Got drizzled on for a few hours this morning, then the sun came out and it became miserably steamy and humid.
Customer Service Week is over and done with for another year, thank G-d. What a stupid, pointless, insulting waste of time. I did get a free meal out of it, but I had to take it to go, which from what I saw and heard is what everyone did because they worked us so hard no one wanted to stay around and "relax."
I also saw and heard that one of the main organizers was pretty p.o.ed that we didn't all sit down together and have a meal like one big happy family. Apparently she thought we should have all stopped working at noon, come in to eat, then gone back out and finished afterwards. Only a true fat-assed office worker could think like that. So I'm glad she was unhappy. I wish they'd discontinue this b.s. tradition and leave us all the h*** alone.
One of my surprise "treats" was to find they'd snuck a Coke Zero into my truck overnight. A freakin' Coke Zero. WTH? Not only that, but it was only a 7.5 ounce can. A) I don't like Coke. B) I don't like diet drinks. C) 7.5 oz is barely enough for me to even notice I've swallowed something. Also, that stuff doesn't have caffeine, right? Why would I even bother drinking a soft drink with no caffeine in it?
And now I have jury duty coming up. This is the first time I've been summoned in about 20 years. Before that, I received 3 summons' within about 18 months, and one thing or another happened so I didn't get on the jury.
1st time: The guy who was going to trial opted to be tried before the judge only and forego the jury.
2nd time: I was in school and they let me go because of that.
3rd time: I got the summons, then about a week later got a follow-up de-summons, that is, a letter from the judge saying my services were no longer requested. All three of these were during 1990-91, or maybe 91-92, I'm not sure.
The kid is drawing an Elder sign. That's the not the kind of thing he'd do if he were worshiping Cthulhu. So...either this kid has Randolph Carter-level resistance to insanity and is hitting the Big Guy with an eldritch magic sucker punch, or someone goofed when they were making this graphic.
This week is "Customer Service Week" at my place of employment, which means that we are expected to act like one big happy family and play stupid games every morning instead of just going out and doing our jobs and getting the **** out of there as soon as possible.
Of course this means they've been working us extra hard. We're supposed to do around 600 meters per day, more or less, depending on what kind of route we have. Friday I did 685, Monday I spent all day in the Dominion (could only read about 580 meters, because it's the Dominion), today I did 711.
I find the whole "Customer Service Week" crap pointless and insulting. I'm hoping that the extra work will put us far enough ahead that we still get a free meal on Friday afternoon. That's what happened last year, anyway. The year before that, I got such a bad assignment that by the time I finished there wasn't anything left of the brisket but gristle and fat.
I finished up building my big favorites list finally, except for all the "various artists" collections and the jazz directory. So I took a break and tonight am getting around to listening to some of the new stuff I've been downloading free, mostly samplers from Amazon. Here's one that I found quite interesting.
Jewish holiday music. Some of the tracks are just standard pop fare, but I think it's worth downloading just for something different. I would recommend skipping track 13 because it's rap--English rap, unfortunately. If it had been Hebrew rap...well I've never heard any but I think it would be pretty cool. Anyway, some favorites on this one, especially track 3 which is sung in Hebrew.
Also worth checking out--one which I downloaded just today, is...
It's probably not what you think it is. Especially of note from this collection is a group called Lilium Aeris, who specialize in ancient music played on period instruments (harp and recorder!). If you have a thing for ancient/medieval music, look them up on YouTube. I haven't heard the whole thing yet (total playing time 63 minutes), but I'm liking it all so far.
At Film School Rejects. Also the real people behind some other famous comedians.
This may shock and dismay some of you, but I've always liked Gottfried and have always been greatly amused by him. I first saw him doing some stand-up on one of those late-night stand-up comedy shows back in the 80s and he had me ROFL. I even remember one of the jokes he did, about when he took away his pet turtle's staircase.
I know he was also a regular on SNL at one time but I've never seen any of those shows.
Well, if you hadn't heard of it yet, one of the local TV stations released all of my employing company's payroll information. Because they can, I guess. I think the biggest shocker for outsiders is that very few of us are overpaid. I don't suppose this will help anyone to learn that their water bills are high because they waste so much water by dumping it out on the ground (which most people refer to as "watering the lawn"). I can almost guarantee this is going to cause more internal problems than external. I have already looked over the spreadsheets myself and was amused more often than aggrieved. For example, I checked two people who I know were hired on the same day. Person #1 has applied himself well, doing his job better than almost everyone else in the department (by the way, this person is not me), and doing what was required of him. Person #2 (not me, either), has spent his entire time complaining about every little thing he could and at times simply refusing to do what he was hired to do. In a normal company, this would of course get you fired, but with my employer it's almost impossible to get fired, so he's still there. Person #1 got regular merit increases and eventually transferred to another department and now makes a couple thousand per year more than I do. Person #2 is still making basically the same amount at which he was hired. I got a big kick out of learning this.
In my wildest fantasies, I see some bigwig looking at this information and saying, "why didn't Person #2 ever get any raises?" and being told, "because he's a worthless f***off" and replying, "then why hasn't his sorry a** been fired?" That's only a fantasy, though. It won't happen.
Here's a mascot (a friendly stray dog) from Thursday. He followed me around for about half an hour down in the godforsaken bottom end of the Old Sky Harbor area.
My daughter has a history assignment in which she has to have her photo taken while standing next to at least 5 historical markers in our home county, and create a poster board with the photos and textual information regarding them. I took her photos with a regular (film) camera because it's just a lot easier to have it developed than to try and print decent digital pix, but I also took a few digital photos so she could begin writing up the text part of her assignment.
Here's the big marker in Sutherland Springs. If you click to enlarge you can probably read it all. By the way, the 1998 flood was worse than the 1913 flood, as far as water volume. It didn't result in as much property damage, nor cause any deaths (here), but as far as sheer volume of water, it was worse.
Here's one I didn't know about until just recently when my dad told me about it. Unfortunately I couldn't get any closer so my digital photo isn't readable, but this is an old homestead site that is still private property. The buildings you can see are both original, except for the a/c window unit on the house, I guess.
The first three shown here are all within just a few miles of my house. There was one other but I took close-up shots of it so we could read the photos and they don't look good enough to bother posting here (it's for an old oil field). This is the Polley family Cemetery, not far from what everyone now calls "the Polley mansion," but which its original owner called Whitehall. You can read this one easily.
This last one is several miles from my home but which I have family connections with. There were actually two markers here, but unfortunately I forgot to take a shot of the second, smaller marker, although we did get a film photo of it with my daughter. The cut-off part at the top says "Marcelina Community." I lived near here from the time I was about 4 to 6 years old. Those objects at the far top left are tombstones; there is a cemetery there also which as I mentioned has its own marker that I neglected to capture digitally. I have several relatives buried there, including my great-grandmother, whose grave is now lost and unknown. However, I showed the kids the approximate location of where about it's supposed to be according to my dad. She died when he was a little kid, and before a permanent marker could be erected over it, a tornado blew through that destroyed/displaced many of the small temporary markers they used back then. And of course, back then they didn't keep blueprints of the grave layouts, either. I also showed the kids where many of their relatives are buried; the last time I was there before today was for my great-uncle's funeral in 1992.
And finally I would like to direct your attention to a cool slideshow of Lovecraftian images assembled by my friend Babel, to the music of Shriekback's "Coelecanth."
Occasionally the topic comes up of "songs about San Antonio." And there are quite a few. Here's one that most people have never heard, or even heard of. I wish I could get a better quality recording of it, but it looks like this is the only one to be heard on the whole internet.
"San Antone" was written by Barry De Vorzon and sung by Denny Brooks. De Vorzon has written lots of pop and country songs as well as soundtracks. He even wrote the soundtrack for one of the greatest movies of all time: Night of the Creeps. Brooks was one of John Denver's backup musicians and recorded some stuff on his own but never achieved much fame.
This song was part of the soundtrack to Rolling Thunder (1977), which was partly filmed in San Antonio and which I've never seen, and then again was used in the opening scene of The Ninth Configuration (1980), which I have seen and is why I know about it.
Deep in my gut I know this is going to happen. You will hear the truth of it second- and third-hand, and you won't want to believe it. The media will portray the incident as dutiful government agents against an extremist fringe group, and you will want to believe them. But then it will happen again. And again. And suddenly one those who have died or disappeared will be someone you know. Then your doubts will begin to grow, and you will become one of those in danger.
Perhaps more frighteningly, as Gillespie argues in Wired Shut, the issue is no longer about what is illegal but about what is possible, as defined by the private security forces we have hired to patrol the borders. No longer public servants, but for-profit corporations. No longer a political football where the debate is at least a matter of public record, but a set of lawyers quietly negotiating Terms of Service agreements, re-writing the borders of possibility at computational speed and enforcing them with software incapable of reason. This new territory is perhaps wider than the old, but the border enforcement is harsh: shoot first, ask questions later.
What troubles me most isn’t that there are borders (there always will be), or that they are different (they always change) but that while in the material world removal is manual and leaves evidence of its passage, in the digital it can destroy without leaving a mark. A redacted document shows, in effect, the action of redaction. The infamous Nixon tapes are not zeroed data, but rather contain an 18.5 minute over-dubbed section of physical tape whose contents historians still hope to recover. Aphrodite’s head still exists, even with her nose missing and a cross on her forehead, and even the Taliban have left enough of the Afghan Buddha statues that international organizations hope to rebuild them someday. But as we evolve into a future where almost all of our cultural output is fragile and digital, I wonder what becomes of the content rejected from the canon?
Very interesting article regarding the transitory and changeable nature of digital media.
NOTE: "Borders" in this article refers to metaphorical borders, not physical borders.
I have been looking for this album for a while now, since I first tracked down the origin of the song "Seven Bridges Road." Steve Young is the guy who wrote it, and originally released it on this album.
Of course it's out of print. It was later released on CD but even that is out of print and available only as a collectible import. It is not even available as an mp3 download from either Amazon or Rhapsody.
I was able to find the "Seven Bridges Road" from this album* on YouTube, but it was in mono, so my search continued. Also I wanted to hear the rest of the album if possible. Note: I might go ahead and upload a stereo version to YouTube before too long, just for kicks.
So finally I found it. If you click here, it will take you to a country music forum wherein one of the moderators made the entire album available via streaming. Naturally, due to my own peculiar obsession/hobby-horse, I used my equipment to record the whole thing and create mp3 versions of my own for repeated listening and future reference.
So, for anyone trying to find this album, just follow the link.
*I say "the 'Seven Bridges Road' from this album" because he re-recorded it a second time for a later album, but more about that some other time.
Take something that works perfectly fine and make it more difficult.
If anyone is wondering what has set me off, they've changed the way images work so that you now have to go through an additional step to view full-sized large images.
And of course, this is on top of their outright lie about the maximum size of large images.
