"Gravedigger" - Dave Matthews Band/Willie Nelson

Okay, folks, the time has come for pondering our mortality. And what better way to do it but through the all-inclusive medium of music video, right? The genre well known for tackling the really "heavy" topics. From R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" (spiritual uncertainty), Tears For Fears' "Shout" (Janovian Primal Scream Therapy"), Pearl Jam's "Jeremy" (bullying & suicide), Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" (national indifference) and Poison's "Every Rose Has It's Thorn" (botanical certainties), these 3-4 minute gems are the perfect vehicle for dispensing deep philosophical & philosophical ideals into the minds of the attention-span-challenged Joe Public.

Death. It looms large and is frightening in it's ability to loom larger and even larger with each passing day. It is pervasive. Duh! We take it for granted. Duh! But seriously, it does seem like we subconsciously marginalize it, perhaps in an effort to cope with the magnitude of fear and uncertainty that is a common denominator of all mankind...let me be clear, I understand that many people have found ways to conquer what I would consider the "fear" of death. I'm sure they would feel insulted by my suggesting that we all, alike, are terrified by it. Still, I have not met a man yet who could tell me that he wasn't afraid of death in his final moment. 

But back to what I was saying. We marginalize it. We trivialize it. We compartmentalize it. Anything we can do to not have to face it's reality. Our language is filled with metaphors & colloquialisms that reduce it to an impotent word in a throwaway phrase: "Dude, I'm gonna KILL you!" "I love you to death." "Meryl, that dress is TO DIE FOR!" "Dead ahead". "I'm just DYING to meet you!" "I listened to Rush Limbaugh's show yesterday and there must have been at least ten minutes of DEAD AIR during the commercial breaks," "Urgh! Your breath smells like death!" "Jimbo, you're so funny! You SLAY me!" "You gotta love Jerry Lee Lewis! He's 'The Killer'!" "I just died in your arms tonight." "Dead heat". "What a great performance, Mr. Cobain! You KILLED it!" "Turn me on, dead man." 

We watch movies that depict death and dying in the most realistic manner and it doesn't affect us one bit. I'm not talking about the "Saving Private Ryan"s or the "Schindler's List"s. I mean "Dawn of the Dead". "Day of the Dead". Night of the Living Dead". "The Evil Dead". "Dead and Buried". "Diary of the Dead". "Braindead". "House or the Dead". "Zombie Strippers". "All You Need is Brains". "Bloodsucking Nazi Zombies"....in fact, the pervasiveness of Zombies is so prevalent in this day and age that I could write a whole 'nother article about it ("All You Zombies" by the Hooters, "Zombie" by the Cranberries and/or Fela Kuti, whichever way your taste lies, the television series "The Walking Dead"...the possibilities are endless).

Nevertheless there are times we are forced to take it seriously. An attentive viewing of Bergman's "The Seventh Seal" is a sobering experience. How can you listen to "Love Will Tear Us Apart", knowing that the composer killed himself, without being just a little bit spooked? You watch "The Crow" and you can't help but find yourself super-attentive to the scene where Brandon Lee gets killed, and it actually disappoints you to learn that the actual killing was cut out of the film. As a child you are fascinated and repulsed by the "Faces of Death" video, watching it becomes a reluctant rite of passage. You may even feel cheated when you find out, as you get older, that the vast majority of stuff in that film is staged, faked, bogus. 

You wonder...even as we minimalize it, even as we fear it, we are compelled to "look it in the eye". To perhaps place our own individual existences within the context of the Greater Reality.

At any rate, the two videos I wish to share are about as somber a rumination on the Grim Reaper's handiwork as any I've ever seen. The first one is by the Dave Matthews Band, an original song called "Gravedigger". Though I'm not much of a DMB fan, I will confess to liking this song. It is a relentless comment on death's indifference. It claims the guilty and the innocent alike. It could care less about justice.

The second one is Willie Nelson's cover of the same song. Where Matthews version was frightening, Nelson's is creepy and spooky. All the more so since much of it takes place at "his" gravesite. Willie almost seems to be taunting his fate with quirky facial expressions that verge upon the bizarre. He sings the song very well, with his typical warbling voice. This is another aspect that sets it apart from the Matthews original, which has quite the defiant tone to it. Willie's, on the other hand, is one of acceptance and certainty. 

Decide for yourself which is the better of the two. You don't have to watch them in order.

food food food good lord how i love food

I usually don't attend "family functions", but today was my wife's grandmother's 90th birthday so I decided to make a surprise appearance. The venue for the celebration was Sirloin Stockade, home of one of the finest buffets I have eaten at...better than Golden Corral, that's for sure. I overdid it, as I knew I would. Decided to post what I ate so that someday I can look back and say, "Good God, how could you eat that much food???"

1st Trip:
Salad: iceberg lettuce, blue cheese dressing, shredded Parmesan cheese, cheddar cheese, red onions, jalapeno peppers, bacon bits (real, not the fake Bake-Os kind), green pepper, cottage cheese

2nd Trip:
Pulled barbecue beef, baked beans, steamed carrots, french fries, dinner roll

3rd Trip:
Taco salad: tortilla chips, seasoned ground beef (a LOT of it), beans, lettuce, taco sauce, melted cheese, just a few chopped red onions, sour cream

Ah, it doesn't really seem like all that much now that I read it back. But I was still eating a long time after everyone else had finished. I'm a slow eater, but the sheer amount of food took a long time to devour.

To top it off, whenever I eat at buffets like this I always make myself an ice cream cone to eat on the way out. I'm really good at making them. The ice cream sticks up, like, 6 or 7 inches out of the cone. So high that I fear it will fall over, but it usually doesn't.

It's been about 8 hours now since I enjoyed this fine repast. I can't say I'm very hungry at the moment, but I may eat a few chips with salsa later. The local store is having a sale and Red Gold salsa is marked down something like $1.30, selling for only 99 cents. I bought my first jar of Red Gold a couple of months ago and it's very good. The hot variety is definitely not false advertising. Hot hot hot! I like hot stuff, but I can't handle it. So we get medium. You have to eat quite a bit of medium before your tongue will start to burn, but burn it will. The wife picked up 3 jars when she first saw it on sale and I went back a couple of days later for 5 more.

I better lay down and rest for awhile...

Underworld - Push Upstairs

It's that time again!

It's time for a few more pictures of the dog! 'Nuff said!

SIREENO KIN!!!

"View from a Keyhole"

I really do think this is one of my best poems. You are invited to compare it with a good chunk of the rest at Bipolar Confessional.

"View from a Keyhole"


I see you hiding beneath
Old shirts and memories
Dirty jeans and worn-out shoes
That have walked a saddening mile
Weakest armour of cloth
Ripped and torn by cruel adolescence
Cursed with hate or blessed with indifference
I see you in there


Surrounded by toys
Some broken, unneeded
I see you and I know that you want to play with them
But time seems to have withdrawn permission
Or maybe you're frightened
Of how happy they once made you
Reluctantly believing they will never again make you smile or laugh
For they have become little more than fodder for the garbage heap
You find yourself beneath


On the other side of the locked door
I bend to peek through the keyhole
Expecting no more than shadows on the wall
But I see you


I've watched you walk in...
(you didn't know I was there...sorry)
...and it broke my heart
To see how swiftly you ran to the door
To behold the look of relief on your face
That broke up and melted the death mask of grief
Saved by grace
When you stepped in and turned the lock
A beaten veteran getting off a plane, whose salvation is the tarmac beneath him
You kiss the dirty carpet and call this place "home"


"How can a man be born when he is old?
can he enter the second time
into his mother's womb, and be born?"
Behind a locked door
You found the answer
Discerning flesh from flesh and spirit from Spirit
From the crowded confines of  your mother's womb


I wanted so badly to see the look on your face when you emerged
Refreshed and ready to battle demons
Or downcast, crestfallen for another day
It would have been worth the waiting hours to bear witness
To the power of this basement haven
Alas, sleep was not as curious
I could not risk your discovering me
Where I was not meant to be
Fallen from my hands and knees
Best to settle for forbidden glimpses through a keyhole
Best you didn't know I'd stolen a tiny part of your soul


I see you there, hiding from the light
Books on shelves half read or dog-eared to the very ends
A hardback Bible, the binding cracked, it's pages would spill out on the floor if not for your curiosity
66 books held tightly in your grasp to hold them together
In order
Camus, King...Baldwin, Irving...tattered paperback
Koran, Augustine...Srimad Bhagavatam, L. Ron Hubbard...sturdy hardback, spines still cracking
Barnes & Noble books unnaturally pinched between mold smelling garage sale bargains and bulky Salvation Army bookends (Webster's Dictionary, Complete Works of Shakespeare, Bullfinch's Mythology, Asimov's Chronology of Science & Technology...anything thick and sturdy enough to squeeze in a row of lesser volumes)
I see all those books but I don't see you reading them
Still, I don't wonder why they are there


I only wonder of you
Why you lie like a skeleton
Beneath piles of junk


I only wonder how
You find comfort there
And not in the arms of the ones who love you

Music service merry-go-round

Much has happened on the subscription music service front. Many times I have thought about writing about it. Many more times I have decided against it because I just haven't been in the mood to write much of anything. Well, that's only partly true. A few times I started something and gave it up a couple of paragraphs in because it was so lame. Or I should say it was lamer than the norm I've established on this blog....

Okay, that's not fair. I think I write halfway decent for a personal blog that will be viewed by very, very few people. It was never meant to be about quality writing, anyway. Nevertheless, the subscription music service situation since I last posted has been interesting (at least to me) and something I am up for writing about.

(Actually I have written two or three scraps of poetry that I don't think are too bad. They can be found at Bipolar Confessional, a clearinghouse for all of my poetic inspiration.)

So, when last we met I had cancelled my SiriusXM Satellite Radio, a service which had served me fairly well during the last 8 years. I did it to save $5 a month by switching to Spotify for my streaming music needs. However, when I got fed up with the loathsome Spotify iPhone app and a few connection drop-outs I decided to switch to Rhapsody. There was a 2-week free trial on it, and as far as I knew I was on a month-long freebie with Spotify (which didn't turn out to be the case when they renewed my membership after I cancelled...at least I thought I cancelled, I only let it slide because I wasn't sure I'd done it right). I knew that Spotify used higher bitrate files than Rhapsody and yes, I was concerned that the sound quality would be an issue. Still, the music database of Rhapsody is incredibly huge...whether it's bigger than Spotify's, I don't know, but they do have stuff that Spotify doesn't...I also really liked Rhapsody's music/song organization capabilities. They definitely beat Spotify hands down on that front. To top it all off in Rhapsody's favor, I never had any problems with their iPhone app. It was easy to use, though I couldn't say if it was easier than Spotify's because theirs kept crashing on me before I had the chance to notice.

Well, here's how it all turned out. I found that Rhapsody's sound quality was a much bigger issue than I though it would be. I didn't think I'd notice it what with my crappy hearing, but it was very noticeable. I decided to ditch it before they got the chance to charge me and re-upped with Spotify. I screwed that up, too, because I clicked on "renew subscription" with a almost 2 weeks left on the month I hadn't wanted anyway. I know, I'm a wimp for not sticking up for myself. But it was just so much easier to take the loss without going through the bs that would surely accompany fixing it up.

The iPhone app situation still bugs me. I've tried everything I know of to do...deleting and re-installing from the phone itself, deleting and installing from iTunes, nothing works. All I can do is hope and wait for an update that addresses the issue. I like the service, and use it enough to justify paying $10 a month to use on my PC alone. Hopefully they'll will come out with an Android version I can use on my Kindle Fire and even more hopefully it will be free. Not that this will atone for the worthless iPhone app. They're a growing company, more users everyday, they've got Mark Zuckerberg offering rave blurbs for crying out loud. SURELY it's only a matter of time before they get all of this ironed out.

Here's the kicker. I guess it had been at least a couple of months after I cancelled SiriusXM and I'm not ashamed to admit I was starting to miss it. I knew I would. I'm positive the marketing geniuses at SiriusXM have a perfect understanding of when someone is missing the service the most after cancelling...and that's when they send the bargain "Come back and we'll give you a hell of a deal" offers. 6 months for $25. When you consider that a typical month of SiriusXM service runs a bit over $15 you have to admit, this is a well-baited hook. We had a little extra money put back so I swallowed my pride and hooked it back up, this time with the understanding that I WOULD keep the Spotify along with it.

That's where I'm at now. Definitely noticing the better sound quality on Spotify. Sometimes I still get connection drop-outs and they are very, very annoying (especially when listening to a classical piece). For now I'm content to bite the bullet. The XM is hooked up in the bedroom, where it always was. I listen to it every night before falling asleep. So glad to be able to "channel surf" again. Sound quality is disappointing but I'm almost convinced that the problem there is with the stereo system I've got it running through. A new one should be at the top of my wishlist.

VIEW FROM A KEYHOLE

I see you hiding beneath
Old shirts and memories
Dirty jeans and worn-out shoes
That have walked a saddening mile
Weakest armour of cloth
Ripped and torn by cruel adolescence
Cursed with hate or blessed with indifference
I see you in there


Surrounded by toys
Some broken, unneeded
I see you and I know that you want to play with them
But time seems to have withdrawn permission
Or maybe you're frightened
Of how happy they once made you
Reluctantly believing they will never again make you smile or laugh
For they have become little more than fodder for the garbage heap
You find yourself beneath


On the other side of the locked door
I bend to peek through the keyhole
Expecting no more than shadows on the wall
But I see you


I've watched you walk in...
(you didn't know I was there...sorry)
...and it broke my heart
To see how swiftly you ran to the door
To behold the look of relief on your face
That broke up and melted the death mask of grief
Saved by grace
When you stepped in and turned the lock
A beaten veteran getting off a plane, whose salvation is the tarmac beneath him
You kiss the dirty carpet and call this place "home"


"How can a man be born when he is old?
can he enter the second time
into his mother's womb, and be born?"
Behind a locked door
You found the answer
Discerning flesh from flesh and spirit from Spirit
From the crowded confines of your mother's womb


I wanted so badly to see the look on your face when you emerged
Refreshed and ready to battle demons
Or downcast, crestfallen for another day
It would have been worth the waiting hours to bear witness
To the power of this basement haven
Alas, sleep was not as curious
I could not risk your discovering me
Where I was not meant to be
Fallen from my hands and knees
Best to settle for forbidden glimpses through a keyhole
Best you didn't know I'd stolen a tiny part of your soul


I see you there, hiding from the light
Books on shelves half read or dog-eared to the very ends
A hardback Bible, the binding cracked, it's pages would spill out on the floor if not for your curiosity
66 books held tightly in your grasp to hold them together
In order
Camus, King...Baldwin, Irving...tattered paperback
Koran, Augustine...Srimad Bhagavatam, L. Ron Hubbard...sturdy hardback, spines still cracking
Barnes & Noble books unnaturally pinched between mold smelling garage sale bargains and bulky Salvation Army bookends (Webster's Dictionary, Complete Works of Shakespeare, Bullfinch's Mythology, Asimov's Chronology of Science & Technology...anything thick and sturdy enough to squeeze in a row of lesser volumes)
I see all those books but I don't see you reading them
Still, I don't wonder why they are there


I only wonder of you
Why you lie like a skeleton
Beneath piles of junk


I only wonder how
You find comfort there
And not in the arms of the ones who love you