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About This Author
I am SoCalScribe. This is my InkSpot.
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Blogocentric Formulations
Logocentric (adj). Regarding words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality (especially applied as a negative term to traditional Western thought by postmodernist critics).
Sometimes I just write whatever I feel like. Other times I respond to prompts, many taken from the following places:
Thanks for stopping by! 
October 6, 2014 at 7:12pm October 6, 2014 at 7:12pm
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SONG: "Ring of Fire"
ARTIST: Johnny Cash
STATUS: Deceased (complications from diabetes, 9/12/2003)
ALBUM: [single] (1963)
In keeping with my list of hometown musicians, I can't very well mention Rick James' stint in Folsom State Prison without mentioning Mr. Folsom Prison Blues himself:
This is my favorite song of Johnny Cash's, no question about it. And if you're a fan of a more punk-rock version, even though they're not eligible for this contest since they're still performing, Social Distortion's cover of this song is one of my favorite songs of theirs too:
Born in Arkansas, Johnny Cash was one of seven children. That number decreased to six when his older brother Jack was pulled into a whirling head saw and nearly sliced in half, dying a week later and instilling Cash with horrible guilt over the incident. He learned to play the guitar and started writing songs at age twelve, and joined the Air Force when he was of age. He served as a radio operator, and was actually one of the first operators to hear of and report news of the death of Joseph Stalin.
Although Cash's personal life is perhaps most famously defined by his relationship with June Carter, he was married once before that, to Vivian Liberto for more than fifteen years during which they had four daughters. He was admitted to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1980, making him the youngest inductee to date at the age of 48. He spent much of the 80s touring as part of The Highwaymen, a supergroup consisting of Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. When June Carter Cash died in May of 2003, she implored Cash to keep working. He would write sixty new songs in the last four months of his life before succumbing to complications from diabetes in September of 2003. Over the course of his career, Cash racked up - among other achievements - 3 AMA awards, 9 CMA awards, and 19 Grammy Awards.
There is some debate about what the song "Ring of Fire" refers to. While it is claimed that Cash wrote it to describe the experience of falling in love with June Carter, his first wife Vivian claimed that it was a crude song about a certain female body part and it could have been about June or herself. She accused Cash of putting June Cartner's name on the song as a writer because June needed the money. The song was originally recorded by June's sister Anita Carter, and Cash reportedly told her that if she didn't hit with the song in a few months, he was going to do his own version and add in Mexican horns (which you hear at the beginning of the song). Her version didn't hit... but his sure did!
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PROMPT: The saddest book I've ever read is...
It might be because this is the most recent "sad book" I've read, but the one that just wrenches my heartstrings is:
| ASIN: 014242417X |
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Amazon's Price: $ 7.82
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Reading this book the first time was sad enough. But even tougher than that, trying reading it out loud to your wife and trying not to choke up at the end. For my money, this is one of the best books of the last ten years, full stop. It's a rare book that can have you laughing out loud one minute and feeling like your guts are unraveling the next. Most of the time, when I finish a book, I anxiously and excitedly think about what I'm going to read next. When I finished this book, I just sat there, absorbing what I had read, contemplating what it meant and how I felt. Books don't often make me than reflective, but this was definitely one of them.
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October 6, 2014 at 9:53am October 6, 2014 at 9:53am
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SONG: "Super Freak"
ARTIST: Rick James
STATUS: Deceased (pulmonary and cardiac failure, 8/6/2004)
ALBUM: Street Songs (1981)
I included Rick James on my list of songs because, for a three-year stint in the 1990s, Rick and I lived in the same small town in Northern California. I spent the first twenty years of my life living around Folsom, California, and Rick James spent 1994-1996 as a resident of Folsom State Prison after being convicted of kidnapping, holding hostage, and beating two different women on two different occasions with his future wife Tanya Hijazi (who was 17 when they first met... 24 years younger than James).
James had a rather colorful life. After dropping out of high school at age fifteen, failed to report for duty when drafted, fled to Toronto, spent a year in a naval prison after moving to Detroit for his music career and getting ratted out by a former manager he fired. He was a songwriter and producer for Motown records, working with the likes of Teena Marie, Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, and Marvin Gaye. His relationship with Gaye was put to the test when he started sleeping with Marvin's ex-wife Janis. He had a well-documented drug addiction, primarily to cocaine, and was reported to have spent in excess of $7,000 per week (that'd be over $12,000/week by today's standards) on his drug habit over a five year period. After being released from prison in 1996 and having subsequent sexual assault charges dropped in 1998, James largely disappeared from the public eye, until Dave Chappelle brought him back to the public consciousness with a now-famous sketch for his Chappelle's Show:
After James' caretaker found him dead in his Los Angeles home on August 6, 2004, his death was ruled a result of pulmonary and cardiac failure caused by various health conditions including diabetes, and a previous stroke and heart attack for which he wore a pacemaker. Interestingly enough, his autopsy revealed a buffet of drugs in his system: alprazolam, diazepam, bupropion, citalopram, hydrocodone, digoxin, chlorpheniramine, methamphetamine, and cocaine... although none were ruled as a contributing factor to his death.
Perhaps James himself was the Super-est Freak of them all? 
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PROMPT: A book I've always wanted to read but haven't yet is...
| ASIN: 0060838655 |
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Amazon's Price: $ 19.99
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Several reputable authorities on history books (including Matt Damon's character from Good Will Hunting ) include this as a must-read history text. I'm actually a few chapters into it, but I keep getting sidetracked by other books. It's not that it's not good... it's actually excellent and even from the first chapter, it's fascinating. It's just very dense. At 729 pages with very small font and tiny margins, it's packed with information.
Maybe the entire history of our country isn't meant to be read in one uninterrupted reading experience. I generally don't like to skip around and read other books when I'm in the middle of one (except for books in different formats... I usually have one audiobook and one text-based book on Kindle or hard copy going at a time). In this case, though, and since A People's History is more of a textbook, maybe I'll give myself permission to read a chapter or two, then tackle something else, then come back and read another chapter or two, etc.
However I end up tackling it, I think it's an important book and I really do want to read it. There's so much about our own country's history that I don't know... or only know vaguely from what I've learned in school or been told in brief overview from Wikipedia pages and other resources... it's important to understand the history - the real history - of our nation. |
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