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,