Party Plans

I decided that for my 50th birthday later this year what I really, really want is to invite all my musician friends and have a big jam session.  If you found this post you most likely received an invitation telling you where and when.  It's only June and I am starting this page (which will be updated frequently) to let everyone know that they should bring their instruments and voices, practice whatever songs on the list that they feel comfortable with, and jump up on stage with us.

Now when I say "bring your instruments" I mean just the instrument -- we will have plenty of mics and amps, as well as a drum trap kit and a keyboard.  Out-of-towners, if you need lodging please let us know asap.  We have some rooms reserved at the Budget Host in Cameron but we will be putting a few folks up in various other places. 

My dream of all dreams is to play as a finale the second side of "Beatles -- Abbey Road".  I think we can pull it off.

Click here for an evolving list of songs (Excel format).
Click here for a folder with songs tabs, etc.

We're going to be jamming for a good four hours, so suggestions and requests are welcome.  In the meantime here is something to whet your appetite.  

Rock on!

Caseman

Three hundred words on death

From medieval times comes the concept of the “wheel of fortune”, which carries with it the concept of a capricious “Fate” who spins the wheel and determines our lot. Also related to that image is the concept of a cycle, in which souls go up and down, from birth to the apex of life, then back down again to the dust. Implied in this great revolving circle is an infinite repetition, with no beginning or end; a cosmic merry-go-round that we all get on, ride for a while, and eventually get off. This cycle is the natural mindset realized and accepted in medieval times and bequeathed to us: a vertical, up-and-down, cycle of existence. 

Nowhere in that mindset is the concept of “progress”. The seasons cycle, people live and die, and nothing ever improves. It is only with the Enlightenment that Western Man starts to think about maybe making society better for the next generation. Medieval society never harbored such illusions, so they celebrated the sun’s cyclical process and life itself, and death was not a gateway to an eternal existence, but a re-sowing and a continuation of the cycle. If a human life seemed cheap and expendable to the medieval, it is because it was inevitable and did not matter: a person’s death was simply his arrival at the next station on the wheel and a gateway to more life. 

By the time the Enlightenment arrived Christianity had already been around for a thousand years, yet it is interesting to note, even in Christian countries, how the natural, primal mentality persisted in superseding the doctrinal, to the point that, in order to remain viable, Christianity was forced to adopt the natural festivals as their own. Saturnalia, the re-birth of the sun, has always been and will forever be a time to renew mankind’s hope. And the spring equinox, in its post-winter bluebonnet-blooming glory, a time to remind us that without death, there is no life.

Generational soapbox

Hi everyone. Getting on my soapbox for a minute because I get sick of people whining about today's youth. The kids are alright, really. My advice to any grandparents out there who can't figure out what is happening in the minds of the young people in 2011 need to take their grandsons to a ball game or their granddaughters shopping and LISTEN to them.

Anyway, I got the following email which rails against young people who are just trying live their lives in the 21st century. I found it quite ironic. My reply to the author of this email is, if the "old way" was so great, why did YOUR generation change them? Like, why did YOUR generation decide that bottled water was better than water from the tap, and that it was worth $1.00 a glass? It's taking the "green" movement to undo that. With respect to my septuagenarian elders, you're just mad because this is this is YOUR legacy.

cds

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Now that I'm 75 years young, I can tell all the younger people I know where to go with their "Being Green".

The Green Thing

In the queue at the store, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day."

The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment."

He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that old lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana . In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then?

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a young person.

Remember: Don't make old People mad.

We don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off.

Wear a nice shirt and bring your "A" game

Published Thursday, Dec. 31, 2009 in The Cameron Herald. Thanks to my good friend and fellow horned frog Bill Crist, publisher of the Herald, for his edits on this piece. Click here to see the article as it went to print.

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Wear a Nice Shirt and Bring your "A" Game

People have been talking to me a lot about the BCS, mostly because of the success of my favorite team, the 4th-ranked TCU Horned Frogs. For the record, the reason that I and my family root for the Frogs is because lot of us went to school there. We are getting ready to fly out to Phoenix this weekend to watch them play in the Fiesta Bowl on Jan. 4.

I have a lot of friends, some of whom are Longhorn fans, who have expressed their sincere commiserations on TCU’s bowl opponent and suggest that we should have had a better game against a “legitimate” opponent. I appreciate the sentiment and am proud that our program is finally getting noticed, but we’re fine with it, really.

Sure, it would be cool to play in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans against Florida, but that’s out of our control. We play in the Mountain West, which is not an “automatic qualifying” (AQ) conference and so we do not have a say in the matter. I’m not bitter, it’s just a fact. We are not in the BCS Club.

See, the BCS is like a big, exclusive golf club that you have to have a lot of money and prestige to join. If you are a member of this club then you are entitled to say who gets to play golf there. If you are not a member of this club you are still entitled to play golf, but you have to do it somewhere else, like on a publicly owned course. You may be an excellent golfer, and you might even be able to beat their best, but that in itself does not entitle you play on the exclusive course with the snooty guys in their club championship and drive their golf carts around and sit in their fancy bar and drink their booze.

Unless you are invited, of course.

This year the BCS National Championship game will be played on Jan. 7 in Pasadena, CA between Texas and Alabama. TCU was not invited to play in this game, even though we thoroughly thrashed some pretty good teams this year on the way to being undefeated. We are not an “AQ” team and neither is our opponent, #6 Boise State. So we don’t get to play for the championship. It’s like, we got invited to play at the nice club but we have to tee off on #10 while everyone else goes off to the first hole. Whatever.

The truth is, we are lucky to have been invited all. There are a lot of entities – big state schools, TV networks, and corporate sponsors – who have put up a lot of money to make sure America is entertained with the best college football possible. This entitles them to invite whoever they want to play in their bowls. TCU didn’t put up any of that money and so therefore we are not entitled to a say as to where we play or against whom.

Most people think that college football needs a playoff to decide its champion. We all know that this is not going to happen any time soon because too many people have invested too much money in the current system. Besides, if the football genie jumped out of a beer can tomorrow and granted us a playoff, we would still have the same problem: who automatically qualifies for the playoff? It would be better, but somebody would still be left out. At least we can all agree that the current championship is “all about the money” and leave it at that.

If the world were fair, the top 10 teams would qualify for the BCS bowls, period. And we would have a fair and equitable system for determining those 10 teams so that everyone has an equal shot at winning the big prize.

The world isn’t fair, however, and everyone is trying to protect their self-interest. And you certainly should be entitled to have control over the things you paid for. The BCS big-shots paid for the right to say who plays golf at their club. Sometimes, though, they are nice enough to invite a guest or two.

So if you are lucky enough to get an invitation to the fancy club, here’s my advice: wear a nice shirt, keep your mouth shut, laugh at their stupid jokes, then bring your “A” game and beat the hell out of your opponent.

Go Frogs!

The Secret of Santa' Sleigh

Published Thursday, Dec. 24 in The Cameron Herald.

The Secret of Santa’s Sleigh

Hello boys and girls. It’s Christmastime again, and if you’re like me (and I know I am), you can’t wait for the big night when Santa Claus comes down the chimney with all the toys. But if you’re also like me you often ponder some of the deeper mysteries of the universe, like, what makes Santa’s sleigh fly?

Now, conventional wisdom would suggest that the sleigh is pulled along by eight magical flying reindeer (or nine, depending on your source) who dash from housetop to housetop. But everyone knows that reindeer can’t fly, and even if they could it is doubtful that they would have enough strength to pull a sleigh large enough to hold all of the toys necessary to supply all the children of the world, much less the speed to accomplish it within the given time frame, so there has to be another solution.

Speculation has run the gamut over the years as to the answer of this question. Does Santa have a private oil well? Maybe, but that would also require a big refinery to produce the fuel. Does his sleigh run on nuclear power? Unlikely -- the technology exist to make it small enough to be used for a personal conveyance. Has he discovered a vein of dilithium crystals in the Arctic and built a primitive warp drive? Not unless he also has a Scotty at his disposal.

I too have pondered this conundrum but had always assumed that Santa’s secret propulsion units would always remain a mystery, much like the secret formula to Coke. But then, the other day, completely by chance, I stumbled upon an ingenious technology on the internet of all places. According to a reliable direct marketing source, the government and big oil companies have been conspiring to hide this technology from us for years, even though the process is ridiculously simple and can be built by ordinary people using a very common substance for fuel.

The process was invented in the early 1800s and produces a combustible gas called oxyhydrogen (HHO), which can be used for things like blowtorches. These inventors came up with the idea for the “oxy-hydrogen blowpipe” which produces a flame hot enough to melt platinum, porcelain and fire brick. Wikipedia told me that.

So where does this gas come from? From the most plentiful substance on earth, that’s where: WATER. All you have to do is use the process of electrolysis to split H2O into its component hydrogen and oxygen molecules, and quicker than laying a finger aside of your nose, there you have a combustible fuel. And recently, some guys came up with this idea for a keen little electrolysis kit that will run off of your car battery. It comes with a bunch of tubes that you hook up which allow you to pump the oxyhydrogen straight into your carburetor, enriching your air/gas mixture and giving you more power and thus more miles per gallon. If you don’t believe me go to water4gas.com and see for yourself.

See, I gotta believe that Santa, being the inventor that he is, has already figured this out and has been using it for years. There are just too many parallels. First of all, when did we first hear of Santa Claus? It was in the poem “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”, first published in 1823, which, coincidentally, is right around the time that electrolysis was discovered. Secondly, besides cheap elf labor, what resource does Santa Claus posses in abundance? SNOW.

It all makes perfect sense. Don’t believe the naysayers who will tell you that it is inefficient because it takes more energy to perform the electrolysis than what you get from burning the resulting gas. Those are the same people who have conspired to prevent us from enjoying the benefits of the 200 m.p.g. carburetor. They will also tell you that Santa Claus is just a myth and doesn’t really exist, much less go around the world in one night in a flying sled.

Maybe using water to run your car sounds too good to be true and is too much to hope for. But why shouldn’t we hope for something better? Doesn’t Santa spread good will all over the world by bringing kids presents? And doesn’t the image of being able to reel out the garden hose and top off the tank give you some hope that there still is some good in the world? It’s the season of hope for all mankind.

So with that, I just want to say, “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!”

Column published

I'm a little late getting this up -- this column was published on April 30 in The Cameron Herald and The Rockdale Reporter. I was trying to be nice in print but this really pisses me off. The Rangers should change their name to the "D/FW Rangers" because they sure aren't the Texas Rangers any more.


I Just Want to Listen to the Game

When my dad was a boy growing up in Rockdale, before there were baseball teams in Texas, he used to listen to the St. Louis Cardinals. When I was a kid he and I used to spend summer nights with the radio on in the open window listening to stations from all over the US and Mexico. My kids, who are now grown, say they have fond memories of drifting in and out of sleep in the back seat on nighttime car trips while we listened to the game in the front.

Why all this nostalgia? Because I can no longer get the Texas Rangers on the AM radio in my car. Yeah, I know, it’s the crappy Rangers, but they are my team, and there’s something about passing the time listening to them when driving at night. The other evening I checked the score on my Blackberry before I got in the car and they were ahead, which doesn’t happen that often, so I wanted to hear the end of the game.

I tuned my radio to KRLD-1080, but guess what? THE GAME WASN’T ON!!! Instead they had some mediocre, ditto-head, Rush Limbaugh wannabe talk show where a kookoo lady caller was wondering if America was turning into a new Weimar Republic. Jeez, enough already. I can hear that any time, day or night. Isn’t KRLD the “flagship” station of the Texas Rangers Radio Network? Don’t they have Eric Nadel’s picture on their web site? You’re telling me they can sell more ads for a self-righteous conspiracy theorist than they can for a baseball game?

I called KRLD the next day and found out that they only carry Rangers games on the weekends; they are on a Dallas FM station during the week, which we don’t get in central Texas, and none of the radio stations in our area that sometimes broadcast the game (Waco, Austin, Bryan) have a strong enough signal that can be picked up at night.

So now my only recourse is to pay to hear the game. Yes, I said “pay”. To quote Tom Petty: “As we celebrate mediocrity / All the boys upstairs want to see / How much you’ll pay for what you used to get for free.” One option is XM Radio, which carries every major league game, but that involves installing a special receiver and giving them your credit card. It’s loud and clear, but it’s the principle of the thing. It would be one thing if I lived in Ohio and wanted to hear the Rangers, but I’m in Texas, dang it, and I should be able to get them on the Philco radio that came in my dad’s old Ford.

My other option is to sign up at MLB.com to hear it on my computer. It’s not that expensive, only $15 for the whole season, but I have to have my laptop with me, which is obviously freaking useless in my car unless I dish out $30 a month for an internet card.

So then I found out that I could sign up to hear a “streaming audio” broadcast of the game on my Blackberry, which costs me another $15 for the season. OK, except it’s not very loud because it’s a phone, so I have to hold the thing next to my head or use an earphone.

That makes me think of the transistor radio I got for my 10th birthday. I carried it everywhere I went, and one time in 4th grade I put it in my sock and ran an earphone up my pants leg and under my shirt so I could listen to it during social studies. So to listen to the game on my Blackberry I have to use an earphone, just like in 1972. And it turns out that the audio on my Blackberry cuts out in bad coverage areas, just like my old radio when I went under a bridge or if there was lightning.

You know me, I’m all about technology, but, really? I have to have a fancy phone with an internet package and PAY to listen to the crappy Rangers in my car? For the “Cubs of the South?” For the “Strangers?” Really?

So, KRLD, I guess you did it for a business reason, but is it worth denying us hopeless Rangers fans the opportunity to ride around in the sticks and hear the bullpen blow the lead or Michael Young win it with a walk-off homer? Can’t we just forget about all the mean-spirited blab for a few hours? Come on, we just want to pass the time listening to the game.

Hola

I am taking an upper-level Spanish course at UMHB. One day I am going to try and get into grad school and start working on a Master's in Spanish. For now I am just keeping current. The class is Spanish-American Literature. And this assignment has nothing to do with that, the prof just wanted us to write something creative for submission to a student publication. So here is mine.

It's a poem that I originally put together as a verse to a song that Emily was working on. If you don't speak Spanish and want to know what it means please feel free to comment and I'll fill you in. I like to call it ...

"Gatito de la madrugada"

Viene la alba a mi sopor
Copa de café con vapor
Soy un girasol
Ven mi amor a se reposar
Torna la cara a me brillar
Con tu luz del sol
Pajarito
Anuncia la mañana en el gran árbol
Ronroneando
Yo en el cariño de tu luz del sol

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Later,
Caseman