Watch this video:
I do so dearly love Disturbed version of this song, and I’ve raved about their original video, which is spectacular. But their music and the accompanying video of our planet from space – I could just wallow in that combination of sounds and sights for hours.
Thank you, NASA Johnson! And Disturbed! And Paul Simon!
In my old age I’ve become much more of a night owl and much less of a “morning person.” Thus the reminder notices stuck to the bathroom mirror this week have been a grim and painful reminder that the world wants me starting each and every day properly pissed off.
Every morning when I get into the car, a few seconds after starting it the sound system starts booting up and I’ll be hearing (perhaps) something from Oingo Boingo, Depeche Mode, The Cure, Morrissey, Pet Shop Boys… The radio is almost always left on SiriusXM Channel 33, “First Wave.” Depending on what I was listening to on the way home the previous evening it’s possible that I’ll get an NFL, NHL, MLB, or ESPN talk show – at which point I’ll switch it to First Wave.
This morning however…
Signs. Portents. Signs AND Portents.
I get Julia Ecklar’s “Temper Of Revenge.” A favorite song, a huge favorite. But not something normally found on any of the above mentioned SiriusXM channels. Or on any radio channel or SiriusXM channel.
What dark sorcery is this??!!
Well, obviously the radio has linked to my phone through the Bluetooth connection and is playing something at random from the music stored there. How this happened is unclear – or why. But what’s really attention-getting is the song chosen “at random.”
Find me a horse as red as the sun!
Find me a blade that will make their blood run!
I will ride out at dawn while the sun’s in the sky
So the buzzards can see where the bodies will lie!
Really, it was a very calm and civil finance committee meeting! No need for horses, blades, or buzzards! Honest!
P.S. – For the record, the next song to come up at random was Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party.” The third song was “One Day More” from the “Les Misérables” soundtrack, so it’s not entirely clear where that fits in with the theme established by the first two songs. It’s possible that after two songs my personal gremlin got bored.
P.P.S. – It’s also quite possible that I don’t have a personal gremlin, I was very short on sleep, and I was anthropomorphizing the shit out of the universe until the Diet Coke kicked in.
Tough night. As they say, let’s not be sad because she’s leaving us, let’s be joyful because of all she showed us and taught us.
And when you’ve sworn that you’re going to put on your big boy pants and make it through the vigil, you get this thread:
Then of course you have to watch the Cassini “Grand Finale” video:
Tomorrow, maybe it would be a good thing to start working a little harder to try to figure out how to get the powers that be in Washington to fund the next mission to Saturn. Maybe a Titan explorer, a boat to sail those methane seas or a balloon to soar over those petrocarbon pinnacles. Or an Enceladus orbiter to taste the plumes coming out of the polar tiger stripes.
Or both.
But for tonight, hail and farewell Cassini. You will always be Queen of the ringed planet in our hearts.
What sound relaxes you? What sound can you have in the background that you don’t need to pay attention to, don’t need to necessarily be involved or engaged with on a conscious level, but which gives you a measure of comfort and familiarity?
A baseball game. Not even knowing or caring who’s playing, who’s winning, who’s losing. Just that cadence, that rhythm, that flow. The sound brings back childhood memories of happy places, evenings spent by the radio listening to the home team on the road, back before every game of the season was on in hi-def, back before you got more than the “game of the week” on Saturday afternoon and your cellar dwelling team was never shown. The color commentator and the play-by-play guy, chatting and chewing over stats between pitches, the steady tone as we get the out of town scoreboard, the rising pitch and excitement as a towering fly goes back, back, back…
Rain. The pitter patter of a gentle but steady soaking, brushing through the leaves of the trees, bouncing off of the patio outside the door. Perhaps some peepers or croakers off in the pond or stream, advertising for a mate.
Thunderstorm! (My choice for the evening.) All of the calming joys of a rain storm, but with the crack of thunder every now and then, echoing across the hills, shifting and reverberating from all around as the storm slowly moves past.
Surf. The constant and never ending cascading of water in motion, running out of time and space as a continent gets in the way.
Air traffic control. A newer one, related in spirit to the baseball game, but now also a happy place that I long to return to, the left seat of an aircraft and the skies where I need to be on my game and ready to join in that snappy technical repartee to safely get from here to there. It’s almost another language, a secret tongue that only those who work and earn their way can learn to speak and be spoken to. Listening is like listening to a radio station in a foreign tongue, one you once knew by have now forgotten through a lack of use, but one which is starting to come back by osmosis as you let the white noise in the background seep into your pores.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Music
[EDIT: This was written AND FREAKIN’ PUBLISHED last night at about 23:40! Now WordPress is asking if I want to publish or delete it. I swear, i pushed the “Publish” button and saw it go. I was wondering why no one had mentioned it… I’m telling you, I’m needing a much better class of hallucination.]
I knew this would probably be coming, because I subscribe to her Patreon account (worth every penny, I love her and her work and her music and her art and her TED talk and her book) but I had sort of forgotten in all of the hubbub. (Stupid freakin’ hubbub!) Then I started seeing other people saying they had gotten theirs and after a while I was wondering if I might have gotten missed or lost. But again, even in that I was so caught up in the 9 to 5 chaos (or in my case, the 7 to 24 chaos) that even that didn’t get through to me.
But I recognized that sigil. I tried very hard not to squeee in the post office. I buried it in with the bills, magazines, and junk mail and waited until I got home to double check.
Even without the return address label, the stamps would have given it away.
‘Tis a thing to be cherished. And I will!
That moment when a song you’ve listened to and enjoyed for decades all of a sudden has a big flaw, and your subconscious is just sitting there grinning at you like Eddie Haskell, tongue stuck out, “Neiner, neiner, neiner! Ruined that song for you!”
Take a look at the lyrics for Charlie Daniels’ “Uneasy Rider.” You know the song.
Follow along…
Verse six – “There wasn’t a soul in the place except for him and me”
Verse nine – “some guy walked in”
Verse eleven – “These 5 big dudes come strollin in / With one old drunk chick and some fella with green teeth”
Verse thirteen – “there was three of them and only one of me”
Time out!
Even if we don’t count the bartender and the drunk chick, that’s SEVEN other guys, not three!
I call shennigans!
Filed under Music
Some days you need to listen to Supertramp’s “Breakfast In America” album at extremely high volume, regardless of the late-ish hour and the possible proximity of the neighbors.
Today is that day.
You have your marching orders.
(Actually, it’s so freakin’ hot here that the neightbors are all buttoned up with the A/C going full blast and so are we, so unless Supertramp actually shows up and sets up a gazillion watt sound system in the room with me, they’re never going to notice. Wait, did I get sidetracked again?)
Long day. All evening doing an online task which I do not enjoy but can not avoid. Not feeling the joy.
Listening to some tunes, as I have been known to do. (BTW, someone changed the key on “Jesus Christ Superstar.” I used to be able to sing along with that. Now it’s just ugly.) Tonight it’s Julia Ecklar for reasons I don’t recall, but I’m having a good time listening again.
Given the task and my mood, I’m ready for “Temper of Revenge.” As she says on the live version on another CD, “One set of chords and you’re all lusting for blood!”
So here we go! “Bring me my lance! Bring my shield! Strong as my sword is…”
“beep, beep! beep, beep! beep, beep!” My phone has cut off the music to have my alarm go off.
Stick a pin in that thought, I’ll be back in five minutes to wade hip deep into the demon horde, slinging entrails and limbs right and left with my massive broadsword. Right now it’s been two hours since dinner and I have to go do that blood test thing to make sure I’m not hypoglycemic.
Who knew that that’s what they meant by “lusting for blood?”
Tooling back through some tasty 70’s tunes tonight (some nights it’s the only thing that helps) and two observations strike me:
First, listening to the opening of “Jesus Christ Superstar,” I’m still constantly just STUNNED to realize that Judas was sung in the Original Broadway Cast recording by Murray Head – who also did “One Night In Bangkok” from “Chess.”
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this in the past (I’m pretty sure Jemima had comments about “Chess” which told me some things I hadn’t heard of before) but it still just leaves me gobsmacked.
Secondly, I had started with a little bit of “Chicago,” in particular the “Chicago 3” album. At the beginning of what was then Side Four is the spoken piece “When All The Laughter Dies In Sorrow.” To this day I remember thinking that it was incredibly sad, deep, and profound. Especially the final couple of lines –
Do you think a greater thinking thing
Will give a damn that man was here?
Oh to be young, stupid, and irresponsible again.
Is it actually better to not know better and do it anyway? In other words, having learned from experience, is it better to be like an exuberant and energetic puppy and get into the trash and chase that skunk when a wiser critter might hold back?
Was Dirty Harry correct? Does a man really have to know his limitations?
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Music, Paul
 | berich56 on Wispy With A Chance Of Straigh… |
 | Jemima Pett on War Board Review |
 | momdude on Above Average Sunset & Cre… |
 | Frederic Paulussen on Above Average Sunset & Cre… |
| Jemima Pett on Proof Of Life – Febrary… |
 | karen bear on iPhone 17 Moonrise |
 | Praveen Yadav on Evolution Of Some Weird C… |
| Jemima Pett on Why Is There Brain Freeze… |
We Love The Stars Too Fondly 