JFK ADULTERY, KARDASHIAN, NEWT, OBAMACARE, AMERICAN IDOL, GLOBAL WARMING HOAX, PLANNED PARENTHOOD.

When I posted something with SIPA and SOPA in the headline
…my page views shot up--compared to my normal numbers, which hover around the “you can count em on one hand” level. So now I’m wondering if I should put popular HOT topics and names in the headlines for all my posts so I can build my readership. CANT WAIT TO SEE HOW MANY HITS I GET WITH TODAY’S HEADLINE. Who knows, I could start competing with Arianna Huffington if I play my cards right.

A few years back I recorded some songs I wrote
at a friend’s state of the art home recording studio. Since I was singing, I warned him that it might take me a dozen or so takes to get it halfway decent. He said it would only take one. He was right—because he applied a program (see photo) by which the sound of every off pitch note I sang (which was frequent) was adjusted to the proper pitch. So if my D was a touch too flat, the program interpreted the sound as one that intended to be a D and shifted the pitch up automatically to a perfect D. Blew my mind. I could suddenly sing on key. First time since I was 14 years old. Apparently this program is what is used in concert for Madonna, Cher, (It’s actually referred to in the industry as the Cher Effect) and other vocally challenged would be and has been singers.


Like just about everything else in advanced music replication technology this is both amazing and depressing. Most people were thrilled when Sgt. Pepper came out in 1967. I recall being somewhat saddened. I loved the Beatles playing as a working quartet and I loved their approach to the writing and playing of songs born out of the simplicity of traditional pop, Rock n’ Roll and blues traditions. Sgt. Pepper (with the brilliant George Martin at the Helm) ushered in the age of big Studio production technology and hastened the wane of raw and real “live” playing with all the natural sound of human musicianship.

I’m hoping for an live acoustic future.


Super Bowl was pretty good game. And an amazing gaming game.

This ticket belonged to the guy who bet a thousand bucks at 50-1 that the first score of the game would be a safety. Bingo!

In Vegas you also could have placed your bet on:

Color of the Gatorade poured on winning coach;
Length of National Anthem;
Will Kelly Clarkson omit a word of Anthem;
Nature of first turnover (Fumble or INT);
Nature of first missed FG. (Wide left, right, short or blocked);
Next Day's Dow Jones direction (Up or down);
Color of Madonna's hair

The only bet that looked good to me was going under the over/under which was 55. Did I make the bet?
You bet I didn't.



Dierdre McCloskey. Economist, teacher, humanist, Born Donald McCloskey.
Underwent sex change at age 53 and changed name to Dierdre. She is one smart lassie and worth checking out. She probably would piss off progressives and conservatives alike since she’s both a staunch humanist and fierce defender of capitalism, albeit with a human face. I watched some lectures online and read a few essays and articles--really good stuff.


The Narrative Arts

James Wood in “How Fiction Works” vividly breaks down the technique of “free indirect style,” in which a third-person narrator subtly adopts flavors of a character’s voice and, and the effect is, as Wood puts it, “We inhabit omniscience and partiality at once.”

Reading V.S. Pritchett short stories. The man has the form down to a science.
Some stories are no more than 6 pages long and when you’re done you feel like you’ve just read a novel.

Realization: Often when writing, I find myself searching for the right word—but what I’m really searching for is a synonym for the one I can’t spell.


Marriage quotes from the Movies.


“Marriages don't work when one partner is happy and the other is miserable. Marriage is about both people being equally miserable.”
Forget Paris

“By the authority vested in me by Kaiser William II, I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution.”
The African Queen

"(To marry again) is the victory of optimism over experience."
The Private Lives of Henry VIII

“Did you know that the institution of marriage was created when the average person lived to the age of 30?”
The Last Kiss

“A wedding is like a funeral, but with musicians.”
Mobsters

"Young lovers seek perfection. Old lovers learn the art of sewing shreds together and of seeing beauty in a multiplicity of patches."
How to make an American Quilt

Empty Nester’s Rhyme of the Day.

Children aren't happy without something to ignore,
And that's what parents were created for.
--
Ogden Nash

Odds and Ends

”I know what men want. Men want to be really, really close to someone who will leave them alone.”
-- Elayne Boosler

She said it, not me.

“After months of partisan bickering, Congress has finally agreed to put a Slinky on an escalator and see if it goes on forever.” (caption to New Yorker cartoon this week)

What does “A word to the wise” mean? Aren’t the unwise the ones in need of assistance?
I just looked it up…apparently it means that it doesn’t take much (only a word) to prompt the wise toward understanding. My bad.

Finally found the best explanation of the 1st Law of Thermodynamics

Continuities
Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form--no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn.

Walt Whitman