The Poetry Of Evil (2015May30)

Some of my Facebook friends think it’s fun to hijack my liberal posts with neo-con dogma. Let’s see how they like having their ugly nonsense shared with everyone:

Earlier this week, I shared a political Facebook meme from Americans Against The Republican Party.

It showed photos of Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marc Rubio, and Lindsay Graham with a caption underneath them all reading:

“Every single Republican Senator running for president in 2016

just voted against paid sick leave.

Oh, and they’re hoping you’ll forget

by next year. Share if you won’t.”

The following Facebook comments from my ‘friends’ are cut-and-pasted verbatim:

Gerry_A:   _ Did you happen to notice 50 percent are Cuban American. There are 3 Hispanic Senators when you add melendez whose a democrat from New Jersey and all 3 are Cuban American and represent Texas, Florida and New Jersey. Isn’t America great!!! I am friends with all 3.

Xper Dunn:   _ I’m sure they’re lovely people, Gerry. But I disapprove of wealthy white men who oppose social service proposals. They have zero understanding of how ugly that makes them look. And, I’m sorry, but it reflects on their character, as well.

Gerry_A:   _ It is naive to think politics are run by evil men who do not have logical analyzed arguments for their opinions. Educated people all seek justice and the best for mankind. You can disagree with a conclusion, but you should never use wide brushstrokes in labelling their character. I recall your comment about your tax dollars concerning the military. I chose not to respond to you then, but found your comment completely inaccurate. Only 3 percent of income taxes pay all military salaries and of that only a small share are combat troops. I doubt you finance even a hundreth of one of their salaries, while their sacrifice protects your right to say whatever pleases you. Even if you are wrong.

Back to my Cuban American friends, it is interesting you are now delineating between race in judging hispanics. We do not. Ted Cruz is a Princeton alumni like you. Perhaps you should further divide out that niche group. We Princeton Cubans are even a smaller niche!

Xper Dunn:   _ I was referring to all of them–anyone who can become a conservative senator is as white as they need to be, whether they have Cuban heritage or whatever. I got nothing but love for hispanics, rich or poor. And I think the naivety is in thinking there are no evil men in politics. Reasoned arguments can be made about lots of stuff, but that doesn’t help a single working parent much—neither does it bring America any closer to the standards enjoyed in the rest of the developed world, vis-a-vis workplace conditions and benefits. As far as military spending goes—I wish their salaries WERE the lion’s share of the cost—I think you’ll find that Equipment Expenditures are the real budget-killers…but that’s another debate.

Xper Dunn:   _ But I do dislike it when people throw the military in my face when it comes to my sometimes liberal use of our freedom of speech. I respect the military plenty—but they don’t protect my rights, they protect our country. It’s up to me to decide whether I risk being confronted by others when I open my mouth. I sometimes say things that I’m well aware may attract violence from some crazy person–they might decide that people like me need killing–I say it anyway because freedom only exists if one is willing to die for it. There’s no military cordon around my house, last time I looked–it’s my ass on the line.

Gerry_A:   _ Chris , I am sorry I mixed a response to another friend with yours. The military reference was for him and something he wrote

Xper Dunn:   _ Ah. Nevermind.

Gerry_A:   _ The political response was for you!!! Sorry we do not always agree. Those like me who came here are thankful for the priviledge and tend to be very protective of the USA. I understand that to keep it special sometimes criticism and change are necessary.

Jerry_J:   _ The way the bill is currently written, I have to agree with them. I fully support sick leave but in some business’ the current system won’t work. I hire well over a hundred people a year – some of them may only work for us once. The way the bill is written; someone who works for me once will receive the same benefits from me as someone who works all year for me. The same thing happens in unemployment. The way the unemployment law is written, here in Florida folks who work for me once are able to collect unemployment (after just four hours of work).

Xper Dunn:   _ This isn’t a wealthy country anymore–it’s a country with a lot of wealthy people in it. When people can earn better wages and work less hours here than elsewhere, then we’ll be the richest country again. Now we are just fetishizing ownership over humanity–it may be American, but it isn’t very sensible. I don’t see how anyone can watch a news program and NOT think that criticism and change are called for. And Jerry_J:   _–all entrepreneurs and business owners take risks–let SOME of those risks be on the part of the people who you depend on to make your business work.

Gerry_A:   _ Jeryl, you are clear and concise with your argument. I agree with you and cannot understand how any educated intelligent person would not agree. It is the blind criticism that makes me disregard people where I would otherwise try to listen and analyze  their position. Unfortunately politics is deteriorating into sound bite mass opinion making. I built a 3000 employee media company from scratch and confronted the shananigans and theories of 2 unions which represented the lion’s share of my employees. Without entrepreneurs they would not have a job and yet the next day after getting the job of their dreams, many spend their efforts trying to demand the most compensation for the least amount of work. I no longer have union employees and would rather close businesses than deal with their counterproductive demands and disheartening blind theories. The bill you and these politicians challenge is absurd, yet they were labelled negatively for not allowing it to cause job losses.

Xper Dunn:   _ People are SO unreasonable when they’re not in charge, aren’t they?

Xper Dunn:   _ Gerry, you invite yourself to my Post, spouting your ‘money is everything–unions are evil’ nonsense–and then you have the nerve to say you don’t bother to ‘listen to or analyze’ people who disagree with you. Gee, I wish I was that smart.

Gerry_A:   _ The problem with your politics Chris is that you think only those not in power are reasonable! When you build a company you sacrifice alot. It is alot easier to let others work long hours, sacrifice their sleep, health and diet and then turn around and demand unjust compensation just because the owner has more. You act as if the owners abuse their employees when the truth is the reverse. Owners sacrifice their lives and suffer much more than a regular paycheck provides. Centuries ago unjust labor practices were anialated in the US. Our court system has become a redistribution center. Juries and often judges vote contrary to the laws in order to reallocate resources from a company to a litigant. You preach as if justice is unilateral. It should not be! Right now it discriminates against the business owner. Longterm it is terrible for the winners as a whole as businesses close, cut jobs, or relocate to friendlier markets. You are your own worst enemy! You will end up with what you are complaining about- more jobs disappearing, lousy work product and inflated prices. Try to deal with that environment. The hardworking studious entrepreneurs will continue to excell without you elsewhere! I love the USA and am sad to see it torn apart by those unwilling to make an effort

Jerry_J:   _ I love you, Xper Dunn:   _ – I so hope you will be at the Reservation this year for the reunion – do you think we should get podiums so we can debate or maybe just make do with both sides of a random picnic table, stone or tree?

Xper Dunn:   _ I don’t enjoy debates, Jeryl, I just can’t keep still when people champion Capitalism over community. We are all responsible for each other.

Jerry_J:   _ One must debate and be able and willing to back up ones opinion with action if they want to teach change.

Xper Dunn:   _ Jeryl—as a business owner, your actions speak for themselves. I don’t think of what I do as ‘teaching change’, I think of it as ‘advocating decency’.

Gerry_A:   _ I listen when they state analysis not blind rhetoric! I never spoke about money! You asked me to the party when you asked me to accept your friend request. You analyse our discussion the same as you do politics. Now you claim I invited myself when it was you who asked. If you do not want me to comment thats fine. It is your call. No hard feelings.

Xper Dunn:   _ Okay, Gerry—that last comment was just crazy. Business owners make all the sacrifices and the workers are the lazy, greedy bastards? Have you had your head checked recently? I think you might have suffered a blow.

Xper Dunn:   _ Stop all this defensive rationalizing–you’ve got a lot of money–isn’t that enough? Do you have to crap on those who work for you?

[At this point, things devolved into name-calling and other emotional responses having little to do with the subject at hand.]

Please Yourself   (2015May29)

Friday, May 29, 2015                                               11:48 AM

Yesterday I watched Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in “Reds” (1981). It reminded me that the USA’s initial renouncement of socialism was due to the Russian peoples’ poorly timed revolution—they overthrew their Czar just as he was allied to the US, England, and France during the first World War. Rather than accept that as an unfortunate piece of timing for a completely legitimate attempt to end the Russians’ starvation and suffering, our government chose to view their revolution as a betrayal of our efforts at ‘making the world safe for democracy’ and beating back ‘the Hun’.

As with the early struggles of the Union movements, this very public alternative to absolute Capitalist rule was demonized by our government—demonstrating that, no matter how idealistic our governmental system might be in the abstract, the people who are its elected officials invariably become the creatures of the wealthy and powerful. Any erosion of the absolute power of the dollar is a threat to the fat-cats’ status quo—and they see to it that any such proponents are labeled enemies of the state. Thus the rich, who fear nothing so much as change, managed to criminalize any philosophical discussions that question the weaponization of commerce, i.e. Capitalism, the source of their power.

They seek to disguise the communal aspect of Democracy—it’s okay for us to share our decisions through voting, but God forbid we share anything else—that’s treason. Meanwhile, the power of the wealthy and the owners overturns those communal decisions through influence on the elected individuals, who are supposed to represent all of us. These mental gymnastics are sheer lunacy to those who haven’t been incubated in the ‘greatest nation on Earth’. But we Americans see it as common sense. Common? Yes. Sense? I don’t think so.

But why do I torture myself, trying to reconcile the human race with rational thinking? I might as well try to make artillery out of paper mache. And why do I care if millions of people are suffering? Suffering and unfairness are a part of the human condition—some might even call it character-building. Perhaps people who never suffer aren’t worth a damn—maybe we need to suffer. And what’s so great about logic? Is a ‘correct answer’ as valuable as a kind word? Not to me. So do whatever you want—it probably doesn’t matter one little bit. We live, we die—nothing can change that. So, be a monster or a saint or a nobody or a somebody—what’s the difference? Please yourself.

Four Squirrelly Videos   (2015May27)

Wednesday, May 27, 2015                                               8:25 PM

Oh–and just for laughs–I wrote a song lyric today, in honor of the season:

Spring Song

When the Spring is really greening

And the dog-flowers start to bloom

I can’t stand this crampy house.

I got to leave this musty room.

Outside, breezes float the pollen

And my nose begins to run

But it’s worth it for the freedom

And the warming of the sun.

Give me a Kleenex, baby

My nose in on the flow

Throw me a Kleenex, baby

I really got to blow.

I’d use my sleeve or spew it out but runny noses make me shout

Give me a Kleenex, baby

My nose in on the flow

Throw me a Kleenex, baby

I really got to blow.

 

Some days ago I threw a bag of birdseed onto the lawn outside the front door. It may not be for everyone, but I enjoy the racket every sunrise and sunset when the birds come to feed—and sing. The squirrels don’t sing much, but they do appreciate a bag of bird seed—boy, do they get chubby when I do this.

Bear suggested I place the video-camera outside the door for awhile and see what I got. That was a great idea—although I had to edit out a terrible amount of passing cars and idling or beeping trucks to get my final, idyllic background-footage. The remaining background sounds are mostly the breeze, the squirrels arguing, and the birds tweeting—I almost posted it all sans music.

Plus, I nearly didn’t post these two ‘cover songs’ videos—they’re terrible. But the squirrel is fun to watch. And the two ‘improvs’ videos are pretty good, for me—so I’m listing them first, in case any of you want to click on a video.

Enjoy, please.

Yesterday’s I-Phone   (2015May25)

Monday, May 25, 2015                                            2:56 PM

The rise of the digital age has many markers: the first PCs, the first off-the-shelf software suites, LANs, the Internet—but nothing singled out such a tectonic shift in society as the I-Phone. Hell, it even started a revolution in Egypt, not to mention the slew of new businesses, of whole new industries, it spawned.

In many ways, we can draw parallels in the rise of the Electric Age—it started with light-bulbs, phonographs, silent films, electromagnets, and dynamos—but nothing pulled the populace into the new age like the radio. Today, we view the radio as archaic and primitive. But it was really the first time that we used our burgeoning understanding of physics in a way which affected the whole population.

But what is radio? Pierre Gassendi proposed a theory of light as particles in the 1660s. Newton agreed with him. Robert Hooke proposed a “pulse theory” of light as waves in 1665. The argument over whether light was made of particles or waves would continue until the mid-19th century.

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In 1845, Michael Faraday discovered that light was related to electromagnetism. James Clerk Maxwell’s studies of electromagnetic radiation and light helped him conclude that light was a form of electromagnetic radiation and in 1873 he published A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism. Heinrich Hertz confirmed Maxwell’s theory by generating and detecting radio waves that behaved exactly like visible light, with properties like reflection, refraction, diffraction, and interference. Maxwell’s theory and Hertz’s experiments led directly to the development of modern radio.

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Marconi

Marconi’s Law, concerning the relation between the transmission distance and the square of the height of an antenna, was tested in experiments made on Salisbury Plain in 1897. Guglielmo Marconi did pioneering work on long-distance radio transmission. His development of Marconi’s law and a radio telegraph system has him credited as the ‘inventor of radio’. He shared the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Karl Ferdinand Braun “in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy”. Braun also invented the first Cathode Ray Tube and the first Oscilloscope—but we are talking about the birth of radio, not television.

Einstein published his “Theory of General Relativity” in 1915, so we can see that ‘scientific’ progress has always been far ahead of commercial applications. But commercial applications are always the ‘stamp of approval’ that humanity gives to the occasional geek working in a back-room laboratory. For more than a century, great scientists had worked on these mysteries of physics while being dismissed as loonies by their more-practical peers. There’s a wonderful song by Gershwin, “They All Laughed”, which catalogs in its lyrics the many innovators who were laughed at until they literally changed the world. It includes the line: “They told Marconi wireless was a phony—it’s the same way now.” And boy, is that true.

Radio-telegraphy, i.e. early radio, had only maritime and military uses, the most notable being its use during the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. But World War I ‘goosed’ the development of military-communications radio, and the first vacuum tubes were used in radio transmitters and receivers. Electronic amplification was key in changing radio from an experts-only practice into a home appliance.

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Commercial radio broadcasting began in the 1920s and exploded across American society, so that by the 1930s it had become ubiquitous–the first mass media, the first location-independent human interaction, and a characteristic that not only defined modern society, but had enormous power to change it.

Radio then spurred unstoppable growth in the new ‘broadcasting’ industry and the electric-manufacturing industry, which in turn gave rise to a variety of new entertainments—news broadcasts, radio serials, classical music for the masses—even an end-of-the-world, alien-invasion panic that swept the country on Halloween in 1938, following the infamous Orson Welles broadcast of a radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds”. Seven years later, scientific research into the same physics of electromagnetism would lead to mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

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It is strange beyond words how our understanding of electromagnetism has two lives—one of quiet, focused scientists working in anonymity, and the other a crazy story about what the mainstream of humanity does with specific applications that eventually catch our eye. And I think ‘crazy’ may be understating the case. Sometimes I think it might be better if we had mandatory inclusion in science—if the majority of humanity has no clue about the inner workings of our tools and machines, maybe we shouldn’t use them. Okay, idealism overload—never mind!

When television came along, in the 1950s, everyone imagined that it would supplant radio and the movies. Now, we can see that early TV, while wonderful, couldn’t quite replace the experience of a panoramic, full-color movie screen. Radio, too, had a quality that TV couldn’t quite replace—variety. The wealth of radio stations, and the diversity of radio programming, provided a wealth of audio-only entertainment that left radio in command of most of our attention, except for what came to be known as Prime Time, that work-is-done, after-dinner period when people naturally enjoyed a reason to sit around the family room and stare at the screen.

I can still remember when the time of day made a difference. At midnight, the TV stations would run the National Anthem and sign off “’til tomorrow” and if I woke up too early and switched on the TV, that test pattern would still be there, waiting for a decent hour before sending entertainment over the airwaves. Radio stations, too, designed their programming with the assumption that people slept at night—and that anyone in their broadcast range was in the same time zone. As the evening wore on, even in the 1960s, the number of entertainment options slowly dwindled down to zero.

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Also, radios had become a part of the automobile dashboard by the 1930s—something TV would never do, since driving requires one to look where they’re going. By the sixties, radio had been transistorized, as well, and tiny, hand-held radios were everywhere. I remember Jones Beach, on Long Island in summer, would be blanketed with sun-bathing families and friends—each with their own radio, but all tuned to Cousin Brucie—I could walk along the beach and hear “She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah…” from a hundred tiny speakers.

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By the 1970s, radio had matured from Amplitude Modulation (AM radio, with that annoying ‘carrier signal’ whine) to Frequency Modulation (FM radio, noiseless—and capable of stereo). Radio had finally equaled the sound fidelity of vinyl. TV wouldn’t match that sound quality until the 1980s, when retailers began to market ‘Entertainment Systems’ that re-routed the TV’s sound through multiple speakers using the Dolby system.

Even XM radio, which broadcasts not through the air, but over the Internet, has yet to overthrow broadcast radio, though it may be nearing that point, out of sheer market pressure—I don’t think anyone is building new radio transmitter stations anymore. But I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the original “Wireless”.

Memorial Day – Observed   (2015May25)

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Monday, May 25, 2015                                            12:14 PM

Remembrances are tricky. There’s no critique in a eulogy. Why speak ill of the dead? They can’t hear you. I’m looking forward to my own eulogy—must be nice to have people talk about the good and overlook the bad.

Americans have little sense of soldiers as defenders of the homeland. We don’t have any borders to speak of—just oceans. Hence our navy is really the picket-line for the USA. But 9/11 changed even that—as have drones. The conservatives describe the modern military paradigm as ‘fighting over there so we don’t have to fight here’. Yet we are just as vulnerable to the keyboard of an angry teen hacker in Teaneck, perhaps more so, than any imaginary horde attempting a beachhead on Martha’s Vineyard.

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It’s become so tangled that many people have begun to see non-involvement in the Shia/Sunni civil-wars of Mid-East nations as a viable military strategy. Recent perusals of Bin-Laden’s archives show that he wanted to keep American targets as the terrorists’ focus—and he did succeed in virtually bankrupting this country by blowing up a single skyscraper. Lucky for us, he’s dead—and ISIS is a far more benign group of thugs who prefer to shoot at things closer to home. If we can just counteract their YouTube recruitment videos, they’re dead to us.

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Unfortunately, they have stumbled onto something that is almost as aggravating to Americans—they’re destroying the cultural history of our earliest civilizations. Human suffering is common—but these jerks are smashing museum artifacts—priceless, irreplaceable art from the dawn of humanity. But that is just for PR—they take most of their plunder and sell it on the black market to fund their armies.

So let’s not forget, on this Memorial Day, that Americans who get rich selling arms to the globe, and rich Americans who buy artifacts on the black market, are the support network for these ‘terrorists’. People say we should stop sending drones into the Middle East—I say we should stop sending money and arms there.

But today is about honoring sacrifice. Mothers who’ve lost one of their own children in battle are troubled by the paradox of glorifying something that could very well take another, or one of their children’s children. Young men who are proud to play their part in our military sense a dark message that their greatest glory will be found in death. Disabled veterans may find themselves bitterly reflecting that the dead have it much easier than some of the living—and get the lion’s share of respect and honor from their countrymen.

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To me, it’s a historical issue. To honor the dead from the two World Wars, the Civil War, the Revolution, et. al. is a straightforward sentiment. By comparison, all the ‘wars’ that followed the advent of the A-bomb—Korea and Viet Nam—became something less than ‘all out’ warfare—they were Political. We tempered our forces, fearing that ‘all out’ aggression would involve the Red Chinese—which would have transformed those ground wars into a nuclear World War III. The interpolation of politics into the fighting and dying became the kindling that sparked the anti-war movement.

Subsequent ‘wars’ drew even further away from the idea of fighting with all our might and resources—today’s military actions are a hodge-podge of nation-consensus-building and domestic opinion-polling. The boys and girls who are ‘sacrificed to our freedom’ today are just as likely to be the victims of one day’s poor polling points—or some cheap contractor’s shoddy manufacturing.

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Plus, there is no more ‘war at home’, as we had in WWII, with USO stations, fund drives, ration books, and flags in the windows. Part of the PTSD suffered by today’s returning veterans is the disorientation felt when they return to a country that’s barely aware of what they’re doing. They suffer, bleed, fight and die thousands of miles away, on the other side of an ocean—and come home to bored, sensation-seeking civilians who hardly knew they were gone.

If we’re going to have war in the Middle East, we should have a little Memorial Day every damn day. Failing that, we should stop sending our young people to die in places we don’t care about. Or maybe we should rename today “Oil Day”.

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Randy In The Afternoon   (2015May23)

Saturday, May 23, 2015                                           9:46 AM

My old friend, Randy Bell, dropped by yesterday for a brief recording session. It had been three years since his last ascension from his Georgia home to visit his old stomping grounds and we had a lot of catching up to do. Inevitably, we turned to music—Randy, a one-time fervent ‘Dead-head’, has a very different musical perspective from mine, and our collaborations, while challenging, produce some very interesting results (for me, anyway).

It was a confusing afternoon in one sense—I have a tendency to improvise on basic chord progressions, and those chord progressions, being in some sense basic building blocks in a variety of tunes, can go in and out of the ‘cover’ domain. For instance, my favorite a-minor chord progression led Randy to start singing along, revealing those chords to be the basis of a Chris Issak hit, “Blue Spanish Sky”. However, as I said, some chords progressions are basic components to many pieces, of both classical and popular music. So if I have to credit Chris Issak, then Chris Issak has to credit basic music theory, as do the Beatles and the Turtles, who use the same chord progression in hit songs of theirs, and Vivaldi, who uses it in his “Four Seasons”.

Having crossed that line, I showed Randy how I had derived my favorite G-Major chord progression from Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone”. It was weird—after a good half hour of ‘improvisation’, we had recorded two ‘covers’!

But my favorite part was Randy teaching me to play a cover of a song written by someone we both knew—“Hard Road Blues”, written by Randy’s lifelong friend and one-time collaborator, Burrie Jenkins. Burrie is a Massachusetts composer and guitarist best known for his “Dharma of the Leaves” . I hope he doesn’t mind too much that Randy and I ‘roughed up’ his tune—it was hella fun to play…

Beethoven’s Pastoral Sixth and Disney in Stereo   (2015May22)

Friday, May 22, 2015                                               10:52 AM

When I was a boy, I liked to lie on the floor of a dark room and listen to classical music. My closed eyes became an IMAX screen for Rorschach-fueled fantasies—vague daydreams of struggle, passion, voyaging, and victory. Back then, I didn’t listen to music the way I do now—I simply heard a soundtrack to an invisible movie. Dvorak’s New World, Tchaikovsky’s 1812, Smetana’s Moldau, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Russian Easter—they all suggested vague plotlines of grand adventures, terrific battles, and transporting joys—and Beethoven’s symphonies were right up there in my ‘top hits’ list. Classical music has always been the soundtrack to my daydreams.

Because I felt that classical music (mostly Romantic, and symphonic, at that time) was a ‘drug’ that would take me on a ‘trip’, I preferred listening to it on my bedroom record-player to sitting in the audience at Lincoln Center—a privilege that my public school provided as often as twice a year, thanks to the wonderful Mr. Freeman, our music teacher. Young people, and non-musicians of any age, I suppose, can hear music without truly appreciating that musicians have to make it. In a sense, music, to me, came from a flat, round piece of vinyl.

Walt Disney and I had that in common, sort of—but he was not a lifelong music-lover—he didn’t come to appreciate Classical Music until he had already become a successful filmmaker. But upon discovering these treasures, they became his passion. He began to use it in his “Silly Symphonies” animated shorts. While working on an extended Silly Symphony of Dumas’ “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (a comeback role for Mickey Mouse, who was slipping in popularity) Disney determined to make it part of the full-length feature that came to be known as “Fantasia”, a set of eight animated classical works performed by Leopold Stokowski (the premiere conductor of the times).

I was in my late teens by the time I saw a reissue screening of what, by then, had become a classic film. The original 1940 release of “Fantasia” was marred by the start of World War II—the lack of European market revenue, and the mixed critical response, made the film seem a failure upon its opening. Plus, there were high costs involved in making an animated feature film—even more so in the case of “Fantasia”, as it was the first film shown in stereophonic sound, and ‘Fantasound’ equipment had to be installed in every theater that screened the film!

“Fantasia” is a treat—a celebration of both music and art, created by the world’s most beloved and successful commercial artist. Every musical piece in the film brings out special features of the individual pieces—and of music itself. For someone familiar with the music, the animation ‘accompaniment’ brought a whole new dimension to the works—and for those hearing them for the first time, it was an indelible, endearing introduction. The skill and effort of the creative teams, the innovations of artistry and technology used to achieve the film, gave the final collection of flickering images and sounds substance to rival the great pyramids of Egypt.

Now, having said all that, it’s not hard to imagine that today’s musicians could find “Fantasia” to be dated and superficial. It may be difficult for any of us today to appreciate the technical challenges of 1940—with the debut of “Beauty and the Beast” in 1991, we experienced the first CGI-generated animation (and the first animated film to be nominated for a “Best Picture” Oscar). Yet, to me, the old Disney animated classics are still marvels of effort and organization—and the proof is in the enduring value of the surviving individual cels, as collectors’ items and as works of art suitable for framing and hanging on the wall. That’s what those old films were—a sequence of hundreds of thousands of hand-painted artistic masterpieces! In comparison, CGI animations are akin to pyramids built with modern construction vehicles—still impressive, but hardly the same effort.

More importantly, serious musicians focus on the pure sound—what else is there, in music? Music videos have been a part of our culture since the 1980s—with their tendency to push more-pedestrian music’s popularity using provocative visual accompaniment, they can make ‘adding visuals’ seem overly manipulative. Plus, there are now many serious composers who are known for their soundtrack compositions made specifically for film, such as Richard Stephen Robbins’ score to “The Remains of the Day” (1993)—or even Karl Jenkin’s score for the DeBeers diamonds ad (1994). It is understandable that today’s musician might see “Fantasia” as opportunistic or exploitative of the great composers. But that would be overlooking the educational and popularizing effect of those times.

It was only the previous decade, the 1930s, that public radio broadcasts of classical music had allowed the masses to hear concert music—prior to radio, classical music had remained as much a privilege of the ‘upper class’ as it had been in the days of noble patronage, centuries before. And Leopold Stokowski, José Iturbi and Arturo Toscanini were still freshly-minted radio stars—the NBC Symphony Orchestra gave its premiere broadcast in 1937. Classical music, in 1940, was in a certain sense, the ‘latest thing’.

Plus, Disney’s animations ‘closed the distance’ for new fans of classical—instead of seeing the mechanics—a film of the orchestra itself, playing—we see the kinds of fantasies that listening to such music can inspire. Disney’s “Fantasia” showed music from the listener’s perspective, not the performer’s.

So when we are tempted to dismiss the film as trite or silly, we ignore its historical context. I’m reminded of Owen Wister, the author of “The Virginian” in 1902. Today we laugh at the clichés of Westerns—the shootouts at high noon, the schoolmarm sweethearts, the strong, silent gunslingers—yet all of these memes were original ideas when Wister first penned them. They only became clichés because these images were so powerful that they were copied and varied ad infinitum, for a century. In the same way, Disney’s enormous influence on our modern viewpoint blinds us to the originality and impact of his work when it was first created. Respect must be shown.

Not that I don’t respect Beethoven. I loved his Sixth Symphony long before I saw “Fantasia” and I love it still, in spite of the fleeting mental image of bare-breasted, gamboling centaur-nymphs imprinted by the film. I also see dancing mushrooms whenever I hear Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and feel the urge to belly-laugh whenever I hear Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours—but I’m sure the composers themselves, if we could ask them, would be flattered to have received the loving attention of Walt Disney.

Opening Shot—Pending   (2015May21)

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Summer Day, Johan Hendrik Weissenbruch, c. 1870 – c. 1903 Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

 

Thursday, May 21, 2015                                          6:44 PM

A tragic death in the west coast family and medical issues on the east coast cast a pall of sorts over what should have been the joyous celebration of my love’s graduation. But here, we have grown used to taking the good with the bad—it seems to have become a constant—I can almost hear Karma’s footsteps dancing about every moment of life nowadays. The greatest drawback to my perspective is that I suspect Celebration, anyway—I’m much more comfortable with a day that passes without incident or remark. Good news seems to beg for bad news, so I’m a big fan of ‘no news’.

With such mixed feelings I face the impending Memorial Day Weekend—a festival marking the beginning of summer, with the paradoxical theme of remembering the fallen of past and present wars. Memorial Day has a heightened frenzy to it since it marks the beginning of summer and the end of school which, for kids at least, signals the start of months of fun in the sun.

This iconic weekend mixes that glee with the grind of throngs of hostesses and hosts trying to light charcoal, avoid burning the barbecue, and keep an eye on the kids in the pool or in the shallows of the beach. And the glee and the grind are mixed with the ghoulish reputation Memorial Day holds for being an annual high-water-mark for traffic fatalities, DWIs, and reckless driving in general. It’s as if we honor the fallen by slaughtering each other on the highways.

It’s like Christmas, almost. Holidays mean good times. Good times get people excited—and excited people are dangerous. The bigger the holiday, the more tragedy looms at its elbow. Not that I don’t enjoy a grilled sausage or a dip in the water—I’m just leery of Celebration. Celebration is the teetotalers’ inebriant—and leads to just as much mischief, in my experience. Add a few beers and you’ve got the worst of both worlds—I guess I’m just too old to appreciate that mixture of risk and uncertainty like I did as a young fellow. Oh, yes—I used to celebrate like a madman—but I seem to have lost the knack of it.

As young people we tend to get bored and impatient with peace and quiet—as we age, we learn to cherish it for its lack of problems and trouble. We also acquire a sense of responsibility—the kryptonite of fun—so we’re doomed to lose our taste for loud parties and wild times. Plus, we get winded almost immediately. What can I say? Don’t grow up—if you can help it. It’s a trap!

And enjoy the weekend, everyone—but not too much.

20150521XD-Rijks-SUMMER_ASummerAfternoon_LkGeorge_Stoddard

A Summer Afternoon, Lake George N.Y., Seneca Ray Stoddard, 1855 – 1880 Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

 

Lunch with Greg   (2015May19)

Tuesday, May 19, 2015                                           10:47 PM

My eldest brother, Greg, treated me to lunch this afternoon at The Fish and Farmer Restaurant (which used to be The Box Tree) in Purdys. I had the clam chowder and the soft-shelled crabs with shrimp roulade—impeccably delicious! We had a great afternoon, catching up and shooting the shit. I haven’t been to a fancy restaurant in a dog’s age—I forgot how much fun it is.

Today’s improv was actually played prior to Greg’s arrival, but it needs a name, and that’s what happened today, so that’s that. Hope you like it…

 

“Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty, And Despair…”   (2015May17)

Sunday, May 17, 2015                                              12:19 PM

In the ancient long ago, the gods were a part of our confusion. Our behavior comprised of animalistic reactions to threat, urge, curiosity and temptation. Monotheism, by simplifying and idealizing godhood, helped to idealize humanity, in that one god forced the idea of one people, of humanity as a unit—rather than focusing on our pecking order, or who was friend or foe, we apprehended ourselves as humankind. Under self-absorbed, squabbling gods, Civilization was a disconnected collection of gadgets and power struggles. Only the dawn of Christianity made possible a vision of people as a collective, as an interdependent society.

As a longtime atheist, my focus has been on the history of religion and on the process of progressivism as it relates to freedom of religion. But as a lapsed Catholic I’ve always kept an eye out for any serious information about the supernatural—or anything that might replace the unifying validation of the human species which religion provides. Short of a religious experience, I hold little optimism for personal enlightenment. But I’ve never entirely surrendered the hope that rational analysis of the human condition may yield something of equal solace to religion.

I feel the same way about the supernatural that I feel about the creator—yes, they are undeniable—but, no, the things we think we know about them are old campfire stories, modified over the millennia. The truth of the supernatural or the creator is outside the ken of people. Let’s face it—people didn’t even realize the immense size of existence until ten or fifteen years ago, after they fixed the Hubble and started seeing the universe without an atmosphere in the way. We haven’t even learned the street names in our neighborhood yet—how can we be so smug as to think we understand the city planner?

But in the meantime, the problem for me has become: How do I rationalize my life—how do I explain why I care? To be crude about it: Why don’t I just kill myself? Up until recently, my only answer has been that life is a ride and there’s no sense in not enjoying it—there’s no guarantee that you’ll get anything more than the one. This is sufficient, but unsatisfying. It reduces life to a long, interactive action/comedy/romance/drama story with no real continuity or ultimate point, either to the story, or to participation in the first place.

Just now, however, it occurred to me that the core aspect of religion is the practical discovery of ourselves as a group. Animals act independently, individually, and their effects as a group are statistical, not intentional. Even herd animals act in concert through instinct—intention and awareness play no part in their tactics. People are no different—they act independently, randomly—until leadership enters the mind of one or more, and they begin to manipulate the group towards collective ends.

Ancient people could only form larger tribes and villages by using threats and rewards—leaders who found their practical control too limiting would add supernatural threats and rewards to enhance control. They would tie them in with campfire stories of creation, origins, ghosts and heroes—thus government-sanctioned religion was born.

Still, the individuals in these communities acted independently, taking into account the societal ‘sticks and carrots’, but leaving personal survival as the bottom line for individual behavior. Pharaoh Akhenaten took a stab at monotheism early on—after he died, not only was the old religion restored, but he was demonized in the recorded history of his successors. Jewish monotheism provides examples of both the enduring antipathy it generated in outsiders, and of the unshakeable strength of a community so tightly bound together by their beliefs.

Christianity is special because it was the first widely-popularized combination of the unifying strength of monotheism and the vision of the Golden Rule, or Love thy Neighbor, or whatever catch-phrase you were raised on. Unlike Judaism, early Christianity spread like wildfire—it was revolutionary in that it suggested a new perspective, a vision of humanity as a whole, bound together by love and caring. The interdependence and support of the old tribal ways were re-inserted into the modern, power-oriented outlook of a conquering empire’s people. Caring about one’s neighbor may have been thought country-bumpkin-ish by the citizens of the great Roman Empire—but Christianity revealed it to be Love, instead—an ancient wisdom to be reclaimed.

First, let me get the semantics of Love out of the way. Lovers who mate are a separate issue from the Golden Rule—passionate love has an element of possessiveness to it—that is part of the desire to protect and please one’s lover. But even in carnal love we must fight the natural impulse to confuse love with possession—people are not things, and to love someone is not to own them. Lust, jealousy, fidelity and infidelity confuse carnal affairs even further.

I’m talking about the other, more pedestrian, love that we have for others, be they family, friends, or strangers—we don’t want to bother them, we want to be friends, we want to help if we can. Conversely, we hope that they don’t want to bother us, that they want to be friends, that they’re willing to help us if they can. Whatever spirit it was that led us to invent politeness, before we learned to use politeness as a weapon—that’s the love I’m talking about.

Empathy is a tricky thing—like charity, it can be taken too far and thus rendered madness—but it is still a natural impulse. The question becomes whether empathy is an indulgence or an inspiration. While that question remains open, it should be noted that the Golden Rule does not endorse empathy any more than it endorses common sense.

On the other hand, the concept of unity should not be over-simplified into a goose-stepping regime, either. Early Communism saw the problem of a lack of human unity in the Capitalist paradigm, but it focused on the unity and overlooked the humanity. It’s not that simple—as was evident from the horrific regimes produced by those early efforts. The main problem is that the cohesion of society cannot stem from a government—it can only come from a society that has the will to be good to each other.

The phrase ‘do as you would be done by’ advocates unity, but not the military cohesiveness of a unity of power. The Golden Rule urges us to be a Family of Man, but to avoid using rationales to bar the pursuit of someone else’s happiness. We should be united, but still free to be ourselves. It’s complicated, which is one of the reasons why we aren’t even close to achieving it. Such an approach is also completely unrelated to the money-oriented outlook which blares from every media outlet and is sold from every political speaker’s dais.

Humanity, at the peak of its potential, has been hijacked by the rich and powerful, and turned towards goals so trite and empty that it is shocking to think how fully we immerse ourselves in their fantasy. Add in their insistence that modern arms, pollution, and habitat destruction are all a normal part of modern civilization, and there seems little reason not to turn our backs on them and their agenda, as one person. But we are kept distracted and engaged in their diversions to the point where we don’t ever stop to question our baldly suicidal sprint towards toxifying the planet and enslaving the non-wealthy—sounds like a fun time to me. Just ‘cause it’s called civilization doesn’t mean it has to be civil—right?

But my point is this: we think of the Family of Man as a spiritual aspect, separate from the mundane aspects of food, shelter, money, etc. Yet the religions that reveal this unity are simply recognizing a truth that is not obvious—that we have two natures: one as individuals and one as members of a species. The whole idea of a society suggests a balancing act between these two—we must live our lives, but we must also be members of a society.

There was a recent debate over taxing small-business owners. The question was whether they had created their institutions in a vacuum, or whether they owed some thanks to the local roads they used, the local shops that fed them, and the local workers they employed—in short, the community that made their own achievements possible. Aside from the argument being semantic nonsense, it illustrates the problem with the wealthy—they prize ownership over reality.

Even when rejecting religion, we are still aware of this core vision—that humanity is a creature of its own, and each of us is a piece of it. In such a paradigm, personal survival becomes insignificant except in its effect on the whole. Thus altruism exists, even without traditional faith. We can each choose for ourselves how much we focus on ourselves and how much we focus on our involvement as part of the whole.

This idea is bedeviled by our divisions into seemingly discrete groups—nations, races, societies—which confuse our perception of ourselves as part of the species. But the global community being formed by the digital age makes such distinctions increasingly fatuous—revealed as the spurious, self-generated divisions of more narrow-minded times.

We don’t need to be a Family of Man—but there’s little point to civilization if our basic foundations remain strife and competition—and without that higher vision, we may as well have stayed animals. There’s no glory in a civilization whose ultimate goal is the despoiling of the planet and the subjugation of the masses. That’s pointless and stupid. Capitalism is a fever-dream that lives off our animal impulses, giving us flimsy rationales for ignoring its faults.

Automation and AI are well on their way to making human labor obsolete. What will Capitalism become in a world without jobs—slavery or ultimate freedom? What will money be worth in a world without salaries? And what will we do with our lives when we don’t have to do anything? Once the issue of personal survival is ‘solved’, what will we be left with, except our destiny as a species?

Saturday With Stevie (2015May16)

Saturday, May 16, 2015                                           10:56 PM

Overcast, sprinkly day—our neighbor hurt his hand on a power tool, but Bear had just bought some first aid supplies—now his fingers look like gauzy sausages. If it ain’t one thing, it’s another. But my day went alright—up until now, when I’m finally posting the videos—the Stevie Wonder Covers video is like eighteen minutes long—and I’ve got a splitting headache from all this video editing. Not that my performance wouldn’t make Mr. Wonder cringe to hear it, but he’s on his level, and I’m down here on mine. With some more practice, I may be able to post better attempts in future videos—I love his music. I hope that, at least, can be heard.

 

The improv is silly—on purpose. I felt it was high time I did something silly and this improv qualifies.

 

The Artworks for both videos, by Caspar Luyken and Carel Allard, are, once again, provided (for non-commercial use only) by the wonderful Rejksmuseum (State Museum) in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

“Verzamelen van het manna in de woestijn”, Caspar Luyken, 1712

(“Gathering Manna in the Desert”)

Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

 

“Sterrenkaart van de noordelijke sterrenhemel”, Carel Allard,

Johannes Covens en Cornelis Mortier, Anonymous, c. 1722 – c. 1750

(“Star-Chart of the Northern Hemisphere”)

Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

The Peter Cianflone Session   (2015May15)

Friday, May 15, 2015                                               3:52 PM

It’s been a banner day for music here. First, I got off one decent improv this morning; then Pete arrived, and we knocked out two covers and two improvs—a decent day’s work for my YouTube channel and some decent music, if I do say so.

I’ve been practicing the “Brown-Eyed Girl” cover in anticipation of being accompanied by my professional drummer buddy—but the “My Guy” cover was just easy enough for me to get through without prep. The improvs made me very happy—if there’s a bit of paisley and patchouli in there, there’s a reason—‘nuf said. I’ve never been exactly ‘hard rock’, per se—which is why I appreciate the support from Pete, who definitely is. He always add so much energy, he almost makes me sound healthy!

Here we go…

I really needed today. Lately, I’ve been very down about the piano-playing—I’ve frustrated myself by working on difficult pieces and I’ve been even more frustrated by how hard it is to keep improvising without ‘going backwards’—if that makes any sense. But today was fun—and I’m truly pleased to share the results. Thanks, Pete!

Two Works by Rameau   (2015May14)

Thursday, May 14, 2015                                          8:23 PM

Xper Dunn plays Piano – May 14th, 2015

“Gavotte variée”, from Suite in A minor (1726) by Jean-Philippe Rameau

Notes:

I start this recording with the most difficult of the variations—I was trying to warm up—but then I start from the beginning and play it all the way through. I take some pride in how well I sight-read this Rameau piece, in spite of my poor motor-control—it is a big improvement over the way I’ve played it in the past.

Unfortunately, it is still a terrible job if compared to any proper performance—I recommend listening to Trevor Pinnock’s (or anyone else’s) performances, elsewhere on YouTube, to hear the charm, power, and beauty of this piece when played properly by a musician, on either the piano or, more properly, on the harpsichord.

Plus, while this recording is over ten minutes, Trevor Pinnock plays the piece in about two minutes—so it saves time as well. I only post my own recording because I love this piece and I’ve tried most of my life to play it—like all my classical ‘dream-board projects’—and this may be the closest I ever come.

[hyperlink to proper performance: Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683 — 1764) – Suite in A minor – Gavotte avec 6 Doubles,Trevor Pinnock ]

Xper Dunn plays Piano – May 14th, 2015

“Les Cyclopes” by Jean Philip Rameau   (2015May14)

Note: I don’t play this sheet-music so much as play around with it–and while I eventually hit every written note, there are parts where I’m just improving on the chord changes. See ‘Trevor Pinnock’ (and others) to hear a proper performance of this piece.

[hyperlink to proper performance: Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683 — 1764) – Les Cyclopes. Trevor Pinnock ]

[The Artworks by Cornelis Troost and Johan Barthold Jongkind are provided (for non-commercial use only) by The Rejksmuseum (State Museum) in Amsterdam, Netherlands.]

20150514XD-Rijk-RiverViewInFrance_JohanBJongkind_1855

“River View in France, possibly near Pontoise”, Johan Barthold Jongkind, 1855

Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

20150514XD-Rijk-FamilyGroupNearHarpsichord_CornelisTroost_1739

“Family Group near a Harpsichord”, Cornelis Troost, 1739

Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

Writing, Good and Bad   (2015May09)

 

 

Saturday, May 09, 2015                                           12:52 PM

In the last thirty days I’ve typed 81 pages, approximately 24,000 words. You’d think I had something important or entertaining to say. But I have, unfortunately, reached a point where I’m able to capture some of my stream of consciousness and hold it steady long enough to type two or three pages of (mostly) coherent commentary on whatever subject is drifting through my mind at any given time. There’s a difference between just writing, and writing about something. Having recently begun an attempt to write something specific about a single subject, I’m made aware that stream-of-consciousness writing is not actually writing. Actual writing requires the writer to take a step outside of one’s stream of consciousness and write with intent—far more arduous and demanding than simply jotting down thoughts as they cross one’s mind.

So, as with many things (music, art, lifestyle…) I am not learning to write—I’m trying to unlearn bad habits in writing. Well, perhaps ‘trying’ is an exaggeration—I’m writing stream of consciousness right here and now! But I’m just taking a break from the effort of writing something other than the obvious. Question: Is it wrong to do something the wrong way as a respite from the hard work of doing it properly—or can I do both? We’ll see, I guess.

I went through my blog yesterday—I wrote a post about drinking tea and half-way through I started to get a bad feeling that I was repeating something I had written before. So I went through my blog to check the other posts related to tea. It turned out that I hadn’t actually repeated myself—I only thought I was because I was in the same stream of consciousness from which I’d written the other posts. My comments and observations were unique, but they all related to the frame of mind in which I contemplate the ancient cultural art of tea—the growing, the buying, the brewing, the methods, the taste, the varieties, et.al.

But tea accounts for but a handful of my posts. Many posts are political, philosophical, or music-related—and over several years of blogging, the probability of repeating myself is far greater than with, say, tea. Then there’s the drawback of simply talking about the same subject all the time—my son once complained that he didn’t want to read any more of my blog posts concerning the evils of Republicanism and Capitalism. He wasn’t complaining that I was unoriginal in any specific way, or that he didn’t like my writing—he was just sick of that subject—and who can blame him?

Thus, I try to avoid politics in my new posts—aside from tiring my readers, I feel that evil is something we should avoid obsessing about, no matter how excited we get about specific evils. It’s the same reasoning that made me stop watching crime procedurals on TV, like “Law & Order” or “Criminal Minds”—I figure it can’t be good for my mental health to watch shows based on murder and other violence. The shows make heroes out of crime-fighters, and that’s all well and good, but the overall subject matter is murder—and I don’t want a lot of that floating around in my brain. And since I don’t want to be an audience for evil, it makes little sense to be a propagator of such.

On the other hand, there’s a reason for all the murder shows. Conflict in drama—in storytelling in general—is a sine qua non. You can’t have a good story without a struggle. You can’t tell of a glorious victory unless it is also a narrow escape from disaster. Two people who fall in love and live happily ever after isn’t a story, it’s a sentence. And while modern entertainment has some pretty simpleminded premises and plotlines, even Hollywood needs more than a single sentence.

I have no idea why social media has suddenly gone dark for me. At first, MySpace and Blogger seemed delightful toys. The re-connecting with long-lost acquaintances, the connecting with new people of shared interests—both presented as technical marvels, bringing everyone closer and giving everyone a voice. Increased bandwidth made uploading every little essay, artwork, graphic image, audio or video recording a matter of moments—I have uploaded my share—hundreds and hundreds of them.

People read them, saw them, listened to them—they liked them, shared them, and commented on them—a dream I didn’t know I had, came true: an audience inside a box on my desk. In the world in which I grew up, a sickly, un-talented artist could only annoy his or her immediate family—now, people like me can annoy the entire globe. But I loved it. To date, I’ve uploaded 1,673 YouTube videos, with 70,335 views and 60 subscribers since 2009. My blog on WordPress has 576 posts and 80 followers since 2012. It wasn’t until now, in 2015, that a sense a futility has crept in and tainted the ‘innocence’ of my uploading ‘spirit’.

The only trouble is: my writings appear now on the same screens as Shakespeare and Poe; my drawings appear on the same screen as Da Vinci and Escher; my piano-playing is side-by-side with Horowitz and Glenn Gould. I could get more followers and increase my Klout score if I simply posted links to Shakespeare, Poe, Da Vinci, Escher, Horowitz, and Glenn Gould.

But when did I switch from “sharing my interests” by uploading my own junk, to worrying over the reactions, the interest, the attraction of my posts over someone else’s? In a way, uploading original content makes me a performer—and as I became conscious of having an audience, I naturally fell into the mindset of one who performs. It’s the old Heisenberg Principle—the act of observing a thing changes the state of the thing. My awareness of being observed changed the way I felt about what I uploaded.

It wasn’t only my awareness of an ‘audience’ that changed my view—I also became aware of the ‘competition’, if you will. The above-mentioned ‘great artists’ are a tiny sample of the enormity of culture online. I didn’t even mention the hundreds of pop artists, the thousands of comics and graphic novels, the many museums with images of their entire collection available online. Symphony orchestras by the score, performing uncounted classical masterpieces are, even so, outdone by the Guttenburg Experiment, a free online source for every English-language book in the public domain. Every book. Every. Book.

So, yeah, my perspective was altered by my growing awareness that sharing online isn’t just a personal act—it is also a small addition to the entirety of Western Culture, most of which has found its way onto the Internet. That stuff wasn’t there before—my stuff didn’t suffer so by comparison. Now it does.

Beyond the use of the Internet as an audience, there is the social aspect. My social awkwardness was greatly reassured by the distancing effect of social media. But even a couple of prisoners, communicating by tapping Morse Code on the walls, will eventually grow familiar and get personal—social media only starts out as distancing—it ends up as the same collection of repressions, politenesses, sensitivities, obligations, and awkwardnesses that comprise real socializing. Arguments are had, illnesses are discussed—even deaths in the family come fast and furious when you have hundreds of Facebook friends. Being obligated to wish someone happy birthday every day will start to make it seem like a chore. And with all that agita, all those people are still miles away, in different states, different countries—even different continents. There’s no touching.

I’m still drawn to my PC, hoping for distraction, looking for attention, or just conversation—but when I sit down and take the mouse, I don’t know where to click anymore.

Recently, I let myself be convinced that I might write something in the professional sense—a bit of fiction—and my editor’s prime directive was, “But you can’t share it all over the Internet, like you do everything else!” So I can’t tell you anything about it, Mr.-and-Mrs.-Nobody-Reads-My-Blog. And here I experience a strange phenomenon—my blog posts are casual ramblings wherein I ‘share’ with the universe—they make me feel less isolated. But writing something I can’t share with anyone (except one person who’s going to be judgmental about whatever I share) makes me feel more isolated.

In school we are often told to ‘show our work’. In the world of grown-ups, you never show your work—a professional never shows the public anything but a finished product—otherwise, it ‘ruins the magic’. To prove the rule, there will sometimes be an exhibit of say, Michelangelo’s sketches—or a book of T. S. Eliot’s unpublished poems—but such exceptions can only exist after the artists in question have established their greatness. Once a person’s name becomes more than an identification, that name’s ‘brand’ can be stamped on anything, tee shirts included, and marketing will take care of itself.

Taming the wild elephant, Anonymous, c. 1725 - c. 1745 Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

Taming the wild elephant, Anonymous, c. 1725 – c. 1745 Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

Portrait of a Lady, Anonymous, c. 1635 - c. 1645 Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

Portrait of a Lady, Anonymous, c. 1635 – c. 1645
Source Graphic courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website

Two Covers Twice and Then Some (2015May10)

Yesterday’s videos are weird — the cover video is of “Brown-Eyed Girl” by Van Morrison, and “Do It Again” by Brian Wilson and Mike Love –I play both songs in the morning and then again in the evening. I had hoped for one to be better than the other, but they are both imperfect in their own way. I’ve been sight-reading out of my weight-class lately, and these recent videos are evidence of that, but there it is, anyhow.

The improv is weird too, though I can’t say exactly why.

The graphic images used are downloaded from the new Metropolitan Museum of Art online collection:

“Prayer in the Mosque”

Artist: Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, Vésoul 1824–1904 Paris) – Date: 1871
Medium: Oil on canvas – Dimensions: 35 x 29 1/2 in. (88.9 x 74.9 cm)
Credit Line: Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Bequest of Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, 1887
Accession Number: 87.15.130 – On view in Gallery 804
[© 2000–2015 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.]

“Pygmalion and Galatea”

Artist: Jean-Léon Gérôme (French, Vésoul 1824–1904 Paris) – Date: ca. 1890
Medium: Oil on canvas – Dimensions: 35 x 27 in. (88.9 x 68.6 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Louis C. Raegner, 1927
Accession Number: 27.200 – Not on view
[© 2000–2015 The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All rights reserved.]

Irish Breakfast   (2015May07)

Thursday, May 07, 2015                                          3:39 PM

“Yorkshire Gold”®—that’s the stuff—an Irish Breakfast tea I obtain through the English Tea Store. Don’t get excited—the English Tea Store is just one of Google’s ‘Trusted Stores’—it’s not some authentic little old lady with a cat in London or anything ‘Harry Potter-ish’ like that. The only thing English about the English Tea Store is that it offers foreign brands. An ‘American Tea Store’ would have just two brands: Lipton and Tetley—if you don’t count Snapple or Nestea, which are produced in the only way average Americans like their tea—iced and flavored.

But I’m an old man with old impressions—truth be told, nowadays there are a lot of new tea brands on the supermarket shelves—greens, chais, herbals—a whole shelf-section of esoteric tea exotica. But they don’t count—no caffeine. No, the Old World understands that tea is a good drug and that non-caffeinated tea is an abomination against nature. They give their teas arcane names like Earl Grey Supreme or Lap Sang Soo Chong. Those are two of my favorites, by the way—the Earl Grey Supreme has a complexity similar to a good wine, and the Lap Sang Soo Chong includes actual burnt leaves, which give it a smoky flavor that couldn’t go better with tobacco.

While I enjoy a good cup of fancy tea, my everyday taste runs more towards the basics—and Yorkshire Gold’s Irish Breakfast tea is some of the blackest, bitterest tea you’ll ever taste—coffee be damned. When it’s good and hot, it’ll warm your insides like a wood-burning stove is lit in there.

I only recently became interested in tea this last mid-winter—I bought a glass teapot with a strainer and some loose-leafed teas, just to experience the real tea flavor. It was an eye-opener to me, having grown up with nothing but Lipton in a bag, with milk and sugar—which ain’t half-bad, don’t get me wrong. If I hadn’t liked Lipton I’d never have been tempted to go further—but, boy, is there further to go. I had these cute little tins of several loose-leafed teas—Bear asked me to save the tins for her when the tea is gone. I’d brew up a pot of real tea and enjoy it in a small cup; then I’d have to throw away the clump of tea-leaves, and rinse out the pot, especially the strainer bit. Some leaf-bits would always get past the sieve—that became annoying, trying to drink the last of the cup without swallowing the leaves.

So then I tried tea-balls—those little metal containers on a chain used to dunk the ball in the hot water. Still, some leaf detritus came through—it was better than that strainer-coil inside the teapot spout, but it wasn’t perfect. And rinsing the tea-ball out each time was almost more trouble than cleaning the pot had been. Eventually, I found the perfect solution—some company makes empty tea-bag sleeves. I bought a box of them. You just add a teaspoon of tea (it always tickles me to think that I’m one of the rare people who use a teaspoon to measure tea) and close it up—voila, homemade tea-bag of whatever loose-leaf tea you prefer.

It worked so good that I bought a mini-stapler to close them (I didn’t want to keep swiping the one off of Bear’s work-desk). So for a while, I made my own Yukon Gold tea-bags. Then that got somewhat tedious, so last week I decided to buy the pre-made Yorkshire Gold teabags. I don’t like to buy stuff frequently, so I ordered a box of one hundred—this huge case of tea showed up yesterday via UPS. It seemed excessive but then I did a little mental math—one hundred tea-bags, about fifty weeks in the year—that’s only two cups of tea per week.

In reality, I drink three or four cups a day, so one hundred teabags is about a month’s supply—still, when you see it all in one box, it’s a lot of tea. Also, I have several other teas I drink for variety, so it should last a little more than a month. I hope so—this stuff ain’t cheap. I should do a cost analysis—it’s bound to be cheaper than coffee—anything’s cheaper than coffee—isn’t it?

Our kitchen isn’t what you’d call spacious, so I didn’t want to add a crate of teabags. I tried stuffing handfuls of Yukon Gold teabags into the emptied spaces of my existing teabag boxes and into the case that’s already there to hold my loose-tea tins and empty teabags and such. But Yukon Gold went for the deluxe foil packet for each bag—it’s about twice the size of the Lipton and Twining packets, so I had to jam them into the boxes to close the lids. I still had an armful left, so I put them in a Baggie and threw that into the cupboard. Our kitchen is virtually bursting with teabags—but I’ll work through them all too soon. Next time I’ll buy four boxes of twenty, or something.

Tea is trickier than coffee. With coffee, I make a big pot and just keep nuking each mugful after the pot goes cold—very low maintenance caffeinating. Tea is more delicate, so I don’t like to make a big pot—I don’t want to nuke old tea. It just won’t do—so I end up making tea by the mug, a separate procedure for every cup of tea. It’s distracting—especially compared to my old coffee days. But boy, howdy, how a cup of coffee perks me up now that I’m used to tea—wow! That’s an added benefit. It’s like aspirin—if you take aspirin a lot, it doesn’t do much, but if you haven’t had any for a long time, you can’t believe how effective it is. All good drugs have the same tripwire—they’re only good in moderation, but the better they are the more you are tempted to be immoderate. ‘Twas ever thus, as my dad used to say.

Earlier today, when I uploaded “Xper Dunn plays Piano – May 7th, 2015 / Improv – My Neighbor’s Garden” to YouTube I felt I had to add:

NOTE: These pictures are a combination of the flowers in my neighbors’ yard and in mine. The beautifully tended quince and wild bleeding hearts are my neighbors’—all of the messy stuff is from our place.

It had occurred to me that no one else on the block would want to think pictures of our place were theirs. I don’t garden—in the traditional sense. It’s more like spectating. But everyone else is far more adult and competent about their yards—and it shows. They’re really beautiful—especially next door’s yard. Well, the other-side next door is a landscape contractor, so his yard is pretty spectacular too—but they have a fence to keep the deer away from their tulips—and to keep their cute little dog from wandering off. We can see it out our windows, but that would feel more like spying than photography. Besides, that’s why I go outside—it’s hard to take a good picture out a window—I’ve tried.

So the improv went pretty well today. There were a couple of walk-throughs—not that I’m complaining—that’s life when your living room is your recording studio. It does interrupt the thread—I just start in again in a different key but, generally, the less distraction the better with these things. On the other hand, it’s very convenient to have an excuse for failing to achieve greatness. (I gonna get there! I just know it!) Oh well, maybe greatness isn’t my thing.

Journal Entries (May 4th & 5th, 2015)

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Monday, May 04, 2015                                            3:08 PM

Such A Beauty   (2015May04)

I know a woman who is a broth-witch. She takes a mess of crab-claw shells and boils them all day, filling the house with a seaside perfume—and by evening there’s a bowl of sinfully rich shrimp chowder like you’ve never imagined. Or take today, when what looked like the ejecta from my lawnmower catcher, and a handful of various spices, again filled the living room with a multi-layered scent, the subtlety of which hinted at the many ways such a potful could have gone wrong. But when the steam left the pressure cooker, there was a bowl of clear vegetable broth on the kitchen table. I lowered my nose to inhale the steam—paradise. And I’m a meat-broth kind of guy.

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I use to wonder what that woman saw in all those cooking shows—turned out it was a professional interest—she could kill on one of those shows, if she had a mind to.

It’s eighty-two degrees! I have photos from about a month ago—three feet of snow. It may not be climate change, but it’s sure-as-hell hot out there. The bleeding hearts are blooming—the neighbors’ cherry-blossom tree is a pink, humming mob of bumble-bees. The breeze is blowing. This beats snow any day.

It’s a beautiful day. What more can I say? May the fourth be with you.

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**-**-**

Tuesday, May 05, 2015                                            4:07 PM

In Which I Disappear Up My Own Egress   (2015Mar05)

When I type phrases using words like ‘erudite’ or ‘pomposity’ I risk sounding pompous and over-educated. When I employ what I think of as bitter satire I risk sounding childish and flippant. And certainly if I don’t write well, those points become confused with a host of unconnected difficulties. I’m one of those idiots who think that I should bring all my education and emotion to my writing—you’d think I’d never heard of style, much less manipulation.

I blame it on honesty—a concept with which I have much concern. Honesty doesn’t go well with good manners—another concern of mine. Thus I feel constrained in writing what I know—I don’t know anything that doesn’t involve everyone else. Plus fiction (my favorite thing) was, I thought, the ultimate goal—but good creative writing is a process of manipulating the reader and of imagining, well, fictions, i.e. lies. Good fiction writers are good storytellers—they have no compunction about telling tall tales—whereas I’m too hung up on the ethics of both the inventing of entertaining fictions and the recycling of my personal history as fodder for the writing factory.

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I write quite comfortably in this blog. You can’t see the sausage being made—I have to back up and correct every other word because of tremors and generally poor motor control, but the result doesn’t show that. I don’t know—maybe I’m afraid to let myself go as a creative writer—it reveals a great deal about a person. Where I have the courage of my convictions when it comes to sharing my thoughts, as I do in this blog, sharing my feelings is quite another story. A great deal of social posturing is concerned with maintaining a strong front, a poker face, the eye of the tiger, even. Exposing oneself in the writing of fiction feels, for a close reader like myself, very naked-ish—I don’t know if I have the balls.

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What is a story? A young person leaves home and enters the woods, as Joseph Campbell might begin. More modern stories might begin with the humdrum lives of two young people who have no idea they’re about to fall in love. Beyond the adventure/journey story and the love story, there’s the family drama, the saga, the epic, and the mythos—all in various flavors of time period, interlocutor, class, culture, setting, fantasy, psychology, etc. However, there’s been a whole lot of fiction written—and more being published every day. The best modern fiction either lasers in on one aspect of the human condition or else ‘goes big’, interlocking and intertwining several of the above scenarios.

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It’s all become quite huge in concept. Plot-outlined whiteboards end up looking like dense electronic blueprints. Big-money fiction writers use many hands—researchers, writing assistants, an editor or two—and, nowadays, in many cases, aspiring writers try to keep up through involvement in a writing class, a writing workshop, or a writing commune—either geographical or digital in location. While writing still consumes the lion’s share of a writer’s working hours, the idea of a writer working in solitude and sending the finished work off to a publisher is as antique as Jane Austen, who died in 1817. And she was pretty good, too. The rest of us need help—or so it would seem. I’m not sure I have the energy to find out.

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I can virtually hear all you he-men out there: “You don’t know if you have the balls? You don’t know if you have the energy? Quit with all the negative vibes and make it happen, sissy-boy.” Yeah, yeah—I get it. But everybody has a different context. In my context, exercise produces negative results—added effort only brings extreme fatigue. Ordinary human bodies recharge after exertion—mine, not so much, or so quick. Do you remember how, in the Bourne Identity, Matt Damon’s character wonders why he can’t remember his name, but he knows he can run so many miles before his hands start shaking too much to aim a gun? Well, think about that stat—fatigue doesn’t just reduce strength, it reduces nervous control and mental concentration as well.

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The virus is no longer preventing my liver from detoxifying my blood. I can exercise now without flooding my bloodstream with the toxins of exertion. Well, no, that’s wrong. Everyone gets a flood of toxins from exertion but the body, especially the liver, cleans that stuff all up. In my present case the central nervous system got its feelings hurt, back when things were really bad and now it goes off on a tantrum every time it gets a whiff of muscular activity, like talking a short walk—you’d think I’d asked it to scale K-2. So maybe the he-men are right—maybe if I powered through all the pain and tremors and spasms and restless leg for ten or twenty months I could get myself back in the fight. Trouble is, I’ve never been a big ‘self-control’ nut—I have trouble getting myself to drink coffee in the morning—even remembering to.

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Plus, I’ve spent many years with the perspective of one who ruthlessly simplifies life to the least possible motion, conserving a tiny bit of energy for the most essential activities. In my not-so-long-ago world, pushing myself was not only unproductive, it was dangerous. And there is an accretion of coping mechanisms encrusting my life-style: nicotine, caffeine, junk food—all of which would have to go if I attempted to torture myself back into being able to jog around the block. It would mean Olympic-level training just to get me in semi-average shape—at my age, with my stress levels, I could blow a gasket trying to get into the kind of shape I may never see again.

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As you can see, I am beset by doubts and weakness. I’d be embarrassed to admit it if I thought I was the only one—or if I thought it was possible to be a thinking person without such baggage.

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Someone on Facebook remarked, “I hope you know we don’t make as big a deal about it down here in Mexico.”—which makes a strange sort of sense—since Napoleon would have gone on to invade North America, if he hadn’t been stopped in Mexico.

The video is more to show you my garden pics than for the music—not my day, musically.

Faith In Outer Space   (2015May03)

Sunday, May 03, 2015                                                       11:40 AM

Freedom of religion is a wonderful thing. It makes it possible for me to abstain from religion without being burnt at the stake or beheaded. That’s a good thing. It makes things better all around, for women, for gays, for children—the judgmental authoritarianism that allows the religious to marginalize women, condemn gays, and abuse children is prevented from becoming part of our legal system. And where such dogma is already infused into society, we have legal recourse to remedy the situation, as with the present argument in the Supreme Court over same-sex marriage.

Those with the notion that religious freedom should allow them to treat others differently, such as denying service to gays, do not understand the difference between religion and law. Belief is a mental phenomenon, not a physical one—where belief informs action, however, things get stickier. You can choose to live your own life as a believer, but imposing those beliefs on others is not ‘freedom’, it is its opposite—ingenuous piety notwithstanding.

Having gone from a civilization wherein religion was a given, to a civilization where religion is optional, we have achieved personal freedom. Those of us entirely without religion are tempted to view this as progress, with the inherent suggestion that religion is obsolete and will, one day, fade away. But believers see religious freedom as an accommodation to the variety of religions rather than as a step away from religion in general.

There’s a difference. We can be proud that human beings are the ‘only race’, the reason that God created the universe—or we can have the pride of a young race that is joining the galactic community by reaching the stars. If the former, we are encouraged to stay in our cradle, this fragile planet with limited resources and time. If the later, we know that we must leave this planet, colonize the solar system and perhaps beyond—or just wait to die out when the planet does. We can condescend to the stay-at-homes by justifying space exploration through its useful by-products, the science and the tech—but the real reason is just that we have to leave.

I can imagine some protest at that statement but be assured that I’m speaking in general terms. We don’t all have to leave—you, personally, don’t have to leave—I’m not expecting to get the opportunity to leave Earth within my lifetime. But eventually some of us have gotta go. Enough people have to populate the solar system to ensure the survival of the race beyond the Earth’s expiration date, whenever that may be.

The end of the Earth may not be coming soon, but it’s coming. We know that now—we know that Earth was once uninhabitable, that it will be again—we know that Earth floats amongst a sea of extinction-level-sized asteroids and meteors, any one of which could ‘hit the jackpot’ at any time. And beyond all the cosmological constraints, we also have to face the fact that our use of planetary resources may reach a tipping point long before any of these lesser probabilities manifest themselves.

We need to start getting our raw materials from further away, someplace where we’re not trying to breathe and drink water and grow food. And the human race could also use a little elbow room—one planet for seven billion people requires a lot of natural resources and a lot of real estate. Our solar system is begging to be colonized and developed. And our planet is begging for a break.

Does religion get in the way of this? Well, religion is authoritarian—it wants to be in charge. And those in charge are uncomfortable with change. Space exploration certainly qualifies as change. You do the math.

However, some changes might benefit us. Earth’s population may not benefit directly—even with the ability to emigrate to space, population growth on the surface wouldn’t change significantly. Overpopulation will eventually bleed this planet dry. But at the same time, a colonized solar system would see population growth as a good thing—and restless young people on Earth would have a frontier to turn to. If we’re going to overpopulate ourselves to death, it seems a small thing to allow some of that excess population to take a stab at perpetuating the species outside of our gravity-well. Think of it as back-up.

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“The Explosion of the Spanish Flagship during the Battle of Gibraltar”  by Cornelis Claesz. van Wieringen, c. 1621    (Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum website)

I Wuz Robbed   (2015May02)

Saturday, May 02, 2015                                                     3:18 PM

Last week was a doozy. An old friend passed away suddenly. My wife succeeded in her five year quest for a MS degree in Occupational Therapy. The weather demonstrated that winter is well and truly over. I played Gershwin well enough to share it with the public on YouTube. I did a pretty good job of ignoring the news, but I heard about the five Baltimore cops charged with the death of a suspect in custody (and the demonstrations and riots). Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for President in 2016—apparently more to provide fodder for Jon Stewart than from any real desire to be in charge of this troubled country. But if he thinks he’s too busy being senator, I’d advise he drop out of his run for the presidency. A guy with that short a fuse would probably implode the first year. Not that I wouldn’t relish seeing that old curmudgeon in charge. They thought they had trouble with Obama? OMG.

My thoughts are confused and scattered. My plans are bleak. My health could be better—but it could be worse. I’d truly love to have something useful to do. Those advocates of service have the right idea—but how to serve without becoming a servant? I’d like to be useful without having to diminish myself—is that possible? It was so much simpler back when I felt that being useful at any job was acceptable—now I’m so old that I can’t help thinking about the ethical probity of anything I do—it really gets in the way. Plus I’ve lost all patience with self-important assholes—it’s too bad that they are the gatekeepers of just about every activity on the planet.

Anyone worth their salt tells themselves ‘the hell with someone else’s project’ and starts up a little project of their own. And I want to—Oh, how I want to. But it takes drive—and I only have drive on every third day. It takes me a couple of days to recover from those days, so I can’t expect to have them one after the other, like a normal entrepreneur.

This writing business—I started to just ‘stream-of-consciousness’ write this blog a few years ago—I figured I’d get warmed up and then write something with some substance to it. But years later all I have is a blog about the search for substance in life.

The same happened with my YouTube channel—I figured there might be something to my piano improvs—they’re not consciously derivative of anything other than Western Music in general—and they are different from anything else out there—even the New Age piano improvs (though some might say that difference is only in a lack of something in my own efforts). Unfortunately, instead of building an audience, I’ve started to become disenchanted with my own work, wondering if there was ever anything there and if it’s good enough for other people to get excited about.

It becomes increasingly clear that my history will not be that of an obscure musician, but that of a musically-ungifted man with a compulsion to make music, however poorly. In a way that is less painful than my experience with the graphic arts. My early gift for draughtsmanship misled me into thinking I was an artist—but an artist needs to have something to say, something inside that needs expressing. Once I had learned to draw, I was faced with the awful question of ‘what to draw?’ and I had no answer.

Writing, too, is misleading. I spent more of my lifetime reading books than I spent talking to people and, with these years of blogging practice, I’ve learn to speak back in the familiar language of books. I write better than I can talk—but, again, the trouble is in finding a subject—a story that needs to come out of my soul. All this verbal meandering on my blog is simply evidence that I can write just fine—but I have nothing important to say.

I should have been a craftsman. I should have taken my love of music and become a harpsichord-maker. I should have taken my love of graphic arts and become a designer or a sign-painter. I should have taken my love of words and become a journalist. But these things take time—they should not be left for late-middle-age.

My main problem was having the guts of my life torn out by HepC. I began suffering physical and mental degeneration in my early thirties—just when I would have started coming into my own after youthful success in systems and programming. I even left my job briefly, seeking something new—but my brain could no longer absorb the new ideas I needed to learn for the new job. I flunked a course at IBM on using the new 360 mini-computers—which may have made no difference since the world was turning to PCs just then, but I was out of the fight, intellect-wise, regardless. I returned to my old job and hung on there until my fatigue and my brain-rot got me fired.

In the process, I took on stress to the point where I’m still trying to shed it. So my emotional health isn’t too sturdy. And the HepC cure was available only last year, when I was fifty-eight. That’s a full quarter-century of my life wiped out by my near-death experience with HepC, liver cancer, and a liver transplant. And after missing out on the meat of life, now I’m supposed to do something with the dregs.

Can you see me at a job interview? I can—it’s a frightening vision—the interviewer is half my age, thinks my education ended in high school (Can I blame them? I have no degree.) and I’m sitting there trying not to swear and hoping I don’t get diarrhea before the interview is over. I don’t respect the product. I don’t respect the management. And I certainly don’t respect this young pain-in-the-ass who expects me to be ingratiating and submissive. I’d just as soon kill the son of a bitch. Good thing I’m on disability.

So that’s my brilliant career. So far.