To those with a bent for automatonic compositional renditions, try WolframTones.
You’ll never again look at your child’s random piano playing the same.
Tag Archives: music
Pioneers Come and Go
Goodbye to another pioneer who lived in my hometown.
Hello to a new sports figure hoping to pioneer a trail to championship glory with a clean program and a focus on academics, who will create well-rounded, successful student-athletes, we hope.
Two bits (0, 1) on the same book of information.
Girls are setting standards like the old Sons of the Pioneers.
We leave this hour with a classic tune, Ghost Riders In The Sky, and a medley, if you want a little more cowboy music melody.
And a nod to a family favourite by Tennessee Ernie Ford, Shenandoah.
And finally, the song that introduced my loved one and me to waltzing.
Beanpole Twist ‘n’ Shout
Lord, have mercy, it was a fun time last night.
Smacking boot heels on old wood floors.
Accordion, washboard, guitar, drums, bass…like an ol’ bayou Saturd’y night getdown.
‘Memberances of N’awlins, crawfish boils, jazz fests, New Year’s Eve on the Riverwalk, ESPN settin’ up for the national championship.
Louisiana hot sauce or, when that’s not available, habanero squeezin’s on the chicken sandwich at Beauregard’s, the ever resourceful Antonio givin’ us the extra onion rings.
Dance lessons a’fore hand – “just remember, it’s not the exact steps that counts, it’s keepin’ time with your partner that makes it zydeco!”
One, two, three four. Five, six, step back.
My partner – my rational, logical engineering wife – dissecting the steps ’cause we already know how to keep time. This ain’t work, honey, it’s the weekend! 😉
Sippin’ whiskey from a flask – Bushmills Black Bush. A little Sprite for the missus. A swig of ginger ale for her male.
My, oh my, does the zydeco bring out the bee-yout’uhful ladies?!
Like the cream o’ the crop, they were, a’dancin’ with their beaus or choosin’ more experienced partners to learn a new move or two to spice up their relationship on the dance floor and off.
I felt like someone wound my clock back, and we were back at the ol’ Chicken Shack down by the river, a jug of hooch bein’ passed back and forth while bodies spun ’round and ’round like the storm clouds that swept past over and over again.
Lightnin’ never strikes the same place twice unless the dance floor’s on fire, my grandpappy used to say.
Reckon he’s right.
Zydeco lessons at the Eagles Club tonight, folks. Don’t miss it!
A nod to Jessica at Arby’s, the behind-the-scenes folks at Lowe Mill, and Yuri Ozaki, whose quiet happiness blesses us all – may your country find peace during this difficult recovery period. Cat, we’ll fill up on Happy Tummy the next go-round.
Take a day off, then my wife and I are hittin’ the dance floor again, this time shufflin’ our feet to swing music.
No offense to you bowling fans but between drinkin’ beer at the bowling alley or hoppin’ on the dance floor with my wife, I’ll take the parquet.
Or is it butter?
One day, our dancing will be as smooth as such.
Flipcharts
Adding up the statistics of all the websites and blogs my team has hidden across the globe, we reached a daily average of 65,000 views today!
Of course, that’s nothing compared to major news sites, celebrity videos, facebook updates or twitter feeds, but we are happy with our low-key approach to viral influence.
Our whole point of existence is not to make people aware we exist.
Makes us wonder if we should start taking ourselves seriously.
Why start now, right?
One of our Czech programmers created a comedy sensor that detects when our funny bones have lost their sense of humour.
Our overcrowded hallway of unemployed superheroes was buzzing with excitement but that’ll happen when the Green Banker’s Lamp is upset that he’s not getting the attention he used to garner before the global economy relapse of 2008.
Of course, he challenged the Green Hornet and the Green Lantern to a three-way duel.
We’ll report the results of their old-fashioned showdown as soon as they reach an agreement about how to get the Funny Bone Dullness Sensor to react to bored superheroes fighting over the right to be famous for being famous for making a moose say vamos.
Census data revealed that 1 out of 6 Americans are American, which, coincidentally, lines up with previous census data that revealed 5 out of 6 Americans are also American.
We can’t wait to see the final report that reveals 100% of Americans are 100% American.
Star light, star bright, is that the last we’ll see and hear of Stardust (the satellite, not David Bowie or Katie Perry channelling the memory of Ziggy Stardust)? If you go coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs, will you go gaga for Lada Gaga going country? Somebody, gag me, please, before I violate the STUPID Act again!
= = = = =
And last, but always least, I realised tonight, after nearly 25 years of marriage, my wife has never (well, rarely) seen the aspect of my personality that comes out when she’s not around, that is kept at bay because I agreed to hide my wild, quasi-dark side away from her relatively normal, socially-even personality. Years of practicing suppression for her sake have been years of practicing suppression for her sake.
More on that last paragraph at a later time. My days of multiple dance partners will have to wait until another out-of-town business trip. I left my wild side in Ireland, didn’t I? In other words, the personality-at-home maintains itself for now. Is that the definition of love?
I want to live but I don’t yet know how, I tell myself. [If I can’t lie to myself, who can I lie to?]
A late message but interesting…
Kentucky Borderline
A clean bill of a healthy state of mind.
Thoughts drifting.
Sitting on the elementary schoolyard swing set again, singing “Jeremiah was a bullfrog” with my two schoolmates, Renée and Rita, while we saw who could swing the highest without getting the teacher’s attention.
After recess, returning to the fourth grade classroom and hanging out with the guys who challenged everyone to memorisation games, using pulldown maps of countries, states and land features.
Talking about a new literature one of the guys had discovered, called “science fiction.”
Passing love notes to Renée in class, getting caught and reprimanded by Mrs. Tallman, who threatened to tell my mother, a first-grade teacher in the same school, down in the modern pod section where the open classroom concept was being tested on teachers and students, whether they wanted it or not.
Renée dead a year later from a blood disorder that I assume was leukemia.
Some thoughts repeat themselves, overshadowing memories that might have been important at one time, including spelling, grammar, math, history, social studies and geography.
How many politicians who want to make teaching a minimum-wage job with no benefits have children in public schools?
Could you be convinced to vote for a real person like yourself whose lifestyle matches most of the ones in your voting district and is not tempted by wealth?
That is, if you have the right and privilege to vote, which you exercise, seriously considering the ramifications of your decision.
If such a person would register as a candidate for public office.
Renée’s lively personality left my life when we were ten, 20.8% of my current life.
Now, news of friends’ parents dying is growing common.
In middle age, these are the days of my life.
My parents just called to inform me Mrs Abernathy had died.
John, Carol, Beth and Don – my thoughts and prayers are with you as you begin the grieving process for the death of your mother. She was a sweet lady, the consummate Mom for all children, loving the neighbourhood kids, church kids, and school kids without showing favourites.
I sit here, remembering her influence on me as I grew up in Colonial Heights – hosting church youth socials in the backyard, supporting Sing Out Kingsport and school musicals – knowing Renée never had the attention from Mrs. Abernathy that I enjoyed throughout my teenage years.
Neither will I have been the type of parent to provide that community support for my children and their friends/schoolmates.
From one end of life to another, death is a constant.
Yet, as much as we know about the whys and wherefores…the loss, the end of forming new memories and absence of wisdom, love and insight from deceased family and friends, young or elderly, change our perspectives.
How does it change my perspective?
Renée has been gone almost 40 years. Mrs. Abernathy just died. Mr. Guinn died 10 days ago. At least one of my schoolmates is dying of metastasised/terminal cancer.
Where is my sense of humour today?
It showed itself in the gift I made for and gave to Dr. Brown this morning, an electronic “Cat of the Year” calendar/video of our cat, Merlin, who has recovered from dental surgery, thanks to the professionalism and joy that Erin and her staff bring to their veterinary occupations.
Humour is an outlet for pain, among other expressions of relief from daily concerns, frustrations and ennui, including relief that pain/worry has ended.
Humour is what I pretend to believe that defines a separation of me from everything else (although I know I am a combination of everything that has passed through this dense set of states of energy called me in this moment).
Merlin ran out of the cage when we got home and looked for dry food to eat, the sign to me he was ready to get away from wet food after a week of healing sore gums.
Debbie and Neal plan to be grandparents in June.
Our oldest nephew marries in July.
Chestney graduates from high school soon.
Our days are numbered – we count up because we never know when to start the countdown.
Renée died at a point that I called 100% of my life up till then. When I die, I will have lived 100% of my life.
Math.
I will have died somewhere.
Geography.
I will have lived with others in a specific time period.
History.
My name will be recorded in both official birth and death certificates.
Spelling.
I might get an obituary to go along with my birth announcement.
Grammar.
I contributed to sub/cultures during my life and learned from others’ sub/cultural clues.
Social studies.
That’s all I know.
All I need to know.
The rest is a joke waiting to be told from a curious perspective while walking down that Blue Highway I call my life.
S p a c e d O u t
Diversionary idea du jour
Maybe it’s just me needing a diversion from the emotion-based thoughts of the day while our elder feline is thoroughly examined at the animal hospital this afternoon to assess the save-or-euthanise, cost-benefit, failure mode analysis by Dr. Erin and staff (my wife and I are already $700 in the hole for the analysis, IV fluids, and overnight stay that will accrue by tomorrow morning).
At this moment, Merlin has a mouth full of dental problems that may mean sepsis spread through his body; a heart murmur, rapid heartbeat (200+ bpm) and other problems (thyroid, potentially) may prevent the use of anaesthesia for surgery.
On a limited budget, what is a feline companion worth?
What are any of us worth?
In any case, I examine the Microsoft Paint image above.
“A” is a typical spray bottle configuration in which the suction tube rests just above the last particles of liquid, especially when the bottle is tilted.
“B” and “C” represent a spray bottle with a check valve that rotates based on the bottle’s vertical orientation, such that, when the sprayhead is tilted downward (“B”), the forward portion of T-shaped suction tube draws in the last few precious drops of fluid, and when the sprayhead is tilted upward (“C”), the rearward portion of T-shaped suction tube draws in the last few precious drops of fluid residing in the other end of the bottom of the bottle.
Elegant solution? Hardly. Cost-effective? Unlikely.
Humourous diversion? Precisely. Reminds me of a child’s game I played in which we matched cards on which odd contraptions and inventions were printed.
Simple solution? Pour the last drops into the new, nearly-full bottle.
Returning to the running analysis at hand – comparing and contrasting the lives of Dr. Benjamin Spock, Joseph Campbell and Hermann Hesse, against the backdrop of watching the following films, courtesy of Amazon Prime free rentals:
- A Clockwork Orange, starring Malcolm McDowell
- Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston
- Zach Galifianakis: Live at the Purple Onion
- 8 1/2 by Federico Fellini
- Between the Folds by Vanessa Gould
- Rosencrantz and Guilderstern Are Dead
- My Name is Nobody, starring Henry Fonda
- Objectified, starring Dieter Rams
- Bukowsi Born Into This, starring Charles Bukowski
- OSS 117: Lost in Rio, starring Jean Dujardin
- Noam Chomsky: Rebel Without a Pause, starring Noam Chomsky
- Ramones: RAW, starring the Ramones
- Red Skelton: A Royal Command Performance, starring Red Skelton
- Steppenwolf, starring Max von Sydow
- My Name Is Bruce, starring Bruce Campbell
- Barenaked Ladies: Talk To the Hand: Live in Michigan
- Moog, starring Robert Moog
- Slipstream, starring Anthony Hopkins
- Dinosaur, Jr.: Live in the Middle East
- Foreign Field, starring Lauren Bacall
Then, during and after, examining my own life and wondering more about why I am the way I am in the social system in which I normally operate these states of energy called me.
There’s a joke in here somewhere. We want our Deity/deities to be serious because death is such a traumatic way to announce the end of a life (more so for us than for the food we eat) but if we were blessed with humour and appear in one form or another of that which we say created us, then can we not also say that our Deity/deities have a sense of humour?
And if you hold no theistic beliefs, were you not created by your parents or by some combination of DNA that must, by definition, hold a sense of humour within its genes?
Erin (the cat, not the veterinarian) and I miss Merlin today. My wife is beside herself at work with worry.
People are dying by the millions and a little domestic drama at home has all my attention.
This is my life.
I won’t have it any other way.
treetrunkdings 