Let me start off by saying that I didn’t ever plan to do a post on faulty products.  I did want to do a post on “products I like”.  We’ll get there.

But I’m very observant.  I don’t miss much.

And I just noticed that I went into my first floor bathroom, which days ago I had closed the heat vent off and shut the door to save energy since I rarely go in there, and it is just toasty warm in there!  I noticed lately that the heat is always off and the door closed to my son’s bedroom, but every time I go in there, it’s warm.

So that’s my first defective product to list.  The floor-mounted close-able heat vents that appear to close but do not impede the flow of heated air.

More to follow.

The other night I happened across a discussion (one that didn’t qualify as a debate) about the ethics of non-vegans’ food choices in the comments on a close friend’s facebook page.  While I have no real interest in participating in that debate since it never really concludes, I did write up my opinion, which I’ll share here, a few paragraphs down.

One reason, but not the primary one, that I chose to write about this is because I am interested in ethics, especially medical ethics (which I studied in college), the ethical components of sexuality and relationship structures, and issues of free choice and free will.  I have a lot of thoughts in common with Peter Singer, Michael Shermer, and my brilliant friend and author Franklin Veaux (blog | essays | site), just to name a few places to start reading for those who like thinking too much!

The main reason I chose to write about this is because I’ve been hearing an issue I really don’t care for come up more and more often: people who have chosen to be vegan (for whatever reason) are increasingly asserting that anyone who is not vegan is unethical, supports animal cruelty and is complicit in the torture of animals.  I find this absurd.  I don’t deny that animals have the capacity to suffer and I don’t support their mistreatment.  That doesn’t mean that I accept the argument that just because a livestock animal, like any biological organism, can feel and respond to their environment that it is unethical to kill them as humanely as possible and for me to eat them if I so choose.  You don’t have to like it, and you don’t have to make the same choices that I do, but it doesn’t make me “wrong” or a bad or unethical person.  I simply do not accept as valid the claim that a minimal level of sentience in animals, nor nociception in invertebrates is adequate to convey the same status as a human being entitled to the applicable substantive human rights and equal consideration of interests.

One thought I had which made me wonder how often it applies, is that my vegan friend (whose page this was on) really doesn’t like food.  She’s told me many times, though not recently, that she hates food and only eats because it’s necessary.  More recently, she’s said she doesn’t hate food, she likes food, but only healthy food.   (After I published this, now she says she loves food — healthy food.  So it appears I stand corrected, at least in the present.)   I, on the other hand, love food.  I do not eat to survive; I consider eating to be one of life’s real pleasures, and I love food so much that I not only learned to cook, I’ve learned to create my own original recipes and duplicate the secret ones of others, and I’ve become incredibly good at it and take it very seriously.  And somehow, miraculously, I’m not addicted to meat, cheese, or sugar.

Also, while I was thinking about topic and doing some research, I found a lot of really well-thought-out discussions and debates about the vegan/carnivore topic online.  I wish I had time to read more of them because I am very interested in logic and I’d really like to know specifically which informal logical fallacy is being committed.   On my long-term TTD list is to learn more about logical fallacy… I’ve run across them, and I recognize them quite well, but I never studied them and don’t know them apart, as much as I’d like to.

So here’s what I wrote, in reply to an ongoing, emotionally-laden argument trying to convince an omnivorous person that they only eat meat because they’re addicted to it and that their diet makes them unethical.  I refer to dear vegan friend using the appropriate feminine pronoun since her identity isn’t relevant to my opinion on the topic:

My brain is full.  I’m not receptive to “the vegan message” either.  That’s not the point.  I don’t want to be vegan either.   It doesn’t mean I’m stupid, unwilling to change my opinions, or that I hate animals.  Perhaps the contrived word (more accurately: pejorative neologism) “speciesist” fits; I don’t know and I don’t really care.  Because I choose to eat meat does not mean I support cruel conditions or torture of animals.  It doesn’t mean I hate animals any more than that South Park episode (“if you don’t support Prop10, then you HATE children” lol) makes logical sense.

What I would like to see are the citations to open/public (not ‘pay for this’ jstor) peer-reviewed scientific papers to support some of these arguments, like that humans are not ominivorous , that these animals are “sentient”, and meat is addictive.  I’d like to see organized political movements, letter writing campaigns to Congress, things that I could be a part of to improve the conditions of food animals to the levels of the farms I grew up on, and bring criminal penalties to people who violate them.  The photos I see of the poor conditions bother me, but I believe these are exceptions to the rule (like criminals, in a world where people like me who find a cell phone in the grocery parking lot pick it up and call “Mom” to say I found your daughter’s smartphone and I’d like to return it), and I have too much to do now already.  I care more about my income and finding a way to pay my bills than activism, but I’ll support reasonable ideas.

It hurts me that she believes I hate animals and support animal cruelty because I’m not vegan, but I neither can nor will try to change her opinion of me, nor will I ever not love her, because I respect her, and the foundation of our relationship is not because of what we eat.  It is because of who we are, and what we can accept.  I’ve seen increasing extremism, but it doesn’t affect that…. I’m sure she’s seen that I’ve had increasing extremism in my love for music over a period of decades, which has improved my life much as veganism has improved hers.  Love can be extraordinarily accepting.  I don’t identify her or vice versa by our choices (we’ve both made some very good ones, and some very bad ones).  Isn’t it okay to just be different?

Some of this is part of one’s definition of cruelty.  I happen to think that it’s wrong that humans, who are beyond a doubt sentient, do not have the right to decide to take their own life when faced with a horrific death or are in intractable pain.  I don’t see vegans showing any interest in supporting *my* end-of-life rights, or my desire to assign those rights to someone I love and trust, something that would directly reduce real cruelty.  The vegans are going after the core issue at the wrong level.  This one will never fly as grassroots, by trying to convince or guilt people into not eating meat.  There will never be a vegan majority.  The “insects are more nutritious than meat” argument is a tough sell too.  I’m not interested in that either.  But the animal right to not be treated cruelly (and that doesn’t mean the Right to Life argument either) is a different issue.  It will only fly as legislation.  Vegans will always be a minority (but they can still have rights, and influence).   I stopped eating all products that can only be produced in unacceptable conditions (like veal), but I won’t be a vegetarian because I don’t believe the claims.  So why don’t you find a way to make someone like me an advocate for your legislation that makes progress on the real root cause?  I would do *that*.
I still don’t like to be labeled as someone who hates animals, especially from someone I love.  That conclusion is logical fallacy.  Animals (esp. if you consider the easy case of one that doesn’t need to be killed to produce a sustainable product, like chickens) do not need to be in poor conditions or tortured (in fact, I read that if you torture hens, they do not produce) so the engineer in me respectfully requests more evidence in peer-reviewed journals and less appeal to emotion.

That all led to a barrage of more insults, condescension, and logical fallacy (which was really my only original interest in the whole thing), including a whole load of “references”, all of which originate on pro-vegan websites without a single citation to anything in an unbiased peer-reviewed journal.  There were some articles and presentations, some of which had names with “M.D.” behind it, which makes it gospel to a vegan but does nothing to address my skepticism (see Argument from authority), my challenge of the data, and refusal to accept a shift of the burden of proof (Onus probandi) onto myself for not “seeking out the information.”  All of that was enough for me to gracefully exit with no further comments and no intention of ever engaging in this topic where militant vegans are present.

I was told I’m “like the person who is so intelligent that they have no interpersonal skills.”  Followed by that it is only the “meat eaters attempting to justify their choices”.   Who else is engaging one in that discussion?  Why would a vegan put themselves in a discussion whereby their intelligence was questioned, now that most choices of sexuality are somewhere between accepted and legally recognized?  I never felt the need to justify anything or to make excuses.  I don’t care that the militant vegans call what I eat “carcass.”   (Sometimes, it even makes me want to respond, “Yum!” when in most cases I just keep quiet about my meals).   I don’t feel bad or guilty for what I eat, and I think if someone meets the definition of a bigot, and someone calls them a bigot, it’s not wrong.  But I do have an opinion how I should be treated as a person, and by extension, how everyone should be.

I also discovered that a week earlier, another of my friends had been attacked by the same group, in much the same way.   The statement was made that “This is my [Facebook] wall” … “if you don’t want to see what you see, kindly remove yourself…”.  Anyone who has been online as long as I have can relate to this, but that’s not the solution when the real problem isn’t that someone (perhaps someone like me) doesn’t like what I see, but rather the problem is I don’t like being treated poorly, judged, and insulted by someone I don’t know… and I like it even less when it’s by someone I do know, someone who should know better and put an end to the “asleep”, “willfully ignorant”, “indoctrinated” into my “incorrect beliefs”, “uneducated”, “unwilling to be educated”, “I am better than you” rhetoric directed at someone just like me.  Or at me.

While all this was happening, someone else who, like me, was on the receiving end of all this disgusting behavior, decided to write her own articles about it.  She said this experience “was the worst interaction [she’s] had online in 20 years” and wrote two brilliant articles about it, which I highly recommend:
We All Have Convenient and Fluid Morals
and
Your Communication Style Can Kill Your Message

They are very well-written and thought out.  I particularly liked the parallels to real human conditions, groups that have no voice, and the deconstruction of some judgmental visuals, memes used to promote “the vegan message” that make people like me abandon with haste.  The one that is “missing a panel” is spot on.  I could deconstruct many others, but why bother?  It won’t make my points more clear.

The other good part of those articles is how she disputed the mutual exclusivity that I could not be vegan, and still care about reform for the quality of life of animals, just like I care about the quality of life for the others who “do not have a voice”, which is a different but very real and very human issue that as
far as I’m concerned is as relevant now as the changes that led to the
elimination of (some) absurdity in law (i.e. charges of witchcraft and debtor’s
prisons).

I’ve also been thinking about it more, and here are some more thoughts I have:

Humans, primates, companion animals, livestock animals, and less complex animals are not equivalent.  They are distinct groups (arbitrarily classified by me) and those groups do not deserve equal rights.  This does not mean they deserve no rights.  [I also think that human children should have rights, although the courts have repeatedly ruled that — child support money excepted — they do not, especially in schools.  Reminder to self to write about that one day.]

So what’s next, defending my right to keep a carnivorous companion animal (which I customarily call a “pet”) and let it freely travel in and out the cat door?

When someone who is not vegan makes a reference to “plants are alive too”, this is generally not to convince anyone that plants have rights.  It is to call out the absurdity of some of the arguments and the use of a logical fallacy, one that extends a premise beyond its boundaries.  I didn’t identify the name of this yet, but I will.

I see many vegans writing online about how much harm that the production and consumption of livestock causes to the environment (and I tend to agree; this is a different issue).  Speaking of the environment, I ask two questions: Do you recycle?  Have you made an effort (like I have) to encourage your friends and family to recycle?  I know more than one vegan with very close friends who just throw everything in the trash (“I can’t be bothered.”).  That’s the same as making the environment “somebody else’s problem”.   Recycling doesn’t require a lifestyle change like veganism, so isn’t that the low-hanging fruit?  I even paid more for trash service that provided recycling.

I don’t like it when someone doesn’t recycle their own trash.  I think it is lazy and irresponsible, and I may tell them I don’t like their decision to not do something easy and not cause a problem for someone else, but I certainly don’t treat them with gross disrespect nor assert the conclusion,

“If you don’t recycle, then you HATE the environment”.

My position doesn’t imply the environment is unimportant.  It doesn’t even matter that our trash and our environment isn’t sentient.  Or is it?  All depends on your definitions and how you choose to treat others.  Calling yourself “abrasive” is a poor excuse for the behaviors I saw that led to this.

Respectfully submitted by one of “the droned masses”…. who just can’t seem to “wake up”… apparently.

Someone recently asked me if I have any favorite constellations.

I like Sagittarius and Scorpius.  I like how both move in the sky and sort of rotate.  The Milky Way runs right through them so those areas are very rich in objects.  I guess I don’t really have a favorite, but I have some favorites.  I really like Orion.  I love the Pleiades, even though it isn’t a constellation and my vision isn’t good enough to resolve any stars in it.  But you might be surprised which constellation I like the most if I have to choose… Delphinus.

Of the stars I like, it would be Antares, Vega, Zubenelgenubi and Zubeneschemali.

Ophiuchus, Microscopium, and Gemini annoy me.

New Moon.  Eclipse.  Blog launch today.

Sometimes, even though I love my ability to produce meaningful words fairly reliably, there are people I admire who can write more emotionally than I can, or who can write music, or deliver words or make cultural references in a way that I only wish I could.

So I’m going to quote someone I adore, and there aren’t many of those
“Oh, I have been waiting so long to play this for you.”

My own introduction to the launch of my site are analogous to her words:
“Oh, I have been waiting so long to share this with you.”

So here we are.  My colors might be awkward and my server might crash from time to time, but no one will *ever* delete your comments, claim to own them for using someone’s service, or take this website from you.
I have a lot of data, a lot of my writing from the past that will take a lot of time to completely fill in, but this is The Beginning.
This is a site I own, and those of you who want to interact, those of you who have encouraged me to write can now be a part of it. I am so honored that you choose to be a part of it and that the technology exists to make this happen.

I write a lot of stream of consciousness, and sometimes I don’t know where I’m going with a story.

Yet I have had so many people encourage me to write.  Chris Stein told me to try to write science fiction after I sent him a synopsis of a dream I had of him.

I also want everyone to know why, on October 19, I chose November 3 as the launch date.

It’s because November 3 has become a defining moment for me.

I like to choose dates (when I can) that have some significance.  There are four reasons.

Numbers and dates and natural phenomena experiences (the full and new moons complete with apogee and perigee in my calendar etc.)

The first reason is that November is a magical month for me.  It took a long time to realize but it came to me late one night when I finally figured out after 30 years what “Angels On The Balcony” is about.
Care to guess what day that happened?

My interpretation (revelation) when I discovered what “Angels on the Balcony” is about, suddenly, was on November 3, 2010, after 30 years of trying to figure it out, I did that at 5:09am EST.

The 3rd (!) reason is that November 3, this year, is New Moon.  Chris Stein told me it’s just as powerful as the Full Moon.  It’s so perfect.

The last reason is even more interesting.
It was November 3, 1989 that a series of events were set in motion that led to my meeting Chris and Debbie not quite 9 months later.
They had a Def, Dumb & Blonde gig that night at the Chestnut Cabaret in Philadelphia.  I arrived early enough to stand in the front row.   I was in the midst of the singularity of almost knowing them (but I didn’t know it was coming yet).
I’d been doing Fan Mail for two years and because we had email since the mid-80s, I had already developed a real friendship with Gunter from Perth.
I was so blown away by this show that afterward, I drove an hour to Bethlehem to use a computer at Lehigh (since at that time, that was the only form of email or internet).  I wrote Gunter a message and told him to “do anything” to come here.  He did.
That trip and the ones that followed developed some of the connections that led us to meet Debbie and Chris and to later become friends.

All this makes November 3 like a new beginning, a transformative moment.  The 21, 22, 23, they are also very special, but the 3rd is really symbolic of a new beginning.

Earlier today, around 2am, I saw a Facebook post on an awesome DH/Blondie fan page, to a link to an article:

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/andy_warhol_paints_debbie_harry_on_an_amiga_computer

It is really fascinating to me to read this today.

Last night, I was looking for something… which unfortunately seems to be a central theme of my existence, but I found a printout that was given to me by someone who was once a good friend a very long time ago. It was at the very beginning of my new career in 1996.  I had just changed jobs.  I’d left one that I truly loved for another that paid a lot more and that I truly believed in..
I’d accepted it for a new opportunity, and I had a passionate career and me and the people I worked with made real contributions to technology.  We created things that changed your lives although our names weren’t attached to it unless you knew how to get to it.

Just as I started on that new adventure, I found out that I was hired by people who worked at Commodore.  They were based very near where I live now.  The people I worked with designed and manufactured the Amiga.  The computer that Chris Stein had before I met him.  The computer that Andy Warhol used to create that image of Debbie Harry, one of the first digitally manipulated artworks ever.  Perhaps the very first one… I don’t know for sure.

Andy Warhol did that on Commodore Amiga.

The person I mentioned, who used to be my friend, was a technician of some sort at that event.  I don’t remember the details, but I remember he told me he saved that file.
He saved to disk Andy Warhol’s artwork of Debbie Harry — and proved it to me.

He wouldn’t let me have a digital copy of the file back in the late 90s, but he did make me a color inkjet printout on quality paper, and I just found it when I was looking for something last night.
Here is *my* scan of that image:

I remember being in awe to work with people who had invented this computer when there were no computers.
And being amazed at the foresight of this person who, instead of shutting down the computer, first saved the image to a disk (and made a copy).
That was the caliber of the people I worked with then.
Engineers were on their way up in the world.  It was almost another Renaissance.
Politics and bullshit, deception, and the concentration of wealth eventually killed us, but those people who hired me, who I got to work with, they were the real deal, visionaries.  Extinct now that that environment is destroyed.

But I remember.

I remember someone in a cubicle across from mine, who saved Andy Warhol’s image of Debbie Harry to a floppy disk and made me a printout.
It was around then that I couldn’t repair Chris’s Amiga 2000, but I did try.  Then I built him a PC and taught him how to use it.

It’s raining outside.  Sometimes if I imagine that it is raining words, I can write.
Last night was the Full Moon and an eclipse (though my vision was never good enough to see a penumbral eclipse).
I was playing all sorts of stuff on my music player (you can see what I play at Last.fm).  I would die without it, but those of you who are reading this probably already know that… and out of that combination came the inspiration of choosing a date to make my site live.

The date that everyone who has encouraged me to write has been waiting for shall be November 3.  Keep reading; you’ll get to the reason eventually.

My kids just left.  We were watching the Lady Gaga 2013 itunes festival show from an HD video… I can’t stop watching it.  Apple keeps issuing takedown notices to Google after it gets 250K youtube views so I saved it to a file.  Fortunately, files don’t wear out like records.
Anyway, I was raving about how I thought the song “I Wanna Be With You” was so fabulous and my favorite.  My son Jeremy said he thought that “Applause” was my favorite.  I like that song, in fact the whole show except for the rap song is so amazing I’m like continuously goosebumpy.  Jeremy left before I could explain why my preferences lie where they do, so I’m going to write about it.

It’s because “I Wanna Be With You” is a song she wrote for her fans, and the way it was performed leaves me no doubt about the genuineness of it and of her words and her delivery.  It was written for me.  Not just me, of course, but that makes me feel personally involved, and it matters.  “Thanks for taking me back” is just precious.

That is the kind of artist that I relate to.  It’s something I find important and that song is very symbolic of that.  I really love the other songs too, and the variety of topics (“Applause” being symbolic of why she performs, obviously “Swine” is about sexual abuse particularly of young or vulnerable people which is another of my own intensely personal ‘things’).  I am not a LG scholar but I do enjoy reading some of it…

That’s how Blondie is.  I was too young to even conceive at the time that this would be so important… perhaps it was subconsciously perceived.  Why it was Blondie, why I chose Debbie Harry and Chris Stein (or maybe they chose me?) is an ongoing investigation in my own head but I’m sure it has something to do with this.  Maybe people who feel that way about the importance of their fans write better music or make performances that are more emotional and feel more real than those who don’t.  When I’m on this topic I also think a lot about Shirley Manson of Garbage and Christina Perri and Lisa and Johnny of Killola.  They are the ones who I know enough about to know that fact about them.

The last thing I will say about that video is a cut-and-paste from my Facebook post late last night:

I can’t help but comment that Lady Gaga’s beautiful song she did in her own hair “I Wanna Be With You” from the iTunes festival London performance
“I won’t be right without you/
and I might break without you/
I’d rather be poor and happy/
than rich and alone.
I’ll write hit songs about you/
No matter how we’ll get through/
I’ll keep on singing for a living/
but I want to be in love/
and I want to be with you.”

I was a skeptic at the beginning but this song touches me like the one I saw her do on Saturday Night Live and I could never have imagined or predicted my reaction to that performance.

Debbie Harry said to me, in person after they had just performed together that she likes Lady Gaga, and that really makes me happy. Because that line I quoted: “I won’t be right be without you and I might break without you”, that is how I feel about all of you, every one of you who I have ever met whether you like what I listen to or not, whether we have ever met in person, and no matter how much pain we have been through. There is a special place for the artists who genuinely adore their fans. They live forever and we cherish them. You all know who you are! I wish I could write for a song for all of you, but I can’t, but I do relate to the “I would anything for you”. My blog will be visible on November 3. You’ll have to listen to why it’s that day and oh, the verbiage when it’s on my own site and not about directed advertising, you’ll see.

*Nite* xxxx eclipse moon

I already know some of you are going to comment something like “Gaga is no Lady”.  I will pre-empt it here with my cut+paste response:

No, she’s an artist. Well, to be accurate, Stefani Germanotta is the artist and Lady Gaga is her artwork. It’s an ongoing performance piece. It’s okay if people don’t like it or her as there is a lot of art in the world that I don’t like or don’t get.

Fast forward to launch day to read why it had to be November 3.

Over the years I’ve heard people use made-up words that I like (either because they’re funny or useful) so I decided to collect them here for everyone’s enjoyment.  I didn’t invent these myself except as noted.

Ruint : I wrote a post about this one!

Gravitoward : a shorter version of “gravitate toward”

Turtling : This is what kids do when you are in a hurry and trying to get out of the house but they won’t get moving.  (I invented this one).

See also, Words I like and hate

In reply to an article analyzing the art of Lady Gaga, which I thought was great…
http://theotherjournal.com/2011/05/23/gaga-a-gogo/

I wrote:

This is a really great analysis and discussion that you wrote.  It’s too bad that everyone is not taught from an early age how important it is to give everything a less superficial examination and help them develop the mental tools to do so.  I particularly liked your point about the ‘conventional notion of a dichotomy between pop and art.’  It was certainly relevant to the topic and still is.  As someone who was guilty of this with my own early dismissal of Lady Gaga as “probably another pop star being fed to us” but realizing a year or so later that assessment was completely wrong, I have developed a deep admiration for her art, her social commentary, and her messages, many of which are deeply personally meaningful.  For me, at the age of 49, many of the ideas in those messages, which you mentioned but didn’t fully elaborate on, are the same as the ones I’ve come up with on my own after decades of self-searching, introspection, reading, and thought, concepts which represent everything I believe in and are the source of my happiness, self-identity, and desire for personal growth.  I could only imagine how much of a head start I could have had on this process if she had existed 20 years ago (which, of course, never would have happened as her success is the convergence of many factors including technology and less restrictions on speech and performance art to name just two important ones).

If you were ever to follow up with a continuation of your analysis, I’d certainly be there to read it.  I wonder what you thought and how you feel about the 2013 “Itunes Festival” performance.  If you haven’t watched it (linearly, not in pieces), I highly recommend it.

The last thing I wanted to mention is how interesting it was to read points about “pop” and “art” in your article from over two years ago and know that her new album, out in a few months, is titled ARTPOP.  I’d say you’re one of those who “gets” it.

I was thinking about trying to invent some new recipes based on things I like… I know my kids like macaroni and cheese (the real kind that’s made with sharp cheddar and milk and baked in the oven) and that reminded me that I wanted to make a recipe for chicken croquettes (they have them for $2.10 per piece at the local farmers market… they’re very tasty but that is crazy).

This reminded me that they used to be a frozen dinner I got sometimes, which reminded me of a frozen dinner that I absolutely loved, I think it was a Swanson frozen dinner, a mostly blue box with a foil pan, “Chicken Au Gratin”.
It was chicken chunks and cheese sauce and noodles that were like linguini.  It could be baked or transferred to another container and microwaved.  I ate a LOT of these in the early to mid-80s.
Google it and absolutely nothing comes up.

I want redevelop this recipe!

One interesting thing I found in the search is this thread about discontinued foods…
I had completely forgotten about the Nabisco “Tid-bits” cheese crackers… the long ones, thick like sticks but flatter than a pretzel rod.  Yum!  I used to eat those.  Those and Cheez Its are good with peanut butter too.

Somehow I ended up reading a long thread about discontinued foods on Amazon.

Someone mentioned “Oscar Mayer Smokie Links (are they really gone?)”
Yes, they are.  I loved those, and called the company, as I often do, to find out where I could buy them and they confirmed they have been removed from the market.

Zingos cinnamon candies!  They are so tasty.  Found 5 boxes of them in a Korean grocery about 5 years after they were discontinued!

It’s amazing reading through this thread and having it confirmed by anecdote that so many snacks and specialty foods originated or are still available in and around south-central Pennsylvania where I live.  I am so lucky to have lived here and had access to all these great brands, all the tasty snacks!  This is the Silicon Valley of snack food!

Another thing I really liked was the Ice Cream Cake Roll.

In the Amazon thread’s comments, I also wrote:

Here are the things that I remember but which weren’t mentioned by anyone:

Ice Cream Cake Roll – a frozen dessert.  I don’t remember who made this.  circa late 70s.
It was a sheet of chocolate cake about a half-inch thick, with a similar sized adjacent layer of vanilla ice cream, and they were rolled up together into a spiral cylinder.  You would slice it.

Chicken Au Gratin frozen dinner, Swanson I think.  It came in a mostly light blue box, heavy foil tray, about a pound.  This was chunks of chicken with noodles (like linguini) in a cheese sauce.  They suggested it be baked, but if you put in a glass dish, it microwaved just fine with regular stirring.  I had these all the time in the early to late-80s.  So tasty!  I haven’t even been able to find an ad for this one.

Zingos cinnamon candies by Brown & Haley!  They were so tasty.  Found 5 tins of them in a Korean grocery about 5 years after they were discontinued early-2000s-ish!

In reply to other comments… I read *all* of them… these ideas come to mind:

If you are looking for a product, you should call the company and ask about it and its availability.  For example, I like Good Seasons “Mild Italian” salad dressing mix (in a packet, so much better tasting than the Italian) and could never find it, but they do make it, and now I know where to get it because I called and asked.  Similarly, Oscar Meyer confirmed they discontinued Smoky Links when I called to ask why I can’t find them anymore.  Go to the source!

Krunchers chips were served in little bags at Panera Bread in 2004.  I remember looking up the manufacturer… it was a company Jay’s in Chicago (they ignored my correspondence) but I later read they were bought by Snyders (in PA) and their products are readily available now, at least here in PA and are just as good.
Charles Chips (yum!) are back in business again, but they cost so much ($11 to $25/pound, eeek!) they probably won’t be for long.  But they were so great in the 70s and even into the early 90s when the trucks would come to my workplace.  They made great chips and pretzel sticks and cheese pretzels too.  Tom Sturgis Pretzels makes a comparable, affordable product.  Snack lovers are lucky to live in PA!

Many classic candies are available in the bulk foods section (look for the bins and scoops) in grocery stores… Wegmans, Giant, etc.  So much cheaper than mail orders.

Some products (like the General Mills monster-themed cereals) are only available seasonally.  All five will be out for this Halloween.  Google is your friend, and call the manufacturers!  They’ll give you the info, take note that you want the product, and sometimes even send coupons.

Is it just me or has the world become noisier?
It seems that as soon as I go out my door, I am bombarded with useless, incessant noise.  It even comes out of the sky.
Earlier, I went to get the mail and a big noisy rattling pickup truck pulled out from a nearby side road and roared by.  No matter where I go, there are loud cars and trucks and motorcycles.. everywhere.
I always remember hearing that sort of thing occasionally, but I don’t remember it being constant.
Are the vehicles falling into disrepair, or are there so many more people around that even a small percentage of the ones who want to intrude on others’ right to quiet enjoyment now amounts to so many people that you can’t get away from them, even in the middle of the night?  wtf?

[Later]

Sometimes I get curious about the weirdest things.  Earlier, I was wondering if I’m the only one who cooks with a blowtorch.  I don’t really *cook* with it, but when I make chicken wings, I always burn off those little hairs with a blowtorch.  I hate those.

After I put the wings to soak in hot sauce, I started wondering if any of the wings in that big pack were from the same chicken.  Or are they all from random chickens?

Someone told me today that I “have an uncluttered soul.”  I’ve never heard anyone say something like that and it made me happy.

Since it was Debbie’s birthday Steph wanted to play some Blondie and played Picture This (which I had *just* played in the car) and then played Angels on the Balcony followed immediately by Do The Dark and unbeknownst to her, I *always* do that!

As you’ve probably noticed, I have a thing for language.  There are some words I like and words I hate, so I wanted to collect them here.

Words I like
interlineated
delimiter
reconcile
depleted
irrevocable
precarious
hungriness as used by Garbage

subtends (as in subtends an angle) z.B. a parsec or parallax second is the distance at which one astronomical unit subtends an angle of one arc second.

neologism.  I didn’t know there was a word for that.  I read this later and had to look up the definition again! (“A newly coined word or expression”).
barrel (verb, as in “Winter storm barrels into the midwest”).  I think this is so funny.  Steph called it a playfulish word.

There are also some words I hate.
temblor (synonym for earthquake).  I think I will nominate this to the LSSU List of Banished Words. (6/18/13 An earthquake by any other name… is still an earthquake.)
viral
most of the words on lssu list.
comptroller
pupil to mean student.
wean
vet (as verb)
noshing
materiel
couture.  This might be the most pretentious word in the English language.
tapped, with the direct object of a person, to mean seeking someone’s expert advice.
swag and swagger
dearth (wtf does this mean?)
gutwrenching
potable
comfy (thanks Sherry)
drops, in the sense of an album being released.  I think “rises” would be better, although both are just wrong.
colonel  (how does this get pronounced like ‘kernel’?)

I also dislike words that are exceptions to English language that you have to memorize and that lead to ambiguity, like
flammable/inflammable, valuable/invaluable.
Why can’t these be consistent, like… consistent/inconsistent or expensive/inexpensive?  WTF?

A comment from a reader  on a news article about a Turkish airline banning red lipstick:

“Let any religion control your appearance, and it wouldn’t stop at just your appearance.”

Today is the lovely and rising rock star Taylor Momsen’s birthday.
I am here only with Logan.  Thunderstorms went through and as usual (though this one was different…. I couldn’t get into my swimsuit because it was inside out and is torn up the side…. I need a new one…. I was in the pool trying to get the solar cover on, in the rain and wind.  Later, there was an insane amount of lightning.

Which of course took down my internet service, so I decided to play Light Me Up, which I still think is one of, if not *the* best album of 2010.

At the beginning of “You” (which I played a few times today thinking of a friend whose last two years are essentially summed up in the message and meaning of that song), Logan thought it was Johnny Cash.

He was referring to his cover of Sheryl Crow’s awesome song “Redemption Day” which I have loved since it came out (along with “Anything But Down” and “If It Makes You Happy”).  Johnny Cash’s version of “Redemption Day” is on an album we often play here when my dad visits.
I love it when my dad visits.  I feel that my connection to him has always been very intense… ever since we walked into the fog after I pointed to fog and asked, “What’s that?” He said, “It’s fog.  Do you want to go in it?” and I said “YES!” and we did.  This is one of my first memories.

I think I was 4. That was very special, we walked around in it and talked about how fog was like a cloud on the ground.  It was so humid today that Logan told me the shotgun he wanted to shoot had condensation on it when he took it out of the case.  We have been discussing condensation the last two days….

I had a very special night in the fog as an adult when I took the green laser photos for Melissa Poole, an artist, friend, and Chris Stein’s ex-wife.
The green laser, and the blue LED, these were only a dream of science when I was growing up. Now they are reality.

Unrelated:
I feel a very special pride when I can explain something to my children the way that my dad explained things to me.  I’m also pleased that I can add more detail, like defining “dew point” and the relationships between volume, temperature, and pressure of gases.

I like how streams of thought lead from one thing to another to another and seem to end up in a random unrelated place, but one that reminds you of something important.

It occurred to me after I imagined that Sheryl Crow must be very proud of her work given that Johnny Cash, a musician whose work has been popular since before I was born, that there is a story about me that I don’t recall ever telling.

When I was young, I visited my grandparents (my dad’s mother and stepfather) and stayed overnight from Friday evening until Saturday afternoon (I would always watch Land of the Lost and The Pink Panther and I *loved* that Ant and the Aardvark!).

When I was 3 years old, perhaps until I was 4, I would sit in a tiny, dark brown, wooden rocking chair and play the 7″ 45 rpm single of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire” over and over and over. The memory is vague, but I think it had the big hole in the center.  I don’t know why I did this, and I barely remember it.

I believe that time doesn’t really exist.
Reminder to self: write about the article talking about contingencies and continuities and how they are undetermined until they pass through the singularity known as “now” to become fixed as the past.
(Note to self 12/25/12: I did this, Walter Alvarez the guy who discovered what killed the dinosaurs.  Must find this.)
discovermagazine.com/2009/oct/26-the-man-who-discovered-what-killed-the-dinosaurs
The interesting part is on the second page.

So back to my point about time not existing.
In 1980, Blondie covered “Ring of Fire” for a movie and put it out on an LP.
Why THAT song?  Why that one?
I didn’t know about it at the time… in fact it would be years after that, when I became a Blondie collector and they became the center of my entire adult life until I realized that existed.

It just seems that there is more to it than simple coincidence that I chose THAT band, and it happened to be THAT song that I played 15 times in a row when I was just turning 4.

Hmmm.

Happy Full Moon!

I don’t recall what its real name is but I call the November one the Love Moon.

Blue Moon is generally the second full moon in a calendar month (rare in November). Black Moon is the second new moon in a calendar month. I think the November one is traditionally the Beaver Moon but for me it is always the Love Moon.

The list I found from Jan-Dec is {Wolf, Snow, Worm, Pink, Flower, Strawberry, Buck, Sturgeon, Corn, Harvest, Beaver, and Cold} Moon, respectively.

If I were naming them, my first set of candidate names would be {Polar Bear, Snow, Precious, Zuni, Lightning, Diablo, Girlie, Leo, Chocolate, Magic, Love, and Blonde} Moon.

I fail to understand how “pop culture” writers can use the word “inimitable” (is this a contraction for in (un?) imitatable (sic) without the apostrophic contraction), a word that someone even as literate as me has to contextually bluff that I know it and hope for the best, and at the same time pervert the language to say “an historical” because people are too lazy-talking to put the accent on the hard ‘h’.

Getting that into the MoS, imho, is a political feat akin to a unanimous worldwide adoption of the Kyoto Convention. I wonder who {verb1, verb2, verb3, …} someone or who knew who to pull that off.

“An historical…” is an abomination to humankind. “An honor” and “a historical record” are different. More dumbing down of the language, like the lately-accepted interchangeability of the very different terms “I’m anxious to…” and “I’m… eager to…”! I don’t know where that manual that everyone is forced to use is printed, but I would venture a guess left coast, and it was an intentional attack on extraordinarily literate 80s graduates, just like the deletion of the last comma in a comma-delimited list (which, I’ve been told is called an “Oxford comma”). Every time I see that, it annoys me, 10 years in, 50 more to go. I’d like to recast the sentences that comprise their job descriptions.

Well, that explains all the back pain I’ve been having!

My Valtrex prescription ended up only being $118 (instead of $190 they misquoted on the phone). Walmart was about $80 cheaper. I have no idea how CVS and Rite Aid can remain in business.  Unbelievable.

Those fuckers are huge horse pills, I hate that. They said a common side effect is dizziness and I have a little of it but not too bad. Between only getting 3 hours of sleep last night (bed very late, up very early, yuck) and cooking dinner from 4:30 until 7:45 tonight, I’m fried.

But dinner was good, the kids loved it. When I was cooking, I made a game of giving them the Myers-Briggs test. When I was working at QI, I had a management course and they had a test where you get 15 sets of 4 words and have to choose one.  Many of the words were not easy words, so I had to define them.  So they learned about 25 new vocabulary words, learned about their personalities and the differences between us, and had fun for an hour and a half because it was a game!

It was hard though, having no sleep today and cooking for 3 hours, my back has been hurting but at least now I have an explanation.  Some people have very severe pain, I just have light pain (most of the time) and bad itching. I have itchy spots on other parts of my body but they so far are not bad and usually short-lived before moving on (usually to a new location), not any worse than how my skin usually is. I hope it isn’t too late starting the meds because I’d hate to spend $118 for nothing. It feels very strange, like a sunburn on my lower back, itching around my waistband from my sides to just barely onto the front of my body. and if it’s itchy and you scratch or touch it, it usually hurts immediately, but not always, it’s unpredictable. I had a flash of pain that felt like I got stabbed in the back with an ice pick, but it only lasted the duration of a camera flash. And you feel like heat and movement, like there are tiny worms in there sometimes but not always.  It’s constantly both itchy and hurting a little bit. The back pain is annoying, like I strained it, but I haven’t needed to take anything for it. I hope it doesn’t get much worse. I have spots on my body that if I press on them, feels like a bruise. It’s very strange. I don’t like it, but it is somewhat interesting. It feels a little bit like the body that I am inhabiting is not the same one all the time. It’s as different sometimes as the difference between what your body feels like when you are drunk compared to sober. It’s not very attractive to look at, so I won’t be finding any playmates in the near future LOL

My doctor was surprised that I got it so young.  They usually do not vaccinate for this until you’re 50.  If I were you, I wouldn’t wait that long.

I got three hours sleep today.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I had to appear for the dreaded drivers license renewal at the PA “Motor Vehicle Services Center”, which is closed Mondays and closes every day at 4:15pm. Isn’t that convenient for people that work.

The four highlights of my experience were:

• arriving and voicing my irritation for the line of people that extended from the service desk inside, through the available space inside, out the door, and down the sidewalk and past the Mail Room (an authorized UPS shipping facility with a superhot customer service girl with the strangest name I’ve ever known) and saying out loud to the amusement of the other agitated customers, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
• watching the motion-detected electric door opening and closing two thousand times as the line proceeded inside to be serviced by a single, unexpectedly pleasant individual handling service requests and giving out thin paper tickets sequentializing those seeking mugshots.
• walking around, wishing I wasn’t there and having a random guy pass, take a look at my awesome Killola ‘shattered’ shirt and saying “NICE SHIRT!”
• listening to another customer talking to his family and relating to his complaint of it taking too long and that PA is the worst state in the nation for service at the DMV.

I was not amused with my half hour wasted, but he was a commercial licensee and needed to recertify.  They drove 45 minutes and had been waiting for six hours.  Mark my words:  One day, someone will go DMV and replace an expression.

The anti-highlights were the two hundred people there who did not speak a word of English, one of them with a cute little baby girl who desperately needed not only a diaper change, but a parent change. Isn’t the definition of ultimate failure as a parent, to impose upon the most important thing to ever exist in your life, such a disadvantage as not speaking the predominant language of the country in which you live?

I’ve been talking to a Blondie fan in Brazil who learned English because of Blondie, so she could meet other fans and communicate and have more personal choices.  She’s more literate in English than most of the people I’ve encountered in waiting rooms in the last three years.  Now there’s someone I respect.  No wonder the economy is in the toilet.

Back to today:

At the traffic light in Kenhorst, I finally parted company with a 40-in-a-45-zone driver clogging a train of cars.
Entering the left turn lane and looking through aligned windows, I had the privilege of discovering the source of the impaired driving:
She had a cigarette in her left hand, and was texting with her right hand on a cell phone held midway between eyes and windshield.
Left palm on the wheel, right hand on the keyboard, no eyes on the road.  WTF?  Prison is my recommendation.
And prison for everyone who thinks that’s not more impaired than a .07 BAC, which is now just shy of a felony.  The only reason it isn’t is it generates more cash per year than could be stuffed into the volume of my house.

My skin is disintegrating from my infection of no-longer-dormant chicken pox virus that I had 39 or 40 years ago.  eeeek!

I wondered for 30 years what that song is about.  I was writing on my friend Hayley’s facebook page and listening to music when it hit me.  Here are my words, in original order, since I was writing when it happened:

I set my hand to writing you, and I’m scared to death I’m going to freak you out or that your fan mail will get lost on its way.

Dragonfly is parked outside.  Do you get in?

Hover high level off.  The time space tactics saved us then.
Grande Trex fans throughout the universe are well informed on the risks pilots take in entering this race.
We have retained as an added feature of daring, thrills, and excitement for this race, a feature, which I’m sure you’re going to like: musical override lasting three and a half hours…
…
The postulate for mischance runs high but not as high as the tension and competitive spirit right here, and all over the galaxy!

XXXX amazing
(blk) is having a moment of Blondie supernatural inspiration!  !!! no words
The line in Angels on the Balcony: “The door swings open and it’s cold outside” which is one of my favorites of *anything* **ever**…
It’s a coincidence (spoken like the twilight zone “It’s a Cookbook!”)

I finally understand it, after 30 years!!! :: Everyone who matters to you, the door opens; they all come into your life when it’s cold!!  October, November, December!!!
BLK supernovas!
5:09am 11/3/10

the season may vary but not everyone like me has such an uneven distribution, where are all these Cancers from?!

I want to do an online chat with Destri about his writing, it’ll never happen but I like Dreaming

I don’t believe that time actually exists (and many physicists who work with quantum mechanics not only believe it too, but have proven it in experiments where doing something now changes something that had already happened in the past!).  Sometimes it seems like certain things that have happened to me very far apart in time are so closely related, or so unlikely, it seems like everything happened simultaneously.  One day I’m going to have to write about that in detail but let me give you the short version…

Obviously everything does interact to some extent with a clock or a calendar, but I believe in connections and I believe that they exist without regard to time and distance, through time (and space) and that those connections are what allows us, to an extent, more of an extent than most people realize, to make our own reality. Consider this: there are six billion people on the planet. There was one person among tens of millions of Blondie fans who became friends with the band and ended up making, owning, their official web site — and it is me.

I sent [Blondie guitarist and co-founder] Chris Stein a letter (through Chrysalis Records) that I typed on an old antique typewriter (older than my grandmother) in 1984, 85 maybe…

When I ended up friends with Chris, I would visit him and stay over at his apartment in NYC and sleep in his downstairs recording studio. Around 1992, maybe 93, on one of my first visits staying over, I was looking around, fascinated, all this stuff — everywhere — on the walls, on the floor, on every horizontal surface, in cabinets and drawers and just everywhere. And I was reading stuff on the walls and just shocked: there it was, my letter. Hanging on the fucking wall, next to a letter from the late artist Vali Myers who he named his child after.  So talk about a full circle moment, all of the things that had to happen not only for the letter to even be there, but imagine the fact that *I* ended up there to SEE IT.

Just received a terabyte drive from California, packed in a custom-sized box, with a foam block protecting the drive on the top, bottom, and THREE sides!! you have got to be kidding. wtf?

Needless to say, it doesn’t work. Beeps and clicks and you can’t even get into the system bios.

I am so busy, I have so much work I need to get done , lot of computer shit and that goddamn hard drive doesn’t work, fuck.  I am so screwed.  It’s a no returns ebay listing and I guarantee that hitachi will not replace an impact damaged drive because the seller didn’t pack it properly.  I feel another two-month long seller dispute brewing.  another $200 gone until then and I still don’t have the fucking drive.  I was up until almost 7am this morning again doing work and computer stuff, it’s like that almost every day, and each day the performance of the computers gets worse and worse with all these website add-ons like google instant, facebook chat and spell checkers and character counters, software updates, and ads pushed constantly.
Now my dad wants me to come visit sunday (which probably means sat. night late through sometime monday..) so i’m really feeling the time pressure.  if that’s not enough, the goddamn shower started leaking again (dripping).  I just fixed that damn thing last month and it took me almost two whole days, all day and six support calls.  I have no more parts so I had to call again today and order the parts (at least they’re free) and I *have* to fix it because if you don’t, the dripping water actually eats away the drain and it is almost impossible to fix.  The hot faucet in the kitchen sink also leaks water but only around the base of the handle when it’s on.  They sent me the parts for that too but I have no time to install them.  I don’t know what it is with me and water issues.  My house is only 13 years old and I have had nonstop problems with dripping faucets and at least seven *major* floods (with ceiling, floor, and/or furniture damage and even some of my posters and Blondie magazines).  Every time I hear water drip, I get like a cat that’s all poofed up!

—

I don’t know who is playing a part in the dumbing down of the world (or behind it) but I’m not buying any shares in that!

so so what
I am a rock star!
I got my rock moves!

Last night, Killola did a short live show that was available to people (like me) who had purchased their new album on the USB “dog tag.” I hadn’t seen this technology before but it was great!

I just plugged the album into a USB port, clicked on an option, and it opened a browser with a video window of the show, expandable to fullscreen, the live audio, and a chat area where fans could type to each other and to the band. It was a nice experience, second only to being there..

This morning, I had a long period of lucid dreams. I was constantly waking up thinking about Killola and in some cases hearing music in my head (which, unlike most people, never happens to me when I’m awake). At 6:22am, I got up and shut the windows and doors because of the noise from the birds. I hate birds.

In the first dream I remember, I was aware of myself walking around in a building, getting ready to go outside. It was night. As I approached the door, a large glass one with two large glass windows on either side, like the door in a business rather than a home, it appeared at first to be foggy outside. As I approached, I realized it was snowing! Visibility was limited; the ground was white. Maybe an inch had fallen; it was fine, slightly icy snow, the kind you get when it’s almost warm enough to sleet or freeze rain. I thought to myself, “Isn’t it July?” For a moment, I believed it was November and felt a moment of fear: Where have those four months gone? Was I in an accident? And that made me realize I was dreaming! I was completely aware of it and could carry on thoughts like I do when I’m awake. I often talk to myself in my mind and I think in my own voice. I wonder if that’s how other people think. But it was just like that.

The realization I was dreaming didn’t make it end like it typically does, and I stayed in that state and it persisted even if I moved around. After a short time, I tried to think a few things and the scene changed. Last night I had a nice call with April and I must have been thinking about her or about how much I miss her, because suddenly she was there, and it made me really happy so I kissed her (not something I normally do) and said, “that’s all,” abruptly finding myself in another scene.

I was listening to Goldfrapp — some kind of a CD-quality live recording that someone gave me and that I downloaded. For those of you who listen to Goldfrapp in real life, Alison can be pretty hard to understand. Very often, even though I’ve read the lyrics to her songs many times, I *still* don’t understand what she’s saying when I listen to them!
It’s a mysterious quality and some people aren’t into it, but I love her voice. Anyway, she was singing in perfect clarity; it was definitely her voice, but all the words were totally clear. It was just perfection, like how I felt when Kato kept the vocal take that Debbie recorded, the one that made me goosebumpy. I can almost remember some line about changing the day to night or about the day becoming night. It was so beautiful, I so wish I could remember the rest of it!

It’s so hot here, it feels like what I imagine a tropical forest to be like. It’s supposed to get much hotter too. And lately it’s been hot. A couple of days not long ago were the hottest in a decade.

Late last night, I emailed Helen something funny about how much I hate birds. She thought it was funny, and this got me to wondering whether there was a facebook group for people who hate birds, and sure enough, there was. “I Hate Birds” has 3,948 members. I joined and posted part of my email to her, here for your amusement and/or horror (you have been warned):

just a little while ago, the moon set. it’s still nice out, though much cooler than earlier. and guess what. there’s a fucking bird tweeting. not just once in a while…. like crazy, and on and on and on. like the ten millions others do at sunup, but here we have one that is different.

I asked myself just one question, and it’s the same question I ask of myself: in the grand scheme of evolution and influence on the world, how will this individual do — success or failure? be interesting to know. I only knew one other bird, that I can recall, that tweeted at night. It was in 1991 at my dad’s when April was there. we had a couple of drinks and just laughed and laughed and laughed…. eventually I was like, “I hate birds. I’m going to go shut it up. do you want to come along?” (she did), so we went outside, snuck around to try to get close, and blasted a gun near it (which I had conveniently remember to bring along). It shut up. 5 minutes later when we got back in the house, it started up again! You might imagine the uproarious laughter we extracted from that experience!

Now bringing this story up to the present (yesterday):

Today not long after i got up, before coffee, i heard really loud tweeting….now remember, I hate birds with a passion except if they’re cooked and served on my dinner plate (or flying around in the air near me, shotgun in hand, on their way there). I’m one who will let the windows open at night and who detests the morning, but will get up just to shut the windows so I don’t have to listen to those fuckers tweeting, squawking, chirping, squeaking, screaming, twittering, or making any other heretofore unmentioned useless obnoxious noises, except possibly the screeching of an owl in the night and the quiet clucking of a chicken living in oblivion.

So I’m hearing this tweeting, looking for an open window to close, but all the windows were shut because it was so hot today… perhaps you’ve heard scientists describe the planet Venus in the daytime. it was like that only different. I traced it down not to a window, but to the garage door… I threw the door open to surprise it, and sure enough, a bird flew out of the open garage door. As I was looking in the area it flew from, searching for a nest, another flew out — right out of my tool box! those little fuckers had built a nest in a cardboard box in the top of my tool box. there were no eggs in it so I dumped it outside and picked up all the little pieces of grass and then put a grinder in the box… which was labeled “Angle Grinder”, not “Bird Nest”!

the bastards can’t read anything for shit, but they sure do shit on anything they can’t read.
which is *everything*.

A bird is just a digestive tract with a mouth at one end and a perpetually open asshole at the other where black, white, and purple shit constantly emanates because nature forgot to design them a sphincter!

I can’t believe I just typed that out loud but I *really* hate those disgusting little fuckers.

Do you?  You can join my own I Hate Birds facebook page.  The other eventually went away after attaining 6000 likes.

It annoys me that my phone erases voicemails even though I press the Save button.

That means that the Save key is actually a Delete key two weeks in the future.  How useless.

If I wanted the message to be deleted, I would have pressed Delete, not Save.

I like the 22nd of months. Maybe I’ll explain sometime.

Completely unrelated:
Today I was thinking that I know very few people nearby (there are a few proportionately speaking) who I think are genuinely good people (all you have to do is drive anywhere to know what I mean), but realize that I know so many genuinely good people if I look at everyone I know online and include those who aren’t nearby geographically. I don’t know that I could count them all. This got me to thinking: do people who are genuinely good to others have more of an impact on the world (more accurately: on the people living in the world) than those others who are “average” or not genuinely good. I think this is true. I don’t quite know how to express this idea, but here’s an example:

Five years ago, I ordered a really tasty Hungarian Goulash (Gulaschsuppe) at a local German restaurant, and being a cook, wanted to develop my own recipe. My process is to do a lot of internet research and then iterate with revisions until successful. I am at the point now where I can think in my head how a recipe will taste just by reading it, and I invariably know if it would be good and how it would need to be changed to make my zero-calorie imaginary culinary delight into its real-world reciprocal. One of the things I did to develop this one was read voluminous material on recipe sites (allrecipes etc.) and I found someone who seemed to have just the right background, so I scrounged around until I tracked down an email; I wrote her, and she wrote me back, contributing her personal recipe, experience, and insights, uncompensated, just because she agrees with me that recipes are guidelines and she’s a genuinely nice person sharing a common passion.

Last week, just after Debbie did the rainforest benefit, I was looking for something specific in my old emails, and of all the things, I found her email from four years ago, so I wrote back with the link to return her favor with my own version of the recipe I developed (which is one of my best, at least in the “easy” category). Such a delight to discover this morning through her reply that her email was still valid.

It really put me in a good mood, and I try to return favors and give back to anyone and everyone who gives something of themselves, something that makes a difference in the quality of life of someone else. Do you know anyone who just radiates? I do, and I gravitoward them.

Also on unrelated tangents:

I liked Google’s playable pac-man logo today, but I had to keep closing it because the cpu fan on my lapdance, er i mean laptop lol, ran constantly at cruising speed. (My car has six speeds, but the laptop only has four: Off, Turtling, Cruising Speed, and Jet Engine).

I made shawarma today, but had to mix up a new batch of Baharat (the spice that’s the primary flavor in it). The big batch I mixed on 12/2/07 got used up. I haven’t cooked it yet. It’s one of my very best recipes… if I ever get an opportunity to cook for Debbie, it might be this one.

I like snakes (and reptiles in general) and was trying to figure out why some people don’t like or are even afraid of them…
Snakes are just flexible tubes covered in hard little plastic scales (like glitter), and upside: you can even order them in different colors and sizes!

A friend who I met online asked me today if I had the new Hole CD, Nobody’s Daughter. This brought back a really beautiful memory that I want to share.

Those who know me surely have a clear perspective of how important music is to me. It hasn’t always been that way. The first show I ever saw was Blondie in 1982, just after my high school graduation. It changed *everything* and as that band became a central part of my entire adult life, I came to realize that what I had been missing all my life was the emotion and meaning and insight that I derive from music now. It’s not entertainment for me, it’s life itself. That said (again), I’m also very sentimental and lucky enough to have received a few truly great gifts over the years, things with real meaning and a deep and irrevocable emotional connection. I keep these things near me all of the time and when I see them, I realize that these gifts are so great it made me actually integrate the person who gave it into my self, into what I am.

so just off the top of my head, here are a few…

a lovely and brilliantly insightful girl whose humor, wit, and inspiration is dearly missed, gave me a black refrigerator magnet with a Carl Jung quote printed in white but could just as easily have been printed in my own love and blood:
“the meeting of two personalities
is like the the contact of two chemical substances;
if there is any reaction,
both are transformed.”

Chris Stein, by putting me on the guest list for four shows on June 28, 1990, gave me a lifetime of Blondie experiences, and his personal insights about so many things started an avalanche of self-discovery and ambition and the realization that the only thing that was limiting what I could accomplish is me myself.

my friend of 26 years, REB, knowing how much I love Blondie, gave me free hosting of blondie.net and debbieharry.net since the mid 90’s, and a plane ticket to England in 2005 so I could go see them on tour.

someone I met in Debbie Harry’s front row in 1993 gave me a red silk rose because it was what I needed at that moment. (Twilight Zone: “What You Need”)

the lovely Apes gave me a Debbie Harry postage stamp from Mali and the inspiration to fly around the world chasing my dreams before I had realized that was the right thing to do every day.

Killola gave me the last fragment of what I needed to demarcate the end of the previous part of my life from the beginning of the next part. That one is going to gets its own article here when I figure out how I can express it. It is unreal what they gave me.

Now with that all in perspective, I want to talk about what my dear friends in the band Cilver (on the original date of this still known as Me Talk Pretty) gave me on May 2 when I went to see them play at the M-Room in Philadelphia (the same place that Killola played on TMI Day (March 28). Both Me Talk Pretty and Killola are two of the three bands that searched my music preferences on myspace (back when it used to be good… not like now, just a dumbed-down version of facebook that limits how much you can say at a time… one of the primary motivators of me doing this site, in fact) and afterward, when I listened to them, I loved them immediately and bought everything they had for sale. I have been into them for years and to watch them, all of them, make it, is fabulous. Why two of those three are from California isn’t clear since I hate California with a passion. But I digress, so back to the story, mostly quoted out of an email I wrote the next day:

first of all it is always supremely exciting to see Me Talk Pretty, and the fact they had advance copies of their new CD that won’t be out for months already was already sufficient to make me burst.

so I wanted to know what time the show was and brought up the bar’s website and fuck me! The Action Design is playing!! I like hem. They are also from California, and played with Killola the first time I ever saw them live, on my birthday in 2008… I didn’t know about them, but Killola Johnny said that day, “you should check out this next band, they’re good and you’d probably like them.” A hot grrrl was waiting for me at the beach in NJ so I figured, okay, I’ll check out a few songs and split, but she had to wait: I ended up staying for the whole set and buying their CD (and a second one that came out a year later). I love their songs “Pale Horizon” and “Landmines” (oh so relevant!) , plus they covered Hanging On The Telephone (had it on their site). Imagine the chances they’re actually playing the same night. WTF?!! they were good too, luscious. I got some stickers and got to tell them how happy I was to see them here! that is so crazy. but not so crazy as this….

so Me Talk Pretty (guitarist) Leon, my friend, says, “I have something for you. Don’t leave.” That was rather early and I’m like “I won’t leave until there are no more bands here.” Then they played, it was soooo good 🙂
they were hungry and I guess it’s the owner who was working the bar (and maybe cooking?) is Greek, and Me Talk Pretty (singer) Uliana’s sister lives in Greece and is married to a Greek man, so he made her a really nice salad for free and gave her some more drink tickets, one of which, to my delight, she placed in my hand. the others in the band ordered food as well; I think they were eating while I was watching The Action Design.

Afterward, we all had drinks together, and later, Leon had me follow him to the van and as we were walking there, I asked him what he thought he of the Hole show he’d said he went to on April 27, the day before I saw Hole at Terminal 5 in NYC with Steph “front row grrrl”, and Debbie Harry saw me there. Leon was describing how she did four songs acoustic and that everyone had to buy the CD to get in, then how there were 100 people waiting in line to get their CDs signed and when they got their turn, Uliana asked Courtney Love if she could give her a sticker from her band, and Courtney was like “sure” (really nice about it) and liked the name. Just at this moment, reaching across the front seat, Leon produces his signed copy of Nobody’s Daughter and handed it to me and said, “I want you to have this. It is a gift from us.” It was a complete surprise, so there I was standing next to him holding this disc with both hands and just looking at him, frozen. I think the word “Seriously?” was the only one I managed for like the next two minutes, maybe three. He asked me not to be speechless, but I couldn’t help it. Courtney Love lives in fucking California and never does anything where you can meet her, I would never be able to get an autographed disc, and these lovely people bought this disc and waited for a hundred people ahead of them to get it signed and give it to *me*. When I got home at almost 3am, I took a photo of myself with the Hole disc, my arm signed by Uliana (how lovely!), and holding their new album We Are Strangers. Their new video Wake Up came out that same day. Leon said it would be on MTV in about 3 weeks or a month from now. Looks like I’m not the only one who likes them heheheeeee.

This is one of those gifts.

This is actually an exact copy of an email I sent to Debbie Harry.   I can never find it when I want to, so here it is.

From an email I sent to Chris:

I had a very cool dream about you this morning.  it was somewhat brief, but I was lucid, so let me see what I can recall of it.

We were at a soundcheck somewhere in a very old building with wooden construction.  A garage door was open to the outside, sort of like what it was at Metropol in Pittsburgh, 1994.  It was warm out, probably May, just like then.

You had a device that you were using to compose something.  It was far more advanced than any computer or program that I’ve ever seen, but it is within current technological capability.  The device had a fairly large, completely smooth glass-like touch screen, it was flat not like a laptop, and bright like the displays they have in aircraft cockpits that you can read in direct sunlight (years ago I interviewed at a company that makes them, they are near here but they didn’t hire me).  you obviously had used it a lot because you could operate it with exquisite dexterity.
You had recorded onto it a bunch of stuff: samples of things, people talking, some music, all sorts of stuff.

Here’s where it gets interesting:

The device autoprocessed all of this recorded information and displayed it almost as if it were a map of the land, like a map of the U.S. but I didn’t see the boundaries, and each spoken word was printed over the map like the label of a state.  A sentence was a series of states, most of them were rectangular but of varying sizes.  you would pan across the map and zoom in and out like on an iphone, but it was a full size screen and infinitely more responsive.  You were moving around and selecting words and fragments of words and notes and sounds and sending them to the construction area, assembling something.

You could zoom in on any of the single spoken words or even on a single note, and as you did, the device would break up a word into something that looked like counties, each with a letter or a note or a symbol representing inflection if it was a spoken sound.  zooming in on a single word would show you a zoomed in view of a state on a map which represented the word, broken down now into smaller pieces that were a combination of English letters, notes, and pauses.  you could choose from these and were adding them to your composition, sometimes a full word at a time, sometimes just word fragments or music notes.  you explained that you could take a sentence and directly reassemble it in a different order without using a cut and paste operation, you did it by just selecting the words or notes or fragments as objects instead of as a waveform like the sound editors I’ve used.  The view seemed to have limitless zoom in or out capability, which is a bit reminiscent of that film from the 70’s, “Powers of 10” where they repeatedly zoomed out by a factor of 10 into the scale of galaxies in space, later back in to the microscopic level.  you were doing this with great dexterity and quickly assembled a composition.

After a while, you went to the composition field and played it and it played all of your samples in order, maybe 40 seconds duration.  I remember it wasn’t overly musical but it was outrageously creative and easy for you as you had started it before and finished it while I watched.

And that’s all I have from it.  But it was fuckin cool.