Musical Hair's Musings

I Don't get this one.

I love a good conspiracy theory, really.  For one it makes you consider a range of possibilities you'd never imagine.  Another thing is that you get to see potential connections that you hadn't thought of before.  Finally, and importantly,  It lets you examine  the logic of  their  arguments  and look  for  holes  in their arguments.

This one I just don't get.  The founding fathers were Freemasons, many of them anyway.  But their goal was world domination abolishing churches and national borders in favor of socialism?  This idea fails in my mind on a lot of levels.

Maybe I buy into the mythology around our founding fathers a little to strongly.  I look at Washington and Franklin and Jefferson as people that should still inspire us today.  I think they "got" it in a way that it might be impossible for most of us to "get it" even today.  Washington envisioned a liberal nation that had ever expanding rights for the people.  Jefferson saw a nation of active and educated citizen farmers keeping a check on government, we should all hope for such a thing.  Franklin I could go on and on about how great he was.

They had an evil hidden agenda?  Where?

OK, here is the kicker: socialism??  Do we see an advance of socialism in the world?  That would be something we need but ain't getting.  We need less privatization, less corporate power, less concentration of wealth in the top 1 percent, not more. 

If freemasons are working towards global socialism, they are failing badly.  If they are working towards corporate fascism, they're doing a bang up job and we had better stop them.  I still don't see the connection going back to Washington or Mozart for that matter.

Can anyone "hip" me to this?

 

later, 

I'm typing this in "simple view" to see if this is like a happy medium where I can back space and correct my spelling and also put in paragraph spacing. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, I have this thing I think I mentioned in my last post: a banjitar. I often call it a banjo, but the manufacturer calls i t a banjitar. Basically it is a guitar neck put on a snare drum. By that I don't mean to knock the construction of it at all, but that is the real rough idea of what it is. <br/> <br/>

A real banjo woul d have four strings, or a d a fifth somewhere around fifth fret. I think it is tuned more like a violin than a guitar. I can't speak for other differences because I've never played a real banjo before. Instead I have this Banjitar, by Gold Tone which I ordered from Southpaw Guitars in Houston Texas, sight unseen.<br/> <br/>

I've practiced with it a lot off and on. It is a lot of fun. I don't do "banjoesque" type stuff on it, but I do love the way my fingerpicking and blues playing sound on it. I even love the way the classicals stuff sounds on it. It is alot of fun. <br/> <br/>


I played it last week with a friend who I will by playing a show or two with once get our act together and he sets a date.  I think we were both surprised at how many things it fit well in, maybe he more than I because I've been fooling with it for a while and he only heard it that night.

Last night was a birthday party of another friend, a guy I used to play in a band with like 9 years ago.  I brought along the Banjitar and the classical.  I only took out the classical whiile everyone else took breaks, something that might happen a lot more often in the future.

Anyway, the banjitar was a huge hit.  I would not be surprised if they get two orders within a week or two.  I had a lot of fun, and I got nothing but compliments on the sound of it.  

So, after lastnight and last week I'd say the Banjitar is just about ready for prime time.  

I'm tired of false advertising in college courses.  When they name a class they should name it for&nbs p;what it is&nb sp;instead of w hat sounds good .  I didn't  go through&nbs p;all the machi nations to get& nbsp;to take a& nbsp;couple of courses just to get tricked into a class that&nb sp;I have littl e use for.  Or maybe  I did.

I signed up for "Probability and Statistics" in the Math Department, which is not to be confused with the same kind of course offered in the business de partment.  No, this  would be  the one for&nbs p;the smart peo ple that I'm&nb sp;taking; for  scientists and  engineers.

As much as I wanted to take a different course (linear algebra, which I heard good things about), this was the only one I could fit into my 42 year old life.  But I could see a lot of uses for stats.  When I did "environmental consulting" in the "hazardous Waste" business stats were used all the time on the data in the final reports, and our data was "verified" using nothing much more than statistical techniqu es.  I could get behind taking s tats in the&nbs p;math department&nb sp;where you ha ve to understan d the theories& nbsp;behind it  and the methods , and not  just memorize a  bunch of  formulas.  Every di scipline uses s tats, from poli tics to social& nbsp;science to  ;hard science t o engineering.

Yep, stats would be cool, and useful.  We're not doing stats.  We're doing probability.  Yes the course is called probability and stats, but we're just doing probability.  Why?  The professor said something about it being a single semester course and a bunch of other stuff that didn't matter so much.

When I was an undergrad, I took a class called "Logic&n bsp;and the Sci entific Method"  which was  ;supposed to be  an "inter disciplinary class&q uot; bridging m ath and philoso phy.  On day&n bsp;one the pro fessor announces&nbs p;the class is& nbsp;not "Logic  and the S cientific Method&quo t; but just&nbs p;Logic.  

What the hell is going on with TBLOG's "advanced View"?  In plain view you can't put in&nb sp;paragraph breaks,  and in ad vanced view the  line goes  ;on and on  ;when you type& nbsp;often not  "auto-returning" ; for those&nbs p;old enough to  remember elect ric typewriters with&nbs p;that feature.  And ever y time I f ix a spelling&n bsp;or change s omething around  ;you get these& nbsp;crazy symbols&n bsp;showing all  ;my backspaces  and stuff.  Man that  is lame.

Anyway, I'd take a logic class, just like I'd take a Probability class.  Understanding the underpinnings of the Scientific Method would be useful because in science it would be good know you're doing science and not just collecting a bunch of data and making up stories about it.  Logic could help with that.  So could a course teaching symbolic logic and then bridging it to the scientific method.  Similarly, stats are everywhere and should be understood by people wanting to see deeper into the world.  I can't imagine why Probability gets priority in this class over stats.

Anyway, I'm sick of false advertising in college courses, and I'm sick of the glitches in Advanced view.  Is there a way to put paragraph breaks in the "plain" view?  If anyone knows, please post in a comment.


Thanks.

Most of my playing has been on acoustic guitars or on bass guitar. As a result, my electric playing has always suffered. It suffers on the one hand because I don't do it very much, either practicing or with other musicians. It suffers too because I haven't really grown accostumed to playing with a lot of distortion. Now, when you're practicing you should only use distortion for specific things, otherwise for general practicing you should play as "clean" as possible so you can focus on you're technique, distortion and effects can mask problems in your hands.

So when I've played my electrics, and they've been plugged in-- which you don't have to be plugged in to practice--, I'm as clean as I can be. I've grown to like that sound a lot, but it might be closest to an old school jazz sound but with the attitude of modern blues or classic rock. Too rock for jazz, too jazzy for rock was always my problem. But it never mattered since I'm mostly considered a bassist by some people and an acoustic player by others. I even added a banjo to that end.

Still, I love playing the electric. I love a little distortion and mildly "Jimi Hendrix" flavored tones and crazy effects-- I just like them along side a very dry clean soung allows for a kind of pick attack and dynamics that gets masked behind most common guitar tones. Still, when I've played with rock guys I've often had to really try to get a distortion they'd find acceptable, and that matched what was going on and that I could still hear myself through. As time went on I've amassed a huge amount of overdrive and distortion and fuzz pedals that let me stradle that thin line between a guitar's natural tone and a distorted tone. That way I could keep a pretty clean amp tone for when a clean tone would work and dirty it up when needed. Basically I'd go into any live playing situation with four sounds within the clean-distorted continuum.

There is a draw back to playing that way. I never really learned to play though a cranked amp. So about a year ago I picked up a Marshall amp, even though I was in the midst of working on a house and not even playing anymore. Now that I'm back playing though I'm taking the time to play almost everyday through the cranked Marshall. I "crank" the Marshall then use an attenuator to get it down to reasonable volume.

I've found the following things about the cranked Marshall. Rivera's are great amps. The Marshall compresses and is overdriven right off the bat. I am a single coil player-- better tone--, but the Marshall sounds best with my SG (with stock humbuckers) than my strat or ASAT. Once I made the switch to the SG into the Marshall the tone was really nice. No Rivera, but nice and heavy and rocking.

It is a lot of fun, playing through a cranked Marshall. I might start playing out with it. We'll see what happens. I have to find a bassist first, which is why I used to always play bass-- because people need bassists. But the cranked Marshall is fun.

I have a lot to write about and a lot of stuff to catch up on because I'm fully over the cold that really knocked me down. I probably won't get to a lot of it, but I'm sure we all know how that goes: they'll be new stuff to write about.

We can't really skip past MLK day though. We as a nation need to press on with the vision of freedom and social justice he spoke of. We need to see the evils of poverty and war and violence for what they are. If we can't see those, then we'll never get to advanced concepts like passive violence that goes to the roots of so many problems. For those that want to sequester MLK to the 60's or to "the civil rights movement" like that was something in the past and not on-going or ever-expanding: please don't miss his message that continues to inspire people, especially children, today. For those that see the "60's" as some horrible misdirection for our country: does that view really stand up to honest scrutiny?

MLK is a classic example of someone as much a leader as a surfer on a wave. If we see him only as a leader: we miss the swell of the masses that propelled him, we miss the team of people around him, we miss the complex depth of Rosa Parks, we miss the cultural imperative of returning vets that saw their freedoms denied and their service to the nation forgotten, we miss the need for his approach in the face of violence being used against the expansion of freedom and the cry for social justice, and we miss the examples that he was following. Skipping past these things we risk missing we can find the ways forward. We can't truly be inspired by his leadership if we can't see that leadership in the greater context from which it came.

Martin Luther King was a much of an inspiration and leader as Martin Luther King Jr. The apple doesn't fall very far from the tree as they say. But, there is another amazing "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" going on here. Jesus inspired Tolstoy to take a sober look at his lifestyle and his class status and his role as a military man in his culture and conclude he had basically lived a lie. Tolstoy gave us The Kingdom of God is Within You. This was picked up by Gandhi, and provided the blueprint for not only his approach to gaining India's independence but for his expansion of these ideas into a non-violent way of life. This way of life that Gandhi formulated can be found by doing a search for "passive violence" on google or checking out href= then an apostrophe like so href=' http://www.gandhiinstitute.or...' target='_the Gandhi institute'_blank'visit the Gandhi Institute for an intellectually rewarding trip into his vision for mankind, or href=' http://www.unitedforpeace.org...' target='_United for Peace and Justice'_blank'visit United for Peace and Justice for a real-time activist approach to the same goal.

Martin Luther King realized that opponents of the civil rights movement would paint it with the hate that they themselves were engulfed in, unless they used a radically different approach. Non-violence as a tactic prevents the conservatives of today to paint the civil-rights movement of the 60's with the hate and half truths they use on the rest of the 60's. We progressives today need to see that the vision for the long-term that King had is what preserves his memory today as much as his achievements. Our vision for the country is a continuation of his, we should embrace the spiritual sources of our inspiration.

For Christians, we need to realize that the teachings of Jesus and the movement he started that liberates people from earthly empires and emperors is carried on not by the Jose Maria Escrivas, Ian Paisleys, Charles Coughlins, Jerry Falwells, Pat Robertsons, of the world. Gandhi and King brought Jesus' message into the modern era for the people, to make the world a better place. These are the Christians, and we in their wake are the Christians: opening up the future for all people in the Spirit of Jesus, not holding back the future in defense of the past (to paraphrase our own Kurt Maddox) and mocking the name of Jesus in the process. We might as well defend his crucifixion with Bible quotes and call King a communist or let Newt Gingrich tell us about King's legacy if were are to confuse the true Christian messengers for the pretenders.

I registered for one math class and two music lessons back at my old college, so once I cut them a check, I'm officially back to school!  I pretty happy about it.  I think I should have mixed feelings, but right now I'm just pretty happy.

I wish I could take more classes, but I only have so much time to give to this.  I am&nbs p;taking a pian o lesson and&nb sp;a voice less on.  I'd like to sign up for the Jazz ensemble, the chamber music ensemble-- though I'm 99% sure the teacher only wants violins and violas and such and not guitars--, bass lessons and guitar.  

The guitar teachers are both filled up with lessons and I'm on the waiting list for the classical guitar teacher.  I could do the bass, but I have till February.  I can fit those into my schedule, so I really don't have a reason not to take the lessons.  The Jazz ensemble ends too late for me and my other commitments, but if I can swing a few things around then I'll be there.

The math class I'm taking is "Probability and Statistics", and I probably should be afraid of this one.  As I look at the text book, I dont' remeber any of the Calculus I need to do this stuff.  I've go some studying to do before i go back.  I might even sign up for tutoring my first week back just to get back on it.

Hopefully this cold I'm still fighting will be over by the time school starts.  It should.  I'd like to get back to the gym sometime soon, but I've been still too sick to go.

later peeps,

Hey,

I can not figure out how to put a link in a post.  Is there some way to do this?  Any insight at all would be appreciated, and I'm not just fishing for comments, but I would like to put links to whatever I'm writing about.

I would put a link to my Daily KOS "diary", but I dont' know how.  Instead I'll just refer you to the right column here where you can click on it if you feel like it.

I wrote about Harry Reid visiting Evo Morales in Bolivia.  Did some one say Action packed?

Not me, I didnt' say action packed.  I'm still too sick to go to the gym where I think I might have left a spare set of keys a week ago.  That's how sick I've been.

later,

Here is a link to article at Yahoo about China's intentions for a bigger military.

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061229/ap_on_r e_as/china_military

I'm in no position to tell any country what to do with their own military. I'm not writing about what China should do. My concerns are with my own country first and foremost. We should have expected China to do this a long time ago, and they have been pretty open about their desire to become more of a world power. While that is their business, I don't see any benefit to us from enabling it. They are doing it on our dollar though, and that is our fault and the fault of our trade policy. Our foolish trade policy will lead to problems in foreign policy later.

Trade policy is not just a tool for the development of business; any business development that comes from it should be considered a secondary or tertiary benefit and not the primary aim. Trade policy must always reflect our foreign policy goals with respect to national and global security. Trade policy is also a great tool for the promotion of human rights and civil rights. Sadly, our politicians neglected the need for human and civil rights when they've negotiated our trade agreements.

The greatest shame of GATT and NAFTA and the subsequent trade agreements, besides their passing in the first place, was the decision to free them of any environmental or wage requirements. The people actually doing the work would have benefited greatly if reasonable standards had been put in place. Instead, every consequence predicted by Ralph Nader came true. We lost jobs, we lost salary and wages. We gained hours worked to make up the difference, losing time with our families and our communities. Workers in other countries gained burning mountains of discarded Nike sneakers, sick kids, arthritic teens, and no right to strike for better conditions. For all this, our conservative pundits tell us we get cheaper goods to buy; but none of those pundits have seen the price tags on these sneakers, have they?

Trade policy should reflect our national security needs, not the greed of a narrow class of business elites at the expense of our common good or our common sense. Our trading partners should be our allies. Back during the cold war, at least that was clear. We traded with the free world because to do otherwise would bankroll our enemy. That simple logic is lost on our leaders now. Instead we have a president that claims to see into the heart of Vladimir Putin and see "good" while the man shuts down freedoms and consolidates power in a manner his country has not seen since Stalin. He even calls China an ally while they block action in Sudan, drag their feet with North Korea, and rattle their saber at Taiwan. For a man who supposedly divides the world into good and bad, he seems to have a strange definition.

China has never been and will never be our ally in the foreseeable future. If the student and worker demonstrators in Tiananmen Square had not been killed or jailed, and if they had risen to positions of leadership, we might be talking about a different China; but this China is no ally. Their jails filled with political prisoners, their media filled with the kind of blatant propaganda envied by our own conservatives, and even their internet filtered by software created by US firms and dreamed of US politicians: they are no ally to us. This is no basis for trade arrangements, and yet there it is: they are our biggest trading "partner". They take our money, they take our jobs, and they fund their military build up while we squander our global influence and our military strength in Iraq.

But it doesn't have to be this way. They don't have to build their military on our dollars. We can amend our trade policy, we can get it back in line with our interests instead of in line with the greed of a small handful. We need to rebuild what we let rot here in our own country and amongst our allies. There is nothing that can stop us except our own inflexibility.

This congress has a chance to get trade right. There are bills being crafted now that will either make things better or not go far enough; but we'll have to make the calls and write the letters to our congress people and senators if we want change. The cold war ended and we were supposed to get a "peace dividend" but instead we sat on our asses and let the world coast along. One terrorist attack and all the old cold warriors that were so wrong then about Russia's intentions and capabilities got whip us into a frenzy about another new enemy "terror" which will be a war without end and endless phantoms to fight. Mean while, China is emerging as the power in the east and Russia is restructuring-- like an US corp would-- into a leaner tighter version of Stalinism.

Trade policy is the first tool at our disposal to curb the creation of future enemies. Let's start using that tool for our own purposes instead of letting it be the play thing for a few wealthy fools that don't want to play fair with their workers.

I put the Ford blog below up at Daily KOS, so if anyone goes over there, be sure to check it out.

Here's a link:

http://www.dailykos.com/user/musicalhair" title="http://www.dailykos.com/user/musicalhair" target="_blank"http://www.dailykos.com/user/...


There is a poll at the end.

I remember Gerald Ford as president, I remember Nixon for that matter too. But I was pretty young so all I remember from Ford was "WIN" buttons meaning "Whip Inflation Now", which I don't know how those buttons were going to whip inflation now. My family are Republicans. My mother has always been a county committee woman, and organizer in the local republican party. I even wrote a lot of campaign literature for local elections when I was in middle school.

I don't remember Ford's presidency very much, but I remember the Ford Reagan primaries. There was a real fear, maybe more real to a sixth greader but still there, that Reagan was a lunatic that would plunge the country into nuclear war with the Soviets if he won. That was back when people called it nuclear and not "Nuke-U-ler he-he-he".

What the pundits are saying is that Ford's subsequent defeat to Carter turned out to be the end of the "moderate" Republican-- the fiscal conservative, socially libertarian, blue blood wing-- allowing the "social conservatives" to take over. What surprised me was something some "presidential historian" said tonight on Lou Dobbs show on CNN (Lou being home tonight). She said that Ford's defeat was because the social conservatives, Reagan's wing of the party, stayed home on election day.

Looking at an election map from 1976 shows the south, from Texas to Virginia all going to Carter, probably the last time a Democrat pulled that off. I would have thought it was because he was from Georgia himself, but according this historian she said republican turn out was low that year in places were Reagan was strong. By staying home, they set up the take over of the party the next time out and reshaped for the worse the political landscape in our country since then.

People voted for Reagan because they thought he'd kick Iran's ass. He didn't. If anything, with all the evidence that points the Reagan-Bush October surprise they exasperated it for political gain. Exasperating problems for political gain seems to be the modus operandi of the Republicans since Ford. Our country suffers for it.

I got to thinking about these holidays. I thought about the Christmas trees that were taken down and then put back up, because the mall or the town or whatever decided they'd almost rather not have a Christmas display if it meant having to have a Chanukah display. I thought about the disgusting way Bill O'Reilly freaks out over "Happy Holidays", and how he turned around his insensitivity to the fact that other holidays are celebrated by other people, and feigns indignation when others acknowledge this diversity. He almost has me stopping my saying of "Merry Christmas".

Anyway, I don't get what he has against Chanukah. OK, I'm being facetious. I know he is just a jerk only "Christian" enough to use it to bully minority religions in this country. But the war on Christmas crowd loves Leviticus and Judges and Deuteronomy as much as any Gospel. The go running to the old testament when ever they faced with having to "love" or seek peace or any of the good "bleeding-heart" ; Christian things they don't want to do. Slavery, anti-race-mixing, Sodom and Gomorrah, Samson, capital punishment, all good Christian positions for those that seek refuge in the old testament when the Gospel might lead them down a hippie liberalism.

What better way to embrace this than celebrating Chanukah and Christmas. See, I always seek to unite and not divide. Here, I'll be dividing myself away from my kid's favorite holiday. If one thinks Christianity is an extension of Judaism, and see the old testament as God's word well, what better way to express this than celebrating the Jewish holidays too.

Now for me-- who is starting to suspect that Christianity has its roots in Platonism and Pythagorism, as well as seeing Judaism's texts as an amalgamation of "near east" religious thought, legends and superstitions, getting a coherent theology only after the influence of Zoroastrianism-- well I'd be out of luck.

I'd feel like the guy that recognizes "under God" in the pledge of allegiance was put there not by the authors, but by congress: not as an act of faith but as a way to find communists during the MCcarthy era. As much as I find it distasteful, It was using God as a prop to make an empty statement about communism than it was to respect the constitution and the separation between church and state. In a way it is like forcing "Merry Christmas" down everyone's throat in total disregard that there are other holidays going on at the same time.

I think it is impossible to over-estimate the impact James Brown had on music.  We lost a truely amazing artist and performer.  I'm going to try to point out somethings that he did, and maybe convey some sense of the range of impact he had.

When you listen to his earliest recordings you hear a pretty typical R&B artist.  Shortly after that though the real James Brown sound or formula or system starts to emerge.  He rightfully saw the importance of rhythm in the musical experience, and understood the role of space in music.  He focused on the rhythm section of his band, creating with them parts that made more sense when heard as a whole than as individual parts.  He came up with the parts, the musicians played exactly what he wanted them to, so once we start hearing the "James Brown" sound we are hearing his ideas and not the musicians ideas in his songs like with most artists.

When you listen to the bass lines in his music, regardless of which bassist he has at the time, the parts are full of space and rhythmic bursts that sit in the drummer's groove perfectly.  Once you learn to hear a bass line in the James Brown way, you will never play bass in the same way again.  Bootsy might have had more freedom than other bass players, but I also think that Bootsy never sounded better than his early days with James Brown.

The guitar parts in James Brown's system are also the archetype for guitar interaction.  Typically in&n bsp;his songs o ne guitar would  play chords up on the treble strings and the other guitar would play a sinlge note line on the bass strings.  The key to hearing how these parts fit, or how he came up with them goes back to the drums.  Everything feeds off the drums.  It seems to me that the single note guitar line comes last, adding a busyness and foward motion to music.  The repetition of the parts then become the canvas upon which the rest of the music built.

The horns often were just another layer of the groove, which was much more like a machine than a band up till that point in time.  This system allowed James to create a vocal line that now that I think about it might have been more like a blues guitar solo than singing.  It is tough to compare James Brown's way of singing, but easy to contrast.  Just listen to Sam and Dave or the Four Tops or anyone for a contrast.  In the same way that riffs and hooks and rhythmic phrasing replaced harmonic progression in his system, these same elements replaced most standard melodic devices.  All the subltle aspects of songcraft were pushed aside for a much more emotionally charged almost seemingly free form chanting or riffing for lack of a better word.

The impact this had on other musicians is staggering.  Every funky drummer that practially blows off the rest of the drum kit for the snare, kick and hi-hat is pledging allegiance to the Godfather of Soul.  Every bassist that leaves the space playing staccatto, sneaking in 16th note Root - octave or root fifth flurries working almost solely off the "box" pattern R-Octave-b7-5 is ripping off James Brown.  The 16th note groove might have been underneath a lot of music as the foundation, but James Brown put it out front saying it was&n bsp;all that wa s needed.  He broke  it free f rom all the&nbs p;restrictions of&nb sp;nice arranging&nb sp;and structures&nb sp;and instead  he let it  run amoke.

It would be silly to list all the 70's funk and soul acts that count James as the primary influence.  It shouldn't be neccessary to point out that hip-hop would have nothing to sample if not for James Brown, he was the primary source with noone of significance in second third or fourth place.  Listen to today's "Jam bands" for yet another logical extention of James Brown's ideas on what makes music groove.  His band laid down the ultimate beats to blow over for jam bands in the same way they were the ultimate beats to rap over in the late 70's and early 80's.

Listen to "Afro-pop", and the various kinds of electric music coming out of Africa.  Two things happend that changed the music in Africa, James Brown toured Africa, and Bob Marley toured Africa.  The inspiration they gave to the local musicians (not to mention the jamming they did) gave us every shade of Afro-pop that we have.  Listen to Fela Kuti's music, or King Sunny Ade (but now that I mention it, listen to Fela Kuti for some more life changing music).

I not one for hyperbole, but it is safe to say that James Brown is as important as Chuck Berry or the Beatles or John Coltrane or Miles Davis in terms of impact.

Hey,

I was going to make a Chanukah post but Opera kept crashing on me.  I upgraded to the lasted revision, and it all seems to be working fine.  I should be doing this in Firefox, but old habits die hard.


Anyway, I was driving home thursday night and passed a car coming the other way with this huge Menorah on its roof.  It was like cut white plexiglass or something with red plexi for the flames, with lies on the inside so that the white candles and the red flame could be seen at night.  It must have been something to make.



It was similar to but different that this:

http://www.carmenorah.com/Parade/images/New" title="http://www.carmenorah.com/Parade/images/New" target="_blank"http://www.carmenorah.com/Par...%20Haven,%20CT_jpg.jpg

I think it is pretty cool.



Anyway, I've got to run and I'll finish my subversive and trouble making take on this later.  This is a good breaking point from a happy post to a political take on these holidays.

Merry and Happy to all.

This Christmas is kinda weird. The kids are getting excellent presents, the best year for them. This will also be the best Christmas in terms of gifts for my wife by far. We did OK this year. We even got gifts for all my aunts and uncles, because when you do OK you have to remember to "kick some up" to the bosses.

I'm not trying to brag or anything, I'm just setting up the contrast. Most of us are all sick as hell right now. My wife just got over a cold. I was getting over a cold and when my wife got it, I relapsed worse. I start kicking that and I go see an old professor of mine who was sick, and I got sicker. I start recovering from that and I dont' know what happened but I'm now more sick than I've been in about 7 years.

I used to work in enivronmental consulting-- hazardous waste and fun stuff like that-- and I would go into things everyone else would be getting out of and the nastier the gig the more I liked it. But, it took it's toll on me. by the time I left it I was having two asthma attacks a day, fighting off colds for a month at a time, and just weak-- not physically but "constitutionally&qu ot; I guess. I used to be able to-- not to gross anyone out but-- spit a cold out of my system before started that gig. Growing older had a lot to do with it, not just the toxic mess I thought I was tougher than.

But after that work, every cold I got would descend into my lungs and I'd be sucking on my inhaler all day and not even getting out of bed for weeks at a time. When I finally left I stayed in bed for two weeks sick too sick to get up. Every cold I had for at least two years would knock me down in ways you can't imagine, and I'd be sick like 4 or 5 times each winter. Each time it would descend into the lungs and I'd be sucking on the inhaler like an addict.

Eventually I started to regain my strength or resiliancy, but it was slow going. For a few years now I've been pretty strong and healthy, but this cold last night started to descend into the lungs. It isn't there yet but I know the feeling and I'm fighting it as best I can. Enough about my whining. Two days ago I was saying to my wife how lucky we are that the kids aren't getting these colds we've have. Last night the oldest one starts coughing and blowin her nose and needing the inhaler. the youngest one is tough as nails though and she's OK so far. I'd be shocked if it takes her down very much if it does hit her.

But wait there's still more whining! We were going to go to my parents house yesterday, to check on my mom as she comes out of the hospital for some tests to see how her bladder cancer is doing and to check out an infection she has, and to celebrate in a small way my father's 80th birthday. Well, she's too sick and just wants to lay in bed. I'll call and check in with them today but she was too ill for us yesterday. (Dad don't want a big deal made of us 80th birthday anyway, at least he says.)

But wait there's more! We were also going to my parents house on Christmas and we were going to go to a restaurant (because we've found all that cooking of a big holiday meal can be exhausting and going out is kinda easier sometimes in and around NYC there are alot of places that really do a nice job of serving Christmas dinner, T-day too for that matter), but mom was too sick to make the reservations and it looks like we're doing leftovers for Christmas because we're all too sick to cook and shop. Luckily the presents are all squared away.

There! So, since I haven't blogged in like two years except for this past week or so, I got in my full year's worth of whining all in this one blog. No more whining for the rest of the year from me, I promise.

ARGGGGHHHH!!!!! I've tried to put up two new posts and both times Opera crashes on me. I've upgraded to the latest version (9.10 from 9.02), but am using Mozilla's Firefox for this post and will probably use it a lot more when posting here. Anyway, hopefully I'll re-do the post about chanukah, which might be cool. Right now I've got to go shopping for the wife.

My littlest one (5 1/2) had her first piano recital today. I hear it went well, I was still finding a parking space when she played. Buy the time I got in she had already played. She played two little studies from her method book-- "La Method Rose" by Van De Velde. She had a lot of fun she said, and her teacher seemed pleased. Other kids played, all students of this one teacher.

When it was over and the mingling had begun some of the kids went over to the piano to play for each other. My oldest got her turn and played the famous Bach Minuet in G from the Anna Magdelena notebook. About a year ago I was surprised to learn that the tune was probably written not by JS Bach, but mostly like by Christian Pezold Bach. When she finished and walked away, another kid sat down and played the same piece, the first half anyway. This kid looked at least a year older than my older one, and based on what I saw in the recital, she was the best of these students-- but I think my oldest can play better.



I'm glad the kids got to see their pals from the music school, even though my oldest didn't get to officially preform in the recital. I think it might make her want to work hard for the spring recital when she is supposed to play.



Both kids though are going to be monsters on the piano. They've both got great ears, and they're surrounded by music. The older one has good solid technique, she has to make certain mechanical changes as she grows (the way you use your pinky as a real little kid is different than when you're older, and you can "dig in" more when you're older but I can't describe it any better since I'm a guiarist), but her musical memory is great and she is a wiz with her scale work. She is already on course for being a pretty fast player.


The little one picks out the melodies that the older one is working on by ear. It is pretty funny actually. She wants to play the stuff the older one is working on. Her teacher asks her to write songs and she comes up with really nice stuff. She gives them crazy names like "The Brand of the New Hope" which is one of her better songs.


The older one doesn't write songs yet, but I think she want's to. Her teacher is focusing on "tone" which I didn't evern realize was an option for piano. On guitar we can get a lot of tonal "colors" and timbre and so on. The piano seems to me to be more limited in that way, but apparently there is something more to it than it would appear on the surface.


Anyway, it is cool watching them grow up. They are a great team. They're both very different, and in certain ways they both want to be like each other. They're both smart, but man they both are on track to be monsters on the piano. I can't wait till one of them starts putting in the time on the guitar. Partly because then the other one will too just to keep up. gotta run ...

Here are the links I forgot to add in the post below:

 

Christian Coalition president-elect quits over lack of focus on poverty  

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2006-11 -28-christian-coalition_x .htm" title="http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2006-11 -28-christian-coalition_x .htm" target="_blank"http://www.usatoday.com/news/...

 

Southern Baptists still back Bush, Iraq war

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/ world/15638737.htm" title="http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/ world/15638737.htm" target="_blank"http://www.mercurynews.com/ml...

 

Southern Baptists Support a Vigorous War

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23023" title="http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23023" target="_blank"http://www.frontpagemag.com/A...

 

Condi Rice tells SBC messengers America's job to spread freedom

http://www.abpnews.com/1092.article" title="http://www.abpnews.com/1092.article" target="_blank"http://www.abpnews.com/1092.a...

 

Profile: Silent Evangelical Support Of Bush's Proposed War Against Iraq

Morning Edition: February 26, 2003

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/tran scripts/2003/feb/030226.hagerty.html" title="http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/tran scripts/2003/feb/030226.hagerty.html" target="_blank"http://www.npr.org/programs/m...

 

It should be noted that the support, mentioned in the headline from the last of the above, was never silent but always loud and 'in-your-face' because the stupid and the war-mongering have no sense of decency to keep silent.

I used to have a "disclaimer" box that would come up before you could get to my blog.  It was pretty funny, I think anyway.  But it was there for a reason: I reserve the right to say offensive and insensative things.  I'm exercising that right, now.   

 

In this case, it should draw no flack from anyone.  I'm about to "bitch" about some people's intolerance of others, and if anyone supports the group I'm about to slam, well they sort of have to support my right to slam them too.

 

might not have this whole "making a new paragraph" thing down yet, so bear with me.

---

 

From Yahoo News comes this nice little headline: Va. parishes split from Episcopal church ,

There, that should be "lavender".   Pardon me, while figure out what font I want this in ...

How's this?  OK, I'm sticking with it.  Anyway, here is a link to the article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061217/ap_on_r e_us/episcopalians_split" title="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061217/ap_on_r e_us/episcopalians_split" target="_blank"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20...

 

This has happened before, and I don't just mean this stuff going on with these churches freaking out over gay people.  I'm reminded of the way the Southern Baptists started.  Yes, I'm "going there" (as I answer the little voice in my head that is saying "Don't go there").

I can agree that gay marriage shouldn't be so analogous with the civil rights movement, but that doesn't make all the applicable analogies any less informative when looking at this issue.  In this case, we're talking about the start of a new sect.

New sects start, everyy religion we have today started either as a sect or something bigger or something smaller.  Most were looked at as cults, and most got their start from some actual theological innovation or spiritual awakening.  Most can point to a leader with a new take on things.  I think it would be instructive to look at the big picture and see how these sects evolved in comparison with sects that started in other ways.

I don't see this breaking away from parent churches as a theological matter, just as I don't see the manner in which the Southern Baptists were created as a manner of theology.  To point out that both groups-- this new Aglican and Episcopal group, and the Southern Baptits- are "conservative" might make some of us groan at an oversimplification of the word, but I say that is very much a part of it all too.  (I have on deck a review of conservatives in Iran, and how it is bickering caused by "conservatives" here and between "conservatives" in cross-cultural conflict that is at the heart of many of our problems in the world.)

This split now is not about how one views God; it isn't about one's relationship with God, and it isn't about anything that is in the chain of command (if I may use such a term) of parishioner to clergy to God.  It isn't about church book keeping, or business, or anything else.  It is about the relationship between the parishioners, and really let's admit it: hate.

It is one thing for a person to be so freaked out by gays that they become all kinds of disfunctional-- you know, like failing to see the person for who they are because of some perference they have, and failing to welcome them into their own community in the manner every person should be welcomed--- but for entire congregations to up-and-leave a church over it is pretty amazing.  They are saying "we don't have to like, respect, tolerate, sit next to, and listen to any gay people".  That is it-- let's not pretend otherwise.  To them, an openly gay person can't stand in front them at church delivering sermons.  Closeted gays can, self-hating gays can, crooks can, racists can, idiots can; anyone can except gays, and women if you're Catholic. 

The Southern Baptists have a distinction I'd frankly be embarrassed about: they were formed because their members could not abide the anti-slavery stance of the rest of the church.  OK, you might think it should be left in the past, after all the church has made statements of apology and we're supposed think it has "come a long way". 

I don't think so.  I think it should come as a realization to the members that they were way wrong, and that maybe they might be wrong else where.  Maybe it isn't about admitting wrong, but just about letting go a position that is so untenable that it is no longer worth keeping in public.  That is no more outragous than the idea that gays and hollywood have a secret agenda of converting the world's population.

Why am I picking on Southern Baptists, do I want a fight?  No, not at all.  All I'm saying is there is something very wrong with a "conservative" church that splits itself way in that manner.  The idea that they were wrong about is not held in isolation but as part of a larger world view; and it is not reasonable to assume that switching from hating blacks to accepting blacks corrected the problems in the world view.  It isn't the same thing as putting tumeric into a tomato sauce instead of oregano. 

The hate was justifed and rationalized in their minds and they carried over those rationalizations into their theology and their reading of their bible.  Correcting the whole "hate blacks" thing takes more than switching it to "accept blacks, in order for the world view to be corrected a lot of relearning and personal growth had to take place.  They didn't just make a wrong or selfish choice when breaking away over slavery, they went down a long and wrong path. 

There is no quick two-block change of direction to get back.  How do I know this?   Below are a few links.  The war in Iraq had at it's very begining when too many of our sheepish population were cowering in fear from Sadaam's phantom nukes and chemical weapons (which Reagan sold him) that there was talk in the media (to help drum up support for the war) of a "biblically just war".  At most only and barely half our population ever supported the invasion before it was started, and that can't mean that more than half of any religious group would have supported it-- well, except for one.  The Southern Baptists seem to stand alone as not only supporting the war and Bush, but they seem to be war-mongers-- or at least war cheerleaders.  No concern over the deaths, no love as the solution to any problems, no turning the other cheek, nope: war is their answer.  Deep down inside they must know that the answer to the bumper-sticker question "who would Jesus Bomb" is no one.  There is something disfunctional in their world view that prevents them from accepting and acting on that truth.  It is the same thing that made it alright to hate blacks.

It is probably the same thing that takes the shock out of the odd fact that the president-elect of the Christian Coalition had to resign before even taking office because he wanted to fight poverty and take seriously being responsible stewards of the planet.  I can appreciate that there is little time after: fighting for tax breaks for the wealthy, fighting to destroy public education, fighting gays, fighting against affirmative action, fighting to make every pregnancy end in a baby (not a healty baby, not a baby that has a healthy mom and shelter and a doctor though), and fighting to get every town county and state to put baby Jesus on every street corner from labor day to presidents day to the exclusion of any other display.  Yes, they have little time to fight poverty or take the environmental problems of the world seriously.  They may have little time to add poverty relief to their agenda but they also have their priorities screwed up, and for the same reasons that lead the Southern Baptists to break away and from their own church.

Is it fair to compare the Southern Baptist relationship to slavery and the Christian Coalition's disregard for the poor to this new group of Anglican's hatred for gays?  Yes, very much so.  There is something I've always liked about the phrase: kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out.  We should love them all too, and let God sort them out; we should accept them all too, and let God sort them out; we should feed them all, and let good sort them out; we should share out communities and our churches and our institutions with them all, and let God sort them out.  We should deny nothing to anyone, isn't that in keeping with Jesus' teaching?  Freaking out over a gay minister or bishop without giving them the same chance and the same respect any other new minister or bishop would receive is just mean.  It says nothing about the openly gay person and everything about the newly created -- and not surprisingly-- conservative group.

---

I don't have a way to preview this, so I'll publish it and edit it after.  I put this in Religion, but not because I'm looking for a fight.  If I wanted a fight, I'd put in in Food or Cooking so I can pick a fight with people that put tumeric in tomato sauce.  We have to fight back in this war on pasta.

I felt like I hit one out of the park with my last post. I felt that right after I wrote it, and the long comments in it are really cool. The conversations around posts were always been my favorite part of blogging. I haven't posted since the one below, mainly because I haven't had time (the weather was nice here for a change and I've been sick), but also for a bigger reason: I had nothing of that level to follow it up with. I realize I shouldn't use my last post as a measuring stick for my next post. I have a few in the works, maybe tonight I'll post them. Actually I had a plan for another post to write: as I was planning the last one I had another idea and I was supposed to type it right after finishing the last one. But, as I researched it the premise seemed to be bogus and not at all reality based, so I scratched that idea and had nothing. It was a "big" idea too. It would have like unified a lot of ideas from my old posts on Akhenaton and monotheism and my last post and maybe even cured cancer. OK, maybe not cancer but maybe eczema or priaprism (which will be the name of my next rock band). In searching for a big idea to replace it, I came up with nothing that big, so I wrote nothing. Tonight, I'll write something. I hope.

I was struck by the fact that everyone has their own "version" of Jesus. OK, all the bible thumpers that are chuckling because they know Jesus personally via the bible can stop chuckling: it isn't everyone "else" that has their own version, but everyone that thinks about Jesus.

There is no real shock here.

 

We can not conceive of another person in our minds in their own entirety, but only as our own image of that person. The moment we gain an image of someone in our mind, we are contemplating what we perceive as their own circumstance against the background of our own experiences and our own lives. Even as remote their lives may be from ours, the contextualizing of their life within our experience is there. The better we get to know someone, the closer we may get to "them" as opposed to our first impressions; but there will always be a difference between our peception and their reality. This can only be even more so when we're talking about a historical figure, and it really is of no significance if that historical figure is a diety that enters our heart (or if the historical figure wasn't a historical figure in anyone's opinion).


Without going it long details, we all read about what the various words in the various gospels "really" mean and we naviagate these words putting together a picture that makes sense to us. The picture that makes sense to us is in part formed by us and our own interpreting and translating of these words into our own mind. The Jesus that sits in our own hearts is the one that makes sense in our own minds. I am completely "OK" with this. I think it can be no other way actually. As long as we are honest with ourselves about it. If I think Jesus was "of" the destitute poor, not a "carpenter" but a "laborer", a rabble rouser: I certainly would have my reasons and noone could really argue with them. If some else thought he was more middle class or of a skilled labor class, literate and educated in a manner the poorest could not expect to be: well, I know that would be reasonable. Where we'd go very wrong would be if we were to consider either of these two different impressions as "wrong" or "right".


Anyway, even all these words we are disecting come to us from copies of copies of copies of gospels that probably were not first hand accounts. It shouldn't be surprising nor disappointing considering the times we are talking about and the means available to those earliest Christians.


But here is something to think about: what language did Jesus speak? Well, if he was a Galilean: that was considered the most Hellenized area, and it was not uncommon for large populations of Jews to have forgotten their language and speak Greek exclusively.


Here is something that surprised me: what was his name? It seems to me his name was most likely "Joshua", and the hellenized version of Joshua was altered to create a "numeralogically perfect" name, which we then translate into Jesus. When we're told of the power in the name "Jesus" are we being told of the man's name or of the numeralogical perfection of the alteration? Might it be decidely "un-Christian" to suppose any name has "power"?

I think it doesn't matter how we conceive of Jesus, so long as we are honest with ourselves about it. If we know that "God's law" is written on all our hearts, and that it is up to us to detangle ourselves-- from our own disfunctions and our own problems and the culture we are in-- in order to see straight through to that "law" as it is written on our hearts. So long as we take that stuff seriously I think we're on the right track.

I don't know. I might start blogging again. I've been busy since my last posts on this, and I might post on some of this. I'm about to undertake some major changes in my life, but I don't like "jinxing" things by talking about them before they happen. What I would do is post as they happen, even if a small percent of these things pan out, it will be pretty cool to post it here. I am looking foward to the new session of congress; and "we" need to be very active and keep them focused on what needs to be done, which I think are: oversight of government contracting, investigating the abuses of power overlooked by the last (well, current) congress, minimum wage, funding the actions of government (taxation and revenue generation), restoration of civil liberities, overhauling energy policy to reflect reality, health care, and inserting economic justice, environmental standards into trade agreeements, and resusitating our economy. I have to run, but I'm looking foward to sharing what I hope will be good and new things going on here for me and my family and the people around me. later

Check this out: www.karmabanque.com

Hedge funds and "short selling" are about 20 of the trades on Wall street (or the finacial markets in general, I'm not really sure which or if possibly both).

These guys have targeted stocks whose price are most vulnerable, but they add an new dimension: boycotts. Some stocks-- aparently Coca-cola-- are way over priced when you compare to actual sales, and when a big enough boycott is organized the price drops. Short selling and hedge funds profit when the stocks they own drop (Yes, it does sound like the "Underpants Gnome's method of capitalism, but apparently it works).

This investing technic can both generate revenue-- which Karma Banque redirects most in a philanthropic way-- and be used to drive down stock value on "bad" corps that either destroy the environment or are unfair to workers or people or the third world. Some stocks are more suseptible than others, but the ones that are suseptible can be effected by this technic.

If "We" can damage their stock value enough, they may have to change they business practices and diffuse the boycotts and those restore their stock value which was overpriced compared to sales and boycott suseptiblity.

Karma banque explains it better than I do, they were on Behind the News on WBAI yesterday with Dough Henwood and they were mind-blowing.

I'm going to try to put up a blog once a week this year. The reason is that I've just not got the time. These won't get "better" due to their infrequency, but maybe I'll focus a little better.

I still want to address the questions raised by Kurt Maddox, but it will be slower going here towards that end.

I've been thinking about what to do for the following year, as described in a blog entry below. I'm sort of doing that and and also compiling reasons we should be optimistic-- and I'm serious about that. The right wins but must resort to more and more dispicable and desperate tactics each time, like a tactical chess player getting some edge in each minor skirmish while strategically their position is weakening and untenable. I really believe this and will have to spell out why at a later date.

As an artist, I see the battle against the dumbing down of my country as a political and a cultural issue. This is an important "Battle", because it isn't just the reactionaries that had issues with Janet Jackson or Ashlee Simpson, it is just that our issues with that level of entertainment are more complicated and we see the source of the problem more clearly and in detail than the religious right has it.

To that end I'd like to recommend this group, found at the this link, which you should right click and check out after complimenting me-- know know, say I must have been working out or something-- in the comments section: http://www.hopeinamerica.com/...


I thought this was a goof, but they look as serious as anything else. They are in the streets standing up to stupidity. Stupidity is our enemy. If people can't understand that Ashlee Simpson is a poor unfortunate fool being lead for the sole purpose of giving us the absolute lowest and stupidest level of "entertainment", how can they understand the level of fraud that Bush is? It is in deed one battle. As I said in an earlier blog, the only difference between Paris Hilton and G.W. Bush is their gender and the year they were born. When H.O.P.E. attacks Paris Hilton and suceeds, Bush will diminish a little because it is the same bogus media that props them both up over all reason and good taste.

The recent events in the Islands of Southeast Asia are probably a lot more devasting than I'm even aware of. Still it seems this might be the worst natural disaster in anyone's recent memory at the very least. Our prayers should of course be with the victims and with the aid workers. Let's keep our eyes open for oppurtunities to give legitimate aid where ever we can as the global community mobilizes to provide relief for the victims.