Month: June 2010

Last night I had my first ever “African food.” At least I think it was African food having been prepared by Africans who said it was African food. The Africans are two students Carol befriended and I have come to know over the last year. One is from Ghana, the other Nigeria.

The meal consisted of rice, a heaping mound of it, covered with a thick tomato sauce containing chunks of beef and seasoned with garlic, black pepper, salt, and something called Maggi, the brand name for a kind of soy sauce, I think it was. And on the sides of the mound of rice slices of fried plantain.

Really a good and substantial meal, though it wreaked havoc with my dyspepsia. Significant gas, belly distention, and even now in the morning my stomach is still gurgling.

I can’t attribute this all to the meal however. The guys knew I am a Laker fan, and they invited us over to watch game 5 of the playoffs with them. They are however are rabid Celtic fans. So I had to sit abjectly as they crowed, the Lakers having gone down to ignominious defeat. That probably didn’t help my digestion either.

Damn Lakers!

Good food.
 

So it is, for the purposes of comparison…using my new audio technica usb device, and recorded on Audacity software…too bad I failed to tune the guitar adequately….audacity.mp3

I lost my ipod so, while working out at the club, I listened to the radio on my original Sony Walkman. The back fell off that a while ago. The battery keeps falling out. But I found one in the back of my locker that still had some juice. Consequently I heard a cut off a new album by Stevie Miller. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe the guy needs some money. The cut was a dance tune and the lyrics ran partially and something like (this is not a direct quotation):

Don’t worry if you can’t find someone to dance
Just get up and shake your (Oh, no, Stevie!) pants.

Pants! My ass. That’s either a desperate or very lazy rhyme.

Followed closely by something like:

Just reach out and grab ahold
And squeeze till your blood runs cold.

That is not only lazy. It’s illogical. I mean blood running cold is what happens when you’re about to die.

Of course, Stevie also gave us the immortal:

Some people call me the space cowboy
Some call me the gangster of love
Some people call me Maurice
Cause I sing of the pomputus of love…

Actually, these are classic. But I swear there is no such word as “pomputus.” But I can understand making it up since “I sing of the pomposity of love” just doesn’t cut it.

Still these are little things compared to the downright disturbing lyrics I heard down in the locker room. They were piping in some satellite radio and I caught myself listening to the refrain three times to make sure that I was hearing what I was hearing:

I don’t care who you are
I don’t care where you’re from
I don’t cane what you did
As long as you love me…

This person is so desperate for love that he appears to have lost all his faculties. I mean is this a love song; or a song of self destruction.

It’s like I don’t care if your last name is Hitler, you come Texas, and you eat babies. As long as you love me?

This boggles the mind.

Recently Brother Dan and I have been getting together a couple of hours each weekend to play guitar and sing songs.  Here is So It Is again with the two of us as recorded on a digital device while we played in his converted garage.

Soitis523.MP3