Continuing the dumb theme:
I just saw a television ad for a pill that’s supposed to help guys that have bladder control issues. The tagline was – now you can spend more time fishing and less time in the bathroom. I’m sure that the product is a godsend to those with that particular problem, but the ad agency doesn’t know a thing about fishing. When men go fishing and have to use the bathroom – they go right there. I thought everybody knew that.
Various glances through the crosshairs of my life:
D-U-M-B everyone's accusing me - Ramones
Like Glen Campbell sang on the sublime Brian Wilson produced "Guess I'm Dumb" I feel dumb these days. Perhaps its
merely a heat driven languish, but with 72 degree air conditioned nirvanas in every building now this is likely not the
case. I don't know if I can even track down the root cause, but I do know the reason I feel dumb. It's because I've lost the ability
to read a book. Since reading Homer's Odyssey I've been unable to finish a chapter in anything else. I've tried fiction. I've tried
non-fiction. Heck I can't even read a magazine all the way through these days. Lulls have happened before, but this one has a terminal feel to it. My concentration is completely off. I know my eyes are fine. My brain seems okay. The printed word just seems to be too much while somehow not seeming like enough.
Rock & Roll Historian:
I put up 4 posts about Nashville rock and roll circa the late 70's through the 80's here and its received some attention here and there.
It's in the February 2005 archives if you want to read the four parts. It was originally something I cooked up with old pal DD Blank
to post on the White Animals messageboard. A big thrill for me has been that some of the people DD and I mentioned have
commented on the posts. Rick Champion, himself, got in touch with me (if you don't know who Rick was, then find the posts). Now
I've been asked by a writer to do an interview about those days. Which will be really weird since I experienced half of those years
while living in Murfreesboro too young to attend the rock and roll shows I would read about in the Nashville Intelligence Report.
It's not like I'm an expert who was there from the start. But I don't guess historians worry too much about such things.
Thistles:
When I was a little kid I found this beautiful purplish flower on the side of the road. I picked it and brought it to my mother thinking
she would be pleased. She wasn't. "What are you doing bringing a thistle into the house? It's a nasty weed." How was I supposed
to know it was a weed? And even if it was a weed, it made a pretty flower. This memory grew into my mind yesterday afternoon
as I cycled around the countryside for thistles, Tennessee's unofficial state weed, are starting to burst into flower along the roadsides. I also thought about their connection to Scotland where some of my ancestors undoubtedly came from. And then I ended up thinking about sin. Yep, good old fashioned Biblical sin; on how so many sins are like thistles - you think you're getting
a pretty flower when underneath there is only ugliness and pain and maybe that's why my mother hated to see me bring one through our door. Then I went down a really steep hill (there's lots of those around Smithville) and thought that all metaphors are perhaps corrupt and that, while I don't like stepping on a thistle barefoot, I still like their purpley pink flowers.
