AdAstra(CreditsCARD)

20131026XD-Improv-AdAstra(TitlesCARD)

20131026XD-Improv-Aspere(CreditsCARD)

20131026XD-Improv-Aspere(TitlesCARD)

20131026XD-Rijksmuseum_MyStud_Art-Nouveau_interieur_anoniem_1890-1910

20131026XD-Rijksmuseum_MyStud_Delftsche Slaolie-Jan_Toorop_1894

20131026XD-Rijksmuseum_MyStud_Het_stadhuis_op_de_Dam_in_Amsterdam-Gerrit_Adriaensz-Berckheyde_1672

20131026XD-Rijksmuseum_MyStud_Portret_van_een_vrouw_tussen_bloemen-Eva_Watson-Schütze_ca_1910

20131026XD-Rijksmuseum_MyStud_Seated Cupid-Etienne-Maurice_Falconet_1757

201320811XD-PreRaphWomen_GoldenTrio

20131026XD-Rijksmuseum_MyStud_Mantelpiece_w_relief_of_Paris_n_Oenone-Jan_Baptist_Xavery_1739

A Pretty Good Day…

I got two decent improvs out of today:

 

 

 

‘nocturnal’ 17th Century keyboard works

The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book was published in England in the 17th Century.

The virginal was a small clavier, so quiet it could only be heard in a small parlor in absolute silence. I guess it was of a piece with the way gentleladies were expected to behave in the old days. The music, which has much more life to it than I’ve been able to express herein, is nonetheless very sleep-friendly. One can only imagine what those people would have made of a heavy metal concert….

Robin, etc.

Robin, etc.

20131022XD-FitzWllmVrgnlBk_XVIII_BarafostusDream(TitlesCARD)

You Are Everything And Everything Is You

Siren-UofVTc036

I feel like I must have done something wrong. It just came to me that I’ve hardly ever cared about anything but music. I used to draw and paint to pass the time—I was good at it and I liked being able to impress people—but in the end, it wasn’t something I had to do. Same with reading and writing—a fantastic way to spend time—and it always took me away from the most unbearable environments—in the same house with an arguing family, being a brat on a bus full of brats, being stuck on a long line, and others. So I draw, read, and write here and there—but there’s only one thing I have to do—listen to, and play, music.

Ulysses-sirens-Draper

From that perspective, I can visualize my whole life, my jobs, my social interactions, my buying habits—as one big structure whose purpose is the perpetual availability of music to listen to, and a piano to practice and play on, and a stack of songbooks to sing from. Don’t get me wrong—many of my hardest efforts were in service to my Claire and my Jessy and my Spence. But anything I do for myself is unfailingly music-related. Nothing else has that feeling of obsession that I just can’t shake.

SirensBoutibonne

Unfortunately, I was not blessed with any talent for music—in general, I’m pretty awkward—and at piano, I’m markedly so. Any slight ability I display now, at the age of fifty-seven, is due to daily practice since the age of fifteen. And whatever ability that may be, it is easily out-shined by any toddler with musical talent and a few weeks of lessons. Do I have a great knowledge of music? Yes, indeed. And do I have a familiarity with music history that goes beyond that of nearly everyone? I do. But I’ll never be a musician, in the normal sense—I must eternally satisfy myself with my own puny capacity, and my improvisations (in which I attempt to make strengths of my weaknesses).

pygmalionNgalatea

Thus, there is a Zen aspect to my music-making—I must see my music as one thing and ‘real’ music as another. Otherwise, I’d have to give up the piano. It makes for a unique situation—there aren’t many pianists who practice every day, but never perform in public, never collaborate with other musicians, and are still waiting, forty years later, to get ‘good at it’. But that it exactly my case.

odsirens

The one thing that remains invisible to everyone else is the satisfaction I feel when I’m playing improvisationally—every day, I imagine that today’s improv is tremendous. Most days, I have a camcorder running and when I see the playback or burn a CD to listen to it, I hear something that is not at all tremendous—in fact, it stubbornly sounds like me playing badly—it’s mystifying.

persephone

I’m lucky, I guess—when I was young, I was very bright—I got used to being sure of the right answer, even when everyone else thought differently—it is a very good attitude—I wish I could share it with people who didn’t do well in school, who became averse to non-conformity and repelled by new data. I always feel sorry for people who disqualify themselves from learning, reading, listening to classical music—someday they’ll run schools so that the slower kids will have as much respect for their own viewpoint as they do for the teacher’s—but I won’t hold my breath.

herculesL

So much of my life is a hot-house flower—it can only survive because the conditions are perfect for it. I don’t have to spend the majority of my time at an eight-hour job every day, because of Disability. I have a very fine baby grand in a living room that really only rates an upright. I have the advantage of having been mentored by Matt Glaser in junior high, and Gil Freeman in high school. I was raised to sing Christmas carols and Boy Scout campfire songs, and to sing along with the AM radio pop tunes of my day. As the cherry on top, listening to records of both Keith Jarrett and George Winston taught me, at an early age, that playing the piano can be as much a cathartic experience as a performance.

Godessette

When I was a teenager, in the heat of a summer day, I could put LPs on the record-player—Glenn Gould playing the Well-Tempered Clavier, Books I and II, by Bach—and it would have nearly the same effect as an air conditioner—the cool, geometrical perfection of Gould’s Bach affected me in a physical way. Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture would make my blood hot and ready for battle. Silly little pop tunes could make me feel like my heart was breaking (and I loved having my heart broken) or that I was ‘king of the world’.

A-Sirens-Berlin

My sincerest sympathy I reserve for the people that see music as one thing—as rap, or as Bob Dylan, or as Theophilus Monk. Even confining oneself to a single genre is, to me, a tragic waste of potential experiences. I like medieval music, Bulgarian folk choirs, baroque recorder music, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Enya, Michael Hedges, Carol King, Randy Newman, Leroy Anderson, John Williams (the composer and the guitar player who made the name famous first). I like the Archies, the Partridge Family, the Monkees, Air Supply, Bread, Kris Kristofferson, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Barbra Streisand, Harry Nilsson, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller, John Philip Sousa, the Roach Sisters, both Guthrie’s (Woody and Arlo), Judy Collins, Burt Bacharach, and just about every other ‘bad’ musician overlooked by ‘serious musicians’.

CombWBattle

I’ve seen every musical movie ever, I watched Bernstein’s TV programs on music appreciation when I was little, I listened to every Nonesuch record in the library, back when Nonesuch produced LPs from ‘Bulgarian Folk Music’ to the ‘Koto Music of Japan’. Music is so much a part of my life that if it was excised from my history, my biography would read: “I am born. I get married. I have a family. I die.”

fantasy-fairy-sirens

And that being the case, it seems rather unfair that I should be without even a hint of musical talent—but nobody expects life to be fair, and for good reason. I think it has been good for my character, such as it is—overcoming failure every day is character-building, if nothing else. My dreams of being a great musician would probably lack their zest if I had the slightest idea of what being one is really like. Isn’t that strange? On the plus side (and I say this all the time) it’s good to have a life-long pursuit that can never be completed. I know that Yitzhak Perlman could say the same thing—but being the world’s greatest living violinist, he doesn’t have to focus on that particular fact the way I do.

Boreas_s1

Horsey Rides – 10¢

 

Saddle Up, Cowboys and Cowgirls!  Yee-Haaaw!

 

Improv -  G'yup  (2013Oct19)

Improv – G’yup (2013Oct19)

 

 

Improv -  H'yup  (2013Oct19)

Improv – H’yup (2013Oct19)

Good News

Thursday, October 17, 2013                5:52 PM

Aaah! What a difference a day makes. The happy couple, off in Cancun, are not here anymore and, while we miss them, it sure is quiet around here with just Spencer and the Wonder Dog (and Bear and I). Politically, the fiscal disaster has been averted but perhaps more importantly, the Tea Partiers’ disastrous tactics have been roundly condemned in poll after poll. You won’t be able to tell from listening to them because one of their hallmarks is to talk ‘through’ realities and ‘preach’ their crazy gospel at the same time. Then there’s the great time I had recording videos yesterday (please feel free to give’em a listen on YouTube) and the fact that I thought I was out of tobacco, but then found a whole tin I’d forgotten about—so my ‘next day rush’ order for more will not be a marathon nic-fit. Add a hot cup of coffee and the day couldn’t be better.

The greatest new thing (as Rachel Maddow would say) is Peapod. It may not be available in your area, but they have me for a new customer. Peapod is a website that lets you shop in the Shop&Go online and have your groceries delivered the next day! I’ve just tried it out, I ordered cookies and cheese and cereal and lots of other stuff and the next day, Poof!, there it was at the door. This may seem silly to a lot of people, but I no longer have a car. And even if I had a car, it’s difficult for me to go and drive and shop and bag and lift and load and carry and put away.

Up until now I’ve been relying on Claire to do all the shopping—but now I can have anything I want, no muss, no fuss. It’s so luxurious I haven’t gone on Peapod a second time yet—I’m still enjoying the pleasure of having stuff delivered. It always bothered me—I mean, a lot of places deliver stuff—pizza, Chinese food, UPS, Amazon-dot-com—but nobody ever delivers what I want most—food and drinks, fresh produce, bread, and sundries.

And they used to. I remember our old house in Katonah had a boarded up rectangle in the kitchen wall—and the same on the outside wall of the house. Someone explained that that was once the ‘grocer’s pantry’. The delivery boy would deliver groceries to this over-sized cupboard without having to ring the bell or be let inside. Likewise, the cook could then unload the grocer’s pantry from inside the kitchen. Back before the Model T, delivery boys and messenger boys were everywhere—better for them to run back and forth than the customers.

But it’s been decades now since the internet first started casting about for a cost-effective technique for online grocery shopping and delivery—and Peapod is the first successful prototype of this concept. I’m very excited.

When I was a boy, one of my favorite books was “My Big Ball Of String”, written and illustrated by Marion Holland, 1958. A boy gets a cold and has to stay in bed. To satisfy his needs without getting out of bed, he begins to tie a string to the light switch, and then the doorknob, and pretty soon he’s got zip-lines and pulleys and his room looks like a giant spider web. I was enchanted by this vision of remote control.

Ever since the Internet arrived, I’ve been searching for new ways to do anything I want from inside my home. And Peapod is my newest ‘string’.

Yay!

p.s. check out my movie reviews at StreetArticles.com

Seven (7) Solid 60's Covers (click here)

Seven (7) Solid 60’s Covers
(click here)

 

Peapod Comes (Click here)

Peapod Comes
(Click here)

 

 

Tip The Driver (Click here)

Tip The Driver
(Click here)

 

 

Keep Trucking On (Click here)

Keep Trucking On
(Click here)

 

Augmentation, but In a Bad Way

Get back to me on that.

Get back to me on that.

 

Augmentation, but In a Bad Way

2nd consecutive rant–I can do this all winter….

Our Dog Is Getting On

Our President can’t reason with unreasonable people.

Our Dog Is Getting On

My most recent rant–enjoy!

In Which I Make a Spectacle of Myself

What town was I in? Nelsonville, aka Cold Springs, NY. Where? On Main Street.

Jessy’s dog, Tuesday (the ring-bearer) and our son, Spencer, and myself had just been driven there by Karen, Claire’s Mom. My Mom, Ethel, had already arrived at a nearby hotel, where she shared rooms with my niece, Danielle, Kathy’s eldest, and Danielle’s daughter, Boston (the flower girl). Our neighbors, Harlan and Sherryl, were there. The rest of the forty-odd wedding party were Burrs from South California.

They had excused me from the rehearsal dinner so that I would be fit for the wedding—and Claire had gotten a sudden case of shingles, so she stayed home, too. If my Mom hadn’t made it, Jessy would have had no family there! I felt bad for Claire—between her work and her courses and helping Jessica with wedding arrangements, she’s been busier than a one-armed paper-hanger. So, I figure the shingles were stress-induced. Now that it’s all over, I hope she can find a little ‘me-time’ again.

So there I was, walking down Main Street on a busy Saturday afternoon in a tuxedo with bow-tie and two-toned (black and white) shiny dress shoes. People were shouting at me, “Hey, nice suit” and “Looking dapper, there” and so forth—I had never felt so exposed in my life—and I wasn’t quite sure where I was going. I wandered into a bed and breakfast and asked if Jessy was there and, for a miracle, the lady said, “Yes, she is. Come on in.” So I stood there in the foyer and I guess I was a little winded—she looked at me solicitously and asked if I’d like to sit down—which I suddenly realized I very much wanted to do—and asked me if I wanted a cup of tea or some water—which I suddenly realized I needed almost as badly.

So she disappeared upstairs to the girl’s party that brides-getting-dressed always seem to become. I sat in an armchair sipping ice water and dreading the long walk up the street to the library where the wedding would take place. I didn’t want to walk that far, but as father of the bride I felt obliged to escort her wherever she went in her bridal gown—and she was walking up Main Street, so I was too. In the event, it was five of us, including the beribboned dog, walking through town and causing quite a stir.

At the library I ignored all the stairways and what-not, focused on being the ‘arm’ Jessy was ‘on’. The service was surprisingly long (considering it was secular—I would’ve expected it from a Catholic wedding service) and then it was back down the hill, but it was dark, I was no longer obligated to escort anyone—so Claire and I walked down rather slowly. I was running on fumes at this point.

We got to the reception, an illegal storefront with no liquor license. As soon as I walked in, the sonic assault made me dizzy—O, do I hate loud music in a small place when I’m expected to make small talk with strangers—OMG, as the kids say. I soon retreated to the sidewalk again, had a smoke, and steeled myself to re-enter. Before too long it was time to eat, and then they danced. I had to do the traditional Father-Daughter dance—but I can’t dance, of course, so I just went from side to side, trying to lift my feet off the floor a few times just to make it officially ‘dancing’.

But Jessy was so happy and so loved and really enjoying her own wedding—something much rarer than you might think—it was a pleasure just to hold her in my arms, regardless of my awkwardness. And she had told me, days before, that the father-daughter dance would be my last mandated activity, so I was relieved to be close to the ‘finish line’, if I can call it that. I would miss the bulk of the reception, including the cutting of the cake, and the after-party—which I assume only the young people had the energy for.

Today, if I remember correctly, they are on their way to Cancun for their honeymoon. Jessy had been married once before, alone in Vegas, to an army recruit who spent most of their married years in Iraq—and this ceremony had much more of an air of permanency about it. I hope that remains the case—they are wonderful people, the now Mr. and Mrs. Burr, and life is so much nicer when you have someone to share it with!

And me? Well, I have a renewed appreciation for lying in bed and watching TV all day. And something about this wedding made me feel that Jessy was taken care of, parentally speaking—and that’s a great feeling. Now, all we need to do is find a girl smart enough to see Spencer as the beautiful man he is…

mucho musico (October 10th, 2013)

Just a few notes: I made up ‘Wulfric the Bad’–as far as I know, there’s no actual person with that name–Boston, on the other hand, is an actual place, but also the name of my niece’s daughter. The rest is pretty self-explanatory…

 

 

 

 

Cold Tea (2013Oct07)

Monday, October 07, 2013                  8:59 PM

The ‘Tea Party’ House Representatives were voted in ‘in anger’—and they make things worse by ignoring any rules of logic or civility. Their mandate, as they see it, is to upset government-as-usual—which no one can deny they have now succeeded at. Bravo, Tea Party—you win.

Just one problem—the Tea Party has no off switch. It was sent to D.C. in protest against all the laissez-faire acceptance of the Twenty-First Century’s dynamic paradigm.

The Tea Party won’t accept any religious freedom that infringes on their religion—and their religion (as represented by the squeakiest wheel) is a type of fundamentalist protestant Christianity. The Tea Party prefers to see global culture as the subsuming of the rest of the nations under the USA’s economic sway, if not legislative. And the Tea Party is against the coddling of perfectly exhaustible humans who ‘claim’ to be disabled or otherwise unable to work—not to mention their children.

The evolutionary story of the Christian faith was completed at the turn of the last century. It was most noticeably finalized by “The Golden Bough” by James George Frazer, first published in1890. I will pause here and quote Wikipedia.com, to save us both some time:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

[“The Golden Bough: A Study in Comparative Religion”

(retitled “The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion” in its second edition)

is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion, written by the Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941).

 

It was first published in two volumes in 1890;

in three volumes in 1900;

the third edition, published 1906–15, comprised twelve volumes.

The work was aimed at a wide literate audience raised on tales as told in such publications as Thomas Bulfinch’s “The Age of Fable”, or his “Stories of Gods and Heroes” (1855).

Sir Frazer offered a modernist approach to discussing religion, treating it dispassionately as a cultural phenomenon rather than from a theological perspective. The influence of The Golden Bough on contemporary European literature and thought was substantial.”]

And this was a crushing blow to organized, modern religions—at this point (as of my writing this) all have been discredited for over a century. T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland” is considered by many to be the pre-eminent poem of the entire 20th century. It’s subject, in large part, is the devastation felt by these good people when the very bedrock of their reality was de-bunked. Nor did this deathblow to the legitimacy of churches come out of the blue.

In 1888, Friedrich Nietzsche, in “The Gay Science”, Section 125, ( translated by Walter Kaufmann):

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

For more than a century, scholars have grappled with historical evidence, with proof that religion is a tradition, not a reality. Because the understanding only comes after an education that involves science, archeology, history, and philosophy, those left with no choice but to turn away from our ancient traditions, or risk hypocrisy, are few—and we tend to be those irritating college-boys and girls. Thus the news that god is dead has come and gone, unless you are well educated enough to understand what research has revealed.

In the interval, we post-modern sophisticates have come to avoid the issue in public out of sympathy for whosoever may still believe in their religion. Thus the major changes were academic rather than public. We see a great reduction in those who once used to prescribe learning (Ancient) Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit so that any truly serious scholar would be able to read the earliest records of the sacred scriptures.

Nowadays, students of Science and Mathematics can ‘show off’ by memorizing all the Latin names of special flora and fauna. Beyond that, the language and alphabet of the ancient Greeks, Romans, or Hindus has become a purely archeological and scholarly interest in the halls of higher learning (pre-supposing I exempt all such institutes that may still be run on the precepts of some such dogma that forbids that point-of-view). An advanced degree in Religion or Religious Studies was once considered a powerful tool for a leader, or a teacher—presently those degrees are viewed by many as no different from a degree in Philosophy or Ethics.

Throughout the Twentieth Century a polite détente was observed with regard to those who considered Christian religions exposed as historical amalgams, rather than ‘revealed scripture’—and those who clung to their faith in spite of what research and learning had unearthed about our distant past. The Old-Timers (if you’ll excuse my calling them that) were not confronted on the sidewalk every day by impatient atheists who wanted them to get over their ‘delusion’. That’s how we got to the point of Charismatic Cults in the 1970s, and hypocritical TV evangelists who were begging for money—and getting it in handfuls from lonely old folks who had nothing to do but watch TV all day.

But this new ‘respectability’ is beyond all sense. Our Christian fundamentalists funded the Muslim fundamentalists’ war against the Soviet Union (godless heathens, that is). Now we have debates on what is extremist, what is terrorist, what is harmless fundamentalist doctrine?

The truth is that it’s all a sham. But religion is a part of society. The Catholics, and the Salvation Army do the most to support the impoverished, but Protestants, Muslims, lots of ‘church-groups’ of whatever stripe are also out there, trying to make a difference. To date, no fund-raising organization for helping the poor has ever replaced our churches and temples.

And that has never been addressed as a public issue. Neither has the basis of ethical behavior, outside of an organized faith’s doctrine. Declaring ones atheism isn’t going to make one a lot of friends. The atheist’s peace of mind is also scant. But the freedom from the ludicrous, the letting go of the incredible… there are some upsides to being without a church.

But I have allowed myself to meander—back to the point. The full quote from Karl Marx is: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”.

He makes no mention of our addiction being used by the establishment to coerce us into cooperation with the very-far-from-fair Capitalist system. For some reason, I always implied that meaning in my own mind. Regardless, when religion becomes part of the politics of a government, it invariably signals some group of hypocrites trying to manipulate the simpler folk. To be fair, I think there are plenty of politicians out there who are privately agnostic—but if they hadn’t the sense to keep it to themselves, they wouldn’t be politicians now, would they?

So the Tea Party can boast members with a very prickly attitude about church-going. And the Tea Party is very picky about freedom. I, for instance, enjoy the freedom of walking down the street and feeling perfectly safe in my own little American neighborhood. But I can only enjoy that freedom because others have lost the freedom to let their dogs roam unleashed, have lost the freedom to hold dangerous drag races down the street I’m walking on, and have lost the freedom to DWI their automobile right up my—shutcho-mouth.

The Tea Party wants to keep their freedom to say no to mandatory healthcare. Where were these people when we got saddled with mandatory auto insurance to register a car—or mandatory home insurance to get a mortgage? I’ll tell you where they were—they were being properly ignored by sensible people who were looking at the bigger picture. We got so used to having responsible representation in the federal government that we got tired of voting—and after a while; the excitable nut-jobs were the only ones voting.

I’m as guilty as the next person—I didn’t bother to vote until Clinton. The aftermath, that terrible eight years of ‘W’, was much harder to take now that I was a voter. But Obama’s election, and re-election, restored my faith in my fellow citizens. I’m supremely happy with his steering of the ship of state. The only thing that went wrong was the Tea Party. The implicit racism of the Tea Party is borne out by its creation after Obama took office, it’s persistent disrespect and rumor-mongering towards our head of state—regardless of the harm done to our nation’s perception by the rest of the world, and its current pretense of fighting to ‘preserve their freedoms’ while the country, perhaps even the globe, begins to smolder.

They are a shame and blight on our body politic. I have to hope that even the idiots who elected them will see their mistake, and vote for someone else to take their office, someone with some common sense and respect for our governing system.

Obama has turned our economy back upwards from the ditch the GOP drove it into—he has passed and (now) implemented the affordable care legislation that the GOP are screaming about—it is very popular. Apparently, health care is something poor people, even middle class people, want and need.

To turn this country upside-down in protest is worse than childish—it is criminal. If it were up to me, I’d charge a heavy fine on the Tea Party reps for every day they thumb their noses at our country’s well-being and reputation abroad.

New Used Car

Well, I only wish our new (but used) Chevy Impala was of the older vintage–but it’s a much more current model and, thus, resembles every other car in the world, as is the case nowadays..

Here’s this evening’s version of “XD plays P”:

A Dish with Added Spice

This Improv, “Chili Con Carne”, was originally recorded on July 20th, 2013.

Phil Robertson of E-Studio Drummer was kind enough to record a drum track and mix it in.

For this revised video, I’ve chosen a sampling of my title-cards for listeners to watch as the music plays–please don’t be confused by the succession of titles.

I hope you like this:

 

XperDunn plays Piano Improv
“Chili Con Carne” (Originally recorded July 20, 2013)
(NEW!)
(with an added Drum Track
recorded and mixed by Phil Robertson
of E-Studio Drummer)