Just In Case

This is a cool link to help people logically think about what they can/should do to prepare for uncertain times.

I hate to be alarmist but when you remember how helpful the govt. was following Hurricane Katrina, it becomes clear that we need to be making our own plans in case things go to shit.

Because the govt.'s plans for how to deal with the total collapse of everything is most likely to be this here, aimed at us, and not care packages or social programs.

Dating Myself With High Singing White Guys

Former Styx piano player and vocalist Dennis DeYoung believes that the success of the band's song "Babe" can be attributed to the fact that "People just like to hear white guys singing high." So he said in an interview on VH1 classic I saw Wednesday night. What exactly did he mean by "singing high?" I've been preoccupied with that question. The weather's bad so I've been wasting a bunch of time - first by watching the aforementioned interview and then by trawling YouTube for old Styx videos.

I thought that line about white guys was pretty funny, mostly because DeYoung delivered it without cracking a smile. He said he wrote "Babe" as a birthday gift for his wife, and when it became a hit single it earned him "a year of unlimited slap (I'm assuming to the ass) and tickle" privileges with her. Hunh. That bit of information was also delivered like a statement by an evening news anchor. It was a nice, dry kind of funny, very different from all the usual rock stars who take themselves so seriously. He's aged well - which in my mind means no hair dye and no toupee. He's still trim and I hope I can complete the graying process as gracefully as he has.

In retrospect I guess DeYoung was the most interesting member of Styx. In my middle school years, I was focused on Tommy Shaw because I loved the Paradise Theater album and he was the only marginally attractive member of the band. Just prior to the release of their next album, Mr. Roboto, my best friend Josephine and I went through this really weird trade - she was working herself up to be intensely fixated on Shaw, but I'd seen him first, so she wanted to swap fixation rights: Richard Gere for Shaw. Or Judson Scott for Shaw, since she knew I had interest in those two and could argue that she'd seen them first.

I didn't see what the big deal was, why we couldn't both lust after Shaw, but she insisted that she needed sole rights. I countered that I didn't feel a similar need for a monogamous fan relationship with Gere or Scott, so the trade to me didn't mean much to me. But she carried on and begged and pleaded and finally I agreed to this weird-ass arrangement, since Shaw had acne scars anyway. And other than "Renegade" and "Blue Collar Man," all my favorite Styx songs were DeYoung's.

Josephine was capable of a passionate fan dedication that I was not - a wall of her bedroom became a shrine to Tommy Shaw. It was covered in photos of him cut from magazines. And when she found a picture of Shaw with his arm around Plasmatics singer Wendy O'Williams, she threatened to beat O'Williams' ass. I'm glad that confrontation never had to take place.

Looking back on that time of our youth, I can see that we came of age at the cusp of a new era: MTV had just been born, but most of us country-ass kids didn't have access to it. You could still be not all that good-looking and make it as a rock band, and Styx is a good example of that. And when I look at my freshman high school yearbook, I can see we didn't have the same image consciousness that kids today have. We look younger and more awkward, with worse skin. It's easier to tell how young we were than it is to clock the ages of kids today. Cable TV changed a lot in this culture.

At the time, Josephine wanted me to get fixated on Dennis DeYoung even though he was married and plain, I guess so we could both plot how to lose our virginities to members of Styx. I wasn't interested because in my eyes Deyoung had zero sex appeal. But now if somebody held a gun to my head and said "You have to become sexually obsessed with one of the members of Styx circa 1985 or die" I'd pick Deyoung. He was pretty funny in that VH1 interview, and I respect a man who doesn't dye his hair.

I'm nostalgic for musicians who aren't model material. How likely is that to come back into fashion?

This entry is a re-post from my old Blogsboro site about a year ago.

Sad Ass Country Songs

The other day I happened across Red Sovine's Teddy Bear on the radio. I didn't know what it was at first, but clocked it as circa 1975 because it was all about CB radios - had "Breaker 1-9" in it and so forth. It was so sad in that over-the-top-1970s-country way it made me laugh:

"Now, I'm not supposed to bother you fellows out there
Mom says you're busy and for me to stay off the air

But you see, I get lonely and it helps to talk
'Cause that's about all I can do, I'm crippled, and, I can't walk!"
I came back and told him to fire up that mike
And I'd talk to 'im, as long as he liked

"This was my dad's radio", the little boy said
"But I guess it's mine and mom's now, 'cause my daddy's dead!"
"Dad had a wreck about a month ago
He was trying to get home in a blindin' snow

Mom has to work now, to make ends meet
And I'm not much help, with my two crippled feet!"

I just assumed it was playing on one of the college stations; that some fringeboy DJ was trying to show off how eclectic he is. But soon I heard that it was indeed a country station. Good to know that country stations are capable of a little variety.

Though I was a big John Denver and Statler Brothers fan in my early childhood, I soon became vehemently anti-country. I got tired of all that whiney stuff. I wanted Dolly Parton to stop simpering and take a shotgun to Jolene and her man too - to hell with both of them. In middle school Alabama was played to saturation levels at every school dance. I rebelled and started buying ABBA and Queen records; decided Country fans were losers. Swore to never again own a pair of cowboy boots.

In my adulthood I became a fan of alt country people like Joe Ely, Ryan Adams, Neko Case, Lyle Lovett, and the Be Good Tanyas, people that true redneck country fans turn their noses up at and who you only hear on college stations. College radio is how I finally got acquainted with Johnny Cash, a man with a proper sense of humor. He might sing about sad stuff occasionally but he did it without any whine.

It seemed like there was a conspiracy to keep all the cool country stars off commercial radio. The Dixie Chicks won me over with "Earl Had To Die" - wasn't an ounce of whine in that song - but then they went and got themselves shithoused for publicly complaining about the war, something that I thought was pretty cool. It was like the Country music world decided "Alright, girls, you're too cool for us now. The appropriate thing to do is go to war, or date a soldier, and later write some songs so you can whine about how you suffered. If you survive. And if the president tells you to jump off a cliff and create a hellish mess for civilians at the bottom, don't question it." I don't get country fans.

Here recently Wyatt borrowed some equipment to allow him to convert records to CD. I look forward to listening to the Statler Brothers and John Denver records again and seeing how they sound now. I think country still mostly sucks at this point but if the Sex Pistols and The Clash had somehow made themselves part of the country genre it might not. But then again, they'd probably never have been heard. Country fans seem to prefer whiney drivel that all sounds the same.

Vacation Jones

Wyatt and I had a shitty day Monday. You could say it was because he had to make four trips between a mechanic shop and Jiffy Lube to get his car inspection done, and then had to spend an hour in line to buy textbooks for his upcoming classes. You could say it was because I spent some time on the phone trying to straighten out something that was fucked up and I was unsuccessful, and so disheartened about it I didn't even try to straighten out some more fucked up shit on the phone, and felt bad about it. You could even say we've reached our capacity to withstand days of rain without getting Seasonal Affective Disorder.

But really I think was because our expectations were thwarted. We meant to go camping at Merchant's Millpond Sunday and be there until late Monday afternoon, but the weather didn't cooperate. It's a wonderful place to visit in the winter cold - no bugs, no snakes, and no people - but not when it's raining. Water falling into the canoe and getting your knees wet is bad feng shui. And we were tired like the old folks we've become.

So Monday became a catch up on chores day, which felt like a ripoff, especially since most of the catching up came so hard. Finally we sat down to dinner and I put in a video slide show my friend in Arkansas sent me. I didn't quite know what to expect. It turned out to be photos and a lengthy narrative of and about her vacation to Eureka Springs last summer. Images of lush countryside filled our eyeballs, along with picturesque old country downtown settings you'd like to prop back in a chair in, cool looking ponds and shaded, mysterious springs. Photos of restaurants they ate in and juicy descriptions of the food they ate and how good it was.

So it was kind of a vicarious mini-vacation, a consolation prize at the end of the day. I was tempted to get bitter with jealousy, but mostly I wanted to cheer my friend on and tell her to get down with her bad self. I've never before considered Arkansas a vacation destination but I'd love to go to Eureka Springs now.

People and Places

Perhaps I'm biased, but I think personal names that are also places are very cool. Guys with names like Cleveland and girls with names like Georgia are almost always good people to know.

The idea that people can also be places is captivating. In Neil Gaiman's Sandman series there's a section of landscape named Fiddler's Green that sometimes gets bored, rolls itself into portly human form, and wanders around looking for adventure. I wish I could find it, but there's a Buddhist quote about how landscapes of the world contain mountains and rivers and heavens and hells, and finishes by saying people are the same way.

Lyle Lovett does this song - "Give Back My Heart" - where he sings "I can't be no cowgirl paradise." He was really onto something there. When people really fall under the influence of infatuation, it's because they think they've glimpsed the promised land in somebody else. Carrying such promise for somebody else can be quite a burden.

Here lately I'm starting to realize that promised lands are really a set of conditions which arrive within your own head. This realization doesn't help much because making your head a friendly place for such conditions is much easier said than done.

Resolutions

My goals for '09:

*Make a tenable living by developing my client base,
*find a sustainable way to stick to a dairy and wheat-free diet,
*increase my gym time to 2-3 visits per week,
*return to yoga or chi kung or belly-dance classes or some combination of those,
*continue writing at my current level of output,
*give Wyatt better housecleaning support,
*find a way to garden and grow some of our food,
*learn to cook tasty meals within my dietary limitations,
*pay Wyatt back 50% of the money I owe him,
*get health insurance,
*find a volunteer outlet,
*continue to be thankful for the interesting and beautiful moments in life,
*continue deepening my spiritual practices and become consistent with them,
*stop making things harder than they have to be,
*continue learning Spanish.

Last year my gym and writing time hit the skids. I made some improvements in sticking to the wheat-free diet, but I still spend too much time off the wagon and of late I've been caving to intense cravings for cheeseburgers.

In the past couple of weeks I've improved my gym attendance, but it doesn't help that when I make that second turn on the indoor track I'm looking right at the sign for the Hardee's across the street. They have ads in their windows advertising a two chili dogs for three dollars deal, and it makes me want to run out and worship at the altar of demon fast food.

Taking a cooking class was on my list for last year. Didn't even come close to getting that one done.

My income has generally increased from month to month, excluding those first few weeks after news of the banking crisis hit. Hopefully business will continue to improve.

This is a long list. How am I going to keep up with my progress on this?

Hickey Factory

The cupping kit is a wondrous invention, but it leaves hickies, and those can be hard to explain.

I bought a cupping kit to use at home on sore muscles. While some kits are glass and require the use of fire, mine are simply plastic suction cups. Put one on a muscle with a knot in it, suck out the air with the special air-sucking gun, leave it on for a few minutes and the knot lets go. I use it on Wyatt's deltoids when he lifts weights too much, and I use it on my shoulders whenever they get stiff.

Afterwards it looks as if you've been loved up by an octopus - you're left with perfectly round, purple circles. They look like bruises but they're not sore like that. Wyatt has fair skin that stays scarlet for a week and half after a cupping treatment.

Several months ago Wyatt was in pain from lifting weights, so I cupped his back and shoulders. A couple of days later we went to the gym. On the way back to the car afterwards, he told me he'd struck up a lively conversation about Virginia Tech football with another guy in the locker room. But Wyatt said he noticed when he got out of the shower and went to get dressed, that guy no longer wanted talk.

"It's just occurred to me these hickeys must have scared him," he said.

About a week and half after this incident, Wyatt and I were at the gym doing time in the sauna. After several minutes we both needed a break, so we went to sit in some chairs by the pool. Across the room a man walked out of the dressing room and started staring at me. I looked back. He kept staring. Do I know him? I thought. No, he doesn't look familiar. Is he trying to pick me up? Maybe I'd better look away before Wyatt thinks we're flirting. The man kept looking at me until he went through the door to the weight room.

"That was him," Wyatt said. "That was the guy who stopped talking to me."

Then it all made sense. Sort of. I assume he was staring because he'd identified me as the hickey monster, but I don't know if he was staring in amazement, horror, or in an attempt to get me to offer to hickey him.