Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Dog Daze of May

Like a big dog, Life picks us up by the scruff of the neck and shakes us silly. ("Surly" might be closer to it.) Cursed by cars, consumed by computers, sold out by our cells--whether cancer in the flesh or the camera's red-eye flash--working our selves deeper into cosmic, economic, and social-medium debt (neither rare nor well done), belaboring all.

I'm currently trapped by tasks I'm too slow for, and tricked by this tripwired hard-drive. Waiting in the wings, my newest piece can't be posted until I learn how to convert a stubborn pdf file into some more-malleable format. (Suggestions are not only welcome; they are sought!)

In the meantime, read some of the most excellent of other blogs and sites: for Jazz, check Doug Ramsey's wise and measured Rifftides, Jazz Profiles by the inexhaustible Steve Cerra, ever-quirky Brilliant Corners, VillesVille for elegant Ellingtonia, and the inelegant Bill Evans mainstay; for Rock/Rootsier material, try allmusic, BeesWeb (i.e., Richard Thompson and related), extensive Early Blues, and the Guthrie descendants' homage to Woody. I also recommend the amazing Samuel Beckett site and (less active now but good stuff in his archives) War Poetry for... well, take a guess. (And if you are desperate for some culture a la Shakespeare, there's always this droll curiosity.)

I hope to get with it soon--blogging actively again, I mean. Till then, drive safely and defensively, and cool it with the phone-cell photography. In the immortal words of Ray Davies of the Kinks, "People take pictures of each other, Just to prove that they really have been there." You could be a model of restraint instead.