Top 10 Highlights of the Week

1. Determined I grossed $11,000 in one month*
2. Rescued a pond turtle from imminent death on the highway and set it free in the local park where it immediately attacked a bathing swan.
3. Laptop hotstick stopped working preventing any blogging.
4. Bought at least $200 worth of frivolous items at Walmart and Tractor Supply.
5. My refrigerator looks like a ten fat Americans live with me.
6. Three teenage girls saw my van at the park and asked for a tour. I said, "There are men who give tours of their van to teenage girls and then there are men who know better." I drove away...fast.
7. Prayed I'd win $550 million in Powerball lottery....but lost.
8. Estimated another month of work before shoulder surgery is required to allow me to brush my teeth.
9. Replaced a belt on a 2004 Mitsubishi Eclipse by bypassing the broken air compressor pulley. The belt was about 1148 mm long.
10. Remembered how to play the A section of Joplin's "The Entertainer" on piano.

* This means I grossed $11,000 for the year.

Fracking Bonanza

I went to that ever reliable new source CNN and for once saw myself in the spotlight and not in a story about homelessness.

The comments to that article are totally about the end of the world caused by hydro fracturing. Some predict it and some deny it and some wish it would happen and some don't care but will insult others just because they can. My current position is that we don't get to see enough of time to get outside our own self-consciousness. 80 years is pitiful compared to the 2 million of human history or the 4 billion of earth's history. Imagine that 100 million years after the creation of earth there was still 900 million more years before the earth was "only" 1 billion years old. Sort of makes going to the store to save $10 on a iPad kind of insignificant.

Ac-cen-tu-ate The Positive

A buddy wanted me to fix his guitar so he brings me a bone nut. The crappy laminate guitar is worth about $30 and the nut costs about $25 so I'm puzzled by his math. Now I have to shape the thing with none of the proper tools. I used the file that I normally clean out my wood stove with.

I'm Always Chasing Rainbows

One of the great pleasures of the last year or two has been performing at long term care facilities. Not only do I get a chance to play nice pianos for a captive audience but once in a while a resident will interrupt the final chorus of "Moon River" to request a song. At the Clipper Home a man as white as a bed sheet croaked up, "Do you know Honeysuckle Rose?" and I really had to work to sight read that one but on the third try I played a passable melody. Today the song was the obscure "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" from 1918, revived by Andy Williams in 1965 and then forgotten...except by 90 year old Texas gentlemen.

Thanksgiving

I'm spoiled and a brat and a hypocrite and I don't wash my clothes enough. I have psoriasis and arthritis and halitosis and psychosis. I get back spasms that awake me like a Medieval torture rack. I surpass the recommended daily limit of Ibuprofen before 5am. My mouth has wrinkles that look like an old woman so I'm doubly troubled because I'm too vain to ignore it and too old to do anything about it. I spent months and recent years without two nickles to spend basically surviving hand to mouth at homeless shelters and getting mishandled by the police state soldiers. The trouble was my crippled pride and also my basic math skills that determined a poorly paying job was actually worse than doing nothing at all. I was more broke struggling to keep a shitty job than just quitting the job and playing guitar. That's the state of the Economy as one thing the Right Wing Big Mouth Radio Pundits have correct is the welfare state that rewards poverty as long as you play by the rules of the loathsome impoverished and don't rock the boat or join any unions. The working resentful poor are so much more fucked than the lazy check cashing sloth because they are broke and the police know they are pissed off and near the breaking point in a cycle of decline. And because they have to take a cocaine piss test to work they must use only stolen prescription pain medication to get through the day.