Short Takes 8/12

Back to School– So I went to Target on Sunday to buy a couple of things. The kids and parents were everywhere. All buying stuff for after school. I remember starting a new school year with cool supplies and new clothes. It was exciting up until like Junior high anyway.

Franz Ferdinand– I have had the title track of the new Franz Ferdinand album rattling around in my head all day. Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action the album will be released on 8/26. The single is on You Tube.

37.5– My current job does a 37.5 hour work week. Strange. 8 and a half hour shifts with an hour unpaid lunch. I don’t think I have ever heard of a company that does that before until now.

The Dodgers– My interest in baseball has waned greatly over the years. But it is interesting that my favorite team is the hottest team in baseball right now. Of course, it is all due to me passing along good psychic vibes to the team… Ok not so much…

Ok… two days of relatively light blogs in a row. I will try to put up something with more substance tomorrow. Just have to think of a good engaging topic.

A Cat Picture On The Internet??

Nothing too serious today. Just a good picture of my furry friend Audie. She has been my cat for nearly six years now.

I think the joys of animals is that they show us the repressed wild side of people. Both good and bad. Cats can be the funniest creatures.

Django Reinhardt And Left Hands

So today I was shopping at Half Price Books. Half Price Books sells used CD’s, DVD’s, Books, Video Games and other things. And for sale they had a three disk CD collection of the works of Django Reinhardt.

I had thought a lot about how Django Reinhardt was an inspirational figure for several guitarists I like including Richard Thompon and Tonni Iommi.

So I went on wikipedia to read up on Django Reindhardt. Django had a serious left-hand injury, which allowed him only to use his 4th and 5th fingers on his left hand. This is a serious injury for a guitar player. But listening to the man, his playing is unbelievable fluid and beautiful.

I think I remembered this on a unconscious level when I went to buy this CD. The reason why I say this is two-fold. First, I have been listening to a lot of Black Sabbath lately, especially Tony Iommi. Tony Iommi also has a serious hand injury. Tony took inspiration from Django Reinhardt.

As I stated in my last blog my dad has recently sustained a left-hand injury. Which is going to at least temporarily restrain his ability to play guitar. My dad taught me how to play in the first place. So when I think of music my dad and guitar playing is never far from my mind.

I guess this makes me hopeful that dad will eventually find his chops again. Also, honestly I am hoping to get some inspiration into my own playing as well.

Also I know that Richard Thompson is a huge Django fan as well. Of course, both of his hands are fully functional.

A side note… even though dad does not use the internet and will never read this unless I show it to him. I would like to say happy birthday. Thanks for everything.

Goodbye Radio

This is a song I recorded awhile ago. I think it is one of my better songs.

Mandatory Overtime- A Workman’s Tale

Unfortunately, my dad has injured his fingers. While he will be OK, he obviously is in a lot of discomfort. The thing that concerns me, is the circumstances behind the injury.

At the end of the previous week the company decided that they were going to have all employees do mandatory 10 hour days. Later they modified that to only the employees that had the work load, needed to work 10 hour days. Obviously my dad was one of the ones forced to work the extra hours.

Normally his hours are 7 to 3:30 but adding two hours for them means starting work at 5am instead. So Dad was forced to come into work earlier than he was used to. Dad’s job involves cutting pieces of steel. And because he was tired and out of it, Dad bashed his fingers.

The good news. Dad’s work sent him off to the emergency room and his injury and treatment will be covered by workman’s comp. However, this injury has basically disabled him from being able to do his job for the time being (Fortunately, also Dad had a week of vacation scheduled for this upcoming week anyway).

But let’s strip the story down a bit. Job forces worker to do too much. Worker gets hurt. Worker is no longer able to work. Instead of productivity being increased. It has actually been lessened.

I sincerely doubt that Dad would have hurt himself if the bogus overtime policy was not enforced. He has only being doing his job relatively injury free for over 20 years. Just some food for thoughr.

Can’t Someone Else Do It??

IT is trending more and more to outsourcing. Companies are moving away from having there own local IT staff to just having third-party agents running there IT.

The problem with this idea to me is a simple one. Are you safe with giving someone access to secure information that does NOT have a direct tie to the company they are working for.

Maybe the uniformity of having specialists that go from shop to shop setting up everything as an expert will make networks more secure. Or maybe the uniformity of setup will give hackers a knowledge base to build attacks around. I am not sure.

I know that I would appreciate the security of not having to always work as a journeyman. And it definitely is making me rethink my career choice.

Of course this leads us into the bigger issue of outsourcing in general. I believe that companies get back what they invest in the first place. And while on the surface of things, outsourcing may seem to be the way to go, I think that their are plenty of costs of outsourcing in terms of constant re-training. I also feel that outsourcing produces lower quality of work because the employees have no incentive to do anything more than the minimum required to do the job.

Lusus Grene

This is the first band I was ever in. It was called Lusus Grene. I am the dorky kid playing the guitar.

Bad News

I think people that compulsively follow the news are unhappy. It is good to keep abreast of things to a certain extent. But news is so uniformly negative that I think following news is kind of a way to reinforce negativity.

“Three people died in a car crash yesterday. See the world really does suck.” That is me telepathically taping into the news hounds’ mind.

I am happier by far when I do NOT follow the news.

I am trying to do at least one new blog every day to force myself to write. This one is not a high end blog though. Will try to deliver something a little bit more though-provoking next time.

Get Your Geek On– Responsibly

What is this one of those contradictory beer ads? Kind of…

Remember when geeks had to hide who they were. No adult would openly admit that they had a comic book collection 20 years ago. Nowadays however being a geek is ok. Whether it is Doctor Who, The Simpsons, or Star Trek everybody has a thing now. It’s ok to proclaim that your house is Griffendore (probably spelled wrong).

And bless the geeks. I wish there were more of them. At least they are intensely interested in something. They are willing to think about things.

Of course, there are some that go too far. They stray too far from reality and only begrudgingly emerge from their fantasy. This isn’t healthy.

Be proud to be a geek. Share the things you love. Your interests should be a way to reach out to other people. Not a way to shut out other people.

Emulation Not Imitation

We all have heroes. We all have people that we admire for various reasons. For instance I greatly admire Tony Iommi the guitarist for Black Sabbath. But am I going to slavishly dedicate myself to learning how to play everything the exact way he does? No.

If I REALLY wanted to emulate Tony Iommi I would have to cut off the ends of a couple of fingers and learn to play left-handed. That is not happening. LOL!!

But can I learn things from Tony Iommi? Yes. Where do you cross the line from being a fan to being a second-rate copy? How many Stevie Ray Vaughn clones are out there for goodness sakes? Hey I admire SRV as much as the next guy, but I don’t need to play the solos for Crossfire note for note either.I knew a guy who could play Eddie Van Halen’s eruption solo note for note. In one sense it was impressive. But, what a waste of time.

Why do we admire our heroes? It’s because they are good at what they do. They bring a unique talent to show the world no one else has. At least, until some yahoo comes along and learns to COPY everything that person does. COPY that is the important word. Sure I can play the guitar riff from “The Ocean” by Led Zeppelin. But I didn’t write it. That is a skill I don’t quite have.

I guess the thing is that I as an artist or as a musician want to increase the available vocabulary to pull ideas from. And yes listening to ideas that are out there and taking aspects of them and using them is a part of the process. But, the next incredibly vital step is combining those ideas to form something new.

Emulation not imitation. I will use aspects of what I like. But my goal is to make something new. Let’s be realistic about this. Imitating is a hell of a lot easier. But, your heroes didn’t imitate, they emulated. That is why you admire them. And if your truly want to be like them. That is what you need to do too.

I am a guitar player so I am using guitar players as my source of examples. But, this can be applied to any form of artistic endeavor. Just some food for thought.