Having a challenge apparently makes me write everyday even if some of it is probably crap. OK, most of it is crap. However, it does seem to make me pay more attention to the scraps of thoughts that randomly pop into my head. How else would you explain producing what sounds like a Civil War piece out of the Spousal Unit resigning from a game of Words with Friends when she was in the lead?
(Go see Blind John Ellsworth’s “The Battle of Virginia”. The last stanza was written first.)
Editor’s Note: Reprinted from SecondHand Trpytophan (original posting July 5, 2008), where I was a guest author for a day. Thanks, Karl for making me write a blog entry, which I think was the longest I had written to that point. As soon as I find your email address, I’ll ask permission to reprint this. (Since I wrote it, I didn’t think you would mind.) I have edited it to remove some of the more scandalous parts, which is why I included a link to the original. For anyone that is trying to figure out how my mind works (a futile effort, perhaps), this may explain parts of it. This is how I will end up creating at least a couple of the poems this month. You have been warned.
There are any number of basic ways to write a song, with varying levels of complexity. This article will show you a couple of time-honored shortcuts to help you on your way to quickly becoming a successful composer. Once you’re composing songs, you form a band, and you’re on your way to stardom and easy riches!
The traditional method of musical composition requires copious study and hard work and has been practiced for centuries by many geniuses (and many not so much.)
First, you have to learn to write both music and lyrics, which can take some time, but may be worth the effort if you’re going to do this for a living and not just try to cash out with one big hit. You could choose to only learn half of the composing job (either words or music), but then you would have to find your own Bernie Taupin or your own Elton John, which implies that there are more than one of each in the universe.
Stop and consider that for a moment. Multiple Reginald Dwights running around with their hair (and Lord knows what else) plugged. Hmm. Have you stopped shuddering yet? Let’s continue.
Then, you must learn an instrument, so you have a way of reproducing your music, rather than just trying to do it in your head or trying to hum everything. This is the hard way. Nobody does anything the hard way these days, except possibly the Amish, and they don’t sing very much, and they’re probably not on the web.
A simpler way is to take some mind-altering drugs and then write whatever comes to mind. Lyrics can sometimes appear very quickly with this method, so have a pen and paper ready before ingesting the drugs. You may want to mark the pen as “the pen” to make sure you can identify it when needed. It might be easier to just set up a tape recorder. Remember to speak clearly, about 2″ away from the microphone. If you can’t speak clearly, you have very good drugs. Don’t try to work. Just enjoy it. If you can’t breathe, you’ve overdosed. This is a problem if you haven’t already started a career, but a boost to sales if you have.
The challenge of this method is that the quality of the song produced is often directly related to the quality (and quantity) of the drugs ingested, so for every “Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup” (which is basically poetry defined) that you compose, you will get at least forty-two variations on “Damn. That’s one big pink elephant and I need to pee.” which really doesn’t rhyme with anything.
The most time-effective way to write a song is to just borrow someone else’s music and possibly even their lyrics, especially when you’re just getting started as a composer. This is called “stealing” by the record companies, “sampling” by rap artists, and “parody” by Weird Al. However, if you borrow dead people’s music, it’s called “to the tune of” and that’s the best way of all.
If anyone ever complains about your song re-using an older tune rather than your writing your own music from scratch, you can just say, “Hey, it’s not like Francis Scott Key wrote the bloody music to the Star-Spangled Banner! It was originally a drinking song!” (History will show they were drinking Guinness, the drink of gods, a meal in a bottle, the blood of an Irishman. If you’ve had four or five pints, you’ll understand the tune. You will still not understand The Star-Spangled Banner.) This is a good defense, and also shows you are a musical historian as well as a composer.
Find a tune that you like (say “Camptown Races“, which everybody seems to know), and when your lyrics are complete, your new song is instantly ready to be performed by many other people. These performances are called “cover versions.” People who are performing “cover versions” simply pay royalties to perform your music, instead of writing their own from scratch. Royalties are how Sir Paul McCartney could afford to get divorced recently. (I believe in “Yesterday”, indeed.)
Next, find a subject you know something about, or would like to know more about. (Just remember, if you don’t know much about the subject, you might have to do research, which can rather be time-consuming and cut into your musical career.)
Most people seem to write about love or sex. In rock music, it’s usually love. In country music, it’s usually lost love. In blues, they often write about death, usually during or shortly after sex.
Many artists find that in addition to a subject, they also require a muse – someone to help inspire their work. The muse often is the subject of the song. This could be your spouse, your lover, someone you want to be your lover or your Old English Sheepdog. When I first heard a writer had a muse, I heard “amuse”, so all of my songs tend to be humorous. Somewhat.
Since I’m old and married, I often write about the perils of growing older, like losing my keys or garlic-induced farts. My lovely Spousal Unit is my muse, so I often tend to write songs just to annoy her, which is what happens as muses age. However, I want my work to be taken seriously, so I usually end my song titles with “Blues.” This means something sad is either going to happen in the song, or has happened recently and is the main theme. Now, if you’ve ever been around somebody farting, it’s pretty sad, especially if it’s an enclosed space. Having your song be a blues song also means you don’t need to play many notes on a guitar to actually perform the song.
[One more great thing about the blues – you generally only write about half a song, since everything is repeated. So, instead of having to explain why Karl seems so sad today, you just say “Karl is dyin’ inside, Yes, Karl is dyin’ inside”, which makes the point more subtly. Then, you go on to the next verse, which is probably about sex or someone else dying or perhaps Karl’s favorite porn site being down.]
Here is an annotated version of my newest song, to show you how to put this all together. It’s a rather short piece, which demonstrates that good songs don’t need to be really long to be successful (four minutes of “na na na na Hey Jude “, my ass.) However, all good songs should have a backstory – which is why VH1 can produce so many “Storytellers” episodes.
Here is the backstory for this particular song. My Spousal Unit and I took my vegetarian niece to our local Genghis Grill recently, since it is one of the few places in the bloody universe that she can eat her damn vegetables while I can actually get some cooked dead animals and not just assorted leaves and berries. (However, I am not bitter about vegetarians. I love them. Especially baked.) While choosing the ingredients for my delicious Mongolian stir-fry, I slightly overdid the amount of fresh garlic on my entree. Had I been an automobile, the results would be called a “backfire.” In a restaurant, it requires looking askance at the table next to you, which is called “diverting the blame.”
I thought it was worth writing a song about this condition, mainly as a warning to future generations on the dangers of excess garlic, not that any Italians would ever listen to me. Actually, the first line just popped into my head, so I had to finish the rest of it, since the Spousal Unit and my niece both seemed disturbed when I recited the opening line in the car going home (more backstory.) As an aside, “Camptown Races” is a good basis for many songs, since if you just leave the “doo-dah”s in, you have that much less to write lyrically. This gives you time to actually bring out the joy or angst in the rest of your lyrics, depending on your mood.
I also wisely used the name of the company in the title of the song. This is called “product placement.” If the song is popular, maybe they would sponsor my tour. They could also post the lyrics at their stores, for a small fee, payable to me. Posting lyrics without writing music is called “poetry” and it is a good way to meet chicks, almost as good as writing songs. It is also a good way to do half a songwriter’s job, and still get full credit as an artist.
Daddy’s having Genghis Gas [5]
Doo-dah, Doo-dah
Flames are shooting out his ass [6]
All the doo-dah day. [7]
Got the runs all night, [8]
Got the runs all day.
Too much garlic every time
It always ends this way. [9]
Garlic’s good on anything
Doo-dah, Doo-dah
“Til it makes your anus [10] sing
All the doo-dah day
Got the runs all night, [11]
Got the runs all day.
Give me garlic every time
To blow my cares away. [12]
Garlic comes in bulbs and cloves [13]
Doo-dah, doo-dah
Spread it on some toasted loaves
That’s garlic bread [14]
Got the runs all night,
Got the runs all day
Garlic is a tasty plant
That keeps vampires at bay. [15]
Garlic, garlic everywhere
Garlic, Garlic [16]
It can help you keep your hair [17]
All the Garlic day
Got the runs all night,
Got the runs all day
Garlic helps your penis grow [18]
Your lover shouts “Hooray!”
Notes
So, that’s it. Now, you’ve seen how to write a song, using an existing tune and produced four verses, so you can have a three-verse single plus an extended album version with naughty bits they won’t play on the radio. You’re humming “Genghis Gas” now, aren’t you? Where are my royalties?
So, there’s a National Novel Writing Month (NaNoMo) which I knew about. I’ve actually been on the mailing list for years, but while I have the first paragraph of my novel done, I’ve never progressed beyond that. Sad. I restart every year. It’s a fictional biography based on my life. Apparently, I haven’t done enough interesting to get beyond the first paragraph.
Today, I found out April is National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo.) One poem a day for a month. That, perhaps, I can do. Especially since it doesn’t have to be a good poem.
A poem is either a song without music, or it’s prose that isn’t very prose-like. How hard can that be?
While some poems have rules (like sonnets and haiku), most don’t. In fact, you can call almost anything a poem, since there don’t appear to be any poem police anywhere.
So, follow Blind John Ellsworth this month and see if I can actually produce a poem a day. It should be interesting. One is done. How hard can the rest be?
I’m beginning to wonder if the ease with which people can share their cause du jour online doesn’t do more harm than good. In many cases, people are actually spamming your friends. Since “friends” is a relative term in the online universe (thank you, Facebook!), we all may just be annoying people we only tangentially know. We may also be inviting people to support causes they actually oppose. (If done on purpose, this is funny. If not, it’s really annoying.)
The main cause of angst in the Facebook world is Causes. Causes is a lovely application for non-profits to reach out to their donors and constituents to keep them updated on the activities of the organization. It’s also a way to fund-raise. As the president of two non-profits, I liked it. However, it’s a separate application, which can make it a pain to use. We’ve actually pretty much retired it, since we can do most of what it does from our own Facebook page, and then, we don’t have to update multiple sites.
As a casual user, I hate it. I am bombarded by requests to sign petitions and support causes, and most of the time, the requests come from people that won’t even send me a personal note. If I get a request from someone I know, someone that I interact with regularly, then I have some hope they actually sent me the request on purpose. Most of the time, Causes just helpfully sends a note to everyone in your address book if you don’t tell it not to do so. This is called a “spambot” when a program does it without the user knowing.
It gets even more dicey when you’re not really “friends” with someone – you’re a co-worker, or a distant relative (or worse, in-law), or friend of a friend, or met them at a conference. Causes doesn’t differentiate. It also assumes that if someone signs one petition, they will want to sign more.
Here’s my personal issue – I’m the President of Sparky’s Pals, which does humane education. It’s an outgrowth of the years my wife and I have spent in animal rescue. However, I am not a vegetarian. I think the “PETA – People Eating Tasty Animals” shirts are actually a bit funny. I’m still annoyed at HSUS for trying to make Michael Vick a poster child. Now, many people in rescue will think I’m a bad person. However, they’ll know why I’m not signing their petitions.
I’m also the President of a community radio station, KNON 89.3 – the Voice of the People. However, I am not a raging liberal Democrat. I didn’t vote Obama. Twice. The only useful thing Obama has done is create the petition system on the White House site, because it lets people annoy him. I do not believe he will ever take action on any of the petitions. However, I do sometimes think Texas should secede, and that petition made the limit for a White House response easily. Then, they raised the response quota. Well-played.
The difference between Causes and the White House petition swamp is that the White House owns their system. Somebody there actually reviews the ideas. For Causes, I’m not sure the targets ever find out there are people annoyed at them.
Here’s my request – the next time you sign an online petition, think “If I had to put a stamp on this, sign it, and mail it somewhere, would I still sign it?” Before you click to send it off to all your friends, think, “Does <whomever> think this way, too?” If you don’t know, uncheck the name. If you don’t know for the majority of your friends in the list, ask yourself if they should be your online friends at all.
If Facebook wanted to make life easy for people, it would force applications to use the groups people create. In my case, baseball players probably don’t care about animal rescue. Animal rescue people don’t care about gun rights, at least not the way I do. Very few people care about my thoughts on religion. I know this. I could just uncheck name after name when I’m signing a petition, or I can just not use the system. I’m thinking about just blocking the Causes application to end the madness.
For anyone still reading that wants to send me a petition, here are my rules:
Feel free to use my guidelines.
I would start a petition about this, but the irony would be lost on most people.
Finally, could you like this post? My wife said if I can get one million people to like this post, I can buy a Mustang.
I hate Halloween. It’s a stupid holiday. Technically, it’s not a holiday, because I had to go to work today. It is also a holiday of strife in my household, because my wife likes Halloween.
The difference may be that she was allowed to go trick or treating when she was growing up. I was not. My parents were convinced I would be poisoned by the same people whose houses I was in every other afternoon. It’s also possible they didn’t want to reciprocate. To add insult to injury, my mother discovered she was hypoglycemic in the midst of my candy-eating years, so I got carob instead. Carob looks like chocolate. So does dog poop. I think I would rather have dog-poop-covered raisins, because then I would know why they tasted bad. If my parents had just given out carob raisins, nobody would have bothered us the next year. Our house may have been papered or burned, however.
By the time I escaped my parents’ house, I was too old to beg for candy door-to-door, and people don’t like others begging for alcohol, unless you’re on a date.
There have been some years where children are being bused in from other neighborhoods to beg for candy. My wife does not mind, because she is a Democrat. Share the wealth. I am a Libertarian. Get your own damn candy, and I won’t stand in your way.
So, I do not enjoy Halloween. At least tomorrow we can celebrate dead people.
There is a cliche – the cure is worse than the disease. I’m getting that a lot lately.
I went to see my doctor because my ankles looked swollen and my feet were getting sore. So, he told me to lose weight (again) and gave me a diuretic. I really didn’t have to pee that much, but I guessed it was doing something.
However, as the days passed, my feet started to hurt. A lot. All over. I thought it was just putting weight on them, but I don’t walk that much, and there should be less weight with the diuretics, anyway.
So, back to the doctor. Poke, poke, poke. Nothing. So, the old Columbo stare off into space and then … “Have you ever had gout?”
I had gout years ago, probably directly linked to the amount of beer I was drinking at the time. So, yes, I’ve had gout.
Down for bloodwork. Apparently, the diuretic can raise uric acid levels in some people (“very few”), and I’m in the lucky number. So, I was drying out and re-aggravating my gout at the same time.
Also, this was “all joints on deck” gout – everything in both feet hurt. The beer gout was just in my left big toe, and it hurt like hell, but nothing like this.
The great thing about today’s medicine is that there are pain killers for everything. So, I got a really good pain killer for my gout. I missed the “take with food” instruction the first two days, so I also got magical journeys in my mind. And naps. Naps with dreams of ants crawling on me – but just one ant. (It’s possible it was Rocky the Chihuahua, come to think of it.)
On the bright side, when I went in for the follow-up that found the gout, I had lost 14 pounds in six days. So, the diuretic worked before it crippled me.
My doctor had also looked at my bloodwork and decided my good cholesterol was too low, so he put me on Niacin. Just like in cereal and Pop Tarts, but a huge dose. It’s an easy pill to take, and there are very few side effects. However, there is one – the Niacin flush. This is not flush, like a toilet, where everything comes out at once (thank God), this is flush like Southern ladies blushing (“Oh, my!”)
In fact, it’s a lot like blushing. As your blood vessels dilate from the drug, you feel flush. Actually, you feel like your head and arms are on fire. I woke up at 3am this morning, and my upper torso was on fire. Plus, I had to use the bathroom.
So, now, I’m limping (gout) to the bathroom (no problems yet), with my upper body on fire (Niacin.) It wasn’t until after the episode that I discovered the Niacin flush or I would have blamed it on hallucinations (pain killer.)
Modern medicine.
Our kitchen is being remodeled. Remodel is from an ancient French word that means “probable insanity”. We are using Ikea. Ikea is from a Swedish word that means “probable insanity.”
A kitchen remodel is the perfect project to prove the adage that the first 90% of the project takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% of the project takes the other 90% of the time.
All the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Since there are no innocents in a remodeling project, none of the names were changed.
Why do women swoon so over their kitchens? They have spent most of the past few millenia finding other things to do, specifically so they would no longer be spending time in the kitchen.
Here’s an interesting side-effect of completely removing a room from the house even for a short time – all of the house is affected, and not in a good way. Crap that was in the kitchen pretty much filled the spare room, which used to be where my grandson took his naps when he was over. So, last visit, he was driven around the block for a while to sleep. You can’t get to the bathroom off the kitchen any more, and the toilet is gone, anyway, since the floor is being redone (another side effect). The dogs can’t be loose because the contractors tend to leave doors open, so they’re spending a lot of quality crate time (yes, they’re annoyed). You can’t use the garage because the driveway is blocked with a dumpster. I’m making coffee in the guest bathroom. The only advantage was that for a while, the refrigerator and a (new) microwave were in the family room, which made beer and snacks more accessible while watching TV.
On the bright side, I’m actually looking forward to the hour-long commute to the office every morning because it means I’m leaving the construction zone.
This project started because our kitchen floor was buckling. So, there was a leak somewhere. However, after the leak was fixed, there was still a ripple in the floor. Male solution: Fix the floor. Female solution: Fix the floor and while you’re at it, replace vinyl flooring with tiles, put in new cabinets, replace the counter-top, paint the walls a different color, and because it’s adjoining, maybe replace the carpet in the dining room. Oh, and maybe paint the hallway. The only thing that stopped the kitchen remodeling from progressing through the whole house (and an entire retirement account) was a hailstorm. Now, we need a new roof which is limiting the kitchen budget. Sometimes, an act of God is actually a good thing. Thank you for the hail, God.
Spousal Unit: “Don’t you love this tile? It reminds me of my Mom’s kitchen in her home long ago.” Me: “That looks like the tile in my grade school cafeteria.” So, who wins? I will now be having supper in my grade school cafeteria. This reminds me, I have to get the Spousal Unit a hairnet. Actually, considering it will be food I didn’t order prepared by a cranky Italian lady, it will be supper in my grade school cafeteria. All I need now are some spitwads. And detention.
Any time a woman finds something that reminds her of “long ago”, it will be in a section of the store called “retro”. Retro is from an Indonesian word meaning “grossly over-priced.”
Spousal Unit: “Should the walls be red or black?” This is an unwinnable situation, unless one really prefers red or black (Me? Notsomuch.) So, I don’t care. However, you cannot say you don’t care in a project of this magnitude – not because you know your opinion is going to be ignored anyway, but because then it looks like you don’t care. (Think about that for a moment.) However, I really don’t care – I just want Bubba, Joe-Bob and their tools out of my house and their monster truck and mini-dumpster out of my driveway. I don’t really care what color the walls are. The only time I’m in the kitchen is to make coffee, and that means I’m asleep, so my eyes are closed. Just put the coffee pot back in the same place it was before the remodel and nobody gets hurt.
We first priced a couple of professional remodeling services. Spousal Unit’s estimate: $15,000. My estimate: $30,000. Actual estimate: $37,000. I can’t give that much blood in a year, so it was off to Ikea. (Spousal Unit’s estimate: $10,000. My estimate: $25,000. Still open. Let’s just say hers was low.)
Ikea is a Scandinavian firm that produces functional furniture. Saying furniture is “functional” is like saying a girl has a good personality.
Ikea is inexpensive, mainly because they don’t produce products, they produce kits. You get a flat box of parts and an instruction sheet, whether you’re buying a kitchen cabinet or a child’s set of toy blocks. Actually, I’m not sure the kitchen cabinets aren’t made from the child’s set of toy blocks. Many of their products are just assemblies of smaller products, so the instructions are “get two of these boxes, and one of those boxes. Assemble as shown on diagram.”
I am not a handyman. I cannot use tools. So, the mechanically inept hire someone to do the job for them. Ikea has suggestions for companies to assist you. Well, a company. If you pay them a slight extra charge, they will act as a general contractor.
In the USA, a general contractor manages a project and assigns specific tasks to other contractors. I know this, because I spent a week on jury duty when a general contractor was the defendant in a lawsuit. In Scandinavia or Ethiopia or wherever Ikea is located, a general contractor apparently only does the odd jobs that nobody else does. They also listen patiently to the woman of the house railing about the ineptitude of the other contractors. You get to actually do project management yourself, therefore saving money. This is why their general contractor service is relatively cheap – he doesn’t actually do anything to manage the project. I suppose I should be grateful we didn’t get a general contractor kit in a flat box with an odd Scandinavian name on the side. I would still be assembling him.
Our cabinet installer is a company named Traemand. They specialize in cabinet installations – their website says so. Unfortunately, they are installing European style cabinets in a US kitchen, which apparently is hard (their website says so). I assume this means they use metric measurements, since their first floor plan had one cabinet blocking half a doorway. This measurement (ironically) was done by a subcontractor who was actually working for the same company that is our general contractor. So, why not just have the general contractor do everything? Ikea split the jobs up, so it is not allowed. What happens if you just buy all the boxes of parts and hire someone else to assemble them? It’s not warranted. This makes no sense to me, but I’m not Swedish.
After the cabinet into the doorway design was corrected (strangely, we didn’t want a doorway blocked), the second set of measurements didn’t seem to match the actual kitchen measurements. So, we finally had the general contractor re-measure. He must have used an American tape measure, because this time, the plan actually made some sense and fit the kitchen.
It occurred to me that there is an old adage “Measure twice, cut once.” I guess nobody told Traemand that “measure twice” implied getting the same number both times.
Of course, the actual installation didn’t allow the existing refrigerator to fit under an installed cabinet. After the installers “made” it fit by lowering the feet on the refrigerator, the cabinet doors above the refrigerator won’t open. Apparently, this is a strange model of refrigerator that has hinges on the doors and they are on the top. Who knew? So, we’re waiting for a new cabinet to be delivered. Yes, Traemand, the cabinet technically fits. However, it’s useless if it doesn’t open, so it needs to be fixed. Finally, they installed the existing double oven at Munchkin-level, so the lower oven will be at the proper height when the Spousal Unit has her scoliosis kick in. In the meantime, if the lower oven is used where it is, the dogs are going to learn the hard way not to sniff things, and grandchildren will learn “don’t touch” on their own. Other than that, it’s perfect. Oh, except we need a new kitchen table because the new cabinet takes up more space than the one it replaced, so the table won’t fit. Well, the table will fit, but people can’t actually sit around it.
An aside on the double oven – many women lust after a double oven. Women love their double ovens. They use them one day a year on Thanksgiving and the rest of the time, they just lovingly gaze at them while re-heating leftovers in the microwave or toaster oven, because using the oven heats the entire kitchen. You know, a guy gets a lot of grief for wanting a 70″ TV to watch the Super Bowl, but at least you can watch other shows on it during the year. How often do you really need two ovens? Sheesh.
So, Traemand may be installers, but they are certainly not designers or measurers. Actually, I will be happy to say that they are installers if the cabinets are all still on the walls in a week or so.
Dear Ikea, it is staggering to me that any company could certify another company to do product installations when their employees can’t use a tape measure successfully. I would have thought that would have been question one on the installation certification test, or at least in the first five, after “What’s a cabinet?” or “Which end of the screwdriver do you hold?” I may be mechanically inept, but I know how to measure how tall something is.
So, we have a general contractor that’s not managing the project, an installer that can’t measure, and a different company for each piece of the rest of the puzzle, all assembling items purchased from random companies throughout the Metroplex. How can this not go smoothly?
Needless to say, the Spousal Unit is approaching a level of cranky not seen since I managed to miss her birthday, our anniversary and Valentine’s Day all with the same business trip. (They’re all within two weeks, so it really wasn’t that difficult. Come to think of it, I was gone less time on that trip than this kitchen project has taken.)
Also, it is taking so freaking long to get the project done, that we’re pretty much used to eating out every night. So, I’m not sure the new kitchen will get that much use, although I’ve been promised it will. (The male version of this is a riding mower sitting in the garage while the neighbor’s kid is doing the lawn.)
A lesson to anyone wanting to outsource a room remodel – get a general contractor and a designer. Write a much larger check than Ikea requests. Pick cabinets out of their catalog. Don’t special-order anything. Go to France for a month.
I heard a loud crash as I was writing this. Luckily, it was one of my grandson’s toys falling off the table in the family room. So, all cabinets are still attached to the walls. So far. I hope it doesn’t turn out that they only hold European-style dishes, pots and pans.
So, day two of the Spousal Unit’s unscheduled visit to Forest Park Medical Center, and as I negotiated with our dog sitter to go walk the PsychoPuppies, and am getting ready to send out the patient update, I realized that I can’t live without texting.
Cell phones are great, but then you have to talk. Sometimes, it’s just not worth a conversation, and other times, you don’t want to give the recipient an opening to change the subject.
Email is useful – you don’t have to talk, so you won’t get off on side issues – but not everyone has a mail client available all the time.
Texting gives you the advantage of interrupting your recipient wherever he may be. It also forces you to get to the point, since you have a limited number of characters per message. (From a recipient standpoint, once your phone is on mute, you’re ignoring the world, and can reply at your leisure. Also, a text at the right time can get you out of any number of interminable situations, even if you didn’t really receive one.)
Unlike phone calls, you can send one text to multiple people – or I can with Google Voice, anyway. (There are services to create distribution lists, as well.)
During the weather shitstorm in Dallas earlier this week, newscasters were reminding people that everyone was trying to call friends and family simultaneously, and texting used a lot less bandwidth, so if a call wouldn’t go through, a text might.
About the only negative is that we’re all being charged for using excess bandwidth that’s there anyway. However, given the number of messages I’ve sent from a hospital room recently, it’s worth it.
It’s time.
I don’t like going to the doctor and I’m very allergic to surgery, but I may be tolerating both very soon. It may be time to finally fix my knee.
My right knee went out yesterday while I was bending down to look at furniture at IKEA. If I tried to build it, it would probably be fatal. So, I’m back to limping around and no male my age likes to hear the word “limp”.
A bit of back-story – I hyper-extended my right knee in soccer practice in high school, either 1977 or 1978. I’m pretty sure it was junior year, so 1977. It hurt like hell when it happened, but the pain diminished rather quickly over time.
It was a stupid injury. I remember it like it was 35 years ago. I was playing fullback, chasing down a ball, cut back around one of my classmates, slipped and landed full-force on my right knee. I landed so hard, I kicked myself in the butt. This is known as “hyper-extension” and it is very bad. In exotic dancers, it’s called “flexibility” and is much more popular to watch.
I spent a couple of days at home with ice or heat (who remembers?) on my knee and spent the rest of the season on the sidelines. I was on the JV anyway, so it wasn’t that much of a demotion.
My mom took me to see an orthopedic surgeon and he said it wasn’t hurt badly enough to fix. Apparently, in the 70’s, there were knee injuries and then there were real knee injuries. He invited me to come back if I ever really hurt it. So, I finally had a knee injury after six or seven years of playing soccer, which would be cool, and it wasn’t worth fixing.
So, I can still say, “Yeah, tore up a knee playing soccer”, but there’s no cool scar to show off, and if you played soccer in Texas, it meant you couldn’t make the football team.
Over the years, it would go out every now and then. I would limp for a couple of days, and then it would straighten itself out and I’d be back to normal. So, I never really saw a reason to have it checked since a) it didn’t cause pain very often and b) it wasn’t bad enough to fix anyway. The most annoying part of the recurring pain was that it was completely unpredictable and it didn’t help determine the weather, like some injuries. Maybe only bad hips can tell when it will rain.
Fast-forward to December, 2009. My knee went out again. My wife convinced me to go see her knee specialist – she has a guy for almost every part of her body, which is not as slutty as it sounds, it just means she gets injured a lot.
First question – “When did this injury occur?” “Uh. That’s a good question – either 1977 or 1978, I’m not really sure.” Dramatic pause. “Why are you coming to see me now?” A clever answer would have been “Because now I have insurance and can afford you”, but I told the truth – it only went out sporadically and I had an existing (approximately 32-year old) medical opinion that it wasn’t worth fixing, anyway.
Dramatic pause. “Somebody told you it wasn’t worth fixing??”
“Yes, I had it checked right after the injury happened.”
“Ah. 1977. Well, back then, it might not have been worth it. Now, we can fix it.”
I assumed this meant prices have risen enough to cost-justify the doctor, hospital and related costs associated with out-patient surgery. (I also wondered if it was the same doctor, since he was not exactly young.)
So, then the questions went on – had I considered rebuilding it? Would I use my own tendon or a cadaver’s? (“Wow. Literally a dead man walking.” Even the doctor smiled.) It sounded painful, but doable – just a matter of scheduling. Then he mentioned the one major problem – no travel for up to six weeks after surgery.
Remember, this was in December. I was still in Lotus. January is Lotusphere. I was presenting. So, no surgery in December or January. February I had customer visits scheduled. March was end of quarter and completely unpredictable as to travel. By April, I had forgotten my knee had gone out.
A few months later, I received a lovely card from the doctor, as did my wife. He was retiring. “Oh, shit. I was going to have him fix my knee.” So, I forgot about it.
A couple of weeks ago, my knee went out. Ouch. I hobbled a bit, and it went back. Then, my left knee popped.
An unsettling thought occurred – “Hmm. Which knee did I actually injure in high school?”
If you can’t remember which knee you hurt in high school, perhaps your time there were not your “Glory Days”, in spite of what the Boss may say.
Both knees straightened themselves out in a couple of days.
Yesterday, I knelt down to look at the back of an entertainment unit my wife wanted to purchase and when I straightened up, BOOM! My right knee (“Dammit! That’s the one I hurt!”) popped out. It hurt. A lot. It was excruciating. It was much worse than usual. At first, I could barely wobble, and even though we were in a furniture store, there weren’t any chairs around to get off of it. So, I staggered around drunkenly until I found the proper limping motion to keep the weight off my leg, and then I was able to walk. Barely.
Bravely, my wife continued shopping. It’s why I love her so.
Eventually, we loaded the five boxes of the entertainment center parts into the car. Ouch. We drove home. We unloaded the five boxes of the entertainment center parts. Ouch. Ouch. (I dropped the end of one of the boxes on my foot. Try hopping in pain on a bad knee. It’s redundant.)
We went out to dinner. We parked uphill across the street from the restaurant. Ouch.
We went home. We walked the dogs. Ouch.
Finally, I tried to just lie down and put my leg up, but I couldn’t find a comfortable position. Luckily, I had dogs pushing me in various directions, trying to help me find the right way. Ouch.
I thought, “The last time this happened, I slept it off. So, I should be better in the morning.” That was last time. This time, notsomuch. So, for the first time in years, I called in sick – although I can actually just work from home, so I’m not really out sick, I’m just not in the office. Technically, it was more calling in “can’t drive“.
I had to tell some of my team why I wasn’t in. I’m sure the word has spread on the floor, so now everyone at the office knows why hiring the elderly is a risk. Also, I weigh slightly more than I did in high school, so nobody believes the “tore up my knee playing soccer” line, anyway.
Tomorrow, I go to see the orthopedic surgeon. Not my orthopedic surgeon, of course, since he retired. His replacement. I have a feeling my knee may have a replacement, as well.
If they fix one knee and not the other, I hope I don’t walk in circles.
So, we’re living in hard times – I hear that all the time. Constantly. It’s a battering ram for one political party against the other. It does seem like there is less of a lot of things these days. (Saying there is more of less just seems wrong.)
However, maybe it’s us. Maybe, just maybe our priorities are screwed up.
This occurred to me last night while we were at a Lady Antebellum concert. Three acts – Thompson Square, Darius Rucker, and Lady Antebellum played a sold-out show at the American Airlines Center. We had tickets through the Darius Rucker fan club, but we had still paid over $100 for a pair of floor seats. A $59 ticket is a full day’s work, given a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
(This is not meant as a rant against Lady Antebellum or the other acts. It was a good show. This basic thought occurs to me every time we attend a concert.)
So, there were 21,000 people in attendance, since the band announced it was a sell-out and that’s what Wikipedia says the AAC holds for concerts. (Two unimpeachable sources.) I’m pretty sure we got a deal on tickets, since the box office was selling someone tickets for $99 (“good seats”) while we were at wll-call, and a scalper was selling his floor seats for $300. Each.
That’s a lot of money.
There were an amazing number of iPhones in attendance, which are not free, plus you have to pay to use them. There were some fairly sluttily-attired women, and from my understanding, looking slutty can be expensive.
The Spousal Unit and I had two cheeseburgers, a large Dr Pepper and a bottle of water before the show. That was another $29. We saw enough alcohol being consumed to require an AAC staff member to make the rounds with a mop. Seriously.
My point is that there was a lot of discretionary spending going on in the AAC and these are not the 1% that are supposed to be universally hated.These are the 99% that are constantly being told they are suffering. (This is not based on any specific research other than my understanding is that very few of the 1% actually own gimme caps.)
Maybe we are spending $200 a night plus $800 for a phone and $100 or more a month so we can take photos for Facebook to try to forget we’re poor. That might be the problem.
Now, I’m sure that some of these people will attend this one show this year and nothing else. However, it’s still a lot of money.At $59 a seat (and many paid more), there was over a million dollars of seats sold last night. The band announced it was their sixth sellout of the tour, so it’s not just Dallas.
Jimmy Buffett will be in town this summer, and he wants $136 EACH for tickets. Four hours after the show was announced, the only tickets at that price level were in the second tier. (To be fair, seats on the lawn – i.e. no seat at all – are only $36. We’re not going. I can’t see spending $300 to hear a bunch of songs I heard live when I was in college.) It should be noted that Jimmy Buffett probably does not set his own personal ticket prices. However, he reaps the benefits.
[Based on attendance at the last Buffett concert I attended, some of the Parrotheads are the 1%, trying to relive a life they never had. Doctors and lawyers make bad pirates. Well, doctors, anyway.]
We have a lot of money for concerts and concert accessories, apparently.
I’m as guilty as the rest, too – so I’m not just pointing fingers. There’s a certain list of artists who I will go see when they come to town, regardless of price (mostly.) I won’t pay $300 for Jimmy Buffett. I’ve paid more than that for Sir Paul McCartney. We paid close to that for Tom Petty floor seats after his Super Bowl show.
I can almost understand the price levels when there are only 21,000 seats available, since there are a lot of fixed costs involved with moving three bands around the country and setting up the stage and the light show. However, the prices don’t go down when you get to larger arenas (Cowboys Stadium, which has shit acoustics, seats five times as many people.) In fact, some times the prices go up.So, economies of scale don’t enter the equation.
You know, this started as a rant about the economy, but it’s turning into a rant against the music business.
Here’s how to help the music business – next time a touring band comes to town, and you wince when you see the ticket prices, just go down to your local bar, pay the cover (if any) and throw $10 in the band’s tip jar. You’re helping a small band, the local economy and you’re saving money. (If they don’t suck, buy a CD. Buy two. If they really don’t suck, ask if they’re on PledgeMusic or Kickstarter for their next project. Pledge.) Find your local community radio station, like KNON. Pledge. A lot.(Really. We’re in the middle of pledge drive at KNON.)
When you do see a local band, take the CD home and play it. See how it sounds very close to how they sounded live? That’s because the band plays the music, whether live or recorded. Now, do the same thing with a big touring act. Does it sound the same? It depends on how many musicians they have on stage with them. Also, you’ll never notice because the thousands of dollars of light show distracts you.
Maybe popular music should take a hint from classical – when you go to an orchestral concert, you have the music. I’ve never seen a cellist rise up from the middle of the stage at the Dallas Symphony. There isn’t a light show. The violinists don’t dash across the stage to trade solos. Why? Because people are there to listen, not see.
So, as always, the fundamental problem with the universe is MTV. I’m glad we got that cleared up.
A final note to national touring bands – you can stop telling us you appreciate how we’re spending our hard-earned money on you. We get it – you’re grateful. You’re also rich, so you don’t have to remind us that we’re not. If you’re really grateful, why not leave drop $20 off the ticket prices. Either that, or buy everyone a beer.
A final thought – yes, this is contrary to my earlier post, and yes, we had screamers behind us last night. Sigh. How many times has Barbra retired?
Unfiltered Thoughts 