Tomorrow’s my 42nd birthday. That was kinda bumming me out.
However, we just got a phone call informing us that tomorrow, my step-son is moving back to another town to live with his father.
The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Thank you, Lord. That was all I wanted for my birthday!
( yeah, I know, I’m BAD! )
I love racquetball. I play at least twice a week for a couple of hours a night. Given the frenetic pace of the game, accidents are what make each game different. I have a regular partner, Mark, and a semi-regular partner, Lance. Mark is short and stocky, lifts weights, looks like John Belushi, and plays like a pro-linebacker. Lance is taller, very strong and very lanky. I am six feet tall, 130 pounds, and very agile. Each of us plays the game to suit our build. As such, Mark tends to stalk the court, Lance tends to dominate the center, and I am all over the place all the time.
Last night we were playing cut-throat. The game was progressing at a snail’s pace, as for reasons only the gods would know, all three of us were returning serves with kills. Makes for no points at all. However, I pulled ahead eventually at about 12-7-11. That’s when the chaos began.
Mark was serving, and hit a wall serve that bounced about knee-high to me. Perfect smash. I returned it about as hard as I can, and it hit Mark just below his left butt. Now, we’ve all been hit plenty hard plenty of times, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. Mark laughed it off and pointed out he was glad it didn’t hit in the spot that hurts him the most, and pointed right below his left shoulder blade. We did a round and Mark returned to serve. I promptly smacked his serve once again about as hard as I could. It of course, nailed Mark right below the left shoulder blade. It stung too. While Mark was cringing, Lance and I had to laugh, pretty hysterically as we were both pretty well exhausted by this point. We made our round again and Mark once again served a perfect wall serve that bounced off the wall and promptly bounced knee high in front of me. I nailed it again. Of course, it hits Mark right below the left shoulder blade. Lance and I bent over again, Mark cringed. Mark cussed in a new language for a for minutes, and we got back to trying to finish the game, which was still 12-7-11. We made another round, Mark served, I nailed it, and true to form, hit Mark once again right below the left shoulder blade. At this point Mark just walked off. The game was over.
In preperation for our next meeting, I have ordered prescription shatter-resistant goggles, and padding to cover pretty much all exposed skin. We all believe in pay-backs.
———————————————————————-
Note from Moon: Although I am joining the racquetball webring, this is not really intended for masters of the game to compare strategies and such. It is more intended for the purpose racquetball fulfills for me, stress relief, exercise, and amusement.
This is arguably the greatest pop song ever written. Ever. There is a little know history to Unchained Melody that most people today don’t know. The music was originally written by Alex North, this is where it gets weird. He subsequently wrote a score for 2001:A Space Odyssey, which was rejected by Kubrick for his choices of classical music. The words were written by Hy Zaret, who wrote other pop songs, but none of which I remember now. The composers primarily emphasized scores for movies, Unchained Melody was actually written as part of the score for a movie called “Unchained“. Understating the obvious, the song has done much better than the movie.
The history of Unchaind Melody is quite a marvel in itself. Here’s it’s chart list:
.It has been re-made and re-recorded hundreds of times, here a list.
However, IMO, The Righteous Brothers’ version is the only one that matters. It was a doo-wop song previously. The Righteous Brothers slowed it down to half-time, and sang it with a passion that has rarely been heard since. What was a popular dance song suddenly became the most romantic song every recorded. The Righteous Brothers would record other major hits, “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” being a classic in its own right. But to me, nothing they ever did ever matched the last 30 seconds of Unchained Melody.
My version sticks fairly close to the original. it has a more modern sound and that’s about it. Some songs aren’t meant to be improved, they’re just updated. Enjoy, and remember, I only do this for fun!
The Righteous Brothers version:
Here’s my personal favorite performance of Unchained Melody. Very shortly before his death, a bloated, sickly looking Elvis Presley gave a performance and ended the show with this performance of Unchained Melody. It absolutely drove me to tears to see the awesome talent this man had. He displays his full range and plays the piano like it’s the last time he ever would. It’s a chilling performance. Within a couple of months, Elvis would be dead and that talent never heard again. Thanks to the new silicon age, his immortal performance of an immortal song can be preserved for the next generations so that they might understand the difference between “entertainers” and the real thing musically. Watch this!
A friend of mine posted this comment on The Motley fool: “God, you are skinny.”
This was my reply:
Yup, I’m skinny. Too skinny. Do you know what it’s like being too skinny in an obesity-conscious world? Huh? Do you? Try going to a decent restaurant right now and getting a meal guaranteed to clog arteries, thereby slowing my system down so I can gain some weight. Go ahead, do it! It can’t be done. Everywhere I turn are these damned low-carb starvation diets. Even if I try eating twice as much, it’s wasted ( get it, wasted? Too subtle probably ). Ever since these damned Santa Monica diets and low-carb diets have infiltrated main stream society, I have withered away to nothing. Even my damned beer gut is gone because my wife will only buy lite beer and tequila. I took up racquetball, within in a month or so, poof, another 10 pounds gone and people in sub-Sahara Africa are starting to feel pity for me. I will never die as long as the country obsesses with no-carb no fat food, I will fade away one molecule at a time till there is absolutely nothing left. I’m just waiting for that worm to turn again when the Surgeon General suddenly freaks out and realizes the country is over-whelmed with immaciated unhealthy people who are not getting all the vitamins and minerals they need every day to remain healthy and start encouraging McDonald’s to add natural lard to their french fries. It may not happen for me in my lifetime, but I don’t want my son to suffer this same fate.
I felt it was too important to not be on my blog.
A while back, I was designing a website for my misguided step-son. We did the usual, inserting rock poses of the band members, making up a song list, the whole works. We were doing the history of the band, when he made a comment in it that just stuck with me, “While we were Rotted Soil, things happened, and the system forced us to change our name”.
How often do you hear of something being blamed on “the system”? This kid has no clue about law, responsbility, or any kind of obligation. He doesn’t even have a clue what “the system” is. But, at the age of 16, he’s already blaming things on it. Where do we learn to do that? Gotta put blame anywhere but on ourselves, even if we have to make up what it is we are blaming it on. People “work the system“, are “victims of the system“, are “oppressed by the system“. Hell, some people even “survive the system“.
“The system’s” obviously a pretty horrible thing.
However, there really is no such thing as “the system”. It’s an imaginary cop-out for people who don’t want to spend the time to figure exactly what it is they’re fighting. Children im foster homes are not “victims of the system”, they’re victims of failed parents, families, or guardians. Put the blame where the blame is due. Battered women are not victims of “the system”, they are victims of individuals who only know violence as a means of negotiation. Blame it directly on their attackers. No one is oppressed by “the system” in the US, they have not bothered to find out exactly what their rights and resources are. The misguided step-son is blaming it on “the system” to pander to the other kids. Rockers love to blame everything on the system, it’s convenient when you’re protesting about something and you can’t figure out what it is you’re protesting.
Playing kids games is usually harmless. However, since so many adults do it, you have to wonder where it came from. I think it came from their childhood, “I didnt’ do it”, “someone else did it”, etc.. If no one ever told them it was wrong, how would they know now? I guess I’m the one to tell them it’s wrong. Blame something on exactly what it is that has bothered you and you MIGHT solve your problem. Blaming things on imaginary summations will never get your problem solved.
“Bitch, go home! We don’t want you here!” At one point, police cordoned off a city block after several dozen demonstrators jeered and razzed the incoming audience.
Time for a quiz:
Did ya pass? If so, then we’ll come to the same conclusion. What is the point in protesting if no one has a clue what you’re protesting? If they are not protesting anything particular, then it seems to me all they are doing is entertaining themselves by shouting obscenities and harassing people exercising their rights under the Constitution. Namely, Article IX of the Ammendments to the Constitution, “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” To wit, follow me here, the Federal government, by allowing others the ability to express their freedom of speech, is disparaging others to participate in the process defined by the US Constitution. Since these people are intent on disrupting the political process to choose our President, they are not protected under the definition of free speech, and are guilty of interfering with the delegates’ Constitutional Right.
Not only should these particular protestors who have no real cause be detained for disrupting the Conventions ( I mean Republicand AND Democrat, this is not a party issue ), they should be charged for violating Delegates’ civil rights ( harassment ), and Constitutional Rights ( disparaging others retained by the people ).
Where is ACLU during these conventions? Why don’t we contact them and ask?
Remember the population bomb, the fertility explosion set to devour the world’s food and suck up or pollute all its air and water? Its fuse has by no means been plucked. But over the last three decades, much of its Malthusian detonation power has leaked out…..
Half the world’s population growth is in six countries: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh and China (despite its slowed birthrate).
Other than China, those five countries don’t have the land nor the resources to support their exploding populations. Whether it be famine, disease, war, or most likely a combination of all of the above, their rate will slow as well.
The prediction now is Ever since 1968, when the UN Population Division predicted that the world population, now 6.3 billion, would grow to at least 12 billion by 2050, the agency has regularly revised its estimates downward. Now it expects population to plateau at 9 billion.
.
Where did those billions go? Millions of babies have died, a fraction of them from AIDS, far more from malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia, even measles. More millions have been aborted, either to avoid birth or, as in China and India, to avoid giving birth to a girl. (Cheap ultrasound technology has in the last decade made it easy to determine a child’s sex.)
.
But even AIDS and abortion are drops in the demographic bucket. The real missing billions are the babies who were simply never conceived.
.
They weren’t conceived because their would-be elder brothers and sisters survived, or because women’s lives improved. In the rich West, Mom went to college and decided that putting three children through graduate school would be unaffordable. In the poor Eastern or Southern parts of the globe, Mom found a sweatshop job and didn’t need a fourth or fifth child to fetch firewood.
.
“On a farm, children help with the pigs or chickens,” explained Joseph Chamie, director of the UN population division. Nearly half the world’s people live in cities now, he said, “and when you move to a city, children are not as helpful.”
.
Beyond that, simple public health measures like dams for clean water, vitamins for pregnant women, hand-washing for midwives, oral rehydration salts for babies, vaccines for youngsters and antibiotics for all helped double world life expectancy in the 20th century, to 60 years from 30.
.
More surviving children means less incentive to give birth as often. As late as 1970, the world’s median fertility level was 5.4 births per woman; in 2000, it was 2.9. Barring war, famine, epidemic or disaster, a country needs a birthrate of 2.1 children per woman to hold steady.
.
The best-known example of shrinkage is Italy, whose women were once symbols of fecundity partly because of the country’s peasant traditions and partly because of its Roman Catholicism, which rejects birth control. By 2000, Italy’s fertility rate was Western Europe’s lowest, at 1.2 births per woman. Its population is expected to drop 20 percent by midcentury.
.
Italy plummeted right past wealthy, liberal, Protestant Denmark, where women got birth control early.
.
Denmark was below population replacement level in 1970, at 2.0 births per woman, and slid to 1.7 by 2001. In Europe’s poorest country, Albania, where rural people still live in armed clan compounds, the 1970 rate of 5.1 births per woman fell to 2.1 in 1999.
.
Even in North Africa, regarded as the great exception to the shrinking population trend, birthrates have dropped somewhat. Egypt’s, for example, went from 5.4 births per woman in 1970 to 3.6 in 1999.
.
Chamie, of the United Nations, says the numbers refute what he calls the “myth of Muslim fertility,” an unfair characterization, he says, that will disappear as the lives of Muslim women ease. Jordanians, for example, he said, had eight children per woman in the 1960s; now the rate is 3.5. (Across the river, Israel’s numbers went from four in the 1950s to 2.7 today.) In Tunisia and Iran, the number may be close to two children, he said.
.
Old notions of Asian fertility are similarly false. China has pushed its fertility rate below that of France; Japan’s population is withering with age; and after five decades of industrialization, South Korea, a mostly rural country with six births per woman during the 1950s, now has 1.17 births per woman.
.
Alarmed by the trends, many countries are paying citizens to get pregnant. Estonia pays for a year’s maternity leave. The treasurer of Australia, Peter Costello, introduced $2,000-per-baby subsidies in that country’s 2004 budget. He told his fellow citizens to “go home and do your patriotic duty tonight.”
.
Japanese prefectures, tackling the problem at an earlier stage, arrange singles’ cruises. Unique among developed countries, the United States has little need to finance romance because its birthrate has held steady at 2.13 per woman. Its growth, about 3 million people a year, is mostly fueled by immigration, as it has been since the Mayflower.
.
Half the world’s population growth is in six countries: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Indonesia, Bangladesh and China (despite its slowed birthrate). That makes doom-saying trickier than it was in 1968, when Paul Ehrlich frightened everyone with his book “The Population Bomb.” Fertility shifts in individual countries are notoriously unpredictable, said Nicholas Eberstadt, a population expert at the American Enterprise Institute, so one might just as well use a Ouija board to predict the fallout.
.
Local changes can be even harder to anticipate. Calcutta, for example, once the epitome of overcrowding, is starting to shrink, Eberstadt said. The father of the population bomb, Ehrlich, a professor of population studies and biology at Stanford, says he was “pleasantly surprised” by global changes that have undermined the book’s gloomiest projections. They include China’s one-child policy and the rapid adoption of better seeds and fertilizers by Third World farmers, meaning that more mouths can be fed, even if just with corn porridge and rice. (He notes, however, quoting UN figures, that about 600 million people go to bed hungry each night.) But Ehrlich still argues that the earth’s “optimal population size” is 2 billion. That’s different from the maximum supportable size, which depends on the consumption of resources.
.
“I have severe doubts that we can support even 2 billion if they all live like citizens of the U.S.,” he said. “The world can support a lot more vegetarian saints than Hummer-driving idiots.”
.
The New York Times Remember the population bomb, the fertility explosion set to devour the world’s food and suck up or pollute all its air and water? Its fuse has by no means been plucked. But over the last three decades, much of its Malthusian detonation power has leaked out.
.
Birthrates in developed countries from Italy to South Korea have sunk below the levels needed for their populations to replace themselves; the typical age of marriage and pregnancy has risen, and the use of birth control has soared beyond the dreams of Margaret Sanger and the nightmares of the Vatican.
.
The threat is now more regional than global, explosive only in places like India and Pakistan. Ever since 1968, when the UN Population Division predicted that the world population, now 6.3 billion, would grow to at least 12 billion by 2050, the agency has regularly revised its estimates downward. Now it expects population to plateau at 9 billion.
That’s doable, especially if half of that is pocketed in isolated areas. The problem in other areas, especially Europe, is now the opposite of what it was 35 years ago:
The best-known example of shrinkage is Italy, whose women were once symbols of fecundity partly because of the country’s peasant traditions and partly because of its Roman Catholicism, which rejects birth control. By 2000, Italy’s fertility rate was Western Europe’s lowest, at 1.2 births per woman. Its population is expected to drop 20 percent by midcentury.
.
Italy plummeted right past wealthy, liberal, Protestant Denmark, where women got birth control early.
.
Denmark was below population replacement level in 1970, at 2.0 births per woman, and slid to 1.7 by 2001. In Europe’s poorest country, Albania, where rural people still live in armed clan compounds, the 1970 rate of 5.1 births per woman fell to 2.1 in 1999.
.
Even in North Africa, regarded as the great exception to the shrinking population trend, birthrates have dropped somewhat. Egypt’s, for example, went from 5.4 births per woman in 1970 to 3.6 in 1999.
.
Chamie, of the United Nations, says the numbers refute what he calls the “myth of Muslim fertility,” an unfair characterization, he says, that will disappear as the lives of Muslim women ease. Jordanians, for example, he said, had eight children per woman in the 1960s; now the rate is 3.5. (Across the river, Israel’s numbers went from four in the 1950s to 2.7 today.) In Tunisia and Iran, the number may be close to two children, he said.
As the rest of the world moves into the 21st century, I expect the same results. In the last 30 years, the peak population estimate has dropped from 12 billion to 9 billion. Hopefully by 2050 it will be dropped a lot lower. As China follows the aggressive move to a modern economy, people stop needing kids to work the farms, and the cost of children starts interfering with their ability to buy convertibles and nice houses, their population rate will drop as well. That could knock another billion off that projection real quick. Eight billion people spread out all over the world is very sustainable. We just have to be more efficient and supporting them than we are now.
Moon
Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon was on the record charts for nearly 294 weeks. That spanned a period of time from 1973 to 1979. The album lingered in the charts in the US until 1986 due to the introduction of new technology ( the CD ). In that time, it has sold an estimated 23 million copies. It is considered one of the classic rock albums of all time and definitely holds the record for endurance.
Now, let’s put it in another perspective.
Martin Janus wrote the words to “bleibet meine Freude, meines Herzens Trost und Saft” in 1661. In 1723 Johann Sebastian Bach put a score to those words as the finale of his “Cantata 147″. The combination became known as a song called “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring”. The score is still played today at countless weddings and other celebrations. Although the rights to the song were lost a long, long, long time ago, and although the “album” is no longer on the charts, it is more popular today than Dark Side of the Moon. If Billboard tracked it’s play time, it would definitely beat out most songs today. The life span of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” would therefore be about 14,612 weeks. You don’t see MTV or VH1 touting it in the same league. They can’t, they don’t want to reveal exactly how shallow the pop industry is. “Greatest song of all time”? It ain’t Stairway to Heaven. For Stairway to Heaven to even begin to compete, it would have to be popular in the year 2251. And that’s only assuming “Jesu” is forgotten soon, which won’t happen as long as I’m alive.
In 1972, a studio band called Apollo 100 redid “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” into a peppy tech jig they called Joy. That was right about the time I was learning to play piano. My teacher wanted me to learn Bach’s version, I couldn’t keep my mind off the Apollo 100 version. For my recital, I started with the Cantata 147, but when it led into the “Jesu” chorus, I switched to the Apollo 100 version. It was a major hit. I can still play the Apollo 100 version, I doubt I can play the Bach version.
I have loved the Apollo 100 version since 1972. Along with the influence of David Bowie, I consider it probably one of the most influential impressions on my musical youth. What I have done now is take my love of “Joy” to the next level, it’s 21st version now. There was only so much Apollo 100 could do with it in 1972. One person, with a computer and some cheap equipment can do a lot more, more easily. You don’t have to be a professional any more to make songs the way you want to hear it. Here’s my proof.
Enjoy, and remember, I only do this for fun!
Now, compare that to either:
Bach’s “Joy”
( Just kiddin, I cede to Johann! )
 |
A couple of years ago, I decided upon a quest. To find THE Joshua Tree that had so impressed U2. |
 |
We landed in San Diego, of course, ya gotta have pink Flamingos when visiting San Diego |
 |
You HAVE to visit the San Diego Zoo. The thing I enjoyed most about the San Diego Zoo is the animals get REAL CLOSE! |
 |
And I mean REAL CLOSE! |
 |
We then began our search for THE Joshua Tree |
 |
At first I didn’t think it would be too difficult. More rocks than trees. |
|
|
Some obviously were not THE Joshua Tree…. |
 |
I had to gaze intently at each one, not sure exactly what it was that qualified it to be THE Joshua Tree. |
 |
I finally decided this had to be THE Joshua Tree for no particular reason other than it took really good pictures. |
 |
When you decide to answer that question that I am sure bugs you as much as me, exactly which one is THE Joshua Tree, be sure to stay at East of Eden. Probably the silliest hotel on earth. |
 |
Not sure what to do next, I drove north. No one ever bothered to tell me how big the Mojave Desert is. However, I was often taken aback by the stark beauty of the desert, as I had never been to one before. |
 |
And just when I thought I had seen it all, I found what has to be the ugliest place on earth. It’s dirt. Nothing but dirt. |
 |
As if to try to change my mind, this happened. ( Nice picture, but it’s dirt, nothing but dirt ) |
 |
One of my favorite places on Earth awaited me once escaping the desert. |
 |
Yosemite doesn’t wait long to impress |
 |
Nuff said. |
 |
|
 |
|
 |
In search of other very silly things to do, we checked into an overly expensive hotel in Monterey. The hotel wasn’t much, but it is was home to the Yahoo legal counsel for the night, and Eric Burdon gave a great show there a long time before we got there. |
 |
The hotel’s only true redeeming quality was a killer view of the Pacific Ocean crashing into the beach. |
 |
Monterey does have a really neat aquarium. Although it did have some fairly large fish, I liked these little guys the most. |
 |
This is my absolute favorite display at the Monterey aquarium. I brought it home with me. |
 |
Deciding to honor Mindy’s most requested silly thing to do, we looked at really large trees for a day. I don’t think we saw THE really large tree, I think it’s farther north. |
 |
Of course, HAD to drive the Golden Gate Bridge, numerous times |
 |
And of course, HAD to visit Alcatraz. |
 |
The odd thing about Alcatraz, is it is a really pretty place other than the prison. |
 |
Our day at the beach was hampered by 45 degree weather and 50 mile an hour winds. |
 |
We were however, greeted with a beautiful good-bye. |
For about the last year or so, I have been suffering an affliction. My entire life I’ve had bouts of acne, and even at near 42, still deal with it. I have never apparently moved beyond puberty. I wear that as a badge of honor. However, this affliction over the last year was different. They were bigger and harder than just acne. After a point, my wife became concerned and made us appointments with a skin cancer clinic.
We both arrived, she was immediately diagnosed as being in perfect health, they made me stay longer. They examined my affliction for about five minutes, gave me a shot, and a prescription. I took it like the squeamish man I am, but was otherwise OK. I followed the instructions of my presecription to the T, applying it in the morning and before I went to bed. However, the affliction was being stubborn at this point. It eventually dawned on me that the morning application was perfect, however, it would itch like crazy in the evening before I applied the bedtime batch. It finally dawned on me to apply it when it started itching. Then, things took a turn for the better real quick. It appears my affliction is under control.
I went back to the doctor for the follow-up, he wasn’t pleased, gave me another shot, a refill for the goo, and scheduled another appointment in about a month. While I was waiting for the doc to come in the room, the nurse did the usual preparation work on her computer and walked out. This gave me the opportunity to see exactly what the problem was. This is where it starts getting weird.
In big bold letters next to my name was “picker’s nodules”. Well, that was just great, I’m nuts. I’m one of those people that likes to bleed. That cuts themself just to experience the feeling of pain. Needless to say, my mind was leaping to all kinds of conclusions that must be wrong. Now, the internet is a wonderful thing, but it’s dangerous. I came home, looked up “picker’s nodules” on the internet, and this is what I got when I searched my affliction:
Neurotic Excoriations
Last Updated: April 14, 2004
Email to a Colleague Synonyms and related keywords: NE, picker’s nodules, prurigo nodularis, repetitive scratching, unconscious picking at the skin, uncontrollable picking at lesions
Neurotic? Now I’m neurotic?
In the US: The incidence and the prevalence of NEs are thought to be common and underreported. The incidence of NEs among patients at dermatologic clinics is 2%.
2% is common? It’s so “common” dermatologists only report 2%?
In studies, 52-92% of patients with NEs are female
I’m male, that means less than 1% of the entire world understands me.
Most studies report a mean patient age at onset of 30-45 years.
OK, we got this part right anyway.
Patients can have a psychiatric history that includes depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and anxiety. Most patients do not have any particular psychopathology; however, psychiatric diagnoses to be considered include the following:
- Depression
- Trichotillomania
- Anxiety
- Tic disorder
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Body dysmorphic disorder
- Somatoform disorders (eg, facial dermatitis, somatization, hypochondriasis)
- Borderline personality (self-mutilation)
- Delusions of parasitosis (may be part of a larger diagnostic group, such as schizophrenia)
OK, by this point I was thoroughly convincing myself I have become a rare form of psychotic that was not only dangerous to myself, but others as well and should just do myself in. So, I just skipped to the end.
The causes of NEs are manifold and can relate to picking as a means of resolving stress or some underlying psychopathology.
I have made the conscious decision to drink beer to resolve stress. That should make all the other stuff go away.
Resolution to this story? I have another friend that is a nurse. She informed me that the most common cause of my problem is bad acne. It itches when it heals. When it itches, people scratch it. The salve stops the itching, the shots boost the healing.
She never did answer if she thinks I’m neurotic or not.