July 31, 2008
RACE TO THE BOTTOM - THE QUIZ
VS.
...I thought this might be a fun exercise--see if you can figure out which of these titans of oratory and profundity uttered these rhetorical jems...I'll post the answers in a few days...no cheating!
QUAYLE OR BUSH? WHO SAID WHAT?
THE QUIZ:
Bank failures are caused by depositors who don't deposit enough money to cover losses due to mismanagement.
Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can't do that. It's gone, gone forever.
A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.
You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.
For NASA, space is still a high priority.
We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace.
A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.
Americans are rising to the tasks of history, and they expect the same of us.
States should have the right to enact laws... particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live.
People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I'll give you an example; I don't read what's handed to me. People say, 'Here, here's your speech, or here's an idea for a speech.' They're changed. Trust me.
The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants.
Sometimes cameras and television are good to people and sometimes they aren't. I don't know if its the way you say it, or how you look.
Free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction.
The thing that's wrong with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur.
I understand the importance of bondage between parent and child.
I have made good judgements in the past. I have made good judgements in the future.
I stand by all the misstatements that I've made.
My friends, no matter how rough the road may be, we can and we will, never, never surrender to what is right.
Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here.
I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.
I have a different vision of leadership. A leadership is someone who brings people together.
I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.
It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.
It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it.
It's going to be the year of the sharp elbow and the quick tongue.
Leadership to me means duty, honor, country. It means character, and it means listening from time to time.
Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods.
Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history - revisionist historians is what I like to call them.
I'm hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.
One word sums up probably the responsibility of any vice-president, and that one word is 'to be prepared'.
People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.
People who bowl vote. Bowlers are not the cultural elite.
Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.
Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us.
If you give a person a fish, they'll fish for a day. But if you train a person to fish, they'll fish for a lifetime.
Our nation must come together to unite.
...
TWO GREAT GUITARISTS LEAVE THE STAGE
Hiram Bullock
1955 - 2008
Joe Beck
1945 - 2008
bummer bummer bummer...
...
July 30, 2008
NOT SO GREAT USING HIS OWN WORDS
...starring jon voigt, as the grand douche...
bummer. I always liked this guy's acting. his performance on 'runaway train' alone certifies him as an all-time great of the thespian profession. but his choices of roles, such as 'coming home' or 'conrack' or 'table for five' led me to believe that he was something of a softie, and to the left.
not that I mind when someone is an artist and a conservative (as rare as that seems to be). but I do object to clumsy rhetoric and half-baked conclusions, and especially paranoia. the piece is mccarthy-esque and hysterical. the other academy award-winning (as if that should mean a pot of piss to anybody) actors destined for the great mccain hollywood press conference are alleged to be clint eastwood, robert duvall and gary sinise (though I don't recall him ever being nominated--then again I don't watch the oscars). non-oscar winners will also probably include kelsey grammar (pause now to enjoy the fact that the voice of sideshow bob will be doing the talking) and the rest of the action star cretins usually around--one misses the bible-thumping flannel-shirted aw shucks jingoism of chuck norris at times like this. wake me when they unveil his lifetime achievement oscar for asskicking...
Good luck with the rest of your career Mr. Voigt. Maybe Mel Gibson is casting for "Apocalypto II"...
...
July 28, 2008
THE LAST LECTURE
...this is as much for myself as it is for any of you...I'm posting this virtually sight-unseen mainly due to the hype this has received since the guy passed away last week. I am merely curious and discovered that this "last lecture" was available on youtube. and I'm planning on watching the whole thing at some later date...
he is greatly missed by many people. and loved. and mourned. there must be a reason...
he was facing certain death, and left this testimonial. I'm curious. Aren't you? let's watch.
...
JIMI GOES JOBBING
...we can all be grateful it never came to this...
...
July 27, 2008
THE LITTLE GIANT
Johnny Griffin
1928 - 2008
coincidentally, I've been listening to "A Blowing Session" for the past few weeks. The cat could play....
...
July 25, 2008
FRIDAY POEM
I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder
I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.
I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.
...
today's thought:
...
July 24, 2008
NELS
Nels Cline is my new favorite guitar player...I think he's tremendous, and bridges several schools (free, skronk, straight ahead, punk, 60s avant, rock n roll) in a very unique way. some of you might know him as Wilco's lead guitar player. That's like being aware of Ben Franklin because he once wrote an almanac...The Nels Cline Singers, Draw Breath, is a wonderful recording...challenging, diffuse, full of sonic toy clatter and chops-heavy playing...above clip is a tiny taste of the fun...
...
July 22, 2008
SO LONG ARTIE
Artie Traum
1943-2008
Let us pause in life's pleasures and count its many tears,
While we all sup sorrow with the poor;
There's a song that will linger forever in our ears;
Oh Hard times come again no more.
There's a song, the sigh of the weary,
Hard Times, hard times, come again no more
Many days you have lingered around my cabin door;
Oh hard times come again no more.
While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh hard times come again no more.
There's a pale drooping maiden who toils her life away,
With a worn heart whose better days are o'er:
Though her voice would be merry, 'tis sighing all the day,
Oh hard times come again no more.
Tis a sigh that is wafted across the troubled wave,
Tis a wail that is heard upon the shore
Tis a dirge that is murmured around the lowly grave
Oh hard times come again no more.
--Stephen Foster
...
July 21, 2008
THE SHORT F-ING VERSION
one of my all-time favorite movies boiled down to its very fucking essence!!!
...
July 18, 2008
NOT JUST BASEBALL
Forgiving Buckner
John Hodgen
The world is always rolling between our legs.
It comes for us, dribbler, slow roller,
humming its goat song, easy as pie.
We spit in our gloves, bend our stiff knees,
keep it in front of us, our fathers' advice,
but we miss it every time, its physic, its science,
and it bleeds on through, blue streak, heart sore,
to the four-leaf clovers deep in right field.
The runner scores, knight in white armor,
the others out leaping, bumptious, gladhanding,
your net come up empty, Jonah again.
Even the dance of the dead won't come near you,
heart in your throat, holy of holies,
the oh of your mouth as the stone rolls away,
as if it had come from before you were born
to roll past your life to the end of the world,
till the world comes around again, gathering steam,
heading right for us again and again,
faith of our fathers, world without end.
...
July 15, 2008
SWEET PEA
...haute couture for one-year olds, September 2004...
Happy 5th Birthday to my sweetie pie...
............................................
A Prayer for my Daughter
William Butler Yeats
Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.
I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.
May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.
Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggd smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.
In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.
May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.
My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.
An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?
Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.
And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.
June 1919
...
July 13, 2008
A GREAT TEAMMATE
I loved Bobby Murcer.
1946-2008
...after hitting the game-winning home run against Baltimore the day following Thurman Munson's funeral...the team was wiped out, sad, deflated and did not want to play...he drove in all five runs in the game, and the Yanks won 5-4...when my little league team visited Yankee Stadium for the first time, he hit a walk-off home run in the ninth inning to win the game 3-2. I was a center-fielder too and I'm sure I considered what he did to be the pinnacle of human achievement...he was not a hall-of-famer but he had greatness, both as a player and as a human being...
...
July 11, 2008
FRIDAY POEM
Those Winter Sundays
by Robert Hayden
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he'd call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love's austere and lonely offices?
...
July 10, 2008
JAZZ BOX
I've already detailed most of the doings that led to this new! improved! axe. More than just a polished turd, I took an instrument that was at the high end of the budget class and nudged it closer to respectability and certainly toward better performance:
tuners replaced with grover imperials
bridge pickup replaced with tv jones filtertron
new potentiometers and new tone capacitors
new set-up with 053-013 thomastik-infeld "bebop" roundwounds
these added components ka-chinged at just over $200. so along with the very affordable craigslist price of $400 for the guitar and case, I've got a very solid workingman's jazz box for well under a grand...
it took more than a little while to get all the inner electronics connected properly. this was my first experience with modifying the internals of a hollowbody electric guitar and the process was not without its challenges. at times it felt rather like I was one of those hobbyists who build miniature tall ships and assemble them in narrow-necked glass bottles...one wonders how they manage this in a mass production setting. perhaps that's one of the advantages of the cheapo pots that ibanez uses--they're tiny.
between this evening and tomorrow afternoon, I plan on doing a lot of playing. I took a break--I was playing so much I actually wore out the batteries in my metronome! Aside from guitar rebuilding and metronome languishing, other family/summer activities took over and I put my lesson schedule on hold for two weeks. This week I actually took two days off of playing at all. Usually this re-energizes me when I resume. Between the time off and the upgraded jazz box, it ought to.
Less frequent posts likely as summer progresses. I'm also re-vamping the mp3 section. so if there are any tracks that you haven't yet downloaded, but want to, I suggest you go ahead and grab them now...
...
July 04, 2008
INDEPENDENCE
...here's to the red, white and blue...
..........................................................
new pictures of the latest ibanez mods:
...new filtertron installed in bridge position.
replacing the bridge pickup on my ibanez with a tv jones classic has proved to be a drastic improvement...following last week's upgrade of the tuners to grover imperials...but the most significant improvement was sonic, and inexpensive: replacing the cheap potentiometers that the ibanez factory installs with basic 500k pots from stew-mac. it opens up the tone of the neck pickup considerably.
every picture tells a story...
new grover tuners:
...before...
...after...
...shiny vs non-so-shiny...
...the crappy pots that Ibanez uses in their "budget" guitars...
...tv jones filtertron classic...
it's a whole new instrument. I still have a slight wiring modification I want to try, but nothing drastic. extremely versatile guitar, very balanced tone...now I can cop the chet atkins stuff as well as the telecaster licks, in addition to the straight-ahead jazz thing...in other words, I'm free...
happy independence day.
...