reunion

I got the most amazing keyboard the other day. It's a cheesy sounding, ugly little transistor combo organ by a Japanese company called Ace Tone, the company that many years ago kind of turned into the modern musical instrument company now called Roland. The organ was made in 1967, it's garish red and white with screw-on stainless steel legs, it only makes five sounds and generally speaking is the kind of instrument that I can't stand, with that crappy, wanky organ sound like you hear on "96 Tears." I paid way more than it's worth, but I would have paid even more to have it.

It's where I began turning into me. It's the very first instrument I ever played on stage in a rock band, back in the winter of 1969. Not one like it, but the exact same one. It was owned by the guy who played bass and ran the band, and I borrowed it on and off for four or five years in the 70's until I finally started getting some real keyboards of my own.

Even with the collection I have amassed in the meantime, I have wondered about this humble little instrument all these decades, and a few months ago I decided to see if I could track it down. I succeeded, and it's home with me now for good. Amazingly, it seems to have been in a time capsule and it looks like nobody has even played it since the last time I did, it just sat in closets all these years. The little black scuff mark that I accidentally made on the cover looks like it just happened yesterday.


And now it's mine. Forever. I almost cried when I opened the box and saw it for the first time in thirty years. I still can't look at it without getting a lump in my throat, and I've had it here for a week now.

I feel like I just married my high school sweetheart. And she is exactly the same as she was the last time I saw her.


Life can be so good.

Happy Birthday!

Jon Anderson turns 63 today.

here's your apology

The speech Pete Stark should have given instead of groveling:

"Fuck you if you didn't like what I said. It was the truth, I meant it, I stand by it, and the majority of Americans agree with me. Thank you and goodnight."

surprise, surprise

Conservatives are beefing about Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling's outing of Albus Dumbledore. Puzzlingly, she is being accused of inserting her own "agenda" into the Potter series.

Imagine that. An author injecting her own agenda into the works she created. That takes some nerve.



Morons.

not as in "happy"

Author J.K. Rowling stunned the civilized world by announcing that Dumbledore of the Harry Potter series, was gay.

Apparently, "Headmaster" is not simply a title.


Of course, anyone who was surprised by this disclosure really wasn't paying attention. I mean come on, all you had to do was look at his wardrobe. Elaborate gowns and flamboyant chapeaux, long fingernails, and a magic wand? What else do you have to do, join the Village People before it's obvious?

Duckman saves the day!

Thanks, Dodd!

http://action.chrisdodd.com/signUp.jsp?key=1570

mistaken identity?

So, George Bush met with the Dalai Lama. I can't help but wonder if he was disappointed when he figured out that he wasn't going to hear a buxom woman sing "9 to 5" for him...

Armenia Genocide Resolution

Could it be that Congress is attempting to sabotage the war in Iraq through a sneaky back-door tactic? Like, if we manage to piss off Turkey to the point where they won't help our war effort, maybe it will put a crimp in the war effort?

According to NPR, France did the same thing a while back, and Turkey isn't talking to them at all.

I like Ayn Rand, so there

Today marks fifty years since "Atlas Shrugged" was released. I still prefer "The Fountainhead" and rank it among my top ten desert island books. While Ayn was not right about everything, she was right about a lot and I don't understand the immense repugnance for her that people display today, apart from the fact that Alan Greenspan is still alive.

the last elected president

Living well is the best revenge...

How inconvenient...

The Nobel Committee, awarded the Peace Prize for 2007, jointly, to Al Gore and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Just another bunch of godless liberals....

Who I'd really liked to have seen as the winner in the last few years? The American People for not having re-elected George W. Bush. That could have been the best contribution to peace for this century. Oops...we blew that one, didn't we?

two peas in a pod

It's being reported that Britney Spears is worried that her life is frighteningly like Princess Diana's and that she may share her fate of being a famous blonde mother who will die as a result of being harried by a flock of papparazi.

Yeah, you know, Britney is just like Diana.

Except for the education, the intellect, the philanthropy, the culture, the breeding, the wardrobe, the good taste, the sobriety, the worldwide adulation, and underwear, it's almost impossible to tell them apart.

get a dictionary, already

David Shuster, subbing for Keith on "Countdown," just did something I've noticed many times lately, something that I really hoped he would know better about. He just referred to Stall of Famer Larry Craig, mentioning that Craig was arrested for "allegedly" soliciting gay sex in a Minneapolis airport men's room.

I understand that the media has to be judicious to some extent, but Craig pled guilty to the charges, the guilty verdict was reaffirmed by a judge, and he is no longer the recipient of legal benefit of the doubt any more than Jeff Dahmer "allegedly" murdered and ate young men. It does no service to truth or to this country to give this kind of cover to hypocrites, it only encourages other hypocrites to try to weasel their own way through troubles of their own creation.

for Gilda

Those people in Idaho must be very angry about that Minnesota bathroom toe-tapping incident. I just heard that Congressman Larry Craig was going to be inducted into the Stall of Shame.

What's that you say? "Hall of Fame?"


Well, that's very different, then, isn't it?


Never mind.

break out the bubbly

Happy Birthday to us! Three years of ranting, yet it seems like only yesterday. Thanks to my two wonderful blog partners and to all of the other blogiverse friends I have made. See you next post...

new blue elephant

...featuring the patented Republican Wide Stance.

golden anniversary

Congratulations to humankind on the fiftieth anniversary of space exploration and the launch of Sputnik 1.