time to be scared iv

Our country is so obsessed with terrorists that we put up with the TSA's security theater and the NSA's massive domestic spying operation in spite of the dubious success rate of these agencies's invasions of privacy. Yet who's the biggest enemy? As it turns out, police are more likely to kill you than a terrorist.

Feel safe?

career planning

My 3.75 year old (who should really be sleeping) informed me she was getting ready for "super hero unicorn school." The school apparently provided her with her Hello Kitty backpack. The cape (a bra, with her head through one of the arm holes) is her own.

stupid fingers, dead skin, and pain

Dead skin. My fingers are coated with it, calluses like I've never had before. Tender, sore fingertips.

I've been playing guitar about thirty years. Before that, I played classical violin for a few years. I played bass in the high school jazz band for a year (the band teacher really hated me). I briefly dabbled on the dulcimer. A while back, I bought a 6 string banjo which is strung like a guitar (some people call this a banjitar; these people should suffer great pain and agony for their sins). So I have a varied background on many stringed instruments.

None of these has confounded me like does the mandolin. It's tuned way differently than the guitar, so not only does no knowledge translate, my knowledge of the guitar fretboard actually interferes with my mandolin attempts. The frets are very close together, so my fingers have to bend in new ways...so I don't even have muscle memory from which to pull. It has thin double strings under high tension, and these dig into my fingers.

I bought it over a year ago, but after playing it for a few weeks and a brief appearance on my album (just buy it already), I got busy and set it down. When I realized it had been months and months since I put it away, I vowed to make a concerted effort to become competent on the thing. For the last couple of weeks, I've been spending at least a couple of hours a day practicing. Today, I had stupid fingers that didn't want to cooperate with my brain (which itself had trouble switching into mando mode), but that's just part of it.

I don't expect to become bluegrass good on the thing...just competent enough to add different textures to my solo act and my next album. It's going slow, and it can be unbelievably frustrating, particularly with nights like tonight, where I was having trouble finishing a single song without stops and starts...but overall, I am (very) slowly getting better.

It's good, though, to challenge one's self, to push one's boundaries. Plus now, I can brag about my suddenly awesome calluses! Yeah....maybe that will make them ignore my whining about finger pain...

joy and chaos

When I was younger, I used to believe in such things as order, fate, justice, and the like. I used to believe that hard work would inevitably lead to success. I used to think that there was such a thing as right and wrong. Karma, just desserts, whatever you want to call it...while I didn't think of it on the level of dogma, I did believe there was some kind of general structure at work in the universe.

Over the years, this certainty burnt away, and I realized that there was no structure to speak of, that the world was essentially random. I knew this on some deep level, but it took a while for this awareness to reach my consciousness...and when it did (the great mental breakdown of 2011), it leveled it to me. Typical existential depression, yes, but one never expects it when it happens.

It took ages to find my way through the worst of the depression. I never found the structure again or the certainty...and I'm certain it never existed in the first place. Dealing with it was never about reconnecting with the order, though. What I instead had to do was just come to terms with the chaos, embrace it.

So how does one embrace chaos? I used to think the drinking helped, but I found out when I quit , my ability to cope only increased. The music helps. The best thing, though, is finding and latching onto any burst of joy, particularly those outside of any expectations.

Luckily, I have a secret weapon: my child. She constantly exceeds any expectations I might have...it seems she's constantly coming at the world from an odd angle. This would make me wonder, if she didn't have such joy...and if she didn't spread that joy so easily. She's the perfect embrace of joy and chaos.

Case in point? Earlier this week, she was running through the house, and she tripped. I asked her if she was okay, and she said, "yeah,...I tripped when my unicorn tail got tangled up in bubble wrap." She then got up, smiled, and went back to running.

How can one be depressed when in the presence of that?

two quick observations

First: Danger 5 is the best television show ever.

Second: One of the most entertaining tasks one can do is go to Etsy, do a search for Cthulhu, and browse the results.

shaking in 3...2...

Ever had a "guess I had too much coffee at brunch" moment? That's me right now.

pills and aching joints

I never got to know my grandmother all that well, but the pain is making me think of her.

My dad was in the Air Force, and although I was born in America, my first memories are of Germany, where we lived until I was seven. My grandmother only came over to visit once, and she was not a good traveler. She was exactly the kind of person who would complain that the food wasn't the same as back home, that they didn't put ice in the sodas...you get the idea. When we moved to South Carolina, we spent a few weeks down in Florida at her house. I know this would've been a good time to try and know her better, but I was a shy kid and was still a bit shaken up by the move to do much of anything.

When my dad retired, we moved down to Florida...to live in her old house, actually. She was close by, but I still never really got to know her that well. My parents tell me it was because she wasn't easy to know, but I suspect the truth is more that I was still a shy and painfully awkward kid...and becoming a teenager didn't help at all. Still, I did try, but I suspect there was some basic incompatibility at work. 

What I do remember most vividly is staying over at her house and watching her in the morning. After she got me cereal (which, after I put some sugar on my corn flakes, she made me stir it into the milk for some reason), she started to massage her swollen knuckles for a minute before taking some pills from her industrial-size bottle of Tylenol. When I asked her about it, she told me that arthritis was just something that happened to us when we got older. But I was in my teens, and the entire concept of getting older seemed somewhere between remote and implausable.

A few years ago, after one of my old band's first shows, my shoulder started hurting. I told my singer it was because I carried her heavy amplifier, but I suspected that wasn't the truth...and she even refused to accept the guilt trip. The shoulder pain persisted, though, and after a few runs to the doctor and through physical therapy, I had a diagnosis: a compressed spinal disk along with arthritis in my shoulder.

This wasn't all that much of a shock to me. I went to the college in the "sling your backpack only over one shoulder" era, and I had played music for (I was shocked to realize) decades at that point...so wear and tear was only to be expected. It was only when getting a suit for a wedding when this was really driven home, when the seamstress informed me that one of my shoulders (the aching one in question) was actually measurably taller than the other. One of my first thoughts was that if I found any more physical deformities, I could change careers and enter a circus freak show...but another early thought was of my grandmother's swollen knuckles.

I soon found I could crack my shoulder joint at will when the arthritis was (to use my grandmother's phrase) flaring up. In some ways, I could look on this as a war wound, a physical manifestation of my suffering for my art and my scholarship. When I told this to my parents, they informed me that being a martyr was also something I probably got from my grandmother. But then one day a few years ago, I started to feel the same twang in one of my fingers. Pretty soon, I could pop it on command. Not every day hurts, but enough days hurt to make me have my own industrial size bottle of pills in my own medicine cabinet, which, with every pain and prescription, starts to resemble that of my grandmother even more.

The last few days, I've started to feel that pain in one of my thumbs...which is undoubtedly proof the arthritis's sphere of influence is surely expanding. The pain usually is pretty ignorable, though. On its most intense days, it's simply annoying yet usually easily treatable. Compared to my recent kidney stone pain, it's quite laughable.Yet it's still troubling. So far, it has stayed out of the hand which fingers notes on my guitars. But I'm beginning to realize that it will eventually grow, spread, start to disrupt, and maybe even take away my music...which is sobering and more than a little scary.

This morning, on the drive to work, the pain started to flair. After pulling into the lot, I sat in my parked car and broke into my car's emergency supply of pain pills. After swallowing, I rubbed my sore hand for a minute. It was only then when I realized that I now am beginning to know my grandmother a bit better.

a random thought while grading

I like the letter x. You hardly see the letter x anywhere. I'd like to humbly suggest we, as a society, start using the x to pluralize words. This would lead to several advantages. First, this would solve the whole issue of whether to use just an apostrophe or an apostrophe-s when making a plural word possessive. Secondly, it would lead to more x in our writing, which is good, because x is the coolest looking of all the letters.

omens?

Every so often, I teach movies. Today, we're watching The Matrix. Just as we got to the scene where Morpheus introduces Neo to the matrix, one of the lights in our classroom starts going on and off on its own.

It's hard not to read something into this...

playing season has begun

I played my second show with my band The Antidepressants on Friday. It was quite fun. Only one major screw-up, but we recovered quickly enough. Everything else sounded really good, and we got a few complements on our songs. We even made money, which is a rarity for a bar show!

I thought about doing a good recap of the night, but then I saw a friend mention grading and remembered everything I have to do...so work won out. But, as I was plowing through my own grading, I got a call from one of the people from the Old West End Festival in Toledo...and he quickly booked us for the 2015 festival. We'll be playing at the Art Fair stage on Sunday, June 7th, at 11am.

I hope to follow this up with more festival shows. The band's first gig was at a festival, which was nice as it gives the band immediate exposure to people who don't just know someone in the group. My drummer specifically asked to do more festivals, as they let him get to bed on time. Last year, I played at the Tiffin Music & Art Festival and A Dam Good Time, and I hope to do both again. I've also got feelers out to a whole bunch of other festivals and bars, so if all goes well, I'll be filling up the ole booking calendar. This is nice, as I go crazy if I don't play out regularly.

I was at a friend's birthday party last night, and I ran into a guitarist from another local band. He gave me several leads on music venues in Findlay, OH. I have a listing of clubs in Ann Arbor MI which I plan on hitting soon. And I'm open to play anywhere else anyone suggests.

So go out there and find me places to play! I'm not proud! I'll even do bot-mitzvahs!

my musical self

Most musician friends think of me as an equipment junkie. I am particularly known/mocked for my love of effects pedals; when, for instance, I told an old bassist that I was paring down my pedalboard, she asked me if I was sick. All I really want, though, is a decent tone...if I can get something I like by plugging straight in, I'm happy.

Most musicians with whom I've played think I'm a solo-crazy freak. A former singer used to say, when showing us a new song, would say, "...and here's where Mike can wank." And, to be honest, it was kinda fun to be told to solo endlessly. But that's what the songs called for, and that's really my main concern. In my solo band, I only have leads in a third of the songs.

To the extent that anyone thinks anything of me as a musician, I would suspect there's a certain amount of misconceptions. I'm not addicted to effects, guitar solos, heavy distortion, a few simple chord structures, kazoos, or anything else. I try to fit in with whatever musical environment in which I find myself...which is what I think any musician should do.

This doesn't mean I don't have a distinct musical personality; I certainly do. I did not really notice it, however, until I made my album (which you should buy immediately). I didn't hear it when I started to do solo shows, because I was locked into the singer/songwriter model (which is admittedly limiting, but in a fun way). But, with my very own awesome band, I can create worlds that are my own...and it's glorious.

Tonight, I have the first in-town performance of my band TheMikeDuBose and the Antidepressants. Our only other gig so far has been a music festival, but that was out of town, and we were the first act (so our set was short and subsequently sparsely attended). Tonight, we have the full set on a Friday night, at my favorite bar, with other awesome bands. And we even have a cool gig flyer!

I hope people make it to the show, because I am fiercely proud of our songs. I have a great drummer and bassist who have both intensity and swagger. I have an awesome horn player. The sound has the perfect mix of swing, catchiness, humor, and grit. This is the closest I've been to letting out the sound that's inside my head.

"It should be fun" doesn't begin to describe it.

the importance of environment

So this semester, I have two Comp II classes. One talks. The other doesn't. Talking class is generally lively and intrigued. Quiet class is generally catatonic. I'm doing the exact same thing in each class and getting radically different results. I have to keep remembering that's just how it is.

Today's example was that we're talking about technological literacy, the accelerating rate of technological change, and the impact of those on definitions of humanity. For the kicker, I show them Ray Kurtzweil's truly mind-bending TED talk:



We get to the part where he's talking about nanobot red blood cells which, if someone replaces 10% of their own red blood cells with the nanobots, that person would be able to sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath or sit at the bottom of a swimming pool for four hours.

The talking class's jaws drop. The quiet class? An honest 50% of them are checking their phones.

Sometimes that's just how it is.

scales of power

Ever wonder how to quantify things? There's fast...there's faster...and now, thanks to my daughter, I now know there's "rainbow jetpack poodle fast."

the value of children

I spend all day Monday and Wednesday with my daughter. Inevitably, this ends up teaching me many things. Today, I learned:

1. that I have the kind of kid whose first words of the day can be "If I were in the freezer, I would be very cold."
2. that advanced vocabulary can be funny coming from a not-yet four year old. We were doing some shopping today. As we were leaving the apartment complex, we had to go around a parked utilities truck. This prompted her to exclaim, "what in the world is going on???"
3. that she has a fun conception of family. I was getting her out of her car seat before going into a store, when she told me, "me, you, and mommy share one body but have three heads."

important information

Was just in my local coffee shop / used bookstore, and I overheard someone say "boys who poop their pants don't get frozen yogurt."

This seemed important enough to share. Now you know.

a modest suggestion that I might not suck

I was just walking through the parking lot on my way to my car, when I was flagged down by another guy in the lot. Turns out, he was a student of mine a couple years back. He told me that he's now a student teacher at a local school, and they are doing feminist readings of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. He then thanked me, and he told me that I was one of the few people he had the taught him how to do stuff, taught him the skills, taught him the theories.

Excuse me...I think I have something in my eye.

exterminate!

When the BBC finished the first episode of Doctor Who, they apparently donated two of the original Dalek props to the Dr. Barnardo's Homes for Children. There's all kinds of tales (some undoubtedly apocryphal) about various Doctor Who props turning up all around England. Now this is some cryptozoology I can get behind.

the future is here!

Screw the "where's my jetpack?" crowd of naysayers. Did you know that we now have the ability to turn on our computers or phones and see a sunset on Mars? How much more futuristic do you need?

on ego

You'd think I'd know ego when I saw it. 

Last week, I ran across the article Keith Richards Is Not a Second Banana: The Guitarist's Conundrum, and it got me thinking about the nature of ego. Normally, I picture ego as the "hey, look at how awesome I am. Look at me. LOOK!!!" thing. You know, the lead singer thing. And this is something which generally bugs the hell out of me. It's one of the things which has turned me towards Indy music and away from any music from the mainstream. And it's not regulated to music; the increased prevalence of this attitude in the NFL is one of the reasons I abandoned the sport. This tasks me.

I like to think of my approach to music as being more workmanlike than anything. I know many won't believe this, but I don't play guitar in bands for my ego. Honestly. If I did, I would have to be the most delusional person in the world. I have, after all, played for empty rooms, and while doing so, the biggest thought I had was just how funny was the whole situation.

Playing was never an ego thing for me. While most of my friends would admit to picking up instruments to look cool or to get girls, that was never in my thoughts. I just wanted to be able to build something, to create something out of nothing, to be in charge of something over which I had full power. If my playing sucks, it's because of me. If I do well, it's because of me. Take autotune and other such abominations out of the equation, and music becomes a sort of meritocracy. Yeah, some people might have an easier time picking up an instrument, but those who work at it will become better. Work tends to level the playing field...and I like this, particularly as I've found it not to be the case in so many other elements of life.

Not picking up an instrument for ego might be believable, but it gets a bit harder to swallow when you make the move to live performance. If it's not for ego, then why would someone climb up on a stage and do this for the public? Why else would I invest my time and money I will never recoup to record an album if it wasn't to make myself feel more important? Truth is, there's always an element of commerce and public relations when you make the move from bedroom to stage, and it would be dishonest not to admit it.

This, I am beginning to realize, is where one's definition of ego comes into play. If ego is just the lusty adoption of lead singer behavior, then I would be right there with the punks in voicing my disdain. But in my solo career, I have to do a ton of this "pay attention to me" stuff as a matter of necessity. I have to do PR. I have to brand myself. I have to flyer. I have to banter. I have to schmooze. I have to ingratiate myself to bookers and bar owners. Yes, there are parts I actually enjoy (designing flyers, for instance, allows me to locate my inner visual artist). Much of it, however, makes me feel dirty...like an ego faker.

Which brings me back to the article. If singers are the ones who crave the spotlight but guitarists (as the article suggests) are more interested in nonchalantly building everything and holding it together...well, who's to say that ego lies in one side or another? And who's to say that desiring the role of public face is any cheaper than wanting to be the all-knowing creator? Is behind the scenes really more a morally pure position than out in front?

Is there really a distinction here? Are they divisible in the first place?

When I had my big mental breakdown of 2011, I had a very unhelpful session with a counselor. In prepping for the session, I tried to boil down all my anxieties about becoming a father, about failing in my attempted career as a professor, about the lackluster reception of my scholarship, all of this I tried to distill to its essence. The best I came up with was, "how am I supposed to continue, how am I supposed to raise and nurture a new life, when I've come to the realization that there is no justice in our lives, that hard work will not necessarily pay off, that we're all at the mercy of random, uncaring forces?"

The doctor had no answers for me. At the time, I suspected it was just because he was bad at his job...or just didn't like me enough to put in the effort. Now, though, I'm beginning to suspect that the lack of insight was really due to my own failure to properly judge the situation. I was mistaking lack of visible ego for moral purity. I was thinking that simply wanting something enough and sweating a lot in an effort to reach that goal would be enough. Is it possible, I'm beginning to wonder, that I failed because I lacked...ego?

Yeah, I wasn't an attention-grasping academic. But I'm beginning to think I failed ultimately because I wasn't egotistical enough to sculpt my work to the places where it might be well-received. Yeah, my lack of  ego made me not try to be an obnoxious bink. But it also stopped me from thinking strategically about my scholarship. It stopped me from promoting myself once I did figure out how to make something that everyone might want. I thought that if I followed my muse, fame and fortune would naturally follow. That, I think, was my downfall.

Now I'm beginning to realize that ego would've helped. As a musician, I've tried to find a niche my music can fill. Why didn't I do the same with my scholarship? I promote myself as a musician. Why didn't I do that as a thinker? Why didn't I realize that being unfocused and unstrategic was not being pure and honest to my muse...but was instead just setting myself up for insignificance? Ego would've helped.

I'm not saying if I would've had ego, everything would've worked out. Hell, I do all the self-promoting ego crap in my music career but still am relatively insignificant on the scene. But maybe I would've stood a better shot.

Maybe this means I need to be the new priest of ego. I must stop people from making my mistake of not thinking enough as an entity to be promoted. I will spread my new knowledge to the masses Ego, I will proclaim, is good. Ego, my inner Gordon Gekko yells, works. Ego for all!

Or is that too much lead singer-esque?

on expectations suddenly diminished

I'm a teacher. This means that I spent my Spring Break the way teachers normally do: getting caught up with grading. There were no vacations, no beach hijinks, no narrowly avoided arrests, nothing all that exciting. I looked after my kid and I graded. Still, I didn't actually get the grading caught up until last Tuesday....well after the break had ended. At least that was better than Fall semester, where my surgeries meant I was always two to three weeks behind.

My standard line to people, who asked about my Spring Break, was that I graded, but it was all worthwhile, because I was caught up...at least until Thursday (today), when I get three classes worth of assignments in. Yes, I'm fairly aware this is the "woe is me" routine. The thing is, when I got to lesson planning this morning, I found out I was wrong in my calculations and only had assignments coming in from one class rather than three. Now I'm faced with a relatively easy grading load which I should finish handily tomorrow afternoon. Now I won't have to stay in the study all weekend doing miserable work. Now I can actually enjoy time with my family.

I'm not sure how to take this.

long live the boob tube

We are living in the golden age of television. I've been saying this for quite some time. TV has, for some time, been a superior medium when compared to films. There's just so much better stuff being produced. Rather than bore you with my own ramblings on the subject, though, I'm just going to refer you to the article 5 Ways TV and Movies are Becoming the Same Thing (but TV is better).

ramifications of warrior culture

I quit watching football a while ago. So far, nothing has made me question that decision. Now, though, with the news that San Francisco plate Chris Borland is retiring after one year due to fears of brain injury, that decision is pretty strongly reaffirmed.

This Sports on Earth article on the possible ramifications of Borland's decision spells out the issue quite clearly. One of the most telling quotes:

" This is the problem for the NFL. The response is not to change the game itself; the response is to find people who do not understand that the game needs to be changed. It sees players -- humans -- as churn … as short-term investments, solely. It is pretending that everything is fine because the money is flowing so freely."

observations of an alcohol quitter

I am, for all intensive reasons, predominantly a non-drinker. Ever since my pseudo-gout (that I can have a gout-which-is-not-gout still cracks me up), I have cut out most all my drinking. I was never an alcoholic...but I was a drunk. I loved drinking. I unrepentantly drank to excess. I loved beer. I loved bars. But when one wakes up and it feels like someone has taken a sledgehammer to one's foot, alcohol becomes very expendable. When I heard it was also a kidney stone trigger, I was definitely out.

Don't get me wrong. I was not an "I will never touch another drop of alcohol again" quitter. I have, if the mood strikes me just right, ordered the occasional beer or cider...but that's kind of rare. I've even just went out to drink on a few occasions. But, for the most part, I'm pretty dry...and that leads to some interesting observations:

• I'm more aware than ever that alcohol is a drug. It's a drug just like marijuana is a drug, like cocaine is a drug, like opiates are drugs. The only real difference is that, in our country, alcohol is sanctioned, while the others are not. As a result of this sanction, most people see it as just another product (albeit one which makes you feel funny). But no: drug city.
• As a result of fully realizing alcohol is a drug, how our society sanctions this drug use becomes increasingly funny. A bar, for instance, is a specific place set aside for people to do a drug. Eating out is often accompanied by "and would you like a drug with that?" There are billboards, television ads, and celebrity endorsements for a recreational drug. Things I used to consider normal now seem really weird as a result of this observation.
• This, as a result, makes the behavior of drug users seem quite strange. Many people order cheap beer, well liquor, or combinations thereof. These people now seem like "I just wanna get high and have no other concerns. Taste? Fun? Sorry...not interested." And we cater to these people! When vaporized alcohol becomes a serious thing, this tendency will increase.
• As a musician, though, my main creative outlet is playing for people who come to a business to do drugs. Yeah, I could play the occasional coffee shop open mic session, but honestly, people don't really go to coffee shops to listen to music. There might not be much reward to playing in bars, but there's no tangible reward to playing in not-bars.
• This makes me think interesting things about why people go to drug-oriented businesses to listen to music. Does that say something about the general public's desire for art? That they can't really handle watching art unless they're under the influence? Or is it just one of those mystery-of-capitalism things?
• None of this, for the record, has made me anti-alcohol or anti-bar. If people are making themselves happy, more power to them...as long as they aren't hurting anyone else or themselves. 
• If anything, thinking of alcohol as a drug makes me more supportive of drug legalization efforts. That we favor alcohol but say other drugs are bad is just kind of random. Hell, if I were emperor, I would legalize everything. Even battlefield and all...plus I wonder how different it would be playing a show in a meth bar or an LSD bar. Would a heroin bar be a better place to play than a valium bar? The mind boggles. Plus this would have the added benefit of undermining the industrial prison complex and the gung ho police, which would, for the record, be a good thing.
• While I don't get people to hang out with me all that much anyway, when they do, I notice that, as I'm drinking, they tend to cut down on their own drinking. I've tried to make it plain that my desire to be sober shouldn't impact them at all, but inevitably, people who come out with me tend to drink less.

Intoxicating observations, eh?

shamrocks, stereotypes, and stupid behavior.

Today is St. Patrick's Day. A holiday...where one has to work. Wee.

When I was still drinking, we used to refer to this as "amateur day." It's largely used by the amateurs as an excuse to behave badly and do things which would normally just tick off everyone around them. In Bowling Green, the bars open at a responsible 5:30am, and students are drunk as early as seven. When I taught in town, we used to get warnings to just send drunk students home. One St. Patrick's Day, I was eating lunch at the local diner, and I heard these drunk undergrads in the next booth bragging about how one of them had already puked on the dance floor in one of the clubs. While this might be entertaining for children, as a true drinker, I never would've wanted to see it under the logic that being drunk isn't an excuse for being a jerk. Now I don't drink, my tolerance is even lower.

Critically, I can't help but think of today as Formerly Oppressed But Now Accepted White Person Identity Strategic Appropriation Day. Yeah, this is unwieldy, and I'm aware that even the acronym (FOBNAWPISAD) wouldn't even catch on. Depending on who you want to believe, my mother's side of the family might've come to England from Ireland. This means that I have as much if not more right to claim this identity than most of the revelers. Yet I still don't claim it today even though it might mean something for me...because I never claim it during the rest of the year. And even if I did claim it, all claiming to be Irish today really means is 1) wearing green, 2) drinking until one is five miles past excess, and 3) getting into fights. Sorry, but I'm not really in favor of negative stereotypes, even if in the service of a buzz.

Realistically, then, this is yet another holiday which has no real meaning to me...and it's not even as fun or as Freudian as Groundhog's Day. Some of my favorite bands are playing out tonight, so I might venture out later if I don't have band practice. My only hope would be that by then, all the idiots will have already worn themselves out.

Really, the only positive thing about this holiday is oddly colored fast food milkshakes.

Bah humbug.

on branding and the humble kazoo

I played a show this Wednesday. Earlier that day, I got an unsolicited text from a former singer, who informed me that he would boycott any future performance which include me playing kazoo. It is, for the record, dismaying when one's art is not fully appreciated. Nevertheless, the major thing about which this got me thinking (other, that is, than this guy's obsessive grumpiness) was about branding.

Once you move from the couch to the stage, you automatically enter the great debate between commerce and art...whether you like it or not. Selling out really isn't the issue, as next to none of us make any measurable amount of money anyway. For Indy musicians at my stage, this mostly entails marketing and branding. Both of these are rife with problems...problems beyond not generally being the strongest suit of Indy musicians.

Marketing is a toughie. Flyers are a necessity (and a cool keepsake), but where to hang them? Around here, we've got the bar itself and not a whole lot of other places. Social media would seem to be an easy one, but Facebook only sends out like 10-15% of a band's posts. Screw getting a decent return rate if hardly anyone gets to see it in the first place. Zines are a no-go, as the aforementioned ineffective social media has already driven them out of business. And advertising in any other sense costs money, and that is something us Indy musicians don't tend to have.

This leaves branding. In story, this means, "how do I distinguish myself from the great swaths of musical humanity who also bash on guitars and wail depressing lyrics?" Talent, unfortunately, does very little to get anyone noticed. This is unfortunate yet still very true. Breaking out of the pack really means making one's self distinguishable in some way. It might only be a way to move from "I saw that guy who plays songs" to "I saw that guy who plays songs dedicated to antidepressant pharmaceutical manufacturers." And this might not seem like all that positive a move. Yet for some of us, it's all we've got.

My approach is to play to my main strength, namely that I'm a reasonably clever weirdo. This is the logic to the dedications to Zoloft's creators. This is the logic to my cool logo/sticker. This is the logic behind incorporating humor and interesting metaphors into my lyrics (an approach which surprisingly few songwriters use). And this is also the logic behind the kazoo. Yeah, I play it because I can't play harmonica. Yeah, I think a sonic change is good. But the main reason is that it's hard to forget a kazoo solo or the person who plays it.

Last Wednesday, I played an open mic night. Instead of the expected 4-5 songs, I got 8-9. I got a great response. People both clapped and "woo"ed. I got complements on my beard. At one point, I even had people singing along (to the chorus of The Isley Brothers's "You've Lost That Loving Feeling." And yes, I played my kazoo.

I played pretty good...and I think I gave the audience plenty of reasons to remember me. It didn't lead to any album sales, though, and what impact it will have on attendance at future gigs is uncertain. But what else, really, can I do?

Of course, I'm open to hearing other ideas on self-promotion. And if any of y'all want to rent me a billboard to advertise my next gig, well, I think my ego could take it.

time to be scared iii

I'd like to fully admit that my last few political posts have been just slightly paranoid. I won't bother to use the "a paranoid is merely someone in full possession of the facts line," but there is, in our current climate, plenty of reason to feed the fear. Never mind our congress actively trying to undermine talks with Iran. Today's thing that has me scared? Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina today announced that if he were elected, his first act would be to use the military to force congress to pass his agenda.

I am not, for the record, worried that Lindsey Graham will actually do this if elected president because, paranoid though I may be, I don't really think he's actually going to become president. What I am worried about, though, is that there will be people who will hear this and rush to the defense of this treasonous pinhead. After all, what has democracy and law ever done for us?

Shudder.

art of the day, 3/11/15

I love me some good recontextualization. Today's example is the art of Franco Brambilla, who takes 1970s postcards and adds sci-fi images. Brilliant.

tragedy

It is one of the greatest tragedies of my life that I have never had occasion to say, "it's nightfall...the beast approaches."

upcoming shows

I have a few shows coming up in the immediate future. First off, I will be playing a half-hour set at Hump Day Review this Wednesday. This is at Stone's Throw in Bowling Green. I should hit the stage at 9:30. I know that at the very least, I'll debut a new cover song. I might also have an original or two to world premier, but that all depends on how tomorrow goes.

I will be doing a show with my backing band The Antidepressants on Friday, March 27th. We are playing with two touring bands (Annabelle Black and Nuaudio), as well as Bowling Green's own Black Swamp Casket Company. This will be a fun one, because...well, it's at Howard's Club H, which is always fun.

But this will also be the second show and BG debut with my band. We're a power trio with horns (well, really trombone). It's definitely hard rock, but with a twist. During our last practice, my instructions to the rhythm section were "pretend that you're either a studio musician in Muscle Shoals or that you're a member of Booker T and the MGs. If you're heard what I do, then just imagine melding it with 60s R&B. Then you'd have a pretty good idea what to expect.

I also have one of my three hour solo performances coming up. I'll be playing again at Stone's Throw in Bowling Green. This one will be April 4th, and I'll be playing from 8-11. This one will have a mix of originals and cover songs. I've been learning an awful lot of new stuff for this. I'm expanding my cover repertoire to include more old-school R&B; not only is it very cool and danceable, it's also an utter blast to sing. I have also learned a few new weird cover songs from the 1980s. It's been way too long since I've done this kind of gig, and I'm really looking forward to it.

Of course, your support would be greatly appreciated at any of these shows. I do this for the love of the music, but knowing that someone else also appreciates what I do is unbelievable. I will, for the record, have copies of my album for sale at all future gigs.

a random universe and daughter

One of the unusual aspects of my life is that I'm home with my daughter more often than most fathers are able to be. This is an absolute blessing, but it isn't normal by any stretch...which makes my life a bit more surreal than in the past. This is compounded by the fact that my daughter is definitely my child in temperament, which generally manifests itself in two ways: she has a highly variable tolerance for cuteness, and she embraces randomness. This enriches and weirdens my life in many ways.

First, many people assume I'm a full time stay at home father. I would love this, but for whatever reason, my wife has yet to become the president of her university...so work, alas, is still my fate. But those who only know me casually can be astounded when they find out I in fact have a job. When me and my kid are out together, I know that filters the way people see me. I don't really care, to be honest...but it would be intellectually interesting to have more data on how that affects people's perceptions of yours truly.

I have noticed, however, that I have more cute females smile at me when I'm with my girl. It is important I never view this as an ego thing, however. They obviously smile at me because (1) my kid is indeed unbelievably cute, (2) it is a rarity seeing a father and daughter together in public...at least in the middle of a weekday, and (3) when I'm with my girl, I am clearly not a threat to any single female in the area.We went to our local coffee shop today. As expected, I got a large number of strangers (predominantly cute females) smiling at the two of us. I tried not to give it too much thought...I find this approach is better for my sanity.

After we had our snacks and looked at the kid books, she wanted to sit at the table with the built-in giant chess board and play. The first game was remarkable mostly for my daughter's flagrant disregard for the rules of piece movement. After a certain amount of time, she informed me that I lost and she won. I reset the board. This time, halfway through, I decided to adopt her disregard for the rules. My knights hung out together to tell stories...and then so did hers. My pawns started to dance...and then did hers. Then I decided to start stacking my rooks...so of course my daughter followed suit.  Game three entailed us moving our pieces at the same exact time. Game four was notable for my daughter's directions that we had to move more than one piece at a time. And of course, my kid's estimation, she won and I lost every single game.

When we left, I stopped at a gas station. After filling up my tank, I drove to the car wash behind the station. As it's March, it's finally time to wash a winter's worth of salt and road grime off my car. I explained the process to my daughter, who kept repeating, "I've never seen a car wash before." When the machine started, my daughter moved to saying "cool" and laughing. When we left, she told me she couldn't wait to see her Mommy and explain how car washes work.

There was no grand lesson from the day other than I enjoy my kid's company immensely...but I already knew that. Part of the fun is seeing the way she fits together experiences. There is no agenda, but even though she has a much narrower pool of experiences from which to compare and establish context, she still amazes me with some of the connections she makes. She moves from point to point in such interesting and wonderful ways, I feel myself a better person just for being with her.

Hey, maybe that's why the cute girls are smiling at me...

time to be scared ii

I've been in more than one argument about our surveillance state, where my opponent supports public surveillance cameras, has claimed "you only need to be scared of them if you're doing something wrong. This, in my mind, opens up the argument to hypotheticals, my favorite being, "what happens when the government wants you to install them in your house?" My opponents inevitably then claim it will never come to that.


One thing I know? Never say never. Because in England, the highest ranking police officer just suggested people install them in their houses. England, for those not in the know, has been miles ahead of America in terms of public surveillance. The town of King's Lynn even brags about  having the first public spying program in the country.

Undoubtedly, these can be used in very real ways to help in the fight against crime. My problem, however, is it's only a short leap to using these to serve private (rather than public) agendas. Also, I don't trust the security of their computer systems. Also, while I am in many aspects a liberal, I don't trust the government enough to say, "hey, feel free to record every aspect of my life!"

Again, don't make me agree with the libertarians.

time to be scared

The biggest nightmare right now is internet privacy and security. It's always been a good idea to be careful with one's online activities. There are, after all, a lot of creeps out there who will try to invade your privacy and steal your stuff. The saddest part nowadays, however, is that one of the most powerful perpetrators of privacy invasions is our own government, particularly the NSA. Now they want to not have to go to the trouble to, you know, follow the law.

Come on, y'all. Please don't make me agree with the libertarians.

breaking a cardinal rule

They say that you should never talk about religion or politics in public. Well, screw that, because this is my blog...and I'll alienate people if I want to.

I understand the desire to want to do away with tyranny. With our current government's support of spying, black ops, and drone death, I understand how someone might be worried about government as tyranny. Hell, there are some government projects that give me the heebey-jeebies. Drug testing is one of the biggest. In general, drug testing ends up being one of those things that succeeds in letting its supporters feel morally superior. It doesn't really accomplish a whole lot else. It, much like the TSA's airport security rules, is more theater of self-importance than practical in any way. Want more details? Then familiarize yourself with What 7 States Discovered After Spending More Than $1 Million Drug Testing Welfare Recipients. This shocks and upsets me on so many levels.

Personally, I tend to think big business is responsible for the removal of more liberty and rights than government. At the very least, they're the ones who are screwing me over more at the minute. The weirdest part is that many of the scariest government activities come from conservatives, who are supposed to be against government intrusion. The drug testing thing? Republican governors. The TSA and Patriot Act? Started under a GOP administration (although continued under our current president). The whole gay marriage ban movement? Again, this is from conservatives who are normally against government curtailing of rights. Hypocrites are fun, aren't they?

To be fair, not all those on the right support this kind of oversight/intrusion. Libertarians inevitably agree with my disdain for all the stuff mentioned so far in this post. Nice in theory. In practice, though, Libertarianism generally ends up being more about the freedom from responsibility than any other kind of freedom. This article Libertarianism is for petulant children is a bit harsh, but it's not all that wrong. Hell, I've seen people try to argue that even the FCC's net neutrality ruling was government tyranny.

Maybe it's just that some people want to complain. What we need is someone who can walk the line between the two sides. Keep us caring for each other, level the playing field, keep us safe, and then go the hell away. People like that don't seem to exist within politics, however.

Solutions welcomed.

programming note

A few weeks ago, I started doing a weekly post of cool links I've discovered in the past seven or so days. It seemed like a good idea. I've decided to cut it out, though. I've been accumulating way too many of them, and I find myself really wanting to talk a little bit about each. So no more Weekly Lynx. You're gonna get them whenever I can actually write them up.

Prepare for the deluge.

birthday voyage

I was at my favorite bar last night. One of the many very cool bartenders and I were talking. I've known her for some time...she used to be the most abusive and coolest of the late night staff at the area diner. Partway through, she told me, "this cute guy who only comes into town a few times of year told me he thought I was about 32...so of course I got his number."

We laughed together for a few moments. I responded with the story of when another bartender told me she thought I was about 34, and I grabbed her shoulders for a very sincere yet overly dramatic "thank you!!!" Of course, this led to the inevitable "how old are you anyway?" I told her that she wore her age well, and she told me "you wear your age very well." I almost wanted to blush.

I've got a song which has the lyric "I still think of myself as a teen, but the world just won't agree...it only seems to notice the lines on my face." This is only half true (my songs are rarely autobiographical...or, for that matter, all that true); I do feel much younger (particularly mentally) than my physical age, but I've been hit with an onslaught of people who claim I definitely don't look my age. I don't understand this, but I'm okay with it nonetheless.

I was out last night because at 12:01am, it was my 44th birthday. I went out with a friend. For the first time in over three years, someone's wanted to celebrate with me. Actually, now I think of it, my 40th was the last birthday party I had. Maybe that's why people make such a big deal of 40...it marks the end of parties. Just a theory.

Anyway, I had a great time, and the only real reason i'm feeling older today is the stupid two week cold I'm battling.

I've spent the day curled up under a blanket, reading a World War II history. My daughter has been more excited about it being my birthday than I. Every so often, my phone will go off to let me know someone else has Facebook-wished me a birthday...which is cool, but I'd rather have them close so we can hang out. Other than that, not much has happened.

When I was younger, birthdays were monumental, an event. Not any more, though. Getting birthday brownies is cool, but it's a far cry from the parties in my past. I don't even think about gifts anymore...it's not that I don't want stuff, but the only things I want are way out of my financial bracket...which, now that I think of it, is pretty much the same thing.

Maybe that is the only real sign of getting older, that the landmarks get less important than the voyage itself. Maybe.

Birthdays are, however, still a great excuse to get a little drunk and listen to rock and roll.

(Blog post 800. Thanks for reading.)

the weekly lynx, 2/23/15

• Point/counterpoint time! Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with employing a little of column A/column B thinking here, but what do I know? I'm far from an expert. These two, however, will get you asking the right questions.
•  Misgovernment, not religion, has sunk the Middle East
• What ISIS Really Wants
•  The Oscars ceremony was this weekend...last night, in fact. I found myself caring even less than usual. Yeah, I think there's value in knowing what the media says about itself, but I am no longer a media scholar, so I have no professional interest. And while I am both a consumer and creator of art, we're also talking about the most corporate kind of art, and a glitzy display dedicated to the most artistic corporate production? I'd rather spend my time writing songs, thank you very much. But if there is a good reason why this should be important, it's because of the horrible record Hollywood has in representation. Case in point? Women in Film shows some pretty scary statistics that pretty heavily suggest that females really have a pretty huge case for getting angry at the film industry.
• The best bit of sculpture you will see this week is the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile in Lego. Must I say any more?
• My birthday is coming up this weekend. And while I would be happy with someone just wanting to hang out with me for a change, I do have two suggestions for gifts if you're feeling generous:
• How about this wall-mounted T-Rex head? It would look great in my office.
• I would also accept an offer to buy me this Lego set of the HMS Beagle when/if it comes out. I also would be fine with the cash equivalent.

a plea

My department is undergoing some kind of evaluation. This requires us to each submit an updated curriculum vita. This required me to dig up and update my cv.

QUIT MAKING ME THINK ABOUT THIS KIND OF STUFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

justice (or lack thereof)

Today, I ran across the article Wal-Mart Just Announced That It's Giving 500,000 Workers A Raise. Each Associate will, it seems, make $1.75 over minimum wage. This is good, as they have traditionally been a horrid place to work.

However, I couldn't help but feel jealous, as I haven't had a raise since 2010 (thanks to a horrid contract negotiation), with none in sight. Ah, the life of a teacher. I mentioned this to my wife (an academic advisor) who reminded me she just had a pay cut.

I'm happy for Wal-Mart workers. I really am. However, there's a feeling I can't seem to shake: the opinion that something ain't right.

teaching genius

Today, in my writing class, we were going over a sample student paper. The essay was a relatively dull and broad analysis of sexism in the Tomb Raider video games. In order to make my point about the writer's thesis, I showed them this video:




and this video:



after which, I showed them this image:

It occurred to me that the image above would best be viewed while the Britney Spears song was playing. Try it. It certainly worked as an educational paradigm.

changing strings

For those of you not in the know, in addition to being a solo musician and having a solo band, I'm also in an alt-rock/alt-country band called Midwest Tourist. My job is to be the resident banjo player. This suits me just fine...less gear to haul, and the banjo is, after all, the heaviest of the acoustic instruments.

We got asked to play a fellow musician's birthday concert. Shortly after asking my band mates if we could do it and after telling the bar we were a go, we realized our guitar player couldn't do it. Then it was decided that I would move over to guitar for this show. No problem for an experienced musician such as I, right?

As it turns out, this really threw me for a loop. I know the songs on banjo, and although I play a 6 string banjo (tuned like a guitar), it's a completely different animal. First, banjos have absolutely no sustain. None. You hit it, and the note completely dies. This, for me, leads me to treat the instrument as much like percussion than anything else. So it translates much less than one would expect.

Add this to the fact that I figured out my parts specifically to fit into a band's complete soundscape--and now I have to not only learn new parts, but I have to take a much more widespread sonic approach. This means the first two practices with me on guitar did not go well. I was messing up constantly and felt like an a amateur. This actually triggered a small depression fit last week: the fear that I would bring shame to my clan.

I've been practicing like mad, though, and I have the parts nailed. The band will not sound the same, because I can't figure out how our regular guitar player does what he does. But with me, while I am somewhat adaptable, I have a pretty definite style...I can only really sound like me.

We play this Friday at Iggy's in Toledo. If you're in the area, you should really come (and contact me for tickets). We're going to sound pretty good in this configuration...and who knows if we're ever going to play in this configuration again?

Make plans, y'all,

puzzling observation 2/15

I will freely admit there is much about this life I do not understand. Today's example? I don't understand why my daughter is running full-speed through the house while shouting "apple fishes."

Sometimes, though, it's best not to waste too much of your time on some of these observations.

the weekly lynx (2/14)

• 5 Problems in Movies You Only Notice If You're Old--This is a worthwhile article to read in general. However, if you want the short version, it is this: when you're older, you gain more empathy, and you start to realize how horrible people in the films treat each other. I've been working with teens since I was myself a teen (first at the pizza place, then as a teacher). I'm not one of those to stereotype 'these youth today,' but if there is one commonality, it is that most of them are unable to see anything from any perspective other than their own. I firmly believe that most people don't get a good sense of empathy until they live a little. That is why the thing that makes me proudest about my kid is that she is as much concerned for others as she is for herself. This, however, is not something you see in the media all that much.
• Invisible Islands: Privacy is a myth on the Internet--If I have one chief disappointment with the last decade or so, it's that people's right to privacy has been slowly eroded. We're spied on everywhere. Someone is watching everything we do. And yet very few people care. I mentioned to a friend that I use Spider Oak, an online storage site focused on privacy. My friend's first response is "that would be good if you were a child pornographer." The idea that the only people who want privacy are those who have something to hide is repugnant to me. But how can you combat the constant surveillance, particularly when online? One of the scarier things I've learned about our government is that simply using privacy-oriented web material (such as TOR) is enough to get you on the NSA watch list. This is definitely something that everyone should educate themselves on...and then get angry and do something.
• 11 Facts That Will Change The Way You Think About Jails In America--Radicals used to talk about the military industrial complex. Well, now we really have a prison industrial complex. More and more, laws and law enforcement seems to be more than anything else about terrorizing and imprisoning anyone who thinks or looks differently. Hell, in my little town of Bowling Green OH, we have a SWAT team, a bomb dog team, an armored personnel carrier, and hi-def surveillance cameras. This has got to stop.
• Jim Crow lynchings more widespread than first thought, report concludes--History is darker than most people are taught. Hatred is widespread than most people thought. And this stuff isn't just in the past either.
• Having the brakes removed from your car is a personal decision--The awesome Cory Doctorow's Swiftian answer to the anti-vaxxer movement.

In spite of what these links suggest, I'm actually not in that bad of a mood this week!

a musician's lament

I have, for professional purposes, to follow a lot of people on social media who I don't like or don't really know. One of them is this bar/booking company (locals can guess who I'm talking about). Whenever you play there, they make you sell tickets if you want any money. This bothers me, because I always thought it was the bar's job. I can't wait until they make us start serving drinks as well...or maybe cleaning up the bathrooms.

Anyway, someone associated with this particular group posted an article on the stuff bar owners hate about bands. It's not the first time I've seen such things from venue owners. The article boiled down to "these whiny musicians don't fill my bar to the rim and still expect to be treated like humans." The key, it seemed, is that the article assumes bars are doing bands favors by booking them, and bands should therefore do whatever the bar wants without complaining...and that this is particularly the case when a band draws less than ten people.

I think about this a lot, because one of my favorite places to play makes the bands play the sound engineer before the musicians get paid. This means that the first 22 people's cover charges go to a bar employee before the artists get paid. This, in spite of the fact that if I bring five fans, those people alone will buy enough drinks to make the bar enough money to pay for the sound engineer. Now, I'm not expecting to get rich off of this, but I also don't want to be the only worker who doesn't get paid. My labor is worth something. And this is at one of the friendlier places to play.

Look, I realize that the bar needs to make money if musicians are able to play, so bars have to be taken care of, financially. But on the other hand, if no one plays at most of these bars because the musicians are tired of being treated badly, then the bars will be empty and close anyway. Both sides of the equation need to be taken care of.

And yes, I'm aware this rant won't accomplish any of those structural changes. My main purpose here is to make clear that live music is a fragile thing. Already, the venues and the performers are locked in an antagonistic relationship. This is especially going to be the case when people don't come out to support local music. Art being created by artists is a fragile thing. Without an audience, it becomes downright precarious.

Let's leave aside the matter of whether friends have an obligation to support other friends (short answer: of course they do. What kind of friend would rather watch a film or tv show then support a friend's creative endeavor?). Live music is vital. Art in general is vital. When art doesn't have to lock itself up to the goals of some capitalist edifice to survive, it will most likely be particularly vital. So the least you can do is give it a chance....by checking out new bands, painters, whatever.  And if you find something you even kind of like, you should support it...by buying albums and other merchandise, by going to the shows, by taking advantage of musician pre-sales, however you can.

And yes, there is a certain amount of self-serving going on here...because I would like to be able to keep laying and maybe even make a second album. But I'm also fine if you have tried but still don't like my stuff. No one is required to think I'm a genius...or to even find me tolerable. It's okay to think I suck. It's okay to not support me.

But for Zeus's sake, at least try to support someone.

(inspired by Music 101: Why you should support local music)

change of scenery

Weekly writing time. I have an agenda, even, and the chances of getting two songs are pretty decent. I'm thrilled to be back at it after a week off, particularly when I haven't finished a song since December. So of course I'm throwing everything in to doubt by changing my routine.

Tonight, instead of camping out at my normal Howard's table, I'm at the local coffee shop. Why? A couple of reasons. It's Wednesday instead of Tuesday, and I have no idea who's working bar. This is important, as bartenders unfamiliar with my long, illustrious drinking history might not be completely tolerant of a sober patron who isn't really spending money (and therefore not tipping all that much).  Plus Howard's tends not to turn on their heater, and while it's not all that cold tonight, I'm still shivering at the memory of my last frigid visit.

So instead, I decided to become the stereotypical tortured artist type and do the coffee shop thing. So far, I'm struck by how bright it is, comparatively speaking. Dessert access is nice, but as I want to sleep tonight, I got a decaf...and it is relentlessly mediocre, as its kind usually is.

I'm not sure how this all is going to affect the work, though. I guess there's only one way to find out.

developments

1. A while back, I talked about TheMikeDuBose luck. In that post, I said, "So, I figure I have about two more weeks before I get sick or pull a muscle or something." As it turns out, I now have a pulled back muscle. While I am glad it is not something worse (it didn't feel like a pulled muscle, but I do have doctor verification), it still does illustrate the luck holds as always. Luckily, though, I have a full drug cabinet thanks to the various surgeries of the last year.
2. In a vegetarian recap, I mentioned that "I've had to move up two belt sizes...so I'm clearly shrinking. Strangely enough, though, the scale still says I'm as gargantuan as always." Yesterday, immediately before going to the doctor for the aforementioned pulled muscle diagnosis, I weighed myself. When they weighed me at the doctor's office, I had gained 6 pounds...in the course of an hour and a half...without eating. I can only imagine my boots are heavier than I realize.
3. In writers write, I expressed questions as to how easy it would be to get back into the swing of writing. I didn't get much done that night except for a thematic structure to one song's lyrics. Since then, I have begun to again explode with ideas. Of course, I wasn't actually able to write last week. Here's hoping I don't have to miss this week's session. I'm particularly curious, as I've been listening to nothing but old school r&b for the last two weeks, and I'm really looking forward to finding out how that's going to affect the songs.

West Wing and me

For whatever reason, I spent lots of today binge-watching West Wing. This struck me:

"it's about the next 20 years. In the '20s and '30s it was the role of government. '50s and '60s it was civil rights. The next two decades are going to be privacy. I'm talking about the Internet. I'm talking about cell phones. I'm talking about health records and who's gay and who's not. And moreover, in a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?"

Wish we were paying attention.

the weekly lynx, 2/7

• Eternal life could be achieved by procedure to lengthen chromosomes--Ray Kurzweil predicts that the singularity (the merging of humans and machines) is coming. I tend to believe him, and this development is but a step on the road. I hope it comes in my lifetime. We tend to forget that we're living in a science fiction world already. Keep your flying cars and jetpacks; I'll take the world we have any day...but I'd rather have the future. Make me King, and this stuff gets tons of funding. Get to work, science monkeys!
• see also One of the World's Top Aging Researchers Has a Pill to Keep You Feeling Young.
• How secular family values stack up--Food for thought. There's no reason not to be a good person...and people who blame bad behavior on stereotypes are more the problem than anything else. We're all stuck on this rock together (with the exception of the few ISS crew), and life is a whole lot nicer and easier when we get along. Make me King, and one of my priorities would be to eliminate stereotyping.
• Dave Wyndorf: why Monster Magnet 'Can't Get Arrested' in the US--There's a crisis in music here in the US. I'm not talking about the music industry dying. It might be dying, but frankly, I couldn't care less about millionaires. They are only a small portion of music anyway. Much more good stuff in fact happens at the street level. But people don't want to support good music. I have played to completely empty rooms. I have seen phenomenal bands play to single digits of people. We need to figure out how to get people interested in music (hell, in Art) again.We need to support art. It's good for the soul. Make me king, and I would tax the ever-loving wallet of the rich and start a national salary for artists.
• The Trip Treatment--With the exception of my mental health prescriptions, I don't do drugs. I am, however, completely sickened with this country's drug policies. They seem to be more about keeping people in jail than anything else. Make me king, and I would legalize everything. The money could be used for treatment and for research for this kind of thing.
• Astronaut: Here are all the sad things I realized while floating through space--Perspective can be a lovely thing. It can be depressing as well. But let's use that perspective to actually do something. Make me king, and...you know.
• Notice: Travelers from the Future--Someone knows more than they are telling. Make me king, and I would tell all.

teacherly musings

If one were to be a fly on the wall of the hallway outside my office, one would pick up some pretty strange impressions of the existence of non-tenured faculty. To wit:

• "Are you going to the union meeting today?" "No. Having the ways administration is screwing us numerated interests me not in the least."
• "...and they treat us like its our duty to do their job for them." "Heh. You just said 'doodie.'"
• "I notice that whenever I send out a notice on Starfish [the early warning system for success mentors], the student then quits coming to class." "You should use that power wisely."
• "When you made that crack about 'doodie,' I felt the need to tell you I have similar thoughts with the word 'retention.'"
• "You ever notice that it's the students who complain most loudly who do the least work?"
• "I've learned to do as little as possible as a survival mechanism. It's tough, though, because I actually like my job."
• "Somehow knowing that you were also made a 'University Diversity Champion' kinda ruins the honor for me."
• "It seems that every time I go to the public library, I have to deal with someone else's mucus. There's always some guy hacking away on the computer next to me. I agree with the ideas of public access in general, but on the other hand, gross."
• "I'm impressed that you own your own level and hammer. Do they live here?"
• "I normally despise meetings with every fiber of my existence, but when they affect me directly--such as when they're supposed to answer the question 'Will we get a new union contract before I retire in twenty years?,' then I make an exception."

on not being behind

I'm caught up.

It's a weird feeling. Last semester, I was pretty much constantly behind. Doctor's appointments, emergency room visit, surgeries, pain, recovery. Don't get me wrong; I realize that, on a scale of injuries and illnesses, pseudo-gout and kidney stones are on a relatively not-serious level when compared to some people's situations. Yet it still sucked.

It did take a lot out of me physically and mentally, but in some ways, the worst part was how much it took of my time.

I was constantly behind on my school work. I was teaching five classes (writing classes, which are grading-intensive anyway), and I would go a couple of weeks between being able to grade or even answer messages...and when I did get to my email, it was clear that the students were feeling abandoned. But what could I do?

Right now, I am fully caught up on my grading. I already have a few days of lesson plans ready. Right now, my students are watching a film which I've taught dozens of times, so my attention is free to wander. I can actually plan out my afternoon without having to perform triage on my school work.

It is a weird feeling, but it is one I could get used to...not that I'll probably get a chance. Life has a way of happening.

the weekly lynx (2/2/15)

One of the things I did when on social media was to send along any interesting web links I found (usually under the heading of "the most interesting xxx you will see today" or some variant). While I hoped people enjoyed them, and I always think it's a good idea to pass on interesting reads, the main reason I did this was so I could have a nice online record of things which I might want to revisit. Only it's not nearly as easy to find a specific post on social media as you might think, so this didn't always work out.

It's not the first time I've tried something similar. Ages ago, I used to have a blog dedicated to neat stuff I found online...but maintaining more than one blog and getting anything done turned out to be a herculean task. But I've found I can do one blog just fine, particularly now I've quit social media. Seriously, I did more posts last month than I did in the whole of 2012. So I've decided to just post a more-or-less weekly roundup of all the neat things I've run across during the week. I'm gonna call it "The Weekly Lynx" (get it? see the photo? get it?) This week's entries:

• Warren Ellis, "Rocket Pistols of the 20th Century"--because all good fiction has more than just a surface.
• "And the Other Way is Wrong"--a brief analysis of David Fincher's directoral craft, which is a must-see for anyone interested in visual art.
• "A Brief History of 'Satanic Panic' in the 1980s"--I remember seeing religious protestors at most of the concerts I went to when in High School...but it was much worse in some places. While it was bigger in the 80s, Marilyn Manson fans in the 90s saw a bit of this as well.
• "Stephen Fry explains what he would say if he was 'confronted by God'"--Alternate perspectives should always be welcome.
• Warren Ellis, "A Suit of Capitalism"--As I get older, I find myself getting more and more radical in my politics...so this is particularly relevant for me.

out of downs

As a kid, I remember liking football. I don't know how much I really understood it, but I do recall enjoying it. At the time, the Terry Bradshaw-era Pittsburgh Steelers were my team. I liked to play football with my brother in the yard...I recall being hard to tackle. But I wasn't fast at all, and I had problems throwing and catching (due to a turn in one eye and not being able to see in 3-D which wasn't diagnosed until years later), so I never tried to play in any formal sense...and eventually, my interest burned away.

In high school, I found myself friends with several football fanatics, so I decided to take up the sport again. We decided to play fantasy football, and although it seemed a bit too much like Dungeons and Dragons, I formed my own team. One thing Fantasy Football really is good for is that it requires you to be hyper-aware and hyper-knowledgeable about the sport, so I got up to speed pretty quickly. By the end of the first season, I knew pretty much every player in the league...and I was thoroughly sucked in.

When my hometown of Jacksonville was awarded an NFL team, me and my dad got season tickets...and for the four years before I moved to Ohio, we would go to every home game. This, on top of going to a sports bar with my dad to watch Monday Night Football, made me appreciate the sport as a social opportunity. It was probably the most time I had spent with my dad since I had become a sullen teenager type, and watching games with him was absolutely vital to me being able to move past seeing him as "father" and truly get to know him. Plus it led to lots of beer and chicken wings, which is always a good thing.

When I moved up to Ohio, I still kept the faith. It was harder, though, because academics are, in general, not only not big sports fans but in many cases actually anti-sports. At least this describes most of the ones I knew. I couldn't understand it. If they didn't appreciate the intricacies of strategy or the feats of physical wonder, couldn't they at least appreciate the social aspect? How football lends itself so well to (and even creates and maintains) community? But save two good friends (both of which soon left the area), I had a very hard time getting anyone to come see the games with me.

So the communal aspect of football eroded for me, but I still held the faith. However, over the last two years, that faith started to diminish. With so many demands on my time (as a father, a husband, a teacher, and a musician), every activity has to pull its weight. Football kept doing things to sabotage itself in my soul. The fact that the sport takes a tremendous toll on its participants became harder and harder to ignore for me, particularly when the head trauma costs became clearer and clearer. I began to be more and more alienated by the displays of obnoxious celebrity, both on-field (why must players, after making a routine play, run to an isolated spot on the field and pose?) and off. With every domestic violence incident, with every shooting, with every general act of spoiled brat millionaire behavior, my interest waned.

Somewhere in the middle of last season, I realized that I was done. I increasingly felt like I was watching a strange spectacle somewhere between celebrity gossip and gladiatorial combat, and I could not sustain my interest or the time it required. I finished out the season, but after that, I swore off football. I wasn't 100% sure I wouldn't feel the itch and cave, but, as it turns out, that never happened. I saw a game with my dad when he came to visit, but after that, I didn't care to pick it back up. I even had to be reminded that the playoffs had started.

Today is the Super Bowl. Instead of watching, I spent the day with my family and then working. I have zero interest in watching the game. I never thought this would happen, but here we are.

Just as well. As a vegetarian, I wouldn't have been able to make my Super Bowl Chili anyway.

TheMikeDuBose luck

I've been going to the gym. I'm say this for the purpose of this narrative, not in an "I'm a non-drinking vegetarian who uses natural cleansing products, cooks his own food, and now I exercise, and this makes me better than you" brag...although the latter statement is 100% true...just sayin'. I have arthritis in one shoulder, and exercise helps lessen the effect. Plus, to be fair, I could stand to lose some tonnage. But the reason I mention any of this is that it accurately illustrates my luck.

First, there's my workout cycle. By this, I mean the process of forcing myself to get to the damn gym for an hour of torture. Then the shame and agony of my gym recovery period. Then all of this happening until, miracle of miracles, I get in the habit of working out. Then, quite naturally, I get a cold...every single damn time. This cold sidelines me just enough to push me right out of the habit of working out. Rinse, repeat. So, I figure I have about two more weeks before I get sick or pull a muscle or something. But I'm gonna keep trying...because I'm stubborn like that.

Today, though, I got a graphic demonstration of my luck. It's snowing here. There's a storm warning and everything; in fact, they say we should get around eight inches before it stops. So, on the way out to the gym, I figured it would be very decent of me indeed if I were to brush the snow off mine and my wife's car...get a head start, such as it is.  Plus I had to grab my mp3 player out of my car anyway, because the sound of my panting is bad enough on its own.

I get my mp3 player and then make quick work of both cars. I walk to the gym (which is in our complex) and start to unbundle. When I dig for my mp3 player, though, I don't have it. So,

1. I search each pocket about five times before rebundling and heading back out to my car. 
2. I tear apart the inside of my car and find nothing. 
3. I look on the snow around my car. 
4. I look on the snow around my wife's car. 
5. I check my pockets again.
6. I go back to my car and start kicking the snow around in case my player got covered. 
7. I then do the same thing at my wife's car. 
8. I go back and re-sift though the snow by my car. 
9. I go back to my wife's car. 
10. I then go back to the gym in case it just fell out as I was getting unbundled. 
11. I go back to the snow around my wife's car...
12. ...and then around my car. 
13. I check inside my car again. 
14. I start resigning myself to the fact that it's probably gone.
15. I check my pockets again
16. I curse (not for the first time, I might add). 
17. I check around my wife's car again. 
18. I wonder how on earth I'm ever going to find the money for another player
19. I go back and look again around my car.
20. I say out loud, "of course. Why should I expect any different? Why even be surprised? Damnit."
21. I then see the mp3 player clearly sitting on top of the snow.

Miraculously, the player worked from the minute I dried it off...but then I had to take about fifteen minutes to calm down. I do my workout and finally return home, two whole hours after I left.

The thing is, however, that if you ever ask me how my day has been going, I probably always have this kind of story ready to go.

killing office hours

Once upon a time, I used to have a perfectly fine office computer. Then, when my kid was about to be born and I was preparing for daddy leave (yes, there are aspects of my job which do rock...just not the four years without a cost of living adjustment), I got a message that they were upgrading my machine.

Yes, normally this would be a good thing. However, after a year, I realized that my new office computer sucked. As time wore on, it got slower and slower. Programs and plugins would randomly freeze and crash. By last Fall, it got to the point where it would take ten minutes to log in and open my mail program and web browser. Need to print off a lesson plan? Add on another ten minutes to open my word processor and send the document to my printer. To call this aggravating would be an understatement.

Yesterday, they took my computer to be re-imaged. I assume this involves a paint stripper, wire brush, and spray paint. I did take care to back up everything on the machine...save (as it turns out) my lesson plan for my morning class. I was able to fake my way through the day's class session, however. Chalk one up to experience and an ability to improvise/con people.

I'm now sitting in my office, looking at the empty space on my desk where my computer should be. As I started to type this out on my phone, I tried to figure out what I actually did in office hours during the several occasions when I had no department machine in whatever passed for my office. Then I realized that I was either madly trying (as a grad student) to finish class readings, (as an ABD) to scratch out time to write my dissertation, or (as a part-timer) to teach myself the random discipline in which I had to teach a class in a few hours.

Right now, all I have are shelves of books I've already read and a phone to keep me company...and my battery can't last forever. I can't grade, because all my stuff is on that computer I don't have. I might be able to write some song lyrics, but all my notes are at home. And I simply don't have it in me to play with my shelf of Lego mini figures. In short, I have no way to kill time.

Man, I really gotta stash a guitar in here.

writers write

I'm at Howards for my weekly writing session. Actually, I would love it if it actually were weekly. This is the first time I've actually made it out here this month...so the best I'm really hoping for is that I don't just spend the whole night knocking off the cobwebs and actually produce something. Time will tell, though

Sometimes when I come here, it's with a firm agenda. On the good days, an idea has wormed its way into my head, and I can't keep my head from spitting out possibilities all day...and when I get here, the ideas explode onto the paper. But writing relies an awful lot on muscle memory, and I haven't been writing songs as of late...so that ain't going to be the case tonight.

Instead, all I really bring with me are two fragments. The first came to me in the middle of the night about three weeks ago...so I grabbed the first thing I could find (a business card for a sadly defunct music store) and wrote down "spend all my time with animals--robots and mechanicals--dreaming of who someday I may be." What I was going to do with this, however, is a bit of a mystery...but it's evocative enough to where I'll figure out something eventually. I also have "maybe you'll stay if you still believe in love." This one, however, is less certain.

I did wake up yesterday with a damn-near complete heavy honkytonk song from a dream. It was pretty bleedin' good, but the chorus ended with the line "loving you is like a shotgun to the face." I couldn't bring myself to write this one down, though. The world has enough misogynistic murder ballads already without me adding to the toll.

The only thing I know I absolutely need to do is rewrite my song "Rise Above." It's about having a friend who has shut off his brain to the point where he's ruined his very real potential and is well on the way to becoming just plain ignorant. Draft one went, after two verse/chorus combos and a bridge, into a list of all the ways this person (and, by extension, the world) was turning into a particular brand of narrow-mindedness which was driving me crazy.

I really liked this version, but two things happened. The first time I played it, a few people make a joking "We Didn't Start the Fire" reference. Sigh. Also, it was friggin' exhausting to sing. So I gave it a normal third verse. Only problem? The normal third verse made the whole song feel normal. Double sigh.

So will I get any traction on "Rise Above?" Will I figure out what to do with either of the fragments I do have? Dunno. But I do know the only way to find out is to sit and do the work. There is only one truth in writing: writers write. That is what they do.

Time to become a writer again.