Okay, this time I’m giving credit where credit is due–Sherryls’ got the green thumb. Harlan, however, makes an appearance towards the end of the video (see yesterday’s blog about the Big Tree across the street).
Monthly Archives: June 2015
The Cajon Box (2015Jun25)
Thursday, June 25, 2015 8:01 PM
My friend Pete came by today. While I was waiting for him I took a few photos of my neighbor Bob’s big tree. My other neighbor Harlan happened to bicycle by and offered the loan of a Cajon—a sort of a box used as a drum—the different sides of the box make different drum sounds. It’s all the rage, or so I’m told. Pete made good use of it—but I’ll let you hear for yourself.
I’ve had a good week. Here are three more videos from earlier.
And here’s some more photos of the big tree.
The Frustrated Musician (2015Jun19)
Saturday, June 20, 2015 1:12 AM
I’ve been trying to hook up my electronic piano to my PC using a MIDI-to-USB connection, but my Music Studio software isn’t picking up any input from the MIDI port. Maybe I need a new Sound Card—I don’t know. All I know is after hours of wasted time, I had to settle for recording my e-piano’s own playback—so, apologies for the sound quality. In the video, you can see that I dance about as well as I play.
The title graphic is from the Rijksmuseum—it’s a page from a French marionette catalog of the 18th century, I think:
[Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Français, 1786, eee 312: La minaudiere Marinette…, Pierre Charles Baquoy, Esnauts & Rapilly, 1786 (Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum Website)]
The other improv is me trying to reproduce that first improv, but on my usual Mason Hamlin baby grand piano. Thus “Reiterations”….
Also, please check out my new poem:
Time To Play (2015Jun17)
[“Fighting Peasants”] “Vechtende boeren” by Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne, 1600 – 1662
Things are calm and peaceful—nothing’s wrong—and that’s excellent news. The past three days I’d been feeling pretty homely at the piano, but I couldn’t post it until now because I did a special background movie for the three improvs—”Winter (Amusement on the Ice)” by Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne, (1625) and “A Musical Party” by Adriaen Pietersz. van de Venne, (c. 1635 – c. 1645) –source graphics downloaded courtesy of : The Rijksmuseum Website and converted using “Photo to Movie 5.0” (software from LQ Graphics, Inc.).
GOT—Grown-Olds’ Tolkien (2015Jun15)
Monday, June 15, 2015 5:04 PM
When Game of Thrones started on HBO I avoided it, assuming that it would be the soft-core-porn/period-costume-soap-opera/bloodlust-gross-out that most semi-serious Premium-Channel Series-es are. It wasn’t until the genius of Trey Parker and Matt Stone presented me with the three-episode trilogy-spoof of GOT on South Park (with that unforgettable theme: ‘Floppy wieners, floppy wieners…’) that I became interested in just how outside the norm this show was.
Parker and Stone seemed to think that HBO’s dramatization of George R. R. Martin’s decade-long book series, “Fire and Ice”, was representative of homoeroticism, women-hating, and a thirst for bloodshed that didn’t speak well for Martin’s interior life. (–And that he talked a good dragon game but when it came down to it there wasn’t much actual dragon in the story.)
Having watched seasons four and five now, I have to agree with Trey and Matt. But as I considered that, I was also struck by the differences between George R. R. Martin’s GOThrones and J.R.R. Tolkien’s TLOTRings (via Peter Jackson). While the double-R middle initials are indicative of just how derivative GOT is of everything Middle Earth, the differences between the kids’ fantasies and the adults’ fantasies are somewhat surprising.
Martin is only one of a long line of ‘followers’ of Tolkien’s original vision of a realistic fantasy world, but Martin’s creative plagiarism is far exceeded by his creative originality in transforming Tolkien-ish memes for an adult audience. That is something even Tolkien never did (and we won’t go into the question of whether or not he just had too much class to go there). It may not have been possible to do so, had Martin not lucked into a generation of grown-ups who grew up on Bilbo and Frodo and Gandalf—but that’s part and parcel of our modern media-hungry culture. It’s no worse than going from Star Wars to Terminator, if you think about it.
Most interesting, to me, is the difference in variety. In a child’s fantasy there are kings, princesses, dragons, wizards, ghosts, monsters, elves, dwarves, and woodland creatures that speak in English accents. In adult fantasies there is sex, violence, power, and corruption—oh, and dragons. Is this representative of the Uncertainty Principle—like Schrödinger’s Cat? Does a child’s fantasy need to match the breadth of a child’s potential future, while an adult’s fantasy needs only indulge the lusts of adulthood? I’m afraid so.
And we see this phenomenon elsewhere—puberty as a singularity, wherein all childish dreams are resolved into the comparatively dreary day-to-day urges of adults who have shed their dreams. I blame it on Capitalism—on our modern beliefs: that money is power—that money is everything—and that dreams are only for children. Something some Tea-Partier said to me online the other day during an exchange over illegal immigration seems to sum it up—he said, “It’s good to be nice, but…” And that, to me, says it all—today, we believe that the things people have always believed in should always bow before the power of money—ethics, scruples, charity, mercy—all bullshit when the bill comes due. I’m sorry, but that’s fucked up.
Like freedom, ethics and principles only exist when we are prepared to lose something for them. I’m not just talking about the grandiose idea of being willing to die for what you believe in. Today, the question is: Are we prepared to be inconvenienced for what we believe in? Are we prepared to make less money, even to make no money until we find another job? When we try to minimize the importance of our urges to ‘cheat’ on our principles in the smallest of ways, we are really minimizing the importance of the principles themselves.
Yes, that does sound like some goody-two-shoes bullshit right there—fresh off the farm. But when you consider the insidiousness of today’s commercialism; when you consider the constancy of the thousand cuts that lobbyists inflict on our government; when you see or hear the thousand new ways to lie spawned by global media—perhaps you can see where some determination in those of us on the side of the angels is in order.
I feel for the fundamentalists—I do. They want to strike back at the filth. But the true filth is invisible to them—just as their ignorance makes their own hatred invisible to them. As I’ve heard many times—‘if you want to kill someone in the name of your God please start with yourself’. Plus, I feel that any attitude that includes murder, or even mild violence, is lacking in the rationality department. (And, yes, trying to legislate women’s reproductive organs and ostracizing gays are both forms of violence).
Some people look at Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. as people who had the courage to face violence without offering violence in return. But many people look at them as people who were murdered. They don’t acknowledge that a person’s principles are not a suit of clothes—they are a part of ourselves. If we give them up, we die in a far more final way than when we meet the inevitable, whenever that may come.
I have some experience in this so I can tell you—it’s nearly impossible to talk about being good without sounding like a goody-two-shoes or worse, sounding grandiose and all Christ-complex-ey. But fuck all you assholes—I’m gonna be good—and if that doesn’t work out to me being rich and famous, I don’t give a fuck. I’m doing it anyway. Fuck all y’all. Oh-and fuck George R.R. Martin’s GOT—twenty minutes of shame-walking a naked woman through city streets for the season five finale—what the fuck is that? Misogyny much, George?
Prove That I Am Sentient
War-Torn Porn (2015Jun11)
Thursday, June 11, 2015 1:52 PM
Everyone chases after wealth and attention but Love brings riches and celebrity that you get to keep—which is nice.
I was just sitting outside my front door. There’s an ornamental bench there that wouldn’t even bear the weight of a more fulsome adult and I was trying my best to act comfortable while unsuccessfully trying to find a painless position. Props to furniture makers—it seems that just nailing some lumber into the shape of a bench can easily result in an instrument of torture if you don’t know what you’re doing.
As I sat there I noticed that various birds were calling and singing around me in every direction, that bees and insects were making different buzzing sounds all around me as well. And the whisper of distant conversations from different homes within earshot of my door murmured to me—the distant traffic of various vehicles quietly rasped afar. Each sound had a spherical range with radii that varied. At this time of early summer in Westchester everything happens in a flotilla of green—profusions of grass, weeds, ivy, shrubs, bushes—and the mighty trees making a ceiling of green. It was beautiful. Then a bunch of cars drove by (I think one was a rental truck) and the bubble popped. Oh well.
Before the cars came I was thinking that the profound beauty of a quiet street in Westchester is partly due to its permanency. The last military action Westchester saw was when they captured Major John Andrè, the British spy, over in Waccabuc someplace, in 1780 or so. And I’ve only lived in Lake Lincolndale for thirty-five years, but I’m pretty sure if the police ever came here in force it was for a barbeque at the club house down by the lake.
People where I live have no way of knowing what it is to live in a place that doesn’t have that kind of security—except for the vets, I imagine. It’s almost cruel to be showing us world news.
When I was a kid, the news would expose something bad happening—and the bad guys would be taken down, the war would end, segregation would be abolished. It was your civic duty to keep up with the news—‘the news’ was important stuff. This thing we have in its place now is a shadowy insult to the memory of the old days and worse than useless—more like harmful. But enough about things that are invulnerable because they make money.
Now the things we see on the news don’t get fixed. They don’t get noticeably worked on. They get discussed. On the news, no less. How imminently useful that is. If the news is no longer an instrument for public engagement in government then World News reports’ only function is to frighten us into sending our young people to PTSD camp. Why should I get my heart ripped out by reports of the suffering across the globe when the news is guided by sponsorship and the elected officials are guided by polls? Isn’t it just ‘war-torn’ porn?
Maybe when you get old enough, you start to see that the people in charge are not running things—most of them are being run. And with a preponderance of such people, the rare good ones can do little more than add entertainment value to the political process and the news. It’s a well-rigged machine—money can do amazing things. Not all of them good.
I still think it’s important to keep up with what’s going on with the human race. I get increasingly resentful of how much garbage I have to sift through to do that with today’s media. Most days I just avoid the whole thing for the sake of mental health—god, the world is crazy—and not in a good way.
But my front yard is wonderful.
Sherryl and Harlan’s Garden (2015Jun10)
Wednesday, June 10, 2015 2:53 PM
First off—to be honest, it’s Sherryl’s garden more than it is Harlan’s—I’m pretty sure he confines himself to lawn-mowing, landscaping, and home-repair—Sherryl does the gardening. I only used Harlan’s Gardens because it sounds so nice as a title. Ergo, my humble apologies to Sherryl—but, as she knows, ‘that’s Hollywood’.
I went next door yesterday right after a big June shower—I wanted to get the droplets on the flower petals (which I did) but I also got a lot of wash-out in the whiter flowers—and I hate to lose that delicate detail and end up with a white blotch in its place—but what are you gonna do, right? There’s still a riot of color in these photos—almost like a party in your eyeballs.
Also, there are just a few shots of our own flowers and vegetable boxes towards the end of the clip, so today’s video should not be considered an official ‘documentary’ of Sherryl’s garden—more like a celebration. One of the very last photos is interesting because it is lettuce from a previous year’s box garden that decided to start growing wild in the cracks of our driveway’s asphalt. Nothing stops Life, I guess.
Every one of the 162 photographs were retouched in Corel Photo-Shop, whether it needed it or not (they all needed it)—so I hope you all appreciate how much eye-strain and mouse-clicking I go through trying to make these videos interesting to watch. And here I run into a paradox—when I do these photo-journal, slide-showy videos of pretty pictures, I always make the insert frame of the ‘me performing’ video very small. I do this because I want the photos to be as visible as possible. But then when I’m making the ‘me performing’ video I add all kinds of video effects—because I figure it’s going to be too small to see. That’s the paradox—I like adding video effects gadgets so much that I’m happier when no one is going to see exactly how loopy the video turns out.
As always, however, I put the lion’s share of my efforts into the music itself—and today, as you will hear, I even got some help from a flock of birds. This improv is a little different from my usual, but I was trying something new—I hope you enjoy it.
On a whinier note (and yes I will have some fine cheese with that) my back is killing me, my shoulder is stiff from all the repetitive photoshop-mousing, a headache is just starting that tiny silver hammer-tapping, and I’m awful tired. I sure hope this video lives up to all the effort.
Slow Song (2015Jun08)
Wednesday, June 10, 2015 3:12 PM
“Slow Song”
by Xper Dunn on June 8th, 2015
****
My tailbone hurts from sitting in a chair—
Through the screen, through my smoke,
Comes a breeze of fresh air.
Through the window glares the light of the raw, hot sun.
I miss the days when I could really run.
When I was young and saw such a day outside
To have to stay inside seemed like being imprisoned.
When did I decide I could let a day like this slide?
How’d I get so old I’d rather stay inside?
Why do I live my life where it obviously isn’t?
I want to fly out the door.
I want to do what I can’t do anymore.
Leave my hat, leave my shades,
Stretch my legs unafraid.
Just run down the street like a teenage machine
With my chin in the wind
– but that’s only a dream.
My tailbone hurts from sitting in a chair—
Through the screen, through my smoke,
Comes a breeze of fresh air.
Through the window glares the light of the raw, hot sun.
I miss the days when I could really run.
In pursuit of my new project, an autobiographical Broadway musical, I wrote these lyrics. Now I have to find a way to sing them. Then write ten or twelve more songs, think up a story line, dialogue, what have you—yeah, I’m almost finished already. Well, it’s a ‘project’—which, in my world, means it will never be finished—so I’m just taking it one song at a time.
Reviews In Review (2015Jun09)
Tuesday, June 09, 2015 5:10 PM
I’ve just finished reading:
“The Three-Body Problem” by Cixin Liu, (Ken Liu -Translator)
“(R)evolution” by PJ Manney (‘Phoenix Horizon’ Book 1)
“The Water Knife” by Paolo Bacigalupi
And watching:
“Jupiter Ascending” (2015) – Written and Directed by The Wachowskis and Starring: Channing Tatum, Mila Kunis, and Eddie Redmayne
“Kingsman: The Secret Service” (2014) – Directed by Matthew Vaughn and Starring: Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, and Samuel L. Jackson
[Note: the following three book reviews were published on Amazon.com yesterday]
In “The Three-Body Problem” by Cixin Liu, I was treated to some rare Chinese historical fiction, as the story involves both alien invaders and their contact on Earth—and, in a fresh take, someone on Earth other than an American establishes First Contact. The protagonist’s story begins with her childhood during the most horrific times of the many Reform movements that swept China early in the second half of the twentieth century. Starting that far back, we are given a small primer in modern China’s history and culture by the time the story’s climax reaches the present day.
But there’s more. There’s science too—radio astronomy, virtual-reality gaming, extra-dimensional manipulation, near-FTL travel, and a planet with an unusual orbit, to say the least, are only some of the highlights. Things get technical enough that I glimpsed one reviewer in passing, complaining that this book ‘read like a tech manual’—but I found it refreshingly reminiscent of Clarke and Asimov. This is still a nerd’s genre—if you can’t take the heat, you’re not going to enjoy the story.
The characters and relationships are, however, as fully fleshed-out as one could wish—this is no space opera—and the plot is so clever that I hesitate to give even the slightest of spoilers. You should discover this book for yourself. And—good news—it is the first in a series—so there’s even more to come!
In “(R)evolution” by PJ Manney, I found an entertaining and involving thriller based on the idea of nanotechnology used to facilitate the brain/electronic interface. While there is little new in the scientist who experiments on himself, or in super-secret societies that control our businesses and governments from the shadows of limitless wealth and power, there’s still a freshness to the storytelling that kept me turning pages until late into the night. Good writing, if not especially great science fiction.
“The Water Knife” by the reliable Paolo Bacigalupi is a story of a near-future America suffering through the destruction of the American Southwest due to water shortages. The draining of the aquifers, combined with the lack of snow-melt from the Rockies, leaves California, Nevada, Arizona, and displaced Texans all struggling in a world where rivers are covered to prevent excess evaporation. Water rights become life or death matters for cities Las Vegas, LA, and Phoenix, AZ—where most of the action takes place.
The ‘water knife’ is a euphemism for an enforcer of water rights and a hunter of anyone trying to access water without legal authority. Angel is one of the best, in the employ of the sharp female administrator of Las Vegas’s Water Authority, Catherine Case. He becomes involved with a hunt for a water-rights treaty granted to Native Americans—a priceless document so old that it would take precedence over all existing agreements—and in the process, becomes involved with a female reporter who’s gone from being an observer to being in the thick of the life and death struggle of everyone in Phoenix as the water runs out and the dangers only grow more unbeatable.
However, the most frightening thing about this novel is its basis in fact—much of the disastrous environment described has been warned of in a non-fiction book, “Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water” by Marc Reisner. That book was published in 1987, and much of what he warned about is starting to manifest itself—such as the present severe drought conditions in California.
Like most doomsday-scenario stories, “The Water Knife” describes people on the edge, people in trouble, and twisted people who take advantage of chaos to create their own little fiefdoms of violence and tyranny. I never read such stories purely for the goth-like rush of people being cruel and dark—but in cases where I feel the story will give insight into something real, I put up with it—especially from a writer as good as Bacigalupi. And this is an exciting, engrossing tale of intrigue, passion, and ‘history as a hammer’, for all its darkness.
[Here ends the text from my Amazon.com reviews]
Having just finished “The Water Knife”, right on the heels of “(R)Evolution”, I’ve had my fill of dystopian cynicism and game-theory-based ethics—or lack thereof, rather. “The Three-Body Problem” was the worst, however—a Chinese woman endures such a horrible childhood under the Red Revolution’s Reform Era that she wishes for aliens to take over the Earth—how’s that for misanthropic?
Science Fiction at its best can be wildly hopeful and uplifting but let’s face it—the vast majority of it deals with rather dark subject matter. I can only hope that my next read will have a little leavening of the stainless-steel truth in it. At heart, I’m a Disneyfied, happy-ending kind of guy.
In between, I watched a few movies. The latest include “Jupiter Ascending” and “Kingsman: The Secret Service”. Talk about dark!
“Jupiter Ascending” is a science-fiction movie based on the premise that Earth—that is, all the inhabitants of Earth—are just a crop being grown only to ‘harvest’. Our unknown alien overlords are just about to harvest (i.e. slaughter) the Earth’s population for the purpose of creating the ‘rejuvenation juice’ that makes them immortal.
Our only chance is a young lady who is surprised to learn that she is the genetic double of Earth’s former ‘owner’, a wealthy noblewoman of the alien master-race whose death left her planetary holdings to her evil son, including the fabulously overpopulated Earth. The evil son is none too pleased to learn that a mere Earth girl is capable of confiscating his prize planet—and the hunt is on. Helping the girl evade the evil son and realize her destiny is a grizzled veteran of the alien military special-forces who’s been unfairly drummed out of his squad.
Some romance between the two slips between the non-stop CGI laser-beams and space destroyers, but even with a happy ending, it’s hard to get past that nightmarish premise.
“Kingsman: The Secret Service”, being a more straight-forward action movie, might lead you to expect a lighter tone. But this Cinderella/James Bond story has several scenes of wholesale slaughter in hand-to-hand combat. Poor old Colin Firth ends up killing an entire congregation of a church—and while their preacher prefaces the scene with rankly bigoted ravings beforehand, it’s still not very enjoyable to see them all slaughtered for their ignorance.
The fight scenes (though in this context, I’m tempted to call them ‘slaughter scenes’) are so busy that the film has to freeze into slo-mo for each death-blow (or death-stab, or head-squish, etc., etc.) just so the naked eye can follow all the mayhem. This is one of the bloodiest films since ‘Reservoir Dogs”, but it has all the trappings of an arch re-mix of James Bond meets Agent Cody Banks.
The director seemed to have trouble fixing on a genre. Samuel L. Jackson is a chipper, lisping arch-villain; Colin Firth is a chipper, upper-class Brit in the style of Patrick Macnee in ‘The Avengers’ TV series; and Taron Egerton gives us a well-meaning but troubled English lad thrust into an unusual situation. But all the set dressing, style, and verve is drowned in a sea of blood that leaves little room for those delicious bits of comic relief that leaven the best action thrillers.
Having said all that, I must admit that as far as quality goes, these were two exceptional movies compared to the dreck that comes out of Hollywood most of the time. Had “Jupiter Ascending” had a gravitas more in keeping with its somber theme, or had “Kingsman” relied a little less heavily on squibs, they might have been great movies. As it is, they were merely good.
Guilty Of Surviving (2015Jun07)
Sunday, June 07, 2015 11:53 PM
Guilty Of Surviving
I condemn you, berate you, accuse you!
No I don’t—I’m just stretching
My dramatic muscles—
Getting ready.
I’m gonna write my life-story
As a Broadway musical
Starring everyone I know—
With the nicest people
As villains.
I’ll post it on YouTube—
An instant classic with no class—
Featuring myself as the Ass.
We open on a cozy log cabin
In a Long Island maternity ward
Where I am born to only parents
With four other children.
I am a child of the sixties,
Seventies, eighties, nineties—
I’m immature—who’re we kidding?
Then I die
Ten years ago
But forget
To stop breathing.
I’m doing it wrong.
How can I write a life-story
After it’s over
When it’s still unfinished?
Instead of rhyming June and Moon
I’ll couple Jew with Moo.
If you had died ten years ago
You’d be confus-ed too.
The tunes I’ll pluck from
Out the ether
Somber songs, but none so
Sweether.
What to call this mess-terpiece, huh? Anyhow, I’ve been watching movies on TV. I saw “Larry Gaye—Renegade Male Flight Attendant” starring the guy from ‘Royal Pains’. I also saw “The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water”. They are both extremely silly movies—which means two thumbs up in my book. “Larry Gaye” seems like someone who loved “Airplane!” decided to write an updated script for the new millennium—it’s always just a hair’s breadth from a real movie, but always veers into nonsense before it quite gets there.
“Sponge Out Of Water” tries real hard and Antonio Banderas is just as engaged in silliness as he was in “Puss in Boots”—but I’m afraid nothing in the sequel compares to the scene in the original Spongebob Squarepants movie where David Hasselhoff transforms into a jet-propelled hydroplane. Nothing could follow that.
After the movie, I was inspired by the calypso-style music played over the end-credits scroll. I played the following improv, but I never actually got any Caribbean rhythm into it. Still, it came out okay.
DARPA Robotics Challenge (2015Jun05)
Friday, June 05, 2015 3:20 PM
I’m watching large, humanoid robots walk up to doorways, use the door handle to open the door, and walk into the building. When one of the robots got the door open there was a camera shot from inside showing the robot framed in the doorway. I could imagine one at my door—it was a little intimidating.
The DARPA Robotics Challenge is an exciting event—robots are expected to drive cars (and get out of cars—a far greater challenge in some ways) then open doors, walk through rooms, turn a big cast-iron valve attached to a pipe, and other challenges. The teams are from all over—the USA, Germany, Japan, and others—mostly students, learning as they change the world as we know it.
In time, these robots may help disaster victims caught under rubble—or turn off reactors in radioactive rooms that no human could survive. Beyond these heroics, there are infinite possibilities. Robotic construction crews could potentially build an entire Martian base—ready for human occupation.
Robots for the rich could become ‘universal remotes’, capable of changing your channel, putting your feet up, and making you a snack in the kitchen. The most remarkable thing about today’s robots is that they have no wheels, no treads—no expectation of level or paved ground. They walk on four legs, on two legs, on little spikes that make them seem to be tiptoeing, and on cushioned pads that look suspiciously like a pair of sneaks.
The variety of approaches makes the DRC Finals a fascinating show—every teams’ robot has a different look—different armatures—different heads—it’s a circus freak show of mechanical geeks. That speaks to the pioneering aspect of robotics research—it’s still just getting started.
But that giant robot looming in the doorway brought a frightening thought to mind. We already have hackers who can wreak havoc on our on-line lives—what will we do when robo-hackers can send a pack of killer robots to any address? Gun control—phooey. A half-ton of robot can ruin your whole day—and who’s to say they can’t be fitted with their own armaments?
So, yes, be afraid—be very afraid. But the immense power and potential of robots will go forward—becoming faster, lighter, stronger, and more capable. The Internet has some unacknowledged problems with security—it’s so irresistibly useful we try very hard to ignore its vulnerabilities. Robotics will, I predict, go just as far before we start worrying about how much power it puts in the hands of not-nice people.
In a way, we have rid the world of dangerous, man-eating animals only to replace them with artificial creatures that could end up stalking us at the push of a button. But please note: I am filled with wonder by the dawning of the Internet—and I am no less excited about this new dawn of robotics. It’s people I’m afraid of.
Watch the DRC Finals LIVE at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dv9Wm20UrcU&feature=youtu.be
A Sunny Day (2015Jun05)
Friday, June 05, 2015 1:59 PM
A Sunny Day
Laughter light and lyrical rides on the birdsong air.
In amber sunshine bumblebees are bumbling here and there.
And pots of tea, and sandwiches of cucumber and salt,
Are laid upon the shining lawn—an emerald without fault.
You can’t hold back the tide of troubles—bother not to try—
Embrace instead the happiness of days when nothing’s wrong
Don’t worry at your worries—better far they far-flung fly
Life is short but summer days luxuriously long.
Laughter bright and beautiful—the butterfly takes wing.
In golden sunlight flowers bloom, and in the breezes swing.
Well, that’s all for today. Here’s videos I haven’t gotten around to sharing with you yet:
Hand Me That Blindfold (2015Jun01)
Monday, June 01, 2015 1:05 PM
Okay, it’s June already. My how time, and all that. The rain falls, the grass greens but the sky is gray. I got drunk last night—and felt better for it—and that’s a change. But poisoning my brain seems a drastic step—is life really that hard? I’d rather be high on life, but life has been bringing me low lately—and I’m far too clever to let myself be cheered up. Oh, yes—I’m a regular genius. I fret and ponder and fume and wish and wish—no wonder poison is the answer.
If I work very hard and try with all my might, could I be stupid, someday? Could I be dumb enough to think that all’s well; that we live in a great country; that the powers-that-be will take care of everything? How nice that would be.
And what difference would it make? If the world goes to hell in a hand basket, wouldn’t I be better off looking the other way? Don’t they give the guy about to be executed a blindfold? And, really, I don’t see any good reason to wait until I’m facing the firing squad. Why not start wearing that sucker right now? It ain’t like I wouldn’t have company. Gimme that thing.