Meat Loaf

Right after I got new speakers hooked up to my Mac, of course I wanted to give them a good test. So I found a Meat Loaf concert on YouTube and cranked up the volume. The new speakers sounded great! And I could not stop watching – and listening – to Meat Loaf.

I wondered where Meat Loaf ranks among the great singers. His voice is so sweet and pure, and then so raucous and powerful. I looked up Rolling Stone’s “100 Greatest Singers of All Time,” as voted on by “a panel of 179 experts” in 2008.

Guess what? Meat Loaf is not on their list. No Barbra Streisand, either. Or Frank Sinatra. Or Andrea Bocelli. Or Jimmy Buffett. Or Neil Fucking Diamond.

The “100 Greatest” list contains a lot of names I respect, and about 10 for which I draw a complete blank. Joe Cocker and not Meat Loaf? Dolly Parton and not Barbra? Jesus.

I’ll never again put any faith at all in anyone’s Best Of list.

100     Mary J. Blige

99       Steven Tyler

98       Stevie Nicks

97       Joe Cocker

96       B.B. King

95       Patti LaBelle

94       Karen Carpenter

93       Annie Lennox

92       Morrissey

91       Levon Helm

90       The Everly Brothers

89       Solomon Burke

88       Willie Nelson

87       Don Henley

86       Art Garfunkel

85       Sam Moore

84       Darlene Love

83       Patti Smith

82       Tom Waits

81       John Lee Hooker

80       Frankie Valli

79       Mariah Carey

78       Sly Stone

77       Merle Haggard

76       Steve Perry

75       Iggy Pop

74       James Taylor

73       Dolly Parton

72       John Fogerty

71       Toots Hibbert

70       Greg Allman

69       Ronnie Spector

68       Wilson Pickett

67       Jerry Lee Lewis

66       Thom Yorke

65       David Ruffin

64       Axl Rose

63       Dion

62       Lou Reed

61       Roger Daltrey

60       Björk

59       Roger Stewart

58       Christina Aguilera

57       Eric Burdon

56       Mavis Staples

55       Paul Rodgers

54       Luther Vandross

53       Muddy Waters

52       Brian Wilson

51       Gladys Knight

50       Bonnie Raitt

49       Donny Hathaway

48       Buddy Holly

47       Jim Morrison

46       Patsy Cline

45       Kurt Cobain

44       Bobby “Blue” Bland

43       George Jones

42       Joni Mitchell

41       Chuck Berry

40       Curtis Mayfield

39       Jeff Buckley

38       Elton John

37       Neil Young

36       Bruce Springsteen

35       Dusty Springfield

34       Whitney Houston

33       Steve Winwood

32       Bono

31       Howlin’ Wolf

30       Prince

29       Nina Simone

28       Janis Joplin

27       Hank Williams

26       Jackie Wilson

25       Michael Jackson

24       Van Morrison

23       David Bowie

22       Etta James

21       Johnny Cash

20       Smokey Robinson

19       Bob Marley

18       Freddie Mercury

17       Tina Turner

16       Mick Jagger

15       Robert Plant

14       Al Green

13       Roy Orbison

12       Little Richard

11       Paul McCartney

10       James Brown

9          Stevie Wonder

8          Otis Redding

7          Bob Dylan

6          Marvin Gaye

5          John Lennon

4          Sam Cooke

3          Elvis Presley

2          Ray Charles

1          Aretha Franklin

My Oldsmobile

It was the summer of 1966. I was in the Navy, assigned to the USS Hector based in Long Beach, California. When I wasn’t on duty aboard ship, I lived off base with friends Joyce and Gary Morse. Their house was at the corner of Poppy Street and Cherry Avenue.

Frequently, I would leave the Morse’s house and drive south on Cherry Avenue, a busy 4-lane street with a speed limit of probably 45. There was a stoplight that I got stopped at most times, and the next stoplight would stop me too, unless I drove as fast as I could from the first stoplight to the second. I knew that I had to get up to around 65 to just barely squeak through the second light, which would be yellow.

One day in July I was doing my normal thing, and as I approached the second stoplight it turned yellow as usual. And, as usual, I kept my foot on the gas. But this time there was an oncoming car intending to turn left across my lane. He apparently did not see my car, and I was not able to get far enough over to my right to avoid him, and he accelerated right into the driver’s side of my car, hitting me just behind the back seat.

The impact spun my car around such that it hit the stoplight stanchion dead center of the rear bumper going around 60 backwards. The stanchion did not move. The back of my seat collapsed, and I flew into the back seat. The well-padded back seat. I was not injured.

If I had hit that stanchion going forward at that speed, there is little doubt that I would have died. There were no seatbelts in that 1956 Oldsmobile 88 – which was totaled. 

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PS -- Jason recently took and sent me a photo of an old 1955 Olds 88, which triggered this memory of a day long past which I was lucky to survive.

Statistical Anomaly

Johns Hopkins Hospital's website is keeping track of the COVID-19 numbers worldwide. This morning's statistics show at least one anomaly  -- the disparity between the Big 4 European nations' death rates and the U.S. death rate.

	Cases	Deaths	% Died
Italy	162,488	21,067	13.0%
Spain	177,633	18,579	10.5%
France	131,362	15,729	12.0%
U.K.	94,847	12,107	12.8%
Totals	566,330	67,482	11.9%
U.S.	609,685	26,059	4.3%

The difference is glaring, and I have to wonder "What's up with that?"

And I have to wonder why the news media haven't been chattering about it.

Uncertainty

Here on April 14, 2020 there is a collective tension, an anxiety, and an eagerness to get our lives back to normal.

If someone credible were to give us a date on which we could turn the switch, well then, a lot of that tension and anxiety would dissipate. People would start the countdown to the liberation, smiling widely while marking the days off the calendar.

But there is no credible expert able and willing to predict that date, and that’s problematic. The uncertainty of how long this social distancing/economic shutdown/joblessness/coffin-stuffing crap will last weighs on us.

Never mind the uncertainty of what kind of world we will live in afterward, never mind the uncertainty of what the “new normal” might be. All of that is up for conjecture, but it’s the timing that’s on my mind today.

People can and will adapt to the new world order. Human history is full of examples to show that those of us who survive this virulent virus will go on and deal with whatever we must. We’ll collectively grit our teeth and put the poncho over our heads and not only face the storm but prevail.

People sentenced to prison can pretty much bank on an end date. Military service has a discharge date attached. No matter how shitty the day, prisoners and soldiers can remind themselves that they have “only X days/weeks/months/years to go.” Having an end date is comforting.

When Hitler was bombing the crap out of London, the residents had no way to know how long that would last, didn’t know if the next barrage would score a direct hit on their own bomb shelter, didn’t know if the Germans would invade and enslave them. Know what they did? They gritted their teeth, put the poncho over their heads and not only faced the storm but prevailed.

So I don’t want to hear any whining.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Don Turpin posed a question yesterday:

When this is all over, how would you like your life to be changed from the old when we do get our lives back after the pandemic?

Which generated some thoughts in me, not really toward how I would like my life to be changed, but more toward how my life will change.

If I may digress just a little, I'll observe that the "war" word is being used far too much and far too erroneously. "It's like a war zone." "This is a war." Etc. People who talk like that are, I think, people who have not seen a real war close up. I'd prefer that people would reserve the "war" word for, well, war.

What we have here is a very stressful time for most people. One might say the situation is traumatic. Following that line of reasoning, then, it's logical to expect, when this is all blown over, post-traumatic stress syndrome in many, if not most, of the people who survive.

It's well-known that our parents who lived through the Great Depression were changed by it. I believe that we will be permanently changed by this pandemic, and in ways that we cannot, with any accuracy, predict.

That is not to say that we can't effect some changes by willing those changes. So, circling back to Don's question: How would you like your life to be changed?

Mannequins

A funny thing happened to me on my way to Nordstrom to photograph mannequins. The store closed. The sign said something about a virus. 

I did a lap through the mall to see what was there -- or, more accurately, what wasn't there. Shoppers weren't there, even in the stores that were still open at 1:30 PM.

So I took a few photos through the windows. My intention was (and still is) to write about different styles of mannequins. This one is Lobotomy-4 style. The dash 4 indicates right-handed. 

More coming when opportunity resurfaces.

Tail Light Malfunction

Tail Light Malfunction

That was the message on the dashboard of my (well, our) Lexus. The tail lights looked OK to me, but when the brake pedal got pushed the left light got brighter and the right didn’t.

Driver’s Manual out of the trunk and open to page 403. There are 2 bulbs behind the trunk liner on the right side, one of which is called “Tail Light.” Off to Lexus dealer with the old bulb in hand. Dude hands me a new one, he collects $3.27, I get home, put it in, find Tail Light Malfunction on the dash.

Back to the Manual. Page 405 shows a 3-bulb cluster mounted behind a little door in the trunk, one of which is called “Brake/Tail Light.” I get the old bulb out, go see my new best friend at the Parts counter, buy two new Brake/Tail Light bulbs, pay $12.87, go back home, replace both L & R bulbs, and find no message on the dash. Success!

Kudos to Lexus for running a diagnostic test of all the bulbs in the car every time the car starts. And kudos to Lexus for even having a liner for the trunk lid. Those are the little things you get (that don't get listed on the new-car window-sticker) when you move up to a “luxury” car, I guess. Even back in 2011 Lexus built those things in.

If I were the kind of guy who would bitch about my (our) Lexus, I’d bitch about the Tail Light Malfunction message not saying Brake Light Malfunction instead. But I’m not that kind of guy. 

Attempted Murder

There weren’t that many of them, maybe 10-15 thousand, but they were an elite fighting force. They set about their mission immediately. The mission was simple: reproduce rapidly and, attacking in concert with the newbies, kill me.

This particular virus specializes in destroying sinus membranes, lung linings, and throat tissues. The small invading force succeeded immensely, wreaking havoc on my respiratory system. Within 24 hours. I got a headache. My back, which had been virtually pain-free since the recent cortisone injection, started to be its former self. I sneezed violently. I coughed so hard I strained a stomach muscle. My voice dropped an octave and sounded weak.

Defense Condition 5 (“DefCon 5”) is the default defense condition in peacetime when there is no discernable health threat. When word of the invaders reached Central Command (wherever that is), CC called for DefCon4. Antibodies and scouts were called up. The scouts reported billions of casualties on both sides, but the viruses were winning. So DefCon3. The regulars were already taking a beating, so the reserves got called up. They kept losing, so DefCon 2 – the draft was hurriedly improvised. My body temperature got turned up; fever kills viruses. Retraining sessions got underway – these new invaders were a bit more advanced than the ones that had been repelled a year ago. In addition to AK-47s and daggers and blow-guns, these guys have Derringers and poisons to put on the tips of the blow-gun darts. And they’re sneaky – they can hide behind a corpuscle.

This virus is not going to kill me. DefCon 2, as I write this 72 hours after the onset of symptoms, has evened the score. The invaders are no longer advancing. Soon they will be in full retreat and my body will begin the healing process. I will walk outdoors again.

No prisoners will be taken; I will gleefully kill every last one of those little bastards.

My body’s defenses have been aided to no small degree by Nurse Judy’s care and attention. She has provided attentive comfort, in addition to homeopathic supplements and her homemade chicken soup. I am blessed.

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January 22, 2021 - The above is dated Jan. 26, 2020 and I had never heard of COVID-19. A few weeks later, it was all anyone talked about. I wondered whether COVID had infected me in January, so last summer I got an antibody test. It was negative, which either means I didn't have COVID or the test result was wrong. I will likely never know which is true.

Back In The Fifties

Believe it or not, there was a time before shopping malls were invented. You went to an individual store - in my mother’s case, she generally went to a department store, and that was generally Sears. It had everything my mother needed. There was no point in shopping anywhere else.

My shoes, which my older brother had worn until he outgrew them, had worn completely out. Off to Sears we went - the same store where we got my eyeglasses and the family vacuum cleaner and many other necessities. Impulse buying was a foreign concept. Necessities only.

It was a rare event, me getting new shoes, never worn by anyone else. Mom and I went quickly to the shoe section, and I was excited.

The primary criterion for my mother was the length of the shoe. On second thought, the length was secondary. As in all shopping, price was most important. But there had to be plenty of room for my feet to grow. If I outgrew the shoe before the shoe wore out, that would be a failure - I had no younger brother to whom the shoes could be hand-me-downed.

My mother did not reach a “worn out” decision easily. Shoes could have the soles and/or heels replaced, saving money. Many times the soles on my shoes became partially detached, held to the body of the shoe only near the heel, so there was a quite audible flapping noise with every step. When the flap-flap-flap bothered Mom enough, she would authorize me to flap a half-mile to the shoe repair shop.

Broken laces did not cause her any duress, so I was on my own there. Get the shoes to stay on my feet any way I could. Scuffed toes were the norm.

But I digress. Back to the new shoes shopping experience.

Sears had some new technology that would be of great assistance in fitting my new shoes. With the try-ons on, I would stand on a little platform and face a chest-high machine. At the top of that machine was a viewing screen. The machine was a continuous X-ray, and the image on the screen showed my foot bones inside the faint outline of the shoe. Pretty cool.

Sometime after that experience, Sears found out about the adverse health effects of such a machine, and you won’t see them at Sears anymore. 

Of course, you won’t find a Sears store anyway. The foot X-ray machine was probably the beginning of the end for them.

Bad Boys

Bad boys rape our young girls, but Violet gives willingly.

In 1961, the U.S. Navy's electronics technician training used that sentence as a mnemonic device. I was being taught to recognize the ohmic value of a resistor. "Bad" starts with B, stands for Black, and it is zero. "Boys" starts with B, stands for Brown, and it's one. "Rape" starts with R, stands for Red, and it's two. And so on, through Orange (3), Yellow (4), Green (5), Blue (6), Violet (7), Gray (8), and White (9).

Resistors were used in all electronic equipment in those days. Not as much these days, but if you take your smart TV apart, you will still find some resistors in there. 

Resistors are made with colored bands painted on them. If you wanted to know how many ohms resistance (impedance to current flow) the thing had, you would look at the color bands. Maybe the bands were Red, Violet, Yellow in that order. Red would be 2, violet 7, yellow was 4. That 4 told you to multiply the 27 (first 2 bands) by 10 to the 4th power. So the resistance was 270,000 ohms, usually written as 270 K ohms or just 270 K.

Clear as mud, right? It didn't take long, though, for the memorization and mental conversion to be second nature. And I still remember it today, largely due to the first sentence above.

But my point is this: The use of that sentence as a mnemonic device in United States military training is incomprehensibile in today's world. It either points to how far we've come, or points to how Neanderthal we were 60 years ago. Or both.

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Update: It also has occurred to me that there was another mnemonic device from my electronics training. To remember the vector relationships of motion, flux, and current (how a generator works, by the way), you would use the right-hand rule* and the phrase "Mary's fuzzy cunt" to remember motion-flux current. 

*See https://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat/physical-processes/magnetism-mcat/a/using-the-right-hand-rule 

Tha Shiznit

Popping, stopping, hopping like a rabbit
When I take the Nina Ross ya know I gotta ta have it
I lay back in the cut retain myself
Think about the shit, and I'm thinking wealth
How can I makes my grip
And how should I make that nigga straight slip
Set trip, gotta get him for his grip
As I dip around the corner, now I'm on a-nother
Mission, wishing, upon a star
Snoop Doggy Dogg with the caviar
In the back of the limo no demo, this is the real
Breaking niggas down like Evander Holyfield, chill
To the next Episode
I make money, and I really don't love hoes
Tell ya the truth, I swoop in the Coupe
I used to sell loot, I used to shoot hoops
But now I, make, hits, every single day
With, that nigga, the diggy Dr. Dre
So lay back in the cut, motherfucker 'fore you get shot
It's 1-8-7 on a motherfucking cop

Boy it's getting hot, yes indeed it is
Snoop Dogg on the mic I'm about as crazy as Biz
Markie, spark the, chronic bud real quick
And let me get into some fly gangsta shit
Yeah, I lay back, stay back in the cut
Niggas try to play the D-O-G like a mutt
I got a little message, don't try to see Snoop
I'm fin to fuck a bitch, what's her name it's Luke
You tried to see me, on the TV, you'se a B.G.
D-O-double-G, yes I'ma O.G.
You can't see my homey Dr. Dre
So what the fuck a nigga like you gotta say
Gotta take a trip to the MIA
And serve your ass with a motherfucking AK
You, can't, see, the D-O-double-G, 'cause that be me
I'm serving um, swerving in the Coupe
The Lexus, flexes, from Long Beach to Texas
Sexist, hoes, they want to get with his
'Cause Snoop Dogg is the shit, bitch!

I'm somewhat brain boggled
So I look to the microphone and slowly start to wobble
Grab it, have it, stick it to the plug
It's Snoop, Doggy, I got a got a fat dub
Sack of the chronic in my back pocket loc
Need myself a lighter so I can't take a smoke
I toke everyday, I loc everyday
With the P-O-you-N-D and my nigga Dr. Dre
Lay back in the cut, like I told your ass
Gimme the microphone and let me hit you with a blast
I got a little cousin by the name of Daz
And bitches who fuck him, gimme the ass
'Cause they know about the shit that we be going through
And they know about the shit that I be putting up
And they be knowing bout the shit I do when I'm on the mic
'Cause Snoop Dogg is Trump tight like a virgin, the surgeon
Is Dr. Drizzay, so lizzay, and plizzay
With D-O-double-Gizzay the fly human being seeing
No I'm not European being all I can
When I put the motherfucking mic in my hand, and
You don't understand when I'm kicking
'Cause Snoop is on the mic and I gets wicked, follow me
Listen to me, 'cause I do you like you want to be done
Snoop Doggy Dogg on this three two one, umm
Dumb, diddy-dumb here I come
With the gat and the guitar was strung, I'm
Not that lunatic nigga who you thought I was
When I caught you slipping, I'm gon catch you then I peel your cap
Snapped back, relax
Ya better not be slipping with them deez on the '83 Cadillac
So we gonna smoke a ounce to this
G's up hoes down while you motherfuckers bounce to this

Tha Shiznit is Track 4 on Snoop Doggy Dogg's 1993 Album Doggystyle. It flooded into my ears this morning while I had my iPhone Music set to play random songs. After I got home I found the lyrics online. 

The "song" about a lot of things I don't understand, but I do understand that a 1-8-7 on a cop means killing a cop. Snoop calls women hoes and he calls black people niggas.

It's hip-hop? It's gangsta rap?

It's not Elvis' Are You Lonesome Tonight? and it's not Billy Joel's Only the Good Die Young and it's not I'm Dreaming of a White ChristmasI.

It's really good stuff? It's garbage? It's been called both.

Spondylolisthesis

I learned a new 6-syllable word: spondylolisthesis. It means the vertebrae in my spine do not behave themselves, do not stay in formation. They apparently did not go through the same boot camp as I did. Or, more likely, they just don't give a shit anymore.

Vertebrae being what they are and where they are, when one of them slips out of alignment, a nearby nerve snitches on it. Then I get the pain. I glare at the offending bone. It looks back at me as if to say, "Okay, big shot, what are you going to do about it?"

An orthopedic surgeon, answering that question, offered me two Options:
1. Surgery to fuse a couple (or maybe 3) vertebrae together in my lower back, or 
(b) inject some goop around that nerve to get it so drunk that it no longer sees the vertebrae slipping around.

Today Terry, P.A., injected 2 cc's of the goop between L4 and L5 while Stephanie employed a continuous X-ray to show Terry where his needle was going. The discomfort was, for me, somewhere between having a tooth pulled and stubbing my toe on an erupting volcano.

It really wasn't that bad, but I have had more fun.

My expectation is a substantial reduction in lower back pain for some number of months, after which I will be faced with Options 1 and b again. Meanwhile, I will look for Option X, whatever that is.

By the way, if you've read this far, I'll assume you're up for just a bit more of this drivel...my bones are quite old and the MRI showed a substantial amount of arthritis -- the osteo kind, not the rheumatoid kind -- which would complicate Option 1, while reducing the effectiveness of Option b.

When I was much younger, it seemed as though I always had some good options. Now, not so much.

Still, it's better than stubbing my toe on an erupting volcano.