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About This Author
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Complex Numbers
Complex Numbers
A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number.
The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi.
Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary.
Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty.
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So ends half the year.
It went too damn fast.
Six months ago, I said here, This year was pretty good - so I won't hope for a better next year. I'll be happy with the same old shit.
And I would have been happy with the same old shit. But no - I got new shit. Smellier shit.
I won't recap it now. Too depressing. I think I drank more so far this year than in all of 2007.
Okay, it hasn't been all bad, but my back still hurts, work still hasn't picked up, my father's still dead, and here I am recapping when I said I wouldn't.
So here are some of the better days:
My re-creation of Psycho, much to the vocal dismay of my wife:
"American Psycho" 
My wife's interpretation of Calvin and Hobbes snowmen:
"Snow Wonder!"
This entry actually got linked in a newsletter that I didn't edit:
"Wavering"
Musings on George Washington and my first ever birthday forum:
"Presidents' Day"
It's always cool to see an eclipse, even if it wasn't the omen I'd hoped:
"Dark Side of the Moon"
It has been a good year for movies:
"Movie!"
I saw Bruce Springsteen:
"May Day"
...who became President:
"Hail to the Boss"
I've reconnected with some old friends from high school, like Pat:
"Community"
I have successfully lost some weight:
"The Down Side..."
And I got tickets to the next Springsteen show!
"Born in the USA"
(Oh, and we're also going to go see Counting Crows. Got those tickets while I was dealing with my dad's passing, and didn't post it here then).
And I have learned some new things this year:
 Never watch Blade Runner and A Scanner Darkly back to back;
Never get drunk and listen to Brandi Carlile's The Story on repeat;
I'm not a computer guru, and I'm okay with that;
I can help my ex-wife without drinking heavily;
I can drink heavily without getting a hangover;
I wasn't the person I thought I was in high school (yeah, I may explain that one later).
Okay, looking back, it hasn't been all that bad, though my perceptions are certainly colored by my pain. Still... dare I hope for a better 2nd half?
What the hell - why not? |
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But currently touring in Europe, which I believe is a mythical land of castles and fairies that lies beyond the Great Eastern Ocean.
http://www.brucespringsteen.net/news/index.html
Springsteen and the E Street Band are currently on tour in Europe and are earning accolades for their stellar performances. In a five-star review (out of five), London's Sunday Telegraph raved, "Bruce proves music can save your soul." The Observer called a London show "a performance of blood, sweat and tears." In another five-star review (out of five), Financial Times of London dubbed the concert "masterly, memorable and utterly exhilarating." The Daily Mail testified, "as good a show as I've ever seen."
Okay, so the Daily Fail's review notwithstanding, those are some serious praises. But hey, Observer? Blood, Sweat and Tears hasn't performed in the past quarter-century. Stick to Bruce.
I guess they like him in England. How about other places in the mythical lands outside of the Real World, AKA the US?
'Magic' has been certified triple Platinum in Norway; double Platinum in Ireland and Sweden; Platinum in the United States, Czech Republic, Denmark, Italy, Spain, and Canada; and Gold in the UK, Austria, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
Singapore? Hope he doesn't play there; that's a caning.
Now, I think there's two things going on here. First, but least, is that the Magic album is Bruce's most political album ever. By that I mean that most of the songs on it are in some way related to the mess in Iraq (funny how Iraq isn't on that list up there. Hmmm.) And I daresay this war is unpopular pretty much everywhere. But most of all - and I may be biased, but I've seen enough Bruce concerts to get a feel for the stage dynamics - the Magic tour has been one incredible musical experience. The band has never been better. Oh, sure, they were probably more energetic in the 70s, when they were just getting their feet wet. And they were a tight ensemble even in the 80s, on the Born in the USA tour. Then they went their separate ways for a while, reappearing in the late 90s (a tour I, sadly, missed) and then again for The Rising in the early 00's, which is when they really started their apotheosis.
But this tour confirms their godhood. Even without Danny Federici - and possibly even because of his untimely loss - they have a way of working together that I, as a pitiful non-musician, can only grok a small part of. All I remember is seeing Nils Lofgren do whirlies on the stage during an extended guitar solo on "Prove it All Night" and thinking, "This is better than anything I've ever seen before, ever."
And now I find that they're going to wrap up the tour with a few more US shows - including one in Richmond, where I saw them for The Rising.
This morning, I got tickets.
The Coliseum is going to rock.
I hear the guitars ringin' out
Ringin' out down Union Street
I hear the lead singer shoutin' out, girl
I wanna be a slave to the beat
Yeah, tonight I wanna break my chains
Somebody break my heart
Somebody shake my brains
Downtown there's something that I wanna hear
There's a sound, little girl, keeps ringing in my ear
I wanna be where the bands are
I wanna be where the bands are
Where the bands are
I wanna be where the bands are... |
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As an employer and one who would never waste time on the Internet while he's supposed to be working, I probably shouldn't be sharing
10 Completely Time-Wasting Websites That Will Enrage Your Boss
Tired of working in the same old rut? Need a new job, or just want to get fired? The following ten websites are assured to enrage your boss if he or she catches you surfing said sites. Enrage and possibly terminate your employment, actually.
http://www.purpleslinky.com/Humor/Work/Ten-Completely-Time-Wasting-Websites-That...
I'm proud to note that one of my previous posts, the Toilet Paper Unrolling page, has made that list. And allow me to suggest other bubblewrap sites:
http://www.snapbubbles.com/
http://www.virtualbubblewrap.com/
And here's one that's in the form of a game (making it a bit less pointless), and it's put out by the manufacturers of real, live, meatworld bubblewrap:
http://www.sealedair.com/products/protective/bubble/funstuff/game/default.htm
Now, this makes sense: put out a game that encourages people to pop bubblewrap. That way, people will get the real bubblewrap and pop it and then, when they need bubblewrap, what will they have to do?
Buy more bubblewrap, of course.
Genius. Sheer, unadulterated, marketing genius. My people have a technical term for that: chutzpah.
This, though, is the best bubblewrap site ever - because you don't have to even click the mouse, just kind of run it around on the bubbles. No scoring, either. And it regenerates, making it the second - or maybe the third - most pointless waste of time since voting against Mugabe.
http://www.stupidstuff.org/main/bubblewrap.htm
Regular readers may wonder why I haven't said anything about George Carlin's untimely, terrible, tragic, and totally serious death here. Well, there's been three reasons for that:
1) Everyone else has, and I hate being part of a crowd, which is why I have a blog;
2) I've heard the media is playing it to death (so to speak), though I don't actually have any firsthand evidence of this because I don't have cable; and
3) I'm thinking about dedicating the next issue of the Comedy newsletter to him.
So, what do y'all think? Should I join the rest of the world in paying tribute to the Master in the next Comedy newsletter, or should I just talk about, oh, I don't know, boobies, or bubblewrap?
Pop. Pop. Poppoppop. |
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At last! An article that combines my two favorite subjects:
http://www.slate.com/id/2193827
Science... and boobies.
As a woman who loves sports, I've always found the concept of breasts bothersome. If all goes according to plan, they will fulfill their intended function for about three of the 70 years that I have them. The rest of the time, they alternate between getting in my way and embarrassing me. They are a favorite target of Frisbees and soccer balls. Finding sports bras is a chore. Shirts don't fit...
I think I'm in love.
Lawson explained that breasts move on three different axes: from side to side, front to back, and up and down. The most motion is generated on the vertical axis. Naturally, the bigger the breast, the more momentum it generates.
Yeah, baby. Yeah. Ooooh, talk more science to me.
Slight quibble: "their intended function" is obviously something other than something that only takes up about three years of one's life. That's like saying that the intended function of your nose is to hold up your eyeglasses.
I'm just sayin'.
Not quite as awe-inspiring, but pretty cool nonetheless, is the Large Hadron Collider (size matters here, too) that they're building over in Europe, where science isn't inhibited by the boobs in the White House:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7468966.stm?hadron
Our planet is not at risk from the world's most powerful particle physics experiment, a report has concluded.
...
Critics are worried that mini-black holes made at the soon-to-open facility on the French-Swiss border might threaten the Earth's very existence.
Critics? You mean like people who READ SCIENCE FICTION and KNOW BETTER than to create BLACK HOLES on EARTH?
Yeah, those critics. |
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I don't know about the rest of y'all, but I'm having a real Monday. I've had to redo something I've been working on twice today. And a guy came in earlier with a bunch of ground shots he'd taken of a parking lot - elevations, that is. Survey data, only he's a contractor, not a surveyor. So I was wondering why some of the shots were off by over forty feet, until it hit me - he'd added where he should have subtracted.
And people wonder why shit gets built wrong.
Anyway, it turned out to be a bad case of Monday on the part of the contractor.
Still... anytime you're feeling like you're having the Monday from Hell (and I could make a case for Monday the 16th being far, far worse than Friday the 13th, by virtue of the fact that it's Monday), remember this chick, whose day started out bad, got worse, and ended up with her sitting in a closet drinking Corona.
I mean... it wasn't even real beer:
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/youandme/story/389467.html
I decide the only way this day’s going to get any better is if I sit in the closet – which is the only room with light that doesn’t have a toilet in it – and get drunk.
So I drank the six-pack of Corona by myself in my closet, crying. With the squeezy lime juice, because I didn’t have the dishes or silverware yet to cut the lime with.
Sounds like what I'd do to cope. Except I would be drinking real beer, I wouldn't lament the lack of lime (because real beer doesn't need lime), and I wouldn't be crying. I'm just saying.
I suppose there's one way to have a worse Monday, but only if you live in certain parts of Iowa.
On a totally different subject, I bet you didn't know that D&D was actually invented by the Romans nearly 2000 years ago:
http://www.christies.com/Lotfinder/lot_details.aspx?intObjectID=4205385&title=rd...
A ROMAN GLASS GAMING DIE
Circa 2nd Century A.D.
Deep blue-green in color, the large twenty-sided die incised with a distinct symbol on each of its faces
2 1/16 in. (5.2 cm.) wide
...
Several polyhedra in various materials with similar symbols are known from the Roman period. Modern scholarship has not yet established the game for which these dice were used.
Probably not actually Dungeons and Dragons, now that I think of it. More like "Battlements and Barbarians."
"Okay, Lucius, make a Dexterity roll. Oops, that's a fumble - your sandals slip and you pour the boiling oil all over your feet. Roll again - oh, no, you've just impaled yourself on your drusus. Better roll up a new character."
"Fine, I'm going to be a Visigoth this time."
"A Visigoth? Damn, you've got a lot of Gaul."
(Players pelt GameMaster with dice for making a pun no one will get for at least 1000 years. One rolls into a corner, only to be found by a history professor 1900 years later.)
Well, it might have happened that way. |
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Much as I hate to join a crowd in giving Father's Day testimonials in maudlin blog entries, I'm going to do it anyway. It's my first Father's Day without Dad - only it really isn't, because he was taken from me long before life fled his mortal flesh.
And the truth is, Bruce said it much better than I ever could, so I give you the words of the Boss:
I remember how rough your hand felt on mine
On my wedding day
And the tears cried on my shoulder
I couldn't turn away
Well so much has happened to me
That I don't understand
All I can think of is being five years old following behind you at the beach
Tracing your footprints in the sand
Trying to walk like a man
By Our Lady Of The Roses
We lived in the shadow of the elms
I remember ma draggin' me and my sister up the street to the church
Whenever she heard those wedding bells
Well would they ever look so happy again
The handsome groom and his bride
As they stepped into that long black limousine
For their mystery ride
Well tonight you step away from me
And alone at the altar I stand
And as I watch my bride coming down the aisle I pray
For the strength to walk like a man
Well now the years have gone and I've grown
From that seed you've sown
But I didn't think there'd be so many steps
I'd have to learn on my own
Well I was young and I didn't know what to do
When I saw your best steps stolen away from you
Now I'll do what I can
I'll walk like a man
And I'll keep on walkin' |
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I've long said that people with Flash and too much time on their hands will eventually destroy the world, or at least the internet.
Here's some proof:
http://www.webupon.com/Web-Design/How-Do-They-Do-That-2-Ten-Awesome-and-Intrigui...
Flash animation – you either love it or hate it. Whatever your opinion, it still represents the cutting edge of Internet animation.
Here are 10 of the best on the net at the moment. Make a coffee, then sit back and enjoy these sites
Well.
At least it's Friday. |
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I bought an artichoke at the grocery store last week.
This was harder than I had anticipated. As I approached the store, the sky turned green and lighting was crackling all around. My goal was to get in, grab some margarita mix, a lime and a few other essentials, and get out.
While I was getting the lime, I saw a few artichokes on display - the biggest, fattest, greenest artichokes I've ever seen. I grabbed the biggest of them; it had a tag around the stem that read, "ORGANIC ARTICHOKE" along with a PLU code. I got the 'choke, the lime, some margarita mix and a few other essentials and got to the self-checkout line.
I started checking out. The PLU code didn't work. There was no option for "artichoke, organic" on the self-checkout screen. I waved at the attendant.
"What's that?" she asked.
"Artichoke."
"Huh. It doesn't look like an artichoke."
It looked like an artichoke to me. I read the PLU code off of the tag for her.
Just then the power blinked, and the self-checkout screens quit working.
I hung around for a bit, but the attendant had run off to do something else and nothing I was doing would work. There was no way the self-checkout would let me check the beer out without the attendant, so I grumblingly picked everything up, put it back in the basket, and went to wait in one of the two 5-deep lines at the regular checkout.
After a half hour of power blinks - at this point, the rain was coming down like Armageddon, so I wasn't going anywhere, anyway - it was finally my turn. The normal registers were working fine, but everyone else had like 60 items, while I had six. I resisted all the candy and such, had a few good chuckles at the stupid-ass tabloids, and when it got to be my turn I whipped out my Kroger card and my credit card.
"What's this?" said the checkout dude.
"Um, it's an artichoke. Has a label on it."
"Oh. It doesn't look like an artichoke."
I squinted; I didn't have my glasses. But it still looked exactly like an artichoke to me. A particularly large specimen, mind you, but... artichoke.
The rain had reduced to a trickle by the time I was done; I went to the liquor store for the rest of the margarita fixins, and went home. The artichoke went into my fridge.
Today, I finally took it out. It still looked like an artichoke, but I could tell that if it waited in the fridge much longer, it would look like a biology experiment, which is more my wife's field. So I trimmed the stem, took off the label, pulled off the most outer bracts, and put it in a half inch of water in a casserole dish and nuked it for five minutes.
When it was done, it still looked like an artichoke, albeit a cooked one. Smelled like one, too. Not the best odor in the world, mind you; they taste a lot better than they smell.
My dad taught me how to eat artichokes. Of course, my mom always overcooked them, like she did everything else, but overcooked artichoke is mostly just more tender. What you do, he explained, is pull off the bracts, dip the base in some sauce (I use a lemon juice, olive oil and pepper mixture; others use more elaborate dressings) and use your teeth to scrape off the tender inner surface. You do this, going around the golden-ratio spiral of the bracts, until you get to where they start to look like the flower petals that they are. Then you pull off the flower petals and scoop out the coarse spines, which reveals the tasty heart. This, too, gets dipped, but you eat it whole.
It's a lot of work. More work, I suppose, than some people think it's worth; I happen to disagree. And I've been to restaurants (The Raven in Virginia Beach, one of my favorite places to go when I'm in that area) where they offer it as an appetizer, with hollandaise sauce. I've seen people at the next table send it back.
"I don't know what this is," they said. "It doesn't look like an artichoke."
People: It's. A. Fucking. Artichoke.
Oh, and look, there's even an artichoke liqueur:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynar
Wow, an alcoholic beverage I haven't heard of. Who says Wikipedia is useless? |
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As regular readers know, I am inclined to indulge in Liquid Fuck-it from time to time, sometimes even to excess, much to the horror of the modern-day prohibitionists and health nuts (amounts to the same thing, really).
But, however, and nevertheless, far be it from me to lower myself to...
Nectar of the Broke: The World's 5 Worst Ways To Get Drunk
Getting drunk on a tight budget is practically a rite of passage. Just about all of us have some tale to tell about nights spent getting shitfaced on Olde English 800 or some equally putrid swill.
But party all the time as we might, it's doubtful any of us have stories that involve being so broke, we had to resort to throwing down any of this. If we had, we'd likely not have lived to talk about it.
http://www.cracked.com/article_16314_nectar-broke-worlds-5-worst-ways-get-drunk....
Oh, and by the way, if you've ever indulged in a manner that could be considered somehow "worse" than any of these... please, by all means, share. I won't believe you, but go ahead.
Just last September in the Pakistani city of Karachi, 22 men died after drinking tharra from an illegal brewery run by a police constable. And why were they drinking tharra when regular old alcohol is plenty legal in Pakistan? For the same reason any of us would have. It was the middle of the holy month of Ramadan and the liquor stores were closed.
...
For all of you who still think communism is evil, hear this. During the reign of communism in the Soviet Union, alcohol was one of the few things people could afford. In present day Russia, steep excise duties have put alcohol out of the price range for many working-class stiffs.
...
Thunderbird is far and away the most normal drink on this list. It's perfectly legal to buy and finding it is as easy as following the trail of broken souls to your nearest crime-ridden neighborhood liquor store.
...
Well, now, if these aren't buzzkillers, I don't know what is.
Oh, yeah, the prospect of another eight years of Republican domination of the Executive Branch.
Dammit, now I need a drink. |
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From a Canadian column:
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=70709403-81f8-4716-...
Apparently, the political happiness of we who live in Western liberal democracies is flat-lining -- or even declining -- despite all the choice and affluence we enjoy.
William Gorton, author of the paper, "Too Much of a Good Thing: Freedom, Individualism, Autonomy and the Decline of Happiness in Liberal Democracies," postulated that "the causes of this stagnation or decline may be attributable, directly or indirectly, to core values of liberalism -- namely freedom of choice, autonomy and individualism."
Moving past the obvious rejoinder that only U.S. citizens are allowed to pursue happiness,
No doubt, there will be those on the right and the left who agree with Prof. Gorton, and who will pounce on his conclusions to advance their own anti-freedom agendas.
The article goes on to make several points about what "freedom" really is that have been knocking around in my head for a while. If only I were a writer, I could have articulated them before now.
We may be free to buy big-screen HDTVs until we are blue in the face -- and be presented with an awe-inspiring array of models -- but we are no longer free to speak our minds without fear that crusading government agents will seek to punish and silence us.
...
Freedom isn't failing us. We are unhappy because we are no longer free.
Read the article, if you will. Agree? Disagree? Agree with reservations? As far as I can tell, the points made are valid whether you're talking about Canada, Britain or the US - or, perhaps, other countries, but those are the ones with which I'm most familiar.
But even if we agree... is it too late to do anything about it? |
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...that the comic "strip" called "Family Circus" was a disgrace to the funny papers. In a world that gave us "Calvin and Hobbes" and "The Far Side" and hell, even "Peanuts," it stands out like a turd in a punchbowl, and smells about as good.
Well, it's high time someone updated the piece of crap and, thanks to the internet and the satire clause in the "fair use" copyright policy (not to mention lax enforcement), someone has:
Warning: The language in the following link is very adult and very, very funny. Don't drink and click, unless you want your sinuses cleared out.
http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v148/mcbotulism/Family%20Circus/?start=all
"I just beat the crap out of that homo Dennis the Menace. You're next, bitch." |
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...about yesterday's list is I can't do half of them.
Not because I'm afraid to, or because my wife would divorce me for most of them, or because I don't want to die.
But because of my goddamn back.
My wife went horseback riding this morning. I used to ride horses when I was a kid. I rode some more recently on the beaches of Antigua and through a Central American rainforest. I don't usually miss it, but now the idea that I can't do it because it would turn my right leg into a screaming, burning rod of pain makes me wish I could do stuff like that anymore.
A friend of mine is whitewater rafting this weekend. Again, not something I ever had a major urge to do, but the idea that I can't makes me very, very angry with myself and an uncaring Universe.
When this shit is over - if it is ever over - I might be done being a dedicated indoorsman, at least for a while. Maybe I'll finally go for flight training and get a pilot's license like I've always wanted.
In the meantime, I'll just thank whatever gods are laughing at us that there's booze. |
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I've been saving this list for a good moment, and if there's a moment better than 5 pm on a Friday that begins what promises to be a sweltering hot weekend, I don't know it.
60 Things Worth Shortening Your Life For
The following risky activities, decadent foods, and otherwise foolhardy indulgences are detrimental to your health. You will, however, not perish in vain.
http://www.esquire.com/print-this/better-man-07/60things0507
Because what's the point of living an extra 20 years if you gotta spend it all living life in moderation?
Have a weekend! |
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...I just have to share it with my Loyal Readers.
Special note to Mavis Moog  : If you value your dogs' health, DO NOT open this link where they can see it.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article1247099.ece
YOU’VE heard of pimp my ride – now here’s pimp my poodle.
Believe it or not, this is a pet pooch sheered, shaved, dyed, fluffed and puffed to look like a COCKEREL.
Complete with slide show goodness.
Words fail me. |
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... to losing weight is that eventually you have to buy new clothes.
Chicks live for that shit. It's like, [falsetto voice] "Whooohoo!!! I just lost 10 pounds so I can go clothes shopping!"
With me (and, I suspect, most guys who bother to lose weight), it's like, "Holy cow, I just lost 45 pounds. Now I have to go fucking clothes shopping."
That's right, first I waited until I lost 45 pounds; then and only then do I even consider braving retail stores, or even the Internet.
See, there are two things going on here. First, I have 45 more pounds to lose, at which point I'll have to go clothes shopping again. And, second, if I gain the weight back (and I'm just pessimistic enough to believe I will; after all, I put it on in the first place), then I'm just going to have to go back to wearing my current clothes.
But I'm faced with the real fact that people are starting to stare at my jeans all bunched up at the waist with a belt that's a bit too long itself, its loose end dangling a foot down like a second cock (only smaller) if I don't remember to tuck it back under. And if I don't wear the belt, I'll have to buy one of those enormous t-shirts like the gangbangers wear, because I'll be walking around with the waist of my pants around my knees.
I'm seriously considering eating a couple of pizzas and chasing it with some beer so I can put off the shopping. I mean, seriously.
But no. If for no other reason than it puts less stress on my spucking fine, I need to at least keep myself at my current weight - and, preferably, suck it up and lose the next 45.
Damn, but I hate shopping for clothes.
I mean hate. |
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Lots of great stuff happening in the U.S. right now - the last Democratic primaries are wrapping up in two of the flyover states, and now the press is going to switch from Obama vs. Clinton mode to Obama vs. McCain mode. In other words, five more months of whose hair is better-groomed and which candidate's grandmother or great-grandmother was a flapper during the Roaring Twenties, because, of course, that makes a huge difference in who should be president.
But enough about politics. Let's take a closer look at one of those flyover states: South Dakota, land of... land of... um. What the hell is in South Dakota?
Ah, yes. The Crazy Horse Memorial which, as it happens, was begun sixty years ago today:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jFm-XObirp1WYOCQbKZBiof7uGzgD911QFQ00
CRAZY HORSE, S.D. (AP) - Sixty years after the first blast signaled work had begun on the world's largest mountain carving, the project is far from finished.
...
The invitation to undertake the carving came from Lakota Chief Henry Standing Bear, who was prompted by Gutzon Borglum's carving of nearby Mount Rushmore to seek a memorial for Indian heroes.
...
"Crazy Horse represents the values of American Indian tribes - of bravery, respect generosity, wisdom. So by being on this memorial he represents some of those struggles that he fought for a long time ago, of protecting our land base and our treaties. We're still in those fights today."
One of General Custer's descendants is a good friend of mine. I think I'll show her the article, see what she thinks.
I know I'd have put a different expression on his face. Something more evocative of how I know I'd feel if my people had been marginalized and driven into special enclaves far from their ancestral...
Oh, that's right. They were.
Anyway, I'll be raising one tonight to impossible odds, like Custer met at Little Bighorn, or a nonwhite man having a real shot at the Presidency. |
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...rock and roll will never die.
But:
Rock pioneer Bo Diddley dies at age 79
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- Bo Diddley, a founding father of rock 'n' roll whose distinctive "shave and a haircut, two bits" rhythm and innovative guitar effects inspired legions of other musicians, died Monday [today] after months of ill health. He was 79.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBIT_DIDDLEY?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLAT...
In the early 1950s, Diddley said, disc jockeys called his type of music, "Jungle Music." It was Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed who is credited with inventing the term "rock 'n' roll."
Diddley said Freed was talking about him, when he introduced him, saying, "Here is a man with an original sound, who is going to rock and roll you right out of your seat."
Say "hi" to Buddy and Jimi for me, Bo. And smile when you flip Elvis the Finger. |
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Many juniors and seniors were driven to tears - a few to near hysterics - May 26 when a uniformed police officer arrived in several classrooms to notify them that a fellow student had been killed in a drunken-driving accident.
The officer read a brief eulogy, placed a rose on the deceased student's seat, then left the class members to process their thoughts and emotions for the next hour.
Pause a moment to think about this. You're a high school student, and someone comes in and tells you a classmate has died a horrible death. Then:
About 10 a.m., students were called to the athletic stadium, where they learned that their classmates had not died. There, a group of seniors, police officers and firefighters staged a startlingly realistic alcohol-induced fatal car crash. The students who had purportedly died portrayed ghostly apparitions encircling the scene.
http://www.theagitator.com/2008/05/31/absolute-maddness/
Now, I'll be the first to acknowledge that drunk driving is Bad. I certainly go out of my way to get quietly drunk at home, or someplace where I know I have a ride, rather than getting in a position where I might even consider it.
But MADD can kiss my gin-soaked ASS. I know the idea is to mess with kids' heads - and I heartily approve of messing with kids' heads, but not like this. We're talking years and YEARS of therapy, here.
And what about the bastard kids who actually went along with this charade and let their classmates think that they're dead? I mean, I vaguely remember when I was in high school, I was like, "I wonder if they'll care if I'm dead. Maybe I'll stage my own death and make them think I'm gone, and see who actually cries. Yeah. Then I'll find out who really cares about me." Teenage angst crap. Well, here's a bunch of teens who actually got to live that fantasy - with help from the teachers and the fucking cops!
And then - what happens when someone actually dies in a car wreck, alcohol-induced or not? It happened to at least one kid every year when I was in high school, and the other kids were all shocked and saddened, even the ones who didn't particularly like the deceased. But now, these kids are going to be like, "Yeah, whatever, another stupid MADD stunt."
As the blogger in the above link said, "What the hell is wrong with these people?"
I'm telling you what, I don't drink enough to put up with this shit. |
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I'm more than happy with Carrion Luggage, however.
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