MAKING SOMETHING

...is what I do, so there's another song up on the almighty MySpace player! Go December! Anything not to have to sit and wrap more presents, I say. Anyway, the song is called "I Made You Something," which I did with help from a sample from a very cool local funk band from the late '60s called The Black On White Affair. Funnily enough and terribly timely too, it's from their amaaaaaazing version of "Auld Lang Syne," which is beats out Guy Lombardo by a mile in my book. If you can locate a version, you will be a lucky listener, as I was. I popped out a couple of loops for the backing, wrote some new words, and got up and sang in the morning while my voice was all gritty and cracking. I love the guy from TBOWA who is going WOOOOOO! He's my new best friend.

It's fun to have fun, it's fun to have funk, and it's a wrap.

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HOW NOT TO WRITE A HEADLINE

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GOAT 11

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GIVE AND TAKE

Give and take, take and give, give give give, take take take. This is something that people very frequently mess up. Learning how to be kind and generous, avoiding thoughtlessness and assholery while also not becoming a passive-aggressive dirt-encrusted doormat is somewhat tricky, especially for women. Women are generally the nurturers in society – not to say that men can’t be – but most men are not, let’s say, as connected to others’ needs. Let’s set up a scenario wherein a women is returning home from grocery shopping, which usually plays out in one of two ways:

#1:

Woman: (struggling to carry six grocery bags full of meat, beer, chips, dip, and more meat) MMMPHH! URRGH! UHHHHHHNNG!

Man: (glances up at her, continues watching TV)

Woman: (carries in second load of groceries, this time stomping feet) MMMMMPHHHH! URRRRGH! UHHHHHHNGG!!!!!

Man: (changes channel)

Woman: (begins to put groceries away, very loudly) SIGH! POUT!

Man: Could you keep it down? There’s gonna be a live building implosion on channel 14 soon.

Woman: (small blood vessel spontaneously bursts in brain, reminds herself to withhold all “favors” for the foreseeable future)

#2:

Woman: (struggling to carry six grocery bags, etc.) MMPHH! URRGH! Could you help me bring in the groceries, please?

Man: STOP NAGGING ME ALL THE TIME! I’LL GET TO IT! GOD!

Woman: (throws economy-size can of cut corn at head of Man; video production team from “COPS” arrives at front door)

Those folks aren’t going to change, so what can you do to get it right? How do you give without depleting your own resources, and how do you take without being a selfish creep? You gotta walk a FINE LINE, my friends, a tightrope, do a balancing act, and other tired clichés.

How To Give Effectively:

1. Know yourself: Know how much time and effort you can give out to other people. Set the cut-off point right before you start to feel put-upon, used, or exhausted. Practice saying, “No, I can’t, I am sorry,” with a real smile. Practice saying, “Sure, how can I help?” with a real smile.

2. Know what you are good at giving: If you try to give something you don’t really have to give, you will quickly get in trouble. Don’t give money if you are not doing so well yourself or if you actually expect to get it back, don’t offer to help a kid with math if you are unable to add yourself, don’t give your time if it means you will be chronically sleep-deprived trying to fit everything in, causing you to drive into a tree. Do offer to share any special talents or experience that you have, unless it is illegal in most northern states.

3. Praise specifically: Give praise that is meaningful. “Oh, that’s wonderful! Everything you do is great!” quickly becomes unheard. “I like the way you structured that paragraph,” or “The colors you picked are so pretty together,” or “I am so proud that you didn’t impregnate that slore of a girlfriend, son, way to go!” gives real feedback to the recipient.

4. Be aware: Not everyone is good at asking for help when they need it. Do a little daily survey around you. If you have a friend or family member festering on the couch, and when you ask them how they are doing they blurt out, “FINE! JUST FINE! THANKS SO MUCH FOR ASKING!” you might want to offer some kind of assistance. You also might want to ask them if you should just leave for a few days.

5. Recognize the Soul-Sucking Vampire: There are people in this world who will take and take and take and take, and then they will take and take and then take, until you cut them off. It’s never enough, and they will go from person to person with their sob stories until they have left a trail of human piles, just dusty folds of skin and clothing plopped there, all dried up. Don’t be fooled; you are the Titanic survivor and they are a 5000-lb. weight looking to tie on to your ducky float ring.

How To Take Effectively:

1. Ask specifically: Even your mother isn’t a mind-reader. If you need help, don’t expect anyone to necessarily recognize that and all white-horse swoop you. Define what you need, figure out the right person to ask, and set a limit to it. Asking “Can I get a ride to work from you this week? My car is in the shop. I can help with gas,” will get you a much better response than “WAAAAAAAA! MY LIFE SUCKS!”

2. Be humble and gracious, but not unctuous: Thank people for what they do for you, but don’t smother them with gratitude. It’s annoying to be over-thanked.

3. Ask nicely: Obviously, “Can you help me with the toilet? It’s stopped up,” is much better than, “CHRIST! IT REEKS IN HERE! GO FIX THE SHITTER ALREADY!”

4. Observe and learn: Pay attention to the people helping you. If you can learn to do what they are doing, then the next time you screw up, you can help yourself.

5. Don’t be a Soul-Sucking Vampire: We all know how nice and comforting it is to have people coddle us and tell us that we are grand and listen to us whine while making us a nice dinner and giving us 50 bucks. However, if all you do is look to others to solve your problems and make you feel better and give you stuff, you aren’t going to have anything but dusty inanimate piles of human around you and you will have to put “Professional Selfish Creep” on your tax form. Fix your own shitter sometimes, baby.

Make sure your tightrope is securely fastened on both ends. Start walking.

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MERRY BRITMAS

I could not give more hearty support to the fine citizens of the United Kingdom who are campaigning to make a Rage Against the Machines song #1 on the British sales charts for Christmas. The British are a funny bunch when it comes to music; they make music that is some of the best ever, yet also have a real fondness for incredibly silly garbage pop, even worse than here in the US. But they get fed up with stuff faster too, hence this backlash against the TV-show-pop-pap that is largely driving the entire music industry now.

This "what's #1 at Christmas" thing is apparently a big deal over in Limeyland, so this is getting a lot of attention. I implore all British fans of D.I. to go to the Facebook page where it all started, and purchase the RATM single TODAY!!! Beyond this delightful F U, the group is also providing a link to donate to Shelter, which is a charitable organization dedicated to improving conditions for the homeless and others. They have raised almost sixty-thousand pounds already via the RATM fun, which is fantastic. If I could join in, you can bet I sure would.

Piss off Simon Cowell and house the homeless for Christmas! GO GO GO BRITS!

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HA 23

("Chewy Chewy" by the Ohio Express is playing on the car radio.)

MissSeven: Hey! This song is kid-friendly!

Me: (smile)

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MY FAVORITE 2009 SONGS, BECAUSE PEOPLE LIKE LISTS

Man. Everyone is listing and counting down and tallying and such this time of year. I really only pay attention to music lists, because I don’t give a crap about movies or TV or most anything, really. But I do listen to an awful lot of music over the course of a year, not anywhere near as much as I would like to but I sometimes have to eat and let the dog out and sleep.

I don’t like “BEST OF” lists because that is a silly concept. But I can tell you the songs that were released this year that I went mental over, the ones I played over and over. These were the ones that I not only loved, but they sparked some kind of strong emotional connection or inspired me to think about what was possible to create, and certainly greatly added to my life. I am always so genuinely excited to know that every year brings me more wonderful music and surprises. Bring it on, 2010!

In no particular order, because I SAY SO.

What Would I Want? Sky -- Animal Collective: From their Fall Be Kind EP, this is the sound of December 2009 for me. I really feel this one, more than even I, Wordy McBlart, can say. Beautiful.



Ain't No Rest For The Wicked -- Cage The Elephant: Great bluesy sound, freshly updated, BIG sound, and lots of fun.



The Longing – Eels: Hombre Lobo is a masterpiece of an album, and if I had to give a “best” award, it would go here. Every song on there is remarkable. This one is heartbreaking.



You've Got The Love (Xx remix) -- Florence + The Machine: This remix by the equally-indie-awesome band The Xx is so hot it isn’t even available for sale yet. So cool and artfully put together, like if you had Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell as a high-tech robots, in the best way possible.



Sinfonia Agridulce -- Mexican Institute Of Sound: Yes, this is a traditional mariachi version of The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony.” And yes, I think it is funny and incredibly cool and somehow very sweet, too.



Leaving California -- PJ Harvey & John Parish: PJ is one brave and strange artist, and I am sure she would agree. A Woman A Man Walked By is a strong album, and this song made a great impression upon me, about taking risks and trying to do things you think you couldn’t.



Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh Oh -- Say Hi: Another inspiration! Local Seattle band Say Hi, in the recorded sense is really just one guy and a computer, and I loved the clever pop construction of this song from the album Oohs And Aahs. Here’s a live version – I was in the audience, yay!



Answer To Yourself -- The Soft Pack: Formerly known as The Muslims (you can see why they bagged that name), this is a RED HOT HOT HOT HOT HOT song from their upcoming album, TONS of energy YAYAYAYAYAYA! Love it. Love it so much that I popped a harmony on top of it and put it on my player, if you want to hear what that sounds like. Go go go The Soft Pack!



Cousins --Vampire Weekend: These guys can do no wrong it seems. They sell out all their shows, and people are frothing at the mouth to get more songs like this from their soon-to-be released new album, “Contra.” They have an instantly-recognizable sound, and can actually play this perfectly live. Whoa!



Wilco (The Song) – Wilco: This is just pure fun pop, with a little sarcastic twist, and a lot of heart too.



If I Were Zooey Deschanel –- Marianne: If you would have told me in 2008 that I would record a song completely off my laptop mic and it would be played on the radio and sold on iTunes and Amazon I would have said OH HALE NO, WUT YOU TALKING, THAT CRAZY. But there we are, and it sure has been a LOT of fun for me and I think for others as well. I also learned a whole lot about Zooey Deschanel fans this year. Man. I regret that I did not have the opportunity to play this at her wedding, which was HERE in Washington. Oh, the pain.



So that’s that. I gave up a nap to write this, and now must navigate my vehicle to pick up my spawn. Rock on, y’all.

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CHRISTMAS IN JAIL

I did a quickie cover of the wonderful and silly "Christmas In Jail" by The Youngsters, and you may find it on my player here. I used the dog's "let me out" bells from the back door on it. The More You Know. Merry Christmas!

Here's the original for ya, too.

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ARE YOU OLD?

Don’t ask your doctor, don’t look in the mirror, don’t go try to find your birth certificate. Take my quiz, answer honestly, and I will let you know. If you wanna know.

These are all simple yes or no questions. Let’s begin.

1. Do other people tell you regularly that the volume on your TV is TOO LOUD?

2. Do you often block the supermarket aisle with your cart, and are completely surprised when you see several people waiting to get around you?

3. Have you purchased and/or actively listened to no new music since your teens or 20s?

4. Have you not danced in at least 10 years, even by yourself in the bathroom?

5. When you are driving, do you decline to use your directionals and just slowly drift wherever you would like to go?

6. Do you take an increased interest in the state of your lawn?

7. Do you routinely fall asleep in a chair in the evening, wake up around midnight and go to bed, and then get up for the day around 5AM?

8. Do you find yourself talking about your medical issues or your friends’ medical issues more than 70% of the time?

9. Do you become very upset when your favorite jeans, sneakers, or makeup items that you have used for the past 20 years are finally discontinued, and then are compelled to go on a quest to hunt them down at Ebay or the Dollar Store?

10. Have you not changed your hairstyle in the last 5 years?

11. If you bend down past the waist, do you hear pops, or can you not bend that far?

12. Do you write out checks at the grocery store?

13. Do you not know how to send a text message or play a videogame?

14. Do you have more hair in your ears, nose, and upper lip than on your head?

15. Gray pubes?

16. Do you think the world is going to hell in a handbasket?

17. Do you write letters of complaint to newspapers, government officials, and businesses?

18. If you attempt to do more than one thing at a time, do you have a mini-stroke?

19. Do your pants and/or underwear come up past your belly button?

20. Do you like to eat dinner at 4PM?

21. Do you make a list so you don’t forget things, then forget where you put the list?

22. Do you vote?

23. Do you drive a large Lincoln sedan or another vehicle that is referred to as a “land yacht?”

24. Do you need reading glasses?

25. Do cruises, crafting, early-bird buffets, a rub-down with Ben Gay, or senior junkets to Atlantic City sound like fun to you?

All done. Give yourself one point for every “yes” answer.

0-5 points: You are practically fetal, you shiny new penny.

6-10 points: Age is creeping in, although you might bop your head to some music on commercials now and then.

11-15 points: If you aren’t in the middle of a mid-life crisis now, it’s going to be arriving in the form of a shiny new Corvette or 100 units of Botox soon.

16-20 points: You are old. Not a little old, like OLLLLLLLLD.

21-25 points: You are already dead and viewing this from Hell, which is located in Handbasket, New Jersey.

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GOAT 10

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Thanks, Dena!


I can't post it here without annoying autoplay, but trust me. Click the link. Or this one!

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ABBA IS NOT

Oh, I tell ya, I tell ya, some things get me irritated, including the news that the blandest, lamest pop group EVER, which is ABBA, is getting into the Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame. Aw, come ON people! Why not nominate The Singing Nun or Raffi or this?



Yes, that’s the 1968 winner of the annual Eurovision song contest with (wait for it) “LA LA LA.” Pretty powerful stuff, I know. I think the winning song the year before was “DEE DEE DEE” and the year after was “DOO DEE DOO DEE, LA LA LA.” Clearly, the four Swedes that made up ABBA took a page from that book to come up with their very own Eurovision entry, the deeply-introspective and hard-hitting “RING RING.”



Just get the two fairly hot girls to sing along together, say the same words over and over 5000 times in a row, and squeeze the sound through a 1” aluminum colander into a bowl of tin foil. Repeat until wealthy.

Actual titles of ABBA songs:

Bang-A-Boomerang
Conociéndome, Conociéndote
Dame! Dame! Dame!
Dum Dum Diddle
Free As A Bumble Bee
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!
Hey, Hey Helen
Honey, Honey
I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do
I Am A Musician
King Kong Song
Money, Money, Money
On and On and On

In my ideal world, fellow 2010 RNR HOF entrants The Stooges would run onstage during ABBA’s induction performance, make out with the girls, kick the guys’ asses, then push them all off the front of the stage and perform this:



It could happen.

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HA 22: SPECIAL CHRISTMAS EDITION

I saw this and went BAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Please to enjoy.

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LITTLE CHANGE

I had to make a stop at the ATM today to continue the Annual December Depletion Of The Monies, dragging MissSeven and Mr11 behind me in the dark rainy afternoon. Ten feet to right of the cash spewer is a Salvation Army bell ringer; ten feet to the left, a young man in a dirty parka leaning against the supermarket wall, smoking.

“Little change little change little change little change…”

“Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding…”

“Little change little change spare change got any spare change…”

“DINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDING…”

The competition for my spare change – and they knew I had it, considering they watched me withdraw a wad from the ATM – was fierce, Bell Ringer vs. Panhandler. I gave each kid a buck and told them to pop it in the red metal bucket, even if just to stop the incessant ringing for a few seconds.

As we walked over to Starbucks to get a snack, MissSeven piped up.

“Mom, why did we give money to the one person and not the other person?”

I could have given her a long-winded talk about seasonal charities and the ever-widening social underclass and that there for a few paychecks could go us all, and the unpredictability of life, mental illness and more, but she was more interested in eating her Starbucks brownie so I kept it short. Short-ish, OK, OK.

“If I have some spare money to give, I like to give it to an organization where I know my money will help people who need food and clothes and shelter and such. The Salvation Army has been around a long time and they have a good structure. Sometimes people who are on the street have serious drug or alcohol problems; not all the time, but I still don’t want to take the chance that my money might go to buy someone things that are unhealthy for them and won’t help them get off the street. There’s just no way to know. It’s sad. There’s not a right or wrong answer about it; some people don’t feel like I do about it.”

Mr11 chimed in. “Why doesn’t that guy just get a job? He didn’t look sick to me.”

“Yeah!” MissSeven brightly concurred. “All he has to do it walk up to Microsoft or Taco Bell and ask, and I bet in a week he would have a job!”

I allowed myself to enjoy her vision for a moment, and then responded.

“Well, you have to be qualified to get certain kinds of jobs. And he might already have a job, but it doesn’t pay enough. It’s just not quite that simple.”

On the way back to the car with the coffee and brownies and pumpkin bread, we passed them again.

“Ding ding ding ding ding ding…”

“Little change little change…”

I nodded at him, thought about the teenager I saw yesterday holding a sign that said “Pregnant and Homeless” who got into a landscaping truck that pulled up next to her on the road, thought about how some things are predictable and how some are accidents of fate, and how some things, change little.

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SKI

I had a spectacularly-brief time in my life when I was a “skier,” for about 3 months the winter I was 14. It was the cool new thing to do in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, as the town had been recently blessed with the addition of a ski hill. It was actually just a very large amount of dirt all piled up to make a few ski runs, making anyone who had been to Colorado or Vermont or Utah laugh and point, but it was our dirt hill and hanging out at the ski lodge beat drinking watery Blatz in someone’s smelly paneled rec room. Skiing looked cool and fun, all the rich kids skied, and I was pretty desperate to get out of the house for any reason at all. I ditched my red parka from Sears for a sleek black ski jacket (fifty dollars it was!), put my smokes in my wool socks, and begged enough money from my folks for a day pass, equipment rental, and some hot cocoa and a cheeseburger in the lodge.

I should have taken ski lessons, but that was deeply UNCOOL. Most of the other kids had been skiing for awhile, and I figured if I just watched them I could figure out what to do pretty quickly. How hard could it be? Snap those boots in the bindings, get on the lift, go down the hill. Sigh. I spent most of the first few times falling three seconds after I started trying to even move towards the lift, then trying to pretend I had skied already and needed a break in the lodge. A lot of hot cocoa and a lot of Marlboro Greens, which I am sure looked completely ridiculous – some librarian-looking child smoking in a fifty-dollar jacket clomping around in ski boots.

Eventually, I made it ON the ski lift. Oh, dear. How do you get OFF? SHIT. How I got off was pretty much fall off at the last minute and try to scramble out of the way of the next chair before I got clocked. I remember looking down from the top of the snowy dirt hill for the first time, thinking that perhaps this was a very bad mistake on my part, because if I wanted more cocoa or to ever return home again, I would have to SKI DOWN THE HILL. I think it took me about 30 minutes freezing up there with my friends coming and going and laughing and encouraging before I decided, well, alright, get on with it. I pushed off and I did not fall. What I did was pick up speed at a very alarming rate. Something I also had neglected to think about was TURNING and STOPPING. I had a vague idea that you were supposed to make big S-turns and then dead stop in some kind of a cool sideways spray of glittering snow. My vague idea was completely replaced by the realization that skiing was much harder than it seemed and I had not too much time to figure out how not to die. Down the hill I went, zipping past other skiers in one straight bullet line, faster and faster. I was terrified but also thought it was terribly funny and started laughing. Good to go out with a smile.

At the bottom of the hill were a couple people who had set up a large camera on a tripod. I would like to now, many many years later, apologize to these photography enthusiasts for ramming into their expensive equipment, sending it flying into the air as I rolled and tumbled to a stop in a mess of skis and poles and crushed cigarettes and Bonne Bell Dr Pepper Lip Smacker. Fear is a great motivator – as I heard them yell at me I ditched the skis, one of which was quietly sliding down towards to the bunny hill anyway, and clomped away as fast as I could, red-faced with snow covering my glasses, to hide in the ladies’ bathroom. Eventually my friend Linda walked into the stall next to me, and assisted in my rescue. She located and returned all my rental crap, got my regular boots from the locker, and borrowed a bright pink ski jacket and a pom-topped knit hat from one of the rich girls so I could make it out of the lodge and down to the parking lot where my parents were going to pick me up. The disguise worked, and of course I am still friends with Linda today. I did rescue her a few years later from a toilet stall at the Milwaukee Arena during an Aerosmith concert, climbing under the door even. She was a bit out of it, heh.

You would think I would’ve learned my lesson about skiing, but it took a real accident a couple of months later to get it through my concussed and ambulance-transported skull. The lesson was that I had no business being on skis and that I was a danger to myself and everyone else. Another thing learned was that I really wasn’t all the interested in skiing, and that trying to hang out with the rich kids wasn’t all that exciting except for that one time I gave Bill Johnson a buck to eat a cigarette and he did. So, to recap:

1. If you are going to ski, take lessons until you feel fully in control of your bad swift self;
2. Wear a helmet ALL THE TIME (RIP, Sonny Bono);
3. Don’t smoke;
4. Don’t try to be someone you aren’t because that never ends well;
5. If you mess up, atone for it or at least throw a twenty-dollar bill in the air and run.

This is pretty much what it looked like then, except there were no mountains. I totally love the blue-shirted lift guy.

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WHY

WHY

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Why may refer to:

* A request for an evidential reason.

REASON (argument)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In informal logic, a reason consists of either a single premise or co-premises in support of an argument. In formal symbolic logic, only single premises occur. In informal reasoning, two types of reasons exist. An evidential reason is a foundation upon which to believe that or why a claim is true. An explanatory reason attempts to convince you how something is or could be true, but does not directly convince you that it is true.

REASON WHY

Reason why, reason is because Redundant. Omit needless words. They canceled the contract because ... Not: The reason they canceled the contract is because ... Also: The reason for the decision is ... Not: The reason why the decision was made is ... Other simpler alternatives: is caused by, is that.

REDUNDANCY (language)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the study of language, redundancy is the construction of a phrase that presents some idea using more information than is necessary for one to be able understand the idea...The use of obfuscating, tumid linguistic constructions in vocally or graphically expressed communications (as in that phrase, which could more simply be expressed as "being longwinded") is also a form of redundancy, with several names. Two rather formal names for it are prolixity and logorrhoea. It is often done with manipulative intent, e.g. to confuse and mislead the audience, to disguise the actual nature of a position or fact, or to persuade in politics or religion. In such cases it is often also fallacious. Comedian George Carlin was famous for criticizing the politically—and socially—motivated abuse of logorrhea to hide the truth or manipulate public perception.

Logorrhea rhymes with diarrhea.



So. Think again before you ask me why.

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