Butterfingers Robertson

It's actually a very easy to dump a can of paint on your head... you would think that that kind of action would be left for the mentally challenged, which i can be on many days, but it can happen very easily you see.

I live in a new house, or a newly remodeled house for that matter, and the exterior is flanked with cedar shake shingles.  I have lived in a few houses in my day and owned a few of them as well... the thing is you only get one chance at a pristine exterior.  Coat that bad boy with Sikkens clear coat and you will be happy for many years... or you can let it slowly start decaying and say to yourself in 8 years "oh man we got to do something about this siding"... as i said earlier, sometimes the best defense is a good offense.

In my house in Vancouver, Myself, Kevin and Pete built a cedar stake fence in the yard.  Kevin soaked the fence in Sikkens clear coat and the fence was shining for years... still is i believe.  Too many damn plants growing on the fence now to hit it again... I know a certain woman who would go ape shit if one were to harm those plants.  Speaking of that i might have stomped a fern today getting a hard to reach area under the front porch.  Some people can swill a beer and chuckle at the collateral damage done to the plants, others can not.  For the record the fern will be fine... i predict a fine fern blossoming next spring.  That is of course if I'm still alive after doing the high ladder work at the front peak of the house.  Perhaps a little climbing harness attached to the bunk beds in the twins room might be a wise idea.  Cause when you are painting all kinds of strange things can go wrong.

You could go to a pro paint store and have a guy tell you you can't roll stain with a foam roller after you have rolled a quarter of the house with it and found it rather satisfactory.  Sure it works the foam, but for a few bucks a pop, i don't get the "you can't".  People are strange, one of the true constants in life... i was liking the way the foam roller could jam into the underside of the cedar shingle soaking it with fine protective juice.  Using a wool roller now, and it can deal as well... good for the diagonal swipes wetting up the underside.  Obviously you have to adjust your technique to the tools you have... for example rather than go all the way down the ladder to reload on paint you can hitch the rolling pan on the top of one of those short ladders that i just had to look up on the internet for the name, which is a step ladder.  yea the paint goes up there... but don't forget that it's up there later when you are painting and talking on the phone to your mother who happens to be confused over the issue of how she broke her hip, because if you move that ladder you might just end up pouring that paint on your head, which makes for a most unfortunate and shocking turn of events.  You need to maintain the conversation, which is pretty easy given it is a rotation of the same 3 points... you also need to strip naked in the front of your house and make it into the sink to begin trying to wash your head and eye.  For the record i was on speaker phone... i talk to mom every day for like 45 minutes it helps give her a sense of normalcy as she slips into a deeper state of dementia.  I often call her when i am making dinner... i need to multitask... it's a sad thing, i can't have the same conversation every day in liu of getting something done so i have combined my life to have that conversation, on speaker phone, while i am doing a task that will keep me in one spot for a while... this way  sometimes the kids chime in, and that makes mom happy.

I should note Mom is in the hospital as she broke her hip so calling her in the hospital is quite the chore... moving rooms, have to call the nurse station to tell the nurse to go answer the phone in her room and give it to her... it is what it is.  Mom's big worry today was that she had ruined Christmas by falling, so i thought we can have this conversation while i paint, only when i went back out i kind of started down low in a section... talking and painting, try to help her through the maze.  I painted the whole low section and then needed a ladder to get higher forgetting of course that the paint tray was on top of the ladder, telling my mother that it's not her fault and no she is not stupid for falling... me grabbing the ladder to move it, and dumping the paint contents right on my head, ruining my good man orange cap, and my Carl Fatrman roadbed shirt, my shoes, my eyeball.

The feeling of failure... did i just really do that, clearly i did.  i read somewhere that the trick to painting was to keep only the tip of the brush hairs wet...  not pour the paint over your own hair.

Then later soaping my head (luckily the stain will come out with soap and water) i managed to pour soapy water directly into my ear.  From our physics and biology classes we remember that soap reduces water surface tension right?  That's why you dip insect riddled plants in soapy water solution.. the soapy water will allow the water (with lower surface tension) to invade the spiracles of the insect and hence drown them.  So you see where i am going here.. i soap water my ear canal opening the flood gates for a future ear infection... just to make matters worse.

It was a good lesson however: 1) don't do my own electrical, 2) remember that you are a non thinking jackass when you are up on that ladder... if you catch yourself trying to improvise stop before you start.

Do I have any more points to make?  Where was I, how much life force did i lose in today's video game. Was that me at the parent teacher conference reeking of cedar stain trying to appear professional? what's wrong with my right eye... oh just trying to cry out the linseed oil on my cornea, it's all good... so you say my children are doing well in school.. chip off the old block i say.

My injuries are substantial

I was in yoga today and the teacher, or spiritual guru was asking if anybody had any injuries... after a couple of softies beaked off about their little problems i decided to stay quiet. Spiritual caring, tree loving, tea drinkers try to get to the root of the problem... where the root of my problem happened to be a finals hockey game in which our team was grossly outmatched... but we had our chances. Sometimes you have to create chances with violent collisions with 200lb plus men going full steam in an effort to injure one another. We played the referee team, and lets just say, as the saying goes... doctors make the worst patients. To get the picture one of their players speared one of our players in the groin and then bitch talked him as he was writhing on the ice in pain. Lets just say it was the most Canadian like game i have played in the U.S.A. There is not really a part of my body that is not damaged so how to mention that casually at the start of a yoga class and then go through the scenarios of each injury in front of a class while caring, kale chip eating people listen with confusion. You see yoga is about achieving inner peace, while hockey is about releasing inner rage. Or at least you practice yoga better in a state of calm, and perhaps play hockey better with a burr under your saddle if you know what i mean. In the dying minutes of a close game the yogi might look at the positive, while the hockey player is looking to settle a few scores. You see all the people in the yoga class seemed so happy to be there and ready to embrace the soothing words of our guru that i felt it unnecessary to point out that the reason my shoulder is in agony was that i had to remove a 220lb man from the puck in a mad scramble in front of the net... and the man was trying to kill me. It's just not your average yoga mindset... also my thumb was numb from a slash, I blocked a slap shot with my pinky and i took a clearing attempt in the groin which worked out well for a moment until i rung the puck off the crossbar. You see i didn't wake up with a little sore body part... I'm an old man who can't let go of the competitive spirit, and i am wounded, and when i am in my pose breathing deeply i am hating all the wrongs i feel were scored against me. Not sure the rest of the class would be able to jive on this tangent... and i don't want to bring them down... if i feel pain i just man it up and carry on. I realize it's better to go the other way but I'm not really there yet... even as we are relaxing in one of those poses i can't remember the name of my mind is racing... "what was that song part.. whoa this is a good saying... that son of a bitch doesn't get another free shot at me". For sure, this is not what my practice needs to be, but it is what it is, and the only way to get to the root about this problem is to be honest about it. I have spent a fair bit of my life addressing issues with respect to garbage creating (try to make no garbage), refuse to commute by car under any circumstance, being totally anti consumerist... many of the left wing tree hugging pinko traits.  But i am also living in this other life where i need to respect my own self like i respect the planet and the creatures that live on it... minus the squirrels of course.  Fucking squirrel... did i mention my loon neighbour calls the squirrel "pumpkin" and then gives him a nut which he then goes and buries under my bean plant in effect killing it.

So i live with 4 crazy women, who mock me with my squirrel hate, and try to play the "be good to everything" card on me.  But yet one of those women just went and bought a fly swatter... WHAT TO KILL PESTS!  Where did the love go?  Where is your compassion for God's creatures?

As we say in hockey the best defense is a good offense.

Actually the best defense is a good defense... and any Yogi with their head centered in a good pose can see that clearly, but in a close game you do what you can when you can.  Truth is i am still haunted by every chance i missed in every close game i played... it's just the way it goes.

Apologies and anniversaries

Sorry about that last post, a real piece of crap... no pun intended. I could just delete it, but then i might have the opportunity to forget it when i fact i need that failure peculating in my soul.  The question becomes why? And then we get into a philosophical debate about what is and what isn't and why they aren't.  It's actually humbling to chop yourself down a few notches every now and then... we are taught to clime the pole, go up higher, make something of yourself... I'm more of a chop the pole down, make a bonfire with it, and dance around the fire naked kind of guy. 

I recall i was too tired when i started it and too dehydrated when i finished it... and a little voice says they have this thing, it's called a draft, you are going to love it!  Drafts are for paid writers not rambling random truth seekers who think making points to nobody in particular is better than watching TV or YouTube, or commenting on facebook images that they shared trying to inspire a nation of update addicts into some real action.

I was called Super Robertson today in Portland, i stopped and responded before the whole reality hit me, luckily i never think in the most remote terms about controlling these things... i just need to not be trying to sell people things (music), and interact with them as a normal human.

The Simpson's nailed it in one episode... some Jazz woman was playing @ Mo's tavern, and Lisa happened to be there, and the music made a profound impact on her, so she went up to the woman after the show who was on the street loading the car and told her such a thing... they conversed and Lisa walked off and the musician said "darn it that felt like a sale".  i laughed my ass off when i saw that... some people like and are very good at sales.  I think the concept itself is bad for humanity as it emphasises false values over real values, the common argument is "everybody has to make a living", which is true, painfully true... we are trapped in the devils bargain (Joni Mitchell of course).  In order to live good tomorrow, we ultimately have to do something that has the side affect of making tomorrow harder to live in.   The classic exponential curve... work harder, fear more and have less,  blame others.

Apparently it is the anniversary of the Occupy Movement... i wrote this song before the occupy movement occured... just to let you know i have street cred (that was a joke):

Happy anniversary:

washroom to flies to pets to serenity

I think i just saw a red eyed dumpy wing drosophila melanogaster on the mirror in the bathroom.. i was going to crush it but noticed the red eye and then gave it a good examination.  A few things came to me, the first being perhaps i look a little scruffy, the moustache is perhaps a little wild and unkempt, and my eyebrows are rather bushy, my eyes they are all squinty looking at a small fly that i observed and then identified.  There was a time i did genetics experiments with D. Melanogaster, also know as the fruit fly.  I had to get the magnifying glass out and i might be a bit wrong on the dumpy wing call, although it looked pretty dumpy to me... i could grab my fruit fly trap and do some wing comparisons, but these days I'm less in the business of breeding flies to express recessive alleles, and more in the business of fly extermination...  so lets run with that on for a bit.

This is a fruit fly trap:

Mason jar, parchment paper and a chunk of over ripe banana (you can use a glass and an elastic if you don't have a mason jar).  Take a pen and poke a few hols in the parchment paper and that will be full of fruit flies in no time... the old can find their way in but can't find there way out trick.  i have seen a few escape but clearly it is an osmosis type of deal... not really but we have a low concentration of flies passing through a semipermeable membrane (a big fly couldn't get through there) to create a high concentration of flies.

Then you can roll the banana in the jar and take out the flies... or you can get water in there and give it a shake, or i guess you could go outside and let the flies go. i don't hate fruit flies, thy can be annoying when you are being swarmed by them, but that's why all smart people have fruit fly traps.  And they are beneficial to humans believe it or not... they are "decomposers", breaking down organic matter to form useful soil.  They also contain hundreds of genes that are homologous to human genes  that can cause disease making them a fine study of what happens when these genes are defective and how the effects of these genes can be modified.  It kind of opens the door for a sci-fi paranoia induced drug company conspiracy.

If a company could cause a disease that they could cure for a fee, and it could be spread with a fruit fly would they do it for 3 Billion dollars?   Totally hypothetical that i just made that up, but kind of intriguing don't you think... Is there is a human out there who will put on a suit and sign the order to do just that if you pay him or her enough money?  Of course, but I'm not sure fruit flies are a good vector to spread disease to humans, hence the sci-fi paranoia induced conspiracy label for this little absurd diversion.  Mosquitoes would be much better suited seeing that they pierce the skin of humans making them a much more suitable vector.  The real question is why bother infecting humans when you can just prey on their insecurities to separate them from their money.  Create a bogus health pill and put your money into marketing and the suckers will line up and feel what the adds tell them they will feel.

I guess i started in the bathroom, or washroom as they say in America... have i come full circle in this bizarre and pointless exercise?

We all have our moments, some of them better than others.  Maybe there is a song in there... actually i did write a song about the drosophila melanogaster some time ago, i don't even really remember it... i remember it was during the Vancouver Garbage strike that went on all summer, and lets just say it was a bumper year for the fruit fly.  i think i was vacuuming the air in the kitchen just pulling them out of the air and perhaps i went over the edge... i have a feeling the song never really got finished as i probably got distracted... i think we had infant twins that year and a 3 year old.  I know that because we had double diapers for the garbage strike, not that i am happy to announce i used disposable diapers in those years but the facts are the facts.  Our first child we used cloth diapers... lets just say that disposable diapers are a better product in terms of diaper rash frequency, which relates to sleep ability and the whole avalanche that follows.  That year i got into a debate with a "green blog" over diaper choices... the point i will concede is that i only tried one type of cloth diaper, perhaps there are others, but given the start up fees and the uncertainty i was in no mood to experiment.  You are still washing the damn diaper which uses drinking water, and it you like to avoid dry heaving you sign up for a diaper service that burns fossil fuels as well.  Power to the people who stay the course of the most environmentally responsible in the face of fecal matter.  It is interesting however the stats on potty training, in countries where diapers are not very affordable children become potty trained at a much earlier age... when there is a will there is a way.  If you can throw money at a problem you problem will stick around for longer, cause you are not working to solve it, you are just working to manage it.

Fecal matter is the main reason i will always be against pets... there are other reasons of course, but me dealing with fecal matter is the biggest one.  i lived with a crazy loon one time who actually uttered the words "i like to clean a litter box", it was bullshit of course, the kind of thing said in the heat of an argument to counteract good logic.  and in the end of course it was me who had to clean the litter box, because the person who loved to do it kept forgetting for some reason, and there is me dry heaving, suffering horribly, and then being mocked by the litter box loving loon for my weak stomach in dealing with this issue that i was very clear that i never under any circumstances wanted to deal with.   It was a good lesson for me... don't give out trust easily and never agree to live in the same abode as cats.  It is a lesson that has served me well to this day, in fact part of our wedding vows had the statement "and under no circumstances will i ever lose my fucking mind and think we need to get a pet".  I mean i like to visit cats and dogs and if we can live on a farm one day i might reconsider my anti dog policy.. a good squirrel chasing dog could live the good life on my farm, but we shall cross that bridge when we get there.  It would have to be a dog smart enough to go shit in the woods by the farm... we would need woods for spiritual clarity and to support an owl population to help pick off the rodents... but these are obvious points.

Is it weird that i went to the washroom, saw a fruit fly and now we are fantasising about a farm?  Not in my world... why do this?  it's a good question and I'm glad i asked it for you.. not quite sure what the answer is yet but let me wrap the right side of my moustache around my index finger and ponder that point for a while.  I'm going to go with "weird is in the eye of the beholder", i think a lot of things that many people think are normal are weird, but i live in a town now who's motto is "keep Portland weird", and by chance i arrived here, but maybe it wasn't chance... perhaps it was destiny.  In reality I'm not sure i could be in a better spot right now... so many thoughts coming, and i keep checking them.  In some ways i am afraid to tweak and OMEN that is shining brightly upon me, never worry about what people think of you, just continue... Moo say's the cow, in the cow's world.

chronicals

It was the first week of school for all 3 kids, a celebration of sorts, and achieved milestone so to say.  Sure sure, it marks the end of an era, and era that was wonderful, but as a parent who's goal is to raise independent children that leave the nest permanently at the age of 18, it was a good milestone.  Some rue the day, some rejoice in it, different strokes for different folks.

It's fair to say that i overdid it this week... exercise every morning from 9-10am, there was a hockey game Wednesday night, i ran into a concert on Monday night and a late night blog the other night. Overdoing things is my ace up the sleeve, i will not miss out because it was too much.. i will just continue to overdo, it's the way i roll.  Think something is important then get into it, game of cricket, have a hand in it... from the Alien sex Fiend song "get into it"... just to keep our quotes accurate.  The song was a bit of a theme song in 3rd year University... memories  set to music... nothing beats that.  I believe it is also important to show your children to do the stuff that you think is important, and to say "I'm too tired or overwhelmed" is unacceptable.

We signed our kids up for the "hot lunch" program... you eat from the cafeteria rather than pack a lunch... i draw from experience on this one, although i learned a lot this week.  the menu is pre-determined so if it is not what they want i will pack a lunch.

On the first day i threw a small piece of poppy seed cake and an apple into the twins pack in case they got hungry from not enough lunch.  On their introduction i took them into the cafeteria so they could see the process and was told... don't worry everybody is new, we will go through everything.

So when i picked them up from the first day they were faint... i asked how was school... "good but you didn't give us enough food to eat" as Hailie stumbled to the left... WHAT???  No sometimes you don't get the real answers from kids, even though they are naturally honest, so we broke it down... Kaiya got involved (who is in grade 3).  So i went back to the kindergarten teacher and asked if Hailie and Emily ate lunch... the answer i got was well they had some stuff so i thought you thought that was all they needed, and they ate more than some of the kids.  Holy shit i thought, so i mentioned that they had lunch cards and the teacher was glad i pointed that out.  in fairness to the teachers they are overwhelmed and in these situations you tend to notice the kids who are loud and causing issues rather than the kids who are quietly starving and too shy to speak up.  Clearly my error for not showing up... as a former teacher i will never begrudge a teacher or tell them how to treat my children rather i want my children to learn that life is not an easy ride and you need to overcome all obstacles.

Shit happens.. my kids starved on the first day of school... should i freak out or realize that this was the greatest lesson.

On the second day of school i showed up at lunch time 11am for the Kindergarten class... there were Hailie and Emily with their hot lunch trying to open their milk, too shy to ask... i opened the milk and hung out for a bit.  Now because of education funding cuts lunch is only 15 minutes, which is crazy cause it took me 45 minutes to feed my kids at home.. focus on your food, sit properly, don't worry about that... you know if you know.  But the thing is the class is dismissed from lunch but if you want to stay and eat you can so i told them... you girls stay and finish your food if you are not done in the 15 minutes... you don't want to be hungry at school.  They looked very seriously at me and said 'no we don't want to be hungry at school"...  so they stayed and ate.  i showed up every day, after the first day, for lunch to reinforce the message and to go over opening the milk technique.  They can open their milk now and are solid in the idea that they want to eat their whole lunch.  just a note, you can always turn a negative into a positive.

On my end the school secretary saw me coming in every day to get a "guest pass" to get into the cafeteria to make sure everything was OK, and pitched the idea that i could help out doing recess monitoring, because of course they are underfunded and desperately need volunteers (go war go).

Now you have to see things from my perspective... after 8 years i finally have a moment away from kids.. i love my kids, and would try to move the world for them... actually i wouldn't cause i know it is an impossible task, but the sentiment is there. But this is a week i have been waiting for for a long time... so to be suddenly hit with the concept of 1) peak sun (my arch nemesis) and 2) a field of screaming kids (my other arch nemesis) i went from free falling  in a state of bliss to stuck in a gel that had a gravitational pull... you see our family's motto is to always help and volunteer whenever possible.. it's a good place to be, a path to a rich life for sure.  But if i were to go to therapy, which is not my style i believe my therapist would recommend staying away from kids.  In fact a perfect job for me would be a teachers assistant.. i would work the same hours as my kids, but the reason it wouldn't work is that once i got off work I would be burned out of kid duty and my own children would suffer.

So there i was in the office. pressed with the volunteer plea... my brain frozen.  there was a vision of me trying to kick start my brain for an excuse like a person might try to start a dirt bike, and i came up with "i have something on the stove", which was total bullshit of course, and i slipped the noose.

The the deli ma came... i need to go in to make sure the kids are OK at lunch, cause they are too shy to ask for help in a room full of chaos, but to do that i need a pass, which means i need an excuse to not volunteer for recess duty... so i have to show up in a welding mask one day, cause I'm in the middle of welding a child safe device, and a clown costume the next day cause i have a gig entertaining children, and a lab coat the next day because I'm working on a cure for some childhood disease... just to make sure my kids get enough to eat and too see what is actually happening, and to remind them that they are allowed to stay past the 15 minutes to finish their food.

This is where the starving on day one payed off big time... they know one thing, they don't want to go hungry so they stay together and finish their lunch, a thing my 8 year old has yet to learn, because when everyone is leaving to play in the playground the pull is irresistible, unless you know real hunger.

How did I do? free time flies quickly, and there are many things that need to be done, one needs to be organized and have a plan. Floors to wash, bathrooms to clean, food to prepare, gardens to tend, neighbours to loiter with, exercise,  bogus excuses, music gear shops patron, food to purchase, Internet to distract, rugs to wash, projects to finish, songs to write, books to read, photographs to organize... there is never nothing to do, and that's a good thing... life is excellent and i wouldn't trade mine for anybodies.

Time keeps on slipping into the future (Steve Miller of course)... King Hell drums on that track played by Gary Mallaber  who is a Los Angeles session drummer the Internet tells me.   I think good drummers need more respect, trust me without a good drummer you are fucked.  You are watching the singer or the guitar player thinking it is all happening, but if the drums aren't happening nothing is.

There was a free water aerobics class this week... me and a bunch of female senior citizens making like washing machines in the pool, it would have made for a fine reality television show... i think I'm not really a television person although i believe my children could use the help of the sesame street character "Count", as our homework is to help our kids learn to count... one of the negatives of a no TV household... of course there are too many positives to enter a serious debate about the issue... if a cable company could provide me with something that didn't load up on the hoarse shit perhaps we could have a conversation, but that's not the way.  Any system that treats the common citizen like some rube sucker can lick a shit as far as i am concerned.

I will not buy, will not believe, i will not see what they tell me to see.

Never think your kids are falling behind on some week to week basis... you just run the chance to instill a prospect of failure that is unnecessary.  My oldest daughter was late to read but now reads constantly... she was never told anything.  i was late to read and was told i hated reading and only liked hockey and so i bought into that, which is why i suffer such  obvious illiteracy.   In school you learn how to learn, sometimes it takes longer for other kids, do me a favour... don't bring the hammer down on a kid, they are just a kid, everybody develops at their own rate... talk to me in grade 11 when some are solving more complex math problems than others, but perhaps those not solving math problems are excelling in other areas.  Don't be a fool and pin your hopes on your kid. they might have a talent that is outside your "hope" range.  Don't rob them of the chance to explore that one, they want to please... park your ego and let them be.

Irony is everything

I love hearing from disgruntled "musicians" who are angry cause they can't seem to make a buck playing their original numbers, and they take to social media to vent their misguided misgivings.

It's really not a lucrative field to get into in the first place, which is the real comedy.  You could almost turn it further and say "hey man i don't like working for bosses cause people suck, and doing my own thing is what i need".  It's just that things are the way they are, and it's not really related to what an individual weights their worth.  If you can sell your music, or tickets to your show, then excellent, good for you, and you probably realize how much work it took outside the "strumming your instrument and singing your words"

Of course there is always the lottery hope that one day you could really make a lot of money from your "art".  I remember being asked by a friend from my home town after i released my first record (CD for that matter), "are you rich yet?"... cause that's a big motivation for a lot of people whether they can admit it or not.  Fortune and Fame, the greatest bait and switch known to mankind...  and it's the fault of all the non supporting people out there that you haven't arrived.

My father went to his grave wondering why his son would put effort into something that he made no money from.  It's the old school mentality, life isn't for embracing, it's for getting ahead, and to his credit he died with a surplus of money... much better than the alternative.  If you are going to make music, than you better be able to sell  it.

A friend of mine put it this way...  recorded music hasn't really been around for that long in the grand scheme of humans association with music, so the fact that it's all free now (or can be), just marks the end of an era where commerce was derived from it, and if you could look at the graph of who made what money, you might find that the artists never really got too much in the first place.  The idea being that, people that played music, did it and survived to do it before it was available to sell, and now in the era where you can stream almost anything for free (find a song on you tube... easier than taping it off the radio which i did as a kid), the game has perhaps eroded.

If anything, and independent artist can get the loins share of the money now...  if they do it properly of course.  Whining about it is not the route of course, which helps with the comedy if you know what i mean.

Another friend once equated why you want to be the musician... in the old days people would be doing labor and to help them slave away somebody might be playing an instrument, i believe it  was a flute in the example given, and the question is: Do you want to be the guy playing the flute all day or one of the grunts digging with a shovel?  I say the flute is a better job.

I would even argue that it is all the "musician" folk with money in their mind, rather than soul in their heart, that have ruined the "playing live music in bars" scene.  There are just too many shitty "bands" out there that it is no longer worth taking a chance to go and pay for something randomly... and they are too fucking loud. Loud can be excellent in the right situation of course, but the folks i am talking about its more like...  What they lack in talent, originality and creativity they make up for in volume, and it is somehow the audience's fault.  It has gotten so bad that people go to shows and talk all the way through them... you went there for some reason, too be seen, too show support and then you talk through a whole set, and that's just normal in some places.  I really believe the root cause of that is that people go to shows for other reasons than to actually catch the show, because the industry is heavy on the numbers game, and the bar needs people to come and drink... if you just show up that's all that matters, the band will get another show cause people came and the bar made money.  It's rarely the love of music that fills the bar.  Not saying it doesn't happen, cause it does, and when it does, you can always count on people wanting to be there cause it's happening and then just take their "talk through the whole set" mentality and bring it there.  Some might even be having a conversation while holding up an iPhone recording the set to prove that they were there.  It's a crazy disease, and to break through that culture takes balls of steel.  Imagine if everybody who ever wrote a song had something important to say in that song, with a killer melody and a king hell groove...  I'd like to live in that world.  Nothing better than listening to a live act and getting something out of a song, but nothing worse than suffering a high decibel, cliche, shittier carbon copy of a successful band, but that's what happens, cause people are trying to make money.  And sheeple are sheeple, they will baa with the heard in the most insane circumstances.

Think about how many clearly criminal and pure anti human politicians get elected because they run adds showing themselves as strong leaders... utter nonsense but if it gets you 51% for the 40% of people who bother to vote then it is worth whatever you spent, or even 36% of the 40% of people who bothered to vote if there are more than 2 candidates, which is even more insane when you think about it.

In music you vote with your concert ticket dollars and everybody wants to be on the winning team.. i don't begrudge anybody who makes a living playing music, way to go i say.

Why don't people talk through shitty movies?   Doesn't seem to happen, they might just leave, some bizarre cultural thing.

I also wonder if the way music has been marketed to sheeple has had an effect on this whole game.  the idea of getting sheeple  to identify with a style of music so that they can be marketed to more directly.  For example there was some "gangster rap" that i quite liked, a lot of it was horrible offensive shit, but as a genera it was very successful, many loved it and many hated it... there were people who i believed were offended that i liked some of it and wouldn't even listen to a track (honestly listen), that i thought was great, because they were predisposed to not like it... the equal and opposite force of those who loved it.  Many sheeple will identify with a style of music and stay in that box, cause it's a safe and comfortable place to be, music has been marketed as an accessory to ones personality.  Musicians are trained to find a unified popular sound to tap into this, which is why you had people who played in hair bands later playing in grunge bands... clearly you are not living you message i say.

As a failure i think i am expert to speak in terms of some of my failed history.  One of the common criticisms i have had over the years was that my albums were far too diverse.  The band Roadbed had a jazz sound, a metal sound and a quirky indie sound and you never knew what you were going to get hit with next.  i liked that, but then I'm kind of a multiple personality kind of guy.  On the short ep Autopilot we went with a rock sound cause all kinds of bands were releasing short rocking eps in the town we were in, and it got us no where, and perhaps irritated our small fan base because we strayed from our formula (and it was too short).

Never do what people tell you... they don't know... we had a great little band that was guitar guitar and drums, and fools kept telling us we needed bass... after a year setback we both got bass/ guitar double necks... we lost a lot of creative time fucking with nonsense to appear more like a regular successful band... the good news was that we became more alien as a result.  It  was not in us to appear normal, take the path, do the math and you end up as a different version of the oddity that you are. Sometimes we were horrible and other times we were king hell, but we were never accused of trying to be something that had been done before.

Do i want to make money from my art?  Sure, that's why i still own all the rights... will it happen? Not sure, but that's OK... you see i already have all the things people would buy if they made money with their music.  Well if one of my songs became a hit, i probably would buy a farm... dare to dream eh. Just being honest.

Shitty bands are like plastic in the ocean of life, clogging up the opportunities for the appreciation of good original music. And the people in the shitty bands are the ones doing all of the complaining about what's wrong... i just see a connection to the problem here.

Zen smashing

So i go for a little walk down the road, and it appears that the place "float on" is expanding... their business is sensory deprivation tanks that help you achieve a Zen like state, if you will.  4 dudes are knocking out a wall with carpenter hammers and dust masks, chipping away little holes in the drywall... i take it they are expanding.  A horrible excuse for a smashing exercise if i ever saw one... i could donkey kick those walls down faster in my birkenstocks... and then there is my 16lb sledgehammer... i could putt those studs out of there in no time achieving a zen state of calmness that no sensory deprivation tank could ever hope to.  I really wanted to step in there and straighten those children out... if your are going to smash out things @ 1am then go for it and feel the power of a good smashing... smashing is fun, make no mistake about it.  It was paining me to see a good demolition go so feebily, but maybe they were saving it up, on some other trip, poking little holes, making dust... i guess it is their gig, and they will get it done. 

The question is do i go back there @ 1:15 am with my sledgehammer and show them how it's done?  Could somebody get injured?  Probably, but smashing is a blood sport and an injury is like a trophy on the mantle... I came, i saw, i smashed.  With my luck i might show up and give a speech on the fine art of smashing and in my first blow take out a live outlet that some fool forgot to trip the breaker on causing all manor of chaos... after all i do have beer and words here.

But smashing is so fun... a nice destructive blow to something that once was... sound, violence, danger.  The bad part about smashing is cleaning up the mess after the smashing is complete... that's when i slip away, perhaps into a tank to bask in the glow of a fine smashing.  All quiet and warm the blood pumping through the ear canal.

I will go and lie in one of those tanks one day and see what i have to say to myself when i'm all alone in the sensory world... hopefully the vision of a woefully disorganized and muted demolition job doesn't enter my conscience at that time.  Pretty sure i can overcome it with the power of music... my next song will be about Cesar Estrada Chavez... there is a street in Portland named after the guy and the way i see it if a Mexican can get a street named after him in the U.S.A. then he must be one king hell individual, not like the swine Harvey Scott, who i thought my first Portland song would be about, but then upon further research had to change course.  It's all good, a song about Mt. Tabor was the way to go, and if Mr. Scott helped bring that to fruition then maybe he did something good after all.

Perhaps a song about a demolition job on Hawthorne could be in order... somebody once said "don't let the facts get in the way of a good story"... smashing on Hawthorne could have wings.

Ground control to major Robertson

I was playing Space odyssey by David Bowie on my banjo on the porch tonight, so i went with this title... probably best to title something after you have written it to get a better summary but that's not the way we roll around here.

One of my daughters suckered me into a talk about the solar system, which sort of started when i almost bumped over the Venus flytrap giving her ice water so she could sleep (totally bogus of course), so i opened the window to get moonlight to guide my way, and she asked about the dark side of the moon.  A critical moment, do we go into a lesson on Pink Floyd, perhaps break out the vinyl, or do we go into a lesson on the basic layout of the solar system.  A perfect example of one of those forks in the road of life... you can go either way, just commit to it.  In honour of my father i stuck to the solar system model which needed spotlights and rotating objects... Dad was a schoolteacher and missed rock and roll completely knowing only that band names carved into school desks in the 70's must be completely unacceptable.  Think like this... to carve into a school desk is just absolutely unacceptable, so if something inspires a carving into a school desk, then it too is completely unacceptable.

Ironic that Pink Floyd would go on later to release the Wall with the iconic song "another brick in the wall", which had the lyric "hey teacher, leave them kids alone"... the poor grammar in "them kids" and the idea of a telling a teacher to not bother the students was just too much for my father to digest.  We don't need no education... well it certainly sounds like you do, that's terrible" he would say.  It was a small victory for me at the dinner table... a cannon shot at the strict authoritarian discipline style that at times alienated me.  Truth be told i had never listened to Pink Floyd but the fact that my father was reciting lyrics, probably from a staffroom discussion, scored one for the home team.

I'm all for learning, cause learning is fun... i was a great ornithologist when i was in grade 5 cause i loved to do it, but i almost failed grade 5, due to some bizarre school intimidation factor i have had to live with my whole life.  I know my parents loved me and meant to do well, it's just that i was from a different stock, and i seemed to take the fear based intimidation motivation as a sign of pure doom, rather than a rally call to buckle down.

Don't fear learning, learning is what the mind wants to do, in my opinion you don't need fear just opportunity to let those questions percolate.   When i was a kid i couldn't sleep at night trying to answer the question "when did time begin"... it's a real mind fuck of a question... i would think well if time started then then what was before it?  If it is continuous  there really isn't an answer... but i never went to the comfort of a deity where this is this and that is that and just recite and don't question anything.

And when the sun swallows the earth after the humans have killed it for the love of money, time will still go on, and what's after that... it doesn't end.  Infinity, not just a brand of car, but the idea of something without a limit... good selling feature for a car by the way.  Because a car will take you where you need to go... good not to put a limit on that feature in the showroom.

Where the hell was I... hot damn, i went on a diversion that landed me in a car dealership... let me guess, some dude is running a leaf blower on the sidewalk outside the car dealership, just to complete the nightmare.

I'm now confused, what is the answer, and how did we get here? Damn questions and the lack of answers.  Maybe i should read the bible, and present my take of it, even though a few good women have warned me against the idea telling me it is a boring load of crap, and that my interpretation of it would just inspire more hate mail, and perhaps death threats.  You see i was going to start a new blog... me reading the bible and giving my take on what i got from it... who know maybe i might find reason, but I'm told i won't.  Can you read the bible and get reason, or do you need to have the reason pointed out to you?  That was my question that sparked the idea... Apparently my perceived interpretation should ruffle the feathers of the converted... surly there must be something, but i am told by others it will be a "no dice" situation.  Given how my beliefs are so stark in contrast to those who live by the Bible's verse, there might be something there, but at the same time perhaps i am the chosen one who can interpret this one properly to bring world peace... it is possible i am the chosen one, and just don't know it yet... like a fine lottery, me being the chosen one to bringing truth to mankind.  At this moment in time i am actually serious about this... what if i could read the bible, being somebody who had no previous inclinations to what it actually entails, could I actually bring an unbiased view of what the message is?

Time is the hunter, and it will show the truth... another song lyric from a song that has yet to be recorded... it might never make the cut, but i just used it anyway... who needs a song when you have a late night blog.