All The Money In The World…

     …can’t buy happiness, but it can rent it.   No money however, definitely gets you heartache, not to mention stress, and anger, and most of the other negative emotional reactions you can have.  So when they say money can’t buy happiness, they’re talking out of their necks.  Yes it can, insofar as it confers both comfort and stability.  Or do you think that a lack of comfort and stability leaves room for a great deal of happiness? You can have moments of happiness, the joy of friends or the happiness being with the love of your life, but the lack of money, the discomfort that lack confers, slowly destroys domestic felicity.  So while money can’t buy happiness, it does make it easier to hold onto and maintain.

    I’m just saying…

  A Viddy, of the Prez speaking of the meeting he had with community bankers. 

    

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    More money stuff, less philosophical, more actual economic news.  The Government is…actually getting smaller, at least the amount of money it lends, spends and guarantees is shrinking.  The amount, according to Bloomberg news is at it’s lowest point in a year, down to $8.2 trillion dollars.  This is apparently taking place because the Obama white house and congress are shifting focus away from Central Bank lending, and moving more towards stimulus spending, according to the bloomberg report.

  And the big boys are making money again.  Goldman really Suchs has pulled in a record $27.3 Billion in trading revenue, doubling their previous record, and JP Morgan’s trade revenue went up 122%.  So, something must be working right. 

    But were still eyeball deep in debt.  That hasn’t changed.  Let’s hope the small goodness above makes for better news in future regarding that debt. 

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   Hey! More good money news!  We the people have MADE A PROFIT off of tarp!  Srsly!  $16,000,000,000 worth.  not too shabby, seeing how we were supposed to take a financial hit on this.  But that doesn’t mean it’s all happiness and light for us and tarp.  There are over 50 institutions that are late paying it off, mostly smaller banks, but the big issues is AIG.  We gave those schmucks $40,000,000,000 in tarp funds, according to this report ( There was at least $130,000,000,000 more but that wasn’t TARP money as I recall)

   So we haven’t heard the last from this beast of a story.  But at least there something happening that doesn’t entirely suck here.   

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    Off on a serious tangent:  The President says he never campaigned on the Public option.  But he did.  I remember it, and it was on Countdown tonight, showing a viddy of him doing just that.  Is it a disappointment? Ya, a bit, but at this point, you take what you can get, legislatively, and fix the inconvenient issues that arise from the legislation later on.  Despite all the hoopla of the election cycle, when push comes to shove, he’s a politician.  He does what he has to do to get what he thinks needs to be done done when he can do it.  It’s called political expediency, did you think it would never happen with him? No? srsly?

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   Off on a less than serious tangent:  A link which explains why the public option SUCKS, A link with a lawyer joke(that’s right, just one), and a most excellent site for the serious guitarist! srsly! Just found it and dammit, I like it.

    A curious viddy with Yul Brynner to close things out.  Before I saw this I didn’t know the man played guitar. Enjoy!

   

Today’s nuggets, via wikiquote(except that last one, I don’t remember where I got it) :  No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.   Luke 16:13

Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal – that there is no human relation between master and slave.  Leo Tolstoy

A fool and his money are soon partying.  Steven Wright

Minor fix 3:21 am 12/24.

Anagram: Rhino Sweat/ White Arson

      I’m just sitting around right now, after a day where i didn’t get a lot done, but busted my ass doing it.   I’m relaxing at this point, bathed in the light from my computer screen, listening to the sounds of the Band UK, with Allan Holdsworth and Bill Bruford, playing a song titled “Alaska”.   I can smell some cake my wife decided on a whim to make.   For all that all of these things have my attention to varying degrees, My mind is moving instead to the day that has just passed, to three subjects.

      I am back to running. And playing guitar everyday, like I said yesterday.  I’m still looking for work, and still failing.

    

       I am running again.  I’m back in the saddle, and dammit it feels good, and maybe just a little sore.  I have to tell you, for the past 18 months or so, I have been walking wounded.  Hurt or ill in one manner or another the entire time.  I think I may finally(crossing my fingers) be getting out of the woods as far as my bad luck that way goes.  Not 100% sure about this but things are looking up. The reason i say things are looking up is that I have, for the first time in i can’t tell you how long, run over 5 miles.  Those of you who used to follow my running exploits may remember  in days gone by that would be a short run.  Times change.  What once was slow is now a good time, and what once was a short run is now long.  I used to be annoyed when I ran a 7:55m/m pace for a 7.45 mile run.  Now I am happy with a time 30 seconds per mile slower than that, that is also 2 miles shorter. 

     Playing guitar is for me, pure joy.  I do it as often as possible.  Today I hit the major 7th arpeggios,  minor 7th arpeggios, alternate picking chromatic string skipping, a bunch of modal exercises, chord scales.  The works.  Feels good working on playing and making music.

   

       The Job thing…. Hmmm…. no news is… well… no news.  I’m still looking, doing everything I can to make sure I have some kind of work soon. But the people offering me work tell me that what work they have is less than unemployment pays me now.  That is sad really. I want to work, but I can’t survive on the same amount of money i was making 17 years ago.  I couldn’t survive on that if i was single and living alone, how the hell am I supposed to live on it while I’m married?  My wife works, and what little money she makes goes towards her debts, she hasn’t enough to kick towards helping around the house with rent and bills.  Oh, and the money I make on unemployment, for all that it is more than I am being offered in a number of cases, isn’t enough for us to survive either.

     Joy.  Something will come through though.  It’s only a matter of time.

    A few random thoughts. 

    If you listen to Dick Cheney you’d think he kept us safe.  First he was only the vice president, he did diddly-squat. Second, Safe? Really? Does he forget 9/11?  He forgets himself, he’s the guy who, when the chips were down, went to an undisclosed location.  3,000 dead on 9/11 and this prick had to hide.  The President is more important than the Vice President, yet he was out and about.  Hide when things are bad, and then when the smoke clears acts like the tough guy.

    Dick is a real pussy.

    The stock market looks like things are rounding out quite nicely.  Not falling anymore.  Bottoming out.  The question then becomes, how long do we stay where we are? Should we expect things to begin coming up roses soon?  Not so fast.  All we did was to inject funds into a broken system.  The system has yet to be fixed.  The guys who ran things into the ground before are still out there running things.  The same laws that were in effect before are still in effect.  A whole lot of nothing has changed, except they know that if the shit hits the fan again, they can depend on our largesse to pull their stupid asses out of the fire. 

    

    But at least things have bottomed out, right?  Right?

That’s it for me.  Later!

Today’s Nuggets, By John Milton, from Paradise Lost, Via wikiquote:  A mind not to be changed by place or time.  The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav’n of hell, a hell of heav’n.

Who overcomes By force, hath overcome but half his foe.

The strongest and the fiercest spirit That fought in heaven, now fiercer by despair.

Anagram: Influences/ Fun License

        I have been playing  my guitar a fair bit.  I have in fact been playing a lot more now that I have the time to play between the time I’m looking for a job and the time I’m blogging or doing whatever around the house.  Today’s blog will have everything to do with musical influences of mine. 

    Let’s begin.

    First off, I think we have to go to the acoustic work of Jethro Tull.  I have been in love with the acoustic work for as long as i have been aware of it.  I think the first place I ran into it was with Aqualung, but I think this song is as a representation of the stuff that i first fell in love with all those years ago.

     

    If I move up a few years, and get to the point where I am actually beginning to play music, My life was in flux, i was changing as a person and the music I listened to was changing along with me.  I was also pretty damn high, and i had fun and i think that shows in the music i was listening to at that point.  There was The Grateful Dead, Old Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream, and this,  Frank Zappa.   Frank wasn’t just fun and subversive, it was also incredibly well put together music.  The man was a musical genius, from both a writing and playing perspective.  Listen and enjoy.

    

    I’m going to fast forward a few years again.  It’s sometime in 1986 or 87, I’m in college and I am working in a radio station with, as well as being taught Jazz Theory by a man named Vanig Hovsepian.  Better known as Turk Van Lake, he played music with and wrote for, among other jazz luminaries Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton. It is here in this place at this time that I learned about true musical diversity, learned that music doesn’t have to be rock to be good.  I heard many names that I had never heard before but which would have a profound impact on my playing.  I am going to pick just one of the many names that defined this period.  I thought about a number of peoples music to throw out.  Cannonball Adderly, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Parker.  But thought I should go with a guitarist, seeing how i play the instrument.  Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Joe Pass.

     

      FUN!   Complete 180 Degree musical turnaround.  Those of you who’ve read and listened here before know about my love of metal, so here’s some METAL.  Live Slayer from just a few years ago, but the song is from early in their career.  CHEMICAL WARFARE!  The Dual guitar attack of King and Hanneman is perhaps one of the best in all of Metal.

    

   That’s all for now, except for a few quotes.  Catch ya later!

Today’s Nuggets, Via Wikiquote:    Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, in as much as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.    John Keats

Roaming through the jungle of “oohs” and “ahs,” searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats.   Duke Ellington

Relax. Be yourself. Play a lot.  Joe Satriani

Anagram: Whole Lotta News/Slow Athlete Won

         

    Roland Burris is planning on presenting himself to be seated as the junior senator of Illinois tomorrow, and the plan is for him to meet with democratic leaders on Wednesday.  And while the meeting on Wednesday may be productive and may get him in the door, he may not be seated in “his” seat in the senate, because everything is not in order.  The Secretary of state of Illinois, Jesse White would need to have signed the certificate of appointment authorizing him to be the Illinois senator, and if you’ve read this space before, you already know that he has decided to not sign off on any document Gov. Blagojevich has signed, due to the senate seat for sale scandal.  Mr. Burris may be able to broker a deal that gets him his seat, but i don’t know that the secretary of the senate would be able to accept it without Jesse White’s Signature. 

    We’ll see.  I’m rooting for the Illinois delegation to have it’s full compliment of senators as soon as possible, but i don’t think Mr. Burris,  who’s people are making noise filled with racial overtones, despite the fact that race has nothing whatsoever to do with this, can get his seat. Jesse White is simply being ethical, something that is refreshing in this day and age. 

      There is nothing he can do without that certificate signed off on by Mr. White.   I know that I for one will be watching the proceedings tomorrow when the senate seats itself to see, amongst other things, what happens with the Burris appointment.  I believe that should be happening around 10 am or so. There is one  person I will not look out for tomorrow in the senate.

      

     Al Franken. 

       The Minnesota state canvassing board has certified that Al Franken has won the Minnesota Senatorial election.  That does not mean however that the Minnesota race is by any means over.  There are certifications that have to be signed off on, and before that happens, the final round of lawsuits by the Coleman campaign to dispute the results have to cycle through, and that may take a while.  I do not know how long it will take to get through the courts, but One would expect that the laws delays here could well take months.  The Secretary of state for Minnesota has signed off only on the election results, being a part of the Minnesota state canvassing board, but has not signed off on Mr. Franken’s actual certificate of appointment.  The actual official results are as follows:

   Franken: 1,212,431 votes      Coleman: 1,212,206 votes

       The court actions here mean that the state will be represented only by Senator Amy Klobuchar.  Illinois may well be represented by only one Senator, Dick Durbin.  New York will only be represented by one senator, because Gov. Patterson is sitting on his hands and not seating anyone in the available seat in New York.  The Colorado Governor got it right, why can’t the New York Governor?  Three states with only one senator representing them each.  I wonder how long it’s been since that has happened?  And how long till they are all filled? How long will we have to wait till we have all 59 democrats in the senate actually seated?  We have 3 less senators helping make the right decisions while we try to fix our economy, and this can be partially fixed quickly, with Gov. Patterson doing his job. As for the other two seats…we can only wait.

         Next Up: a few Links for you to peruse at your leisure.    

   Leon Panetta? Head of the CIA?  A man who’s only real Intel experience is three years as chief of staff for President Bill Clinton 11 years ago? WOW.  I don’t know.  I like him, but he’s more the budget guy.  He’d be the perfect guy to fill the spot left open by Bill Richardson who dropped out of his spot as commerce secretary-designee due to some controversy or other.   More pay to play crap, or so it seems.  We’ll find out soon enough.  

     

     My party is ethical.  While guys like Blagojevich are clearly unethical on some level, not everyone who is investigated is.  I cannot and will not distance myself from Mr. Richardson because we share a political party.  I will presume innocence until there is proof of guilt.  In Blagojevich’s case there is undeniable proof in the form of tape recordings.  Not so much from Richardson.  Let’s wait for the investigation to finish and then judge.  A  grand jury investigation is not a criminal complaint.  Let’s not confuse the two, and say the man is guilty of anything before he has been charged with anything.

      That’s about it from me.  A final Video, a few quotes, and I am done.

   I got some guitar playing in today, not much, call it 45 minutes. Scales: major, minor, and pentatonic.  2 string scales one octave scales, 3 string one octave scales, and 2½ octave 6 string scales.  Alternate picking chromatic exercises.  Chord scales.  So I thought I’d toss out a video lesson from Paul Gilbert. Good stuff. it does cut off right in the middle of him talking tho.  there are more like it on youtube, this is just part 1 of 3.  Enjoy!

       

   That’s it for me.  Football picks, running, and other such happiness next time.  Later!

Today’s Nuggets, Via Wikiquote:  Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if we kill all pleasure in the actual process of life, what sort of future are we preparing for ourselves?  George Orwell

Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad. Henry Kissinger

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.   Mark Twain

Anagram: Minor Seventh/Honest Vermin

Business before pleasure.

The Bailout is official. Both of them. Yes you read that right. After The Bush Administration gave the Auto industry the juice it needed to survive to see another day, while trying to crush the UAW with impossible demands that one hopes will be dropped after the Obama administration takes over next month, the Canadian government stepped in to assist as well. The Canadians have promised a total of $4 billion canadian(about $3.3 American) to help the manufacturers stay in business in Canada. It looks like GM will actually get more than they had originally asked for. Gm had asked for 4/5 of a billion Canadian to get through this month and an additional 1.6 billion line of credit from Canada to get through the second quarter, but is getting $3 billion Canadian, a little over 1/2 a billion more than they had asked for.

Looks good for the big three. I for one am happy about that, Now we all have to hope that the UAW isn’t crushed under the weight of legislation. No one with three working brain cells wants to see the unions die. Especially not one as strong as the UAW.

That’s it for that for now. Onto other things…

Franken takes the lead! Al Franken has taken a lead of 251 votes in the Minnesota senatorial race. But all is not over here, not by a long shot. There are more court challenges to ballots to come as well as the aforementioned (in the video anyway) 1600 absentee ballots that have yet to be counted, having been initially rejected. This one should be fun, and does not look like it’s going to be over anytime soon. Whoever wins this seat will not be there for the opening of the senate in early January, that much seems guaranteed. And the ballot counters have their hands full, that much is certain

I watched Hardball yesterday with Chris Matthews, and they showed at one point a few ballots. They have some dense people up there… but i am sure there are plenty down here in new york who are just as bad, but I digress. One person wrote the word yes on the spot yer supposed to blackout to mark your choice. Silly people. Next one they showed had both Coleman and Franken’s names blacked out, he at least got the blackout part right, but accidentally blacked one and then the other out. He did have the presence of mind to write down the words “I really do want to vote for coleman” down…or someone did. Thinking about it there is no guarantee that the person who filled out the ballot in fact wrote that down. But the last one of the three they showed there was the best. Whoever this genius was didn’t know what the hell he was doing (women don’t screw up this badly, not without help, that’s why i say He) He literally took his pen and scribbled all over the ballot, marking both the Coleman and Franken names, and all of the blank space in between as well. I would try to tell you what this idiot was thinking, but my guess is that thinking isn’t exactly his strong suite. This is why you should not drink an entire bottle of bourbon before you go vote. You’ll F*ck it up. Just like Slappy Mc Asshat did in this case. I’d put in the video of it but I can’t find it on youtube…It’s out there somewhere, and it’s worth a look. Good Stuff.

That’s it for that. Personal stuff, a final video, a few quotes and I am done.

I am back to playing guitar everyday! WOOOOOHOOOOOO! I am not hitting the single note exercises nearly as hard as i was this time last year, but I am playing a fair bit more now than i have been, and Life is good. I have been concentrating almost exclusively on chord scale finger picking exercises. I’ve been doing that just to get them under my fingers and to build up my callouses again. I have been doing some small amount of 2+ octave scales and some 3+ octave four note per string scalar exercises, basically major scales, just to do it. The chord scales are generally pretty easy, just to toss an example at you, a four string exercise I’ve been doing:

Em, Am6 (or E/f#dim if you like),Em7 (E/GMaj) , Am, E9 no 3rd(E/Bmin), CMaj, D add9, and back to E min.

It is actually pretty easy, if you think of it as three note chords with a drone e bass, and those three note chords have three basic shapes. Those shapes I will discuss at a later time. Sounds harder than it is, trust me on this.
A final video, some relaxed Wes Montgomery style playing, the song title is “I’ve grown accustomed to her face”:

That’s it for me. Later!

Today’s Nuggets, Via Wikiquote: I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. John Steinbeck

A learning experience is one of those things that say, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that. Douglas Adams