Well…just had to do a short one on an article I just read out on Kos…over the weekend, an Iraqi man recognized that a suicide bomber was trying to get into a shrine to detonate a suicide vest….this brave man, Najih Shaker Al- Baldawi hugged the suicide bomber and detained him while he set the vest off…killing Mr. Al-Baldawi and the murderer….but saving hundreds of lives….this is bravery….RIP….
Category Archives: Misc
Stairway to Heaven…
Well…do I have your attention after that title? Hope so…but this one is a little obscure but I wanted to do something a little different today…one of my favorite bands, Led Zeppelin, and it’s founders and last surviving members Page, Plant, and Jones, have been involved in a plagiarism lawsuit brought by the estate of the lead guitar player of a band called Spirit…who you may or not have heard of…who wrote a song called Taurus back in the early 70′s that had a few chord progressions that sound something like the intro to STH. I listened to it the other day and I did find a couple of notes that kind of sound like one part of STH but the rest of it is nothing like it…and today, the court in LA agreed that the parts that the plaintiffs said were stolen have existed in the public domain for hundreds of years and that Page and Plant didn’t steal them….so two years of a cloud over the guys has been cleared and STH has been shown to be an original work….with the climate of litigation these days, I am really surprised that the case was decided as it was…and I think it was decided correctly….
Another one for the B-3 count…
Well…back to do another one on my obsession with the Hammond B-3 organ and the bands that used it…was watching a concert with the original lineup of the Beach Boys the other day and there it was… a B-3 sitting on the side of the stage but this one was painted white which was quite weird but still easily recognizable…so, add another one to the B-3 count…
RIP Muhammad Ali…
Well…it seems like every week there is another great in our lives that passes away…yesterday, we lost Muhammad Ali at the age of 74 after a short illness…it is kind of weird when someone that has been there for you entire life goes….I remember the 1960 Olympics gold medal and the brashness of that young Cassius Clay…yeah, I’m that old….and I remember listening to his fights on the AM radio since, back then, they weren’t on TV until later when you could see some of them on Wide World of Sports…I also remember the draft resistance that now I find quite strange since Ali was 25 at the time and most draftees were in their late teens…but, that’s for another time….his work outside the ring was what made him so different from other fighters at the time and was even more significant that his boxing….and is what made him the real man that he was….he had a great life….RIP Ali…
Strange music…
Well…as you can see, politics haven’t really been too interesting to me lately…after all, how do you comment on the absurdism that is the repub race…so, I think I’ll do one on some music I heard on the bike this morning. On the ride today, “Sunshine of my Love” by Cream came on and, since I was at my last water stop in the park, I could really listen to it without wind noise or any other distractions…well..it is the strangest engineering I have ever heard in a song….whoever did the recording put the drums in the right ear, the guitar in the left, and Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton singing in the middle….really a departure from the normal way that songs sound….I was going to do a similar one on how the drums sound on “Nantucket Sleighride” by Mountain…where they use the entire sonic range from ear to ear for the drums and then lay the rest of the music on top of it so it sounds like you are really at a live concert…and that contrasts to “White Room” by Cream where the drums sound like you are sitting a couple of feet in front of the kit….weird…or not weird but interesting how sound can be changed so your brain interprets it differently…yeah, okay….probably only interesting to me….
March 18th
Well….it was an okay day yesterday but I had the up and down feeling crappy thing going on again and it’s been almost a week now and I am getting tired of it…slept okay last night but feel a little crappy this morning since I was not good last night but it was the first time this week so I don’t feel bad about that…it was another windy day yesterday that kept me off the bike and today the cold looks like it will do that again…where the heck is my 60 degree weather? Oh, well….I am almost 200 miles up on where I was last year at this time so I guess I shouldn’t bitch too much….and my back doesn’t hurt today so that is a plus, too….didn’t get much done yesterday and today looks the same with pool, maybe, so the weekend will have to be cleaning time….not much to do today…I have a ham to cook this morning but that is about it….just going to veg it out and have more coffee after I finish this…more later….
Just some stuff…
Well….have been thinking of a topic for today and haven’t had much luck…I could write about the word salad that ole Palin did the other day when she was endorsing Trump…or that Palin now blames her son’s arrest for domestic violence on Obama…thanks Obama….or I could write about the stories I read today that says everyone that has ever met Ted Cruz hates him…now that is something to think about…how hard would you have to try to have everyone hate you? I know some people hate me, mostly commenters here, but not everyone….or I could write about the big donors from Jeb!’s campaign already pointing fingers at people trying to find the blame for how terrible he’s doing…I have news for them…he’s just an idiot spawn of an idiot family, that’s why no one wants him. I could write about our lousy governor and how incompetent he is unless it’s harming unions or giving tax cuts to his business cronies…and, how the e-mails that were released show that no one in his administration gives a damn about anyone that can’t give them money….but no, not going to write about any of those….just about stuff….nope, not even about stuff….just bored and I think I’ll go back and read some more…
Two more for the B-3 count…
Well…just finished up the work that I had to do today…it took longer than I expected….but, were back to the Hammond B-3 count and just saw two more groups that use the B-3..Umphree’s McGee and The String Cheese Incident were on AXS tv doing concerts today and both had a B-3 on stage….so let’s add two more groups and keep the count going….can’t remember if I put Buddy Guy in the count yet but if I haven’t, he needs to go in, too….
Starbucks declares war on Christmas…
Well…I kinda figured you were tired of me writing about ole Ben Carson so I thought I’d go another direction today….if you haven’t heard, Starbucks has declared war on Christmas….at least according to some of the really crazy religionists on the right…and, how are they doing that you may ask? They have taken aim at Christmas by taking the snowflakes and reindeer off of their cups! I tell you it’s a travesty…Christmas will be ruined now that you can only get plain red cups for your coffee in the morning! Yeah, that sounds pretty ridiculous, huh? But, there are a bunch of nuts on the right who have taken this seriously to the point that a rant video by one of these nuts had gotten over 10 million hits…and write-ups in many of the mainstream newspapers followed…and not even tongue in cheek like my rant here…I wonder if we are going to have to endure this crap for the next two months when someone somewhere doesn’t celebrate Christmas to the satisfaction of these crazies…I know it will give me something to ridicule but I mean, really? Don’t these folks have anything better to do? I’ll bet Starbucks is shaking with the threat of a boycott…okay, I even laughed at that one….geez…
Volkswagen is a cheater..
Well…in this age of computer run cars, I guess this had to happen….the other day, it was discovered that Volkswagen used the computer software that runs their engines to cheat the EPA tests in their diesel cars sold in the US. The software was so sophisticated that it could tell when the engine was being tested and put in the pollution control protocol when, all the rest of the time, the engine would run basically without pollution controls, spewing from 10 to 40 TIMES the pollution that it was certified for. It was also revealed that there are almost a million cars with this software that are polluting our air…and the funny thing is the CEO of the company doesn’t know anything about it…okay, that was sarcasm…I just wonder why they would want to do this..better mileage? Okay, I am having a hard time working up outrage when this crap happens all the time…corporations are not people…but who are the people behind this? Nope…no outrage…damn…I wonder if my outrage meter is broken? Geez…