Three Living Angels

Linda Ronstadt has pipes that should be put in a museum. She's lip synching here but that's due to 70s era television limitations. She made her career singing other people's songs or maybe songwriters made their careers writing for her...either way she really hits a home run here with some tricky lyrics and dynamics. Her cover of Willin' is incredible because it's actually a trashy song that I've sung in trashy bars but she is all dignity and honest.

I try to be realistic about eras of music. Yes, if you stacked up top hits from 1966 to today's top hits there isn't much to compare but it's unfair to look at it that way because quality music today is basically not on the radio unless it's an oldies station playing songs from 1966. It's also unfair because of course if you pick the cream of the best songs from any era that have stood the test of time then they will always be better than the generic modern tune. I'm sure I could go back to 1966 and find some B side duds. Independent artists have gone underground because corporate music has established a stronghold on the market. Subversive music such as 1966 is no longer status quo acceptable to larger production companies and since they are controlled by the larger media whores then we will always listen to redneck filth with short shorts cleavage shots and July 4th teenage brothel mix. But the good music is out there.


  Crystal singing a song that Judy Collins also recorded. They both worked with other people's material. Crystal Gayle is so emotive that it makes me weak in the knees. She is the youngest sister of Loretta Lynn, and the only kin to be born in a hospital and not a coal miner's cabin. One day I'll tell you the tale of planting trees near Butcher's Holler, living in a tent, eating noodles for two months. If you haven't heard of her it's because she's past her prime and was never a media whore. She's classy...a word that Britney Spears can't spell. Crystal had a real pro career toeing the line between country and pop. Mostly Country, but "Don't it make my brown eyes blue" could be covered by Eminem and it would still be good. "Snowbird" is a song made famous by Anne Murray but Crystal Gayle sang it early on and inspired me to work on it myself. It's out of my league but it taught me some lessons in songwriting. Like "Long Long Time" the lyrics really go to town if you can follow them.


A song from early Judy Collins (that has been deleted but was called "Everybody Get Together)...The Youngbloods made this song famous years later and this is Judy's groovy  version. She sang Send In The Clowns years later that was on the radio every minute. I remember playing this song outside the armory in Santa Cruz when everything had fallen apart in the forest with my girlfriend and I being hounded out like skunks in an attic by the park rangers. My buddy Brad came down to visit and we three were bused to the armory with the skanks and whores of the grimy street village...and I had my guitar that was broken and repaired with metal plates like a leg bent in half and I met a guy who had stopped taking his medication and only wore sweatpants and played his steel string guitar with real skill and we stood outside in the wintery El Nino rain with the most destitute people in America, refugees of the Reagan springtime, and sang from my moldy 60s songbook. Junkies shot dope in the bathroom and the floor reeked of disposed condoms...chlorine and false hope...desperation...food stamps...back pain. It was as bleak a situation as you can imagine.

Wait....we sang For What It's Worth, by Buffalo Springfield. Shit. I remember that because the guy in the sweatpants could play the distinctive harmonic at the 12th fret during the intro and I was so impressed by that. Anyway, you get the picture.

Mixed Messages

Own an oil well to fund your anti-oil campaign? (that's a pump jack in the background)

I'm a hypocrite and a dirtbag. I've been called a rat and a traitor to my cause. I thrive on arctic wolf blood. So I know when something is amiss. My favorite evangelical environmental site, Climate Progress, has the frequent article on hydro-fracking, which is what pays Oggy's bills lately. I'll be moving away from the electrical installations to radio telemetry so more information can be directed to the headquarters than ever before but it's still related to pumping chemicals into the earth to break it so everything can keep growing like cancer. I'm not sure if humanity is in the end stages but my ignorance is preceded by my own egotistical inventions when I venture to suggest humbly that USING WASTEWATER OR PROPANE TO FRACTURE SHALE POCKETS IN ORDER TO LIVE IN LARGER CITIES WHERE WALMARTS ARE BEYOND THE REACH OF A BICYCLE is probably an indicator of something terribly wrong. It reads like desperation. We have no water...so unless we want to dehydrate the citizens of south Texas then we have to figure out another injection material...SO WE WILL USE THEIR SHIT WATER.
If you aren't scratching your head then go back to sleep because you're useless.

New Favorite Song

Try to sing this song and not sound fake.

Routine News

So, we're trying to get back to the office today at 5 pm and there's a head on collision in front of us that shuts down farm road 85. We're redirected through a lightning storm. And when I research what happened I learn that it's not even the first fatal head on accident OF THE DAY.


"C S -
The newly-appointed city manager of C S died from injuries he suffered in an accident Tuesday morning.
RM was on his way to work Tuesday morning when his vehicle collided with a cement truck on Highway 83."*

moments after the sheriff told non big rigs to turn around

RM died early in the morning and someone who hasn't even been identified died around 4:30 pm....on a different road nearby. And the death toll is like Kabul because only Friday a man drove drunk and killed his two kids and a woman driving another car. If you want to make money you should open an air lift helicopter medi-vac service in CS

And when I say that I drive 450 miles each day I want you to take a good look at the road I'm driving on. 75 mph, frack trucks...wet...lightning...tired...wind...illegals...smugglers...hogs...dying wolves...the only reason there aren't helicopters in this picture is because of the lightning and maybe the drivers were too dead to bother with. And this particular stretch of road has a wide shoulder, paint, and no pot holes which is not true for most of the road. All of this effort so we can remain the #1 polluter on the planet. Congratulations.

*That's the road I once commuted on. I pass the cement plant every day.

Accident Analysis

Follow the line to Oggy's broken Body

I've joined a select group of people who have watched a tire pass them at 60 mph and the tire belongs on the vehicle they are driving.

In my case, the day was already a blazing and hellish adventure that had me pouring battery acid in my face to cool down. And this only a day after having another leaf spring component break that took ingenuity beyond belief to fix on a remote well head access road. Using a rock bar to leverage the leaf spring down to fit a bolt plate across. 5 hours in a dry sauna of 110 degrees wrenching on bolts. Awesome! Well, that lasted 1 day as the trailer's axle had been crying for attention and finally threw in the towel. And this is all only 1 day after burning out a $2200 explosion proof flare stack motor (unfortunately not idiot proof) The bearing froze, the spindle nut sheared off and the tire came off. "We lost a tire." I heard and thought he meant a flat tire because I could see smoke and shrapnel accumulating behind us in a cloud...then I saw a strange sight bouncing in the rear view mirror, a brilliant and free tire, finally released from the shackles of the axle. It bounced and bounced, traffic dodged it from the opposite direction and then the tire took a right turn off the shoulder and we three sweaty laborers, dog tired from unrelenting heat and work watched the tire bounce past us and I confess I was rooting for the tire to clear the fence separating the Zebra and Llama hunting ground because it seemed to want to make it. It was aiming for the fence.

Notice that the lug nuts are still on tight

The tire was really moving and it was either going to tear the fence down or else bounce over it. At the last second it hit a big bump and easily soared like Oggy's inflamed ego into the descending sunlight where the last hope of arriving home at a reasonable time collapsed and the Llamas scurried for cover beneath the Zebra's striped indifference.

Ah, it looks like the whole brake drum came off

We laughed and laughed as traffic bombed past us on their way to frack another farm to death, inches from crushing us.
The spindle nut either came off or the whole bearing seized due to lack of grease. The brakes are toast and now the whole axle shaft has to be replaced. Our laughter is the most dangerous part because when death and heat stroke are guaranteed risks every day then having a tire detach from the trailer at high speed becomes a joke. I still think it's funny.