Summing Up and Forging On

I named my cane Virgil.

Sometimes I get criticised for buying bottled water. I even criticise myself. But when I look out at the birds' reaction to the water from my faucet I feel somewhat vindicated. There are two bowls. I pour the old water into #2 each time I put fresh in #1. They always use the old water until the new is a few days old.

It's frightening.

On Wednesday, 43 monkeys escaped from a primate research facility in South Carolina. Run like the wind little primates. It's not that far to Florida.

A story in my book is about a chimp that a retiring employee helps escape. His lab experience has warped him so that he goes for a walk on the wild side.

oodyDoodsky
Howdyhorde
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Ppl, use common sense! DNC admitted in court it rigs primaries! So y in God's name is any1 surprised if this elec was rigged? That's what I KEEP SAYING! Voting rigged & 3rds have no prayer! Olig LOVES voting! Gives illusion of choice & keeps us from mobilizing vs capital!

eb - I haven't trusted electronic voting machines from the first. Not claiming the current results would be reversed. But the only system I trust is the black "X" on a paper ballot. There are other issues such as voters purges for cooked up reasons and making it hard for voters to cast a ballot, but paper ballots to me is the primary issue.

The earliest versions of humans are extinct. I am pretty sure ours extincted Neanderthals, though I can't prove it. Makes sense, knowing how we are extincting so many branches of our own species. It might seem horrifically improbable that we could all go the way of the other homonids within a century, but it seems to me we are paving the road to our own demise with a vengeance.

A thing that continually preys on my mind is the fact that the package is often of superior workmanship over the product inside. Whoever is making packages ought to be in charge of building everything.

I'm going to try screenwriting. "Teapot's Empire" will be the pilot project. It reads much like a film already, just needs the formatting and a bit of development. Any screenwriters out there with advice will be welcomed.

My first four concerts:
Conway Twitty, 1958 - He started out with his rockabilly hits but soon went into pure country with songs I didn't know.

Rex Allen/Anita Bryant, 1962, San Antonio Rodeo - Rex put on a good show, with the help of Rex the wonder horse. Anita sang very well. This was before she got into controversy.

Van Clyburn, 1963 - He did all modern pieces that I found monotonous and boring. He did a great job, but the selection was not for me.

Bob Dylan, 1965, Long Beach, CA - ticket price $4.50. Barry McGuire was a few rows over. He performrf acoustic and then did the Highway 61 Revisited album, backed by the original band.

I spelled Cliburn wrong.

I began my vinyl record collection in 1958 with two albums: Belafonte Sings of the Caribbean and Belafonte. Within weeks I added Jerry Lee Lewis' first records. Over the years I bought all the records I could find by these two artists. In the early years of collecting I added Brook Benton, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Elvis Presley, Clyde McPhatter, Brenda Lee, Dinah Washington, Lena Horne, Don Gibson, Johnny Cash, and many more, all before British rock and folk exploded on the scene. After a lifetime of collecting I've given them all away to my children and one nephew. But I still can hear most of it on Youtube. The sound is not so good, but my memory fills in the muted parts.

One of my fave bands from my late teens was a Milwaulkee busking rockabilly/country acoustic band called the Violent Femmes. They're still touring today.

Not familiar but I will look on youtube.

That was the song that got them on the charts, but there's so many good songs in their first three albums.

mothballs try to dominate the Thanksgiving festifitities.

Over my lifetime certain records and albums have marked milestones in my listening habits and in my perceptions of the world. Harry Belafonte did this with the albums, Belafonte Sings of the Caribbean, Belafonte, and Paradise in Gazankulu. The latter was recorded in the midst of the final struggle against African apartheid. A song titled Capetown is one from it I still listen to.

Next would be Bob Dylan's Freewheelin, Highway 61 Revisited, Desire, John Wesley Harding, Planet Waves, Blood on the Tracks, Another Side. I had never heard of the man when I saw Freewheelin in a record store, but I recognized songs recorded by Peter Paul and Mary. I figured anybody who could write these songs had to be good. Highway 61 Revisited blew my mind as no other recording had done before or since. Here was the embodiment of the mental processes I experienced from about age eighteen until then. I just sat there in the aftermath of a first playing for a long time.

Many albums reached me in various ways. Guthrie, Guthrie, Leadbelly, Lena Horne (Now), early Jerry Lee Lewis, Seeger, Collins, Baez, Sainte-Marie -

Leonard Cohen was a master with a number of great albums. Songs of Leonard Cohen, Songs From a Room, Recent Songs. Recent Songs made me obsessed with certain tracks, such as The Guests, and The Traitor.

Then I came to Phil Ochs, whose revenue from record sales barely covered the cost of releasing them. I liked Tape From California very much. But Rehearsals for Retirement became one of my top all time favorites. He was radicalized in the same ways as me, except out there and more experienced. I was heartbroken over his suicide.

If that's so 'twould appear to be a case of killing with kindness then given,

" ... a single human has an average of around 2% Neanderthal DNA overall with some countries and backgrounds having a maximum of 3% per human."

or the pen is mightier than the sordid.

Humans will have sex with anything. It's in their nature. Not every human and not always with anything, but a sizeable portion is like that. I am sure some humans mated for life with Neanderthals because some humans go against the popular grain. Humans are callous to those who are different, generally speaking.

Quite so, an atavistic primordial cordiality. Then there's the other white meat imperative. Yet, DNA doesn't lie. There was a lot of love in the gloom.

By next Thursday fortnight or within the next thousand years, according to St Stephen, we may have radiant new hominines to five on.

Until the big warm when the sun runs out of hydrogen by which time a species well beyond the next will have bespawned a delightfully milky whey and slingshot earth out past saturn.

Or so the story goes.