Saturday, December 16, 2006

msb-0094 I got da Blues, I got da Blues.

msb-0094I got da Blues, I got da Blues.

Feedback come first, but there is really any.

Not directly anyway.

I got a new page hit counter back in November and its reporting that 80% of my visitors are first timers.

Either that's an anomaly caused by the fact that the page counter just doesn't have historic page load yet, or its really right and there is a lot more curiosity about this disease, or this podcast, than I had thought. (Nah. Its gotta be the stats.)

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Well ... it finally happened.

My last client is no longer a client.

They were very, very good.

No, I'm not going to name them, but they know who there were.

I wish I could have done more for them, but there were corporate and corporate culture changes, and the presence of consultants was no longer required.

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On the plus side, I've just applied to a Gummint Relations Committee (as described in the Winter newsletter of the Greater North New Jersey chapter of the National MS Society.)

We'll see if I get accepted. It would be a chance to get to influence and make a difference on the life of MSers in New Jersey and potentially beyond.

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Its always a bit of a downer to be let go around this time of year...

Good luck finding anybody who's going to make a decision about hiring anyone at this time of year.

To quote that prolific writer, "Anon.":
"I'm sorry but we don't see any openings until May or June.

Oh and Merry Christmas to you and your family
."
and not to forget:
"Recession is when the other fella loses his job.

Depression is when you lose your's."
(I think that last one is actually by "Will Rogers", [it certainly has that laconic pace and "mordant"wit,] but Google can't find it and political humor isn't my library's "forté".)

So I'm doing some ravelling reveilees, without any comment, for the next few episodes
except to remind you all of the upcoming crip invasion of the "Pacific Coast Hellway"'s "Serius Stars 102" time slot on January 2nd, 2007.

"Ya-a-a-ay!"

That'll be a thrill. An MSer on the air. ("Fuck Corporate Radio"), as "C.C. Chapman" likes to put it. ( http://www.fuckcorporateradio.com is another URL to get you to http://www.accidenthash.com/ )

I'm really sorry I didn't get to go to a couple of events where he was but with MS I really couldn't go.

We'll just see what that brings as far as new listeners.

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No, I'm not bringing my mobile studio with me because I really don't trust the airline security staff to not screw with it, and me, and I can't afford to FedEx it.

In the past, you know I would have done it, taken my stuff down there, but now, with all the travel and personal baggage restrictions, "no fuckin' way!"

I'll just read from and write to you guys on the blogs until I get back. (Then again I may bring my Samson mike and record the shows with CastBlaster on my brother-in-law's computer.)

I'm putting four shows in the can (well up on the server anyway, :-) and I'll be releasing then on the days when they would go out anyway. But they just won't be the same.

MDMHvonPA's Roundups will have to wait until I get back to the studio/home office. (Unless of course he got some equipment for Christmas with which to record his own dulcet tones. :-)

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I'm sorry to be so boring but I'm been reading a book which is definitely "not" boring, so my excuse is that I've been in "absorption mode".

The book is "This Is Your Brain on Music" by "Daniel J. Levitin" (ISBN: 0-525-94969-0).

Its a fascinating, heavy slog, forcing me to learn new terminology for things that I thought I knew, and explaining certain things to me that I had wondered about since taking music classes at Dawson College in Montréal in the early seventies.

Cognitive science has made some real advances and some real discoveries with the development of PET scans and other MRI techniques.

I won't go into it with you but suffice it to say that the processing of music and the mapping of the audio processing in our brains is a lot more distributed than I'd ever suspected;

enough so for me to know that Mullah Omar and his ban on music was fundamentally doomed to faillure because our fundamental physiology, the very core of our beings, is dedicated to the processing of music; and as we evolve, it's only becoming more so.

I'm going to read this book twice at least and will likely revisit it through the years like I did "Systemantics" by "John Gall".

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Note to serving president Bush, or his successor: read "The Prince" by "Niccolò Machiavelli" (ISBN: 0-226-50044-6).

It explains exactly what needs to be done to conquer Iraq (or anywhere else for that matter.)

You won't win until and unless you "move there" and properly occupy it.

The insurgents/rebels don't respect what they, rightly or wrongly, currently perceive as an absentee landlord. Neither does the populace. (And neither do "we".)

Prepare to move the seat of the "American Empire" to Iraq, or prepare to write it, and the billions of dollars expended and the thousands of lives lost, off as an unfortunate adventure.

But move into Saddam's Palaces and you've won. Its that simple ... and that complex.

4 comments:

mdmhvonpa said...

Brain Music ... huh. Neat association there.

Miss Chris said...

Last year my husband got laid off between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was a real downer. I'll bet they gave him a big "Merry Christmas" as they handed him his pink slip.

Charles-A. Rovira said...

I usually look at any kind of layoff from a non-seasonal or episodic work (like urban tree feller,) as an admission by management that they don't know how to do their job.

Never mind the time of year, management that isn't able to cope will fundamentally leave everybody screwed over.

Look at the ass-hats in management at the vanishing American auto companies.

What did they do when the price of oil was rising inexorably?

Built bigger and bigger cars, SUVs and trucks.

Everybody wanted what they needed; cars that were smaller, lighter, nimbler, cleaner and, first and foremost, more fuel efficient.

The home grown auto makers were blind, deaf and pretty fuckin' stupid.

They insisted on building these road monsters, in ever increasing size, weight, number of doors, gimrack, geegaws and gallons per mile, (not miles per gallon.)

The foreign auto makers had never been under any such illusion and now Ford and G.M. are facing increasing competition that they themselves created with their eyes wide shut!

I would line up the designers and the executives at those companies and give them a pink slip and a swift kick out the front door.

Instead, they're staying and the poor schmuck on the assembly live is getting the crank shaft.

(Hsssssssssssssss. Deflating anger.)

Have Myelin? said...

Brain Music. I forgot to mention that about three years ago I took part in a one week study in Dallas for which I was handsomely compenstated for and here is how it worked: I watched a woman talking with my cochlear implant, (in the meantime I had been injected with radioactive dye) and then I was stuck in the cat scan. Oh yeah, I had some electrodes all over my brain! They were testing to see what my brain really "heard" as opposed to lipread. Then I had to take my implant off and watch a woman talking with no assistive devices and get back in the scanner.

Apparently the scanner "lights up" parts of the brain if one really hears it. Nice test!!! :)