Is It Reno, Me, Or The Whole Goddam World?

I’ve been living in Reno for about a year and a half, and I’ve grown to really hate it here.  First, aside from the 3-1/2 years I spent in Peru, I have never seen a bunch of angry drivers all in one place in my goddam life.  I will say that no less than 95% of the bug eyed drivers who go around tailgating everybody in their path, gunning past other drivers, and even speeding around in the snow and ice – are driving full size pickup trucks.  And, 95% of the full size pickup drivers have the dreaded goatee, shaved head or baseball cap, and shades on the head – I wonder what THAT means (that’s a rhetorical).  While I avoid sports bars like a bad disease, I do end up in one occasionally – they all try to talk like MMA guys – every goddam one of ‘em.

I won’t spend a lot of space on the huffing and puffing in the checkout lines at grocery stores – I’ll just say that it’s mostly middle aged and older people who are just jumping up and down because they are in line.

Next is, other than in Peru, I have never seen a bigger bunch of inept, incompetent businesses in one town in my life – and they are all full of it – they will gouge, lie, excuse, and blame the customer.  Just today I had the maintenance guy over here to fix the dishwasher and water heater.  Dishwasher won’t drain, and the 50 gallon water heater runs out in less than 5 minutes of a shower.  I sat here and listened to the dumbass try to tell me I was using the wrong dishwasher detergent, and that it’s normal for the water to sit at the bottom of the goddam thing.  Then he tried to tell me that if I let the water warm up before my shower, that that would run out the supply of hot water in the FIFTY GALLON WATER HEATER.  As if that weren’t enough, he then said that if I had the heat in the apartment on, that since it’s so cold right now, it would affect the hot water.  After I asked him why I’ve been using the same dishwasher detergent for the whole time in this apt. (4 months), why all of a sudden, AND, what’s the excuse for the hot water running out when it was 105 degrees outside, he whimpers, “Well, I’m not gonna argue with you, sir, I’ll just have Debbie come over tomorrow and you can talk to her about it”.  He also had to change the locking mechanism for the sliding glass door to the patio, so now, the handle wiggles all over the place.  “Debbie” will hear about all this tomorrow, and if she feeds me the same bullshit as this sniveling little dwid did today, she’s gonna wish she didn’t.

I’ve had similar experiences with three different computer repair stores, and I’ve been on the receiving end of lazy ass “Customer service” people whose answer, when asked to help was, “I dunno”.  Friend of mine laid into one at WalMart for that a few weeks ago. I’m in the middle of my report to the BBB regarding one of the computer stores – it’s a back and forth debate between me and the f’n parasite store owner that could go on for months.

Then there’s the entertainment directors at the casinos – who, after a year and a half of my attempts to contact them, have yet to answer their phone, return a phone call, and/or acknowledge an email – and I’m talking about more phone calls and emails than I can begin to count.

For the first 50+ years of my life, I had a handful of headaches – and always because something was wrong – never a headache for no apparent reason.  Well, over the past 3 years, I’ve had headache after headache after headache – and sometimes blinding ones.  I know exactly why – it’s from all the daily bullshit that I’ve been putting up with all my life – it’s really starting to take its toll.  If I don’t soon get into a situation where I can have some amount of peace and quiet, peace of mind, and where I don’t get screwed with from the time I wake up till the time I go to bed, I will end up very soon with some major health problems – and that’s after being a pillar of health my whole life up until now.  My only wish is that if or when I do get a heart attack or stroke, that I drop dead, and don’t end up hanging around as a vegetable.  I made a promise to me a long time ago – wheelchair, paraplegic, brain damage, or any major health problem, that I will cut an artery open and be done with this fucked up beyond repair piece of shit of a place.

So, so far, I have yet to find anything I like about this craphole of a town – with the angry people, businesses who have no business being in business, slack-asses for workers, and the Good Ol’ Boy network firmly in place in the entertainment circle.  The one thing I’m not a hundred percent sure of is whether it’s just this town, or if the whole f’n world.  Either way, I’ll venture to say that I’ll be out of this black hole known as Reno as soon as I’m able.

Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

 

                This is me, you pathetic little chicken shits, but you knew that already.
               
Hey cowards.  How does it feel to know that the only thing you know is to hide behind your bullshit, in the safety of your computer room, or your secret hiding place where nobody knows where you are, while you cause grief and loss for the masses?  How does it feel to know that you are rotting from the inside out from your hatred and lies?  I know you’re the ones who have screwed with me for decades – because what, you’re afraid of me???  I know you’re the ones who put that baseball cap in my apartment, and moved my stuff around just enough so that I knew it was moved.  I know you’re the ones who jammed my radio station.  I know you’re the ones who told Google to bury my old photography website, and who got YouTube to delete my videos, accounts, and censor my comments.  I know you're the ones who, of all things, snipped the little balls off my hairbrush - all of them, all at once - how juvenile and pathetic is THAT???  I know you’re the ones who send me my usual day to day bullshit that you would like me to believe is the natural order of things.  I know you’re the ones who saw to it that I didn’t get my insurance money, I know you sent that Peruvian girl – with or without her knowledge.  I know you’re the ones who have been making damn sure I don’t get what I earn, you’ve closed all the doors in the music business, because what, you’re afraid of seeing somebody who actually WORKED at something and made something of himself – right, you pathetic little cowards?  How does it feeeeeel, to know that you would never, in a million years, come out and face me, or any of the other decent people whose lives you screw from the safety of your little bunker?  Guess what, fucking pathetic little pieces of shit, I still sleep well every night, while you gotta do the fifth of vodka just so you can stand your disgusting selves.  I continue to look for that crack in your armor, the hole in the huge wall that you built to protect yourselves from people like me, and to keep us out of where we might actually make this a little better place to live.  If or when I do slip through where you didn’t see me, I’ll come after you, I’ll expose you for the worthless fucking parasitic goddam yellow bellied pieces of shit that you are.  If I go to my grave before that, well, rest assured that I still know what miserable little weasels you really are.  Paranoid and delusional, you say?  Go fuck yourselves.

P.S.  If you should grow a backbone someday (fat fucking chance), I offer you to some see me, I’ll be waitin’.

Goofy Grin, Rifle Arm, and Pathetic Little Men, Part III

 

                                                                            

It’s Little League baseball season in Hawaii, back around 1967, Kanewai Park.  There was this one kid on the “Senators”, he was a skinny kid with a goofy grin and a rifle arm – and I mean a rifle of an arm – no arc balls, no lobbing, those pitches came hissing at the plate – rising upwards a few inches from the backspin.  There were a few times when the opposing coaches had to drag a kid kicking and crying up to the batter’s box, because the kid was afraid of this wiry pitcher, who, by the way, never hit a batter- not once.  Well, the wiry kid’s parents moved, so the following year he had to play for the “White Sox”.  The coaches were two clowns who each had a kid on the team that apparently they wanted to make stars out of.  They had one on the pitcher’s mound, and the other on second base.  These kids had no arm, no gumption, no game, no talent, nothing.  The pitcher threw nothing but arc balls, which the other teams had no problem smacking all over the place.  The goofy grinned kid, well, he sat on the bench the whole time.  Oh yeah, there was also the termite on third base – who, on the rare occasion that he actually fielded a grounder, would toss the ball in the general direction of first base with all he had, where it would sometimes roll at the general vicinity of first base – other times it would end up closer to home plate.  And yes, the skinny, rifle armed kid with the goofy grin never saw one second of game time.

Fast forward to today, the city is Reno, Nevada, and it’s not baseball this time, it’s the music business – from which some of us have made a living for quite a few years.  The kid with the goofy grin is still as naïve as he was when he was 10, firing baseballs at the plate because that’s what he did – and not to show anybody up, or to threaten anybody’s manhood.  He makes music because that’s all he knows, and all he ever wanted to do.  He never sold out, and was never able to fit into western society as we know it.  I’ve been here almost a year and a half, and I have not been able to get a single entertainment director, a single owner or manager to return a phone call or email.  I’d be willing to bet that not a single one of them has even looked at my demo videos.  The acts that are working around town – in the casinos, they could easily be compared to the arc ball pitcher, and the second baseman who hit first base about two thirds of the time, and the third baseman who could not, under any circumstance, even come close to reaching the first baseman’s glove.  So far, in the many painful excursions to the handful of rooms where they hire solo acts, it’s been amateur night, street musician night, or the lounge lizard from hell.  One of the rooms just recently cut back from four nights a week of entertainment to three, and another is trying something different on one of the nights that normally featured the regular live entertainment.  For the record, there is a huge difference between bashing the “competition”, and reality.  If there were good acts here, I would be the first to say so, and I’d even shake their hand, but well, what I’ve heard literally hurts my ears, and makes my skin crawl.  The worst part of all this, though, is, as I said, the fact that not a single entertainment director or manager has answered the phone, returned a phone call, or returned an email in my countless efforts to make contact.  I don’t know if it’s a very tight knit Good Ol’ Boy network, or if there is something else behind this, but it’s gotten way past the point of absurd.  People who are smarter than me have said that they do not believe in coincidences – well, I agree with that for the most part, but, coincidence or not, this is way beyond reason or logic – it appears to me that there is, at the risk of sounding paranoid, something behind the endless avoidance, unanswered phone calls and emails.

I do have my new CD that has been sent to quite a few radio stations, including Sirius XM, and Pandora, but the reality is that there is a very slim chance that any of the program directors will ever get around to listening to it.

In case you would like to see Fid doing what he does, you can find him here:  http://thefidmusic.com/

It appears I must come up with another plan.  It’s a damn good thing that this is not a life or death situation, or I’d have been in the ground long before now, or at the very least, I’d be living under a bridge.  Being the town leper is not the most pleasant thing I’ve ever experienced – and holy hell, now that I think about it, five years of that is a bit much O_O .

The Carburetor And The Paint Job...

Once upon a time, as I drove down the street, I saw a nice car next to me, chugging along, driver frowning with dismay.  Being that I’d seen a few cars acting as this one did, when I got to the stoplight, I kindly said, “Hey, you might want to have your carburetor looked at”.  The driver looked over, still frowning, replied, “Eh, fuck you, buddy, mind your own fucking business, there’s nothing wrong with my goddam car, AND, your paint job sucks!!!”.

This is precisely what happens when a person hears something he or she doesn’t want to hear.  In the case of an addict – and let me tell you, addicts come in all shapes and sizes, and an addiction can be to just about anything – this is the M.O.  A particular personal case of mine involves a 30 year old who is addicted to online video games.  He and his girlfriend will spend 8 – 12 hours a day in front of their computers, eyes bugged out, cussing, swearing, ignoring their infant daughter, the house being a mess, and not spending one red hot second trying to better their life.  The girlfriend feeds the addiction, and has absolutely no ambition of any kind – other than to spend countless hours trying to satisfy her voracious appetite for online gaming.  She is controlling, manipulates him into doing what she wants.  Yes, he can make his own choices, but we all know how easy it is to fall into the habit of letting another person pull the puppet strings without realizing it.  The guy has been talking, for no less than five years, about becoming a professional writer, and a professional graphics tech and website builder, but has not made any significant effort towards pursuing either interest – in spite of his claims to the contrary.  He has a full time job managing a video store, but still makes time to spend countless hours, not to mention, countless dollars, on this mindless and expensive habit.  BTW, this is a guy who was trained in the Air Force to build aircraft, and spent approximately seven years or so working for private aircraft companies, including Columbia Air and Lockheed Martin.  He happens to be a family member of mine, and, I stayed with him at his apartment for about four months just a short while back.  I cannot begin to tell you what I witnessed in that short time, things that I find unmentionable.  The actual things they did, the things they neglected, is not the point I want to make here.  The thing that is causing great harm, not only to this little family, but to millions of people, is that most, especially when confronted with something personal – as in a shortcoming of some kind – will deny to the death, they will excuse, they will attack, they will insult, and they will lie.  First, when one denies, then excuses, then pleads guilty to a lesser charge, he, in essence is saying, “NO, I DIDN’T DO THAT”, then, “Well, I did it because _______”, then, “Well, I kinda did it”.  This telegraphs the lie – while the person thinks he or she is fooling everybody else.  Next, when the person does, “Your paint job sucks”, he is employing still another cheap, dishonest tactic – the objective being to divert attention from the facts at hand, hiding behind the launching of personal attacks – in this case, the facts being, “I have an addiction, and my girlfriend is feeding it”.  All the cheap insults, the name calling, the “Your paint job sucks” only serve to show the person for what he is – dishonest.  I went through this once before with this same person a few years ago – it didn’t take him long to resort to vulgar filth, gross namecalling, and some of the cheapest, most disgusting insults I’d ever heard.  This particular time, I stopped before it got to that, it was to the point of vague, behind the back insults, and I didn’t see any benefit for allowing it to get the point that it did the previous time.  P.S.  Narcissism qualifies as a sickness.

My question is, why is it so difficult for so many people to just be honest?  Why do they try so desperately to hide from the truth, and to hide from themselves?  In my experience, it’s so much easier to take a look at myself, assess the situation honestly, and act accordingly.  If there realistically is something wrong, I’ll try to fix it, and, if I had offended any person with it, I would hunt them down and apologize; AND, I would make damn sure I didn’t make the same mistake again.  If the guy in the chugging car would have said, “Ok, thanks, I’ll have it looked at”, that would have brought only good results, but the sad fact is, I don’t recall ever hearing a single person reply that way – and I’m not just talking about my own situations – for one thing, I don’t make it a habit of telling other people what’s wrong with them or their lives; and for another, I’ve witnessed quite a few situations other than my own.

To drive the point home, I’ll mention that it’s likely most of you have had dealings with an alcoholic, drug addict, or a gambling addict.  An addiction is an addiction is an addiction, and the symptoms are always the same – denial, defensiveness, excusing, and attacking.  I, personally, don’t relate to addictions, because for whatever reasons, I don’t have an addictive personality.  That’s not to say I don’t have other issues to deal with, other shortcomings, it’s just that addiction happens to not be one of them.  From where I sit, addiction is a choice, not a disease.  What I mean by “not a disease” is that there is no bacteria, no virus, no gene, no single celled organism, that causes addiction.  It’s not some little amoeba that makes you pick up that bottle, light up the cigarette, or sit in front of the computer for hours on end, doing god knows what.

So, as with most things of the world, I have no answers.  I must admit that this kind of situation does cause me some amount of grief – mostly because that’s how I react to dishonesty. I also don't do so well with personal attacks.  It's not the content of the insult that I have a problem with, it's what's behind the attacks - it's the attempts at bullying, the attempts at pushing my buttons - now THERE is one of my shortcomings.  While I am far from perfect, and while I don’t claim to be all that smart, one thing I will never do is bullshit anybody.

All for now.

Since I Was Knee High To A Pissant…

People have been trying to take away my sense of self worth.  From parents, to “friends”, to Little League baseball coaches, to teachers, to High School basketball coaches and referees, to business owners I had the misfortune of working for when I was a young adult, to people in the music business of all ranks and positions, to girlfriends and wives, and it continues to this day.  As if that’s no enough, people seem to like to push me – they seem to see me as some wimpy little mouse that they can talk to with gross disrespect, who they can bully, taunt, and whatever else – until I start belting people.  Seems that’s the only way I get any respect.  Does that mean that people define a person by the power of his right hook?  I sure goddam hope not, because that would be pitiful.  If a person is seen as kind, unassuming, non confrontational, non contentious, and soft spoken, most will see him as a fool, and will treat him accordingly – and this has been the story of my life.  Funny thing, the times I actually did knock some smartass off his feet, it was, “Oh my god, what a nasty attitude”, and, “Geez, this guy is violent”.  Isn’t verbal abuse violent?  Isn’t emotional abuse violent?  Isn’t bullying blatantly violent?  Even when I get into verbal boxing matches, I’m labeled as harsh, angry, and with a bad attitude.  People have tried to bully me into submission, they have reported to authorities, they have gone all over town, telling anybody who would listen that I’m some kind of monstrous, ill tempered dragon that needs to be slayed.  Add to that, if the person does dare to debate me face to face, they try the guilt, the shouting down, the bullying, the distorting of what I say, and every cheap debate tactic known to man and then some.  I always say, “If you start by hiding behind bullshit, you’re gonna lose”,  and I have made more enemies than I can begin to count because of this.  I won’t debate or argue unless I have facts and truth behind me – I don’t see any sense in doing otherwise.  And yes, people hate that.

One of the things I promised me when I was young, was that I would never get into any kind of debate – whether verbal or otherwise – while trying to hide behind untruths, and that I would never employ sneaky, underhanded, or otherwise cheap, manipulative tactics – and I’ve kept that promise.  When I played Little League baseball, I was the skinny kid with the goofy smile and the rifle arm, and I’m still that guy.  I always shook the other team’s hand after the game, and I meant it.  Same when I played basketball in high school – I was a sportsman, and when I congratulated the players on the other teams, I meant it.  Yes, there were times when I had to bend the rules – when some big bullying ass would try to push me around when the referees weren’t looking – my dad taught me an old elbow trick – which I used on occasion – and let me tell you, it worked every time without fail – thanks for that, Dad.  Funny thing, though, I always hated it when some knuckle dragging numbskull would put me in the position to do stuff like that – and it’s the same even as I speak.  After going about my life, having to occasionally put a bully in his place over the years, an incident occurred about ten years ago, on a pier in San Diego, and I’ve since had to walk away from the bullies of the world – mostly because I fear for my freedom, and in many cases here more recently, I fear for my well being.  As the world becomes angrier and angrier by the day, I cross paths with some horribly angry people just about every time I leave the house, and I know they’re not out there acting like idiots while being unarmed.

I’d like to elaborate on that last piece there.  We American boys are taught from the day we’re born, that we must be Clint Eastwood, Chuck Norris, and Superman all rolled into one – that we must “Kick ass”, that we must handle every situation with brass ones, and with scripted verbal perfection.  One sad circumstance is that with every day that goes by, the laws are slanted more and more towards protecting the cowardly and the manipulative.  In other words, being that none of us has a policeman in our back pocket, when a situation requires that we “take the law into our own hands”, we are vilified, crucified, and in quite a few cases, we spend time in a prison cell.  This goes for defending our own life in our own house, in the street, in public places, and wherever else – you dare defend yourself and cause a badguy harm, and you’re screwed.  Meanwhile, when an innocent person dies at the hands of a lowlife, everybody is crying and saying how sorry they are that said lowlife murdered an innocent person.  Where are the laws, and where is the personnel, to protect us?  And, on the subject of defending our own life and/or well being, what’s worse, spending anywhere from 3 months to life in a prison cell, or being dead – is that even a choice we should be forced to make?

I’ve been hearing a lot lately, from the female population of the world, that Hollywood, along with printed media, is causing girls and women to have bad “self esteem”, by putting out an unrealistic standard for all to see, as in, “We can’t possibly compete with the 5’6”, 100 lb. model with the perfect figure, perfect face, and perfect skin”.  Well, same goes for the Chuck Norris syndrome – not to mention, if Mr. Norris were to handle a situation in a public place the way he did in any of his movies, he’d likely still be in a prison cell, or dead from gunshot.  I’m beginning to smell a conspiracy here.  It’s been said that almost 50% of the American population suffers from some degree of depression and anxiety.  How is this possible?  We’re all walking around with our heads all screwed up, making it damn near impossible to see what’s right in front of us, to deal with other everyday stresses and problems, and most of all, we can’t see what and who is causing most of the dissent in the world.  I don’t have answers, only observations.  I’m among the almost 50% that fights with depression and anxiety – not to mention my ongoing disgust and grief that is caused me by all the unfairness and injustice in the world.  From where I sit, there is but one thing left that the universe, the Powers That Be, has not been able to take from me – and that is my sense of self worth.  For whatever reason, I never doubt me, I deny nothing, I don’t pretend to be something I’m not, and I’m ok with all my shortcomings.  Oh yeah, and I sleep very well at night.

So, I continue to dread leaving my house, I dread getting in the car, I even dread getting on the internet – because I am so beat down from witnessing so much anger, hatred, unprovoked resentment, bullying, and other such violent behavior, while not being able to do a thing about it; and, while I watch the law continue to protect the cowardly and the dishonest.  Again, no answers, just observations.

So, What Do We Do With The Rinds And Seeds?

There is nothing more negative than pretending that a problem doesn’t exist. To remedy a problem, you must first acknowledge it. With so many people hiding behind clever cliches, and grossly overused words such as“positive”, the problems of the world become exponentially worse.

We hear, “When we’re served lemons, make lemonade”. Ok, but what do we do with the rinds and seeds? What we’ve been doing is, we pretend they don’t exist, and the result is the ever expanding mountain of rinds and seeds, that is fermenting, and rotting everything around it. So, drink the lemonade and enjoy it, but we gotta quit ignoring the rest. We need to quit the cowardly practice of needing to be socially acceptable, we need to bring problems to light, and figure out what to do about them.

So, the next time you start pointing fingers at a person for mentioning a problem, or for showing his or her disgust, and before you start throwing around words and terms such as “Negative”, or, “Bad attitude”, think about what you’re saying, and think about what to do about a problem, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist; and instead of trying to squash the messenger.

One more thing, all the denying, excusing, defending, manipulating of facts, smartass retorts, and bullying in the world will not change the fact that problems exist, and that they need to be stated, acknowledged, and dealt with.

Lizards, Dragonflies, Mountain Lions, And Bears

 



Pat and Bill are my neighbors.  Bill is in his mid 70s, Pat in her late 60s, Pat works in the office, Bill is retired.  Every night at five o’clock, they go to the casino, they get their dinner, Pat spends an hour or so playing slot machines, while Bill sits in the sports bar section and watches whatever is on one of the 25+ tvs that are up on the wall.  Now, I’m not here to tell other people what and what is not good for them, it may sound like I’m going in that direction with this, but I’m actually here to make a different point.  For me, doing what Pat and Bill do would be a huge waste of time, it would not satisfy me, it would be a very short time before I would be very unhappy, bored out of my skull, and I would feel like I’m just doing, “Me, me, me”.  As for me, me, me, if there should ever come a time when I get to retire, where I have enough money to do what I want, I would still want to do something, or maybe more than one something, that would contribute matter or sound waves that is worthwhile to the universe – not necessarily to the human race, just to the universe.  While on that subject, anybody who has read more than one or two of my blog posts knows that I generally detest most people – with good reason – I have been cheated, lied to, exploited, taken advantage of, stolen from, and bullied in one way or another ever since I can remember.  I’m not speaking of the being pantsed and stuffed in a locker kind of bullied – I’m speaking of mostly workplace bullying  - where the typical pathetic little boss type feels the need to throw his or her “authority” around, and, I’m speaking of street bullying – being tailgated, huffed and puffed at in the grocery store line, and on occasion, having to confront some smartass, and subsequently being threatened by cops and/or lawyers.  There was even one occasion where I thought I killed a guy by belting him – and I only belted him once.  That was the scare of my life – I thought my life was over – that by biggest and longest running fear was finally coming to fruition – that I was going to spend the rest of my life in prison because some yellow bellied, bullying piece of human crap pushed me.  This kind of thing (bullying from parents, little league baseball coaches, high school basketball coaches, bosses, etc.) has been going on since I was eight years old – at least that’s as far back as I can remember.  So, hopefully you get my point – I generally detest most people.  There’s also the fact that I’ve seen the universe work against me in just about every way possible – stifling everything I’ve ever tried to do – seeing to it that everybody benefits from my hard work and abilities – except me.  That being said, I don’t know why I care even a tiny bit about doing something “good” for the universe.  Again, couldn’t care less about people, but on some level, I feel compelled to do something good for the universe.  At the top of my mind is this – that should I ever be able to do what I want, when I want, I would probably spend a good amount of time in some wooded area in Colorado, under a tree, playing my guitar or banjo for the lizards, the dragonflies, the mountain lions, the bears, and the trees.  This would of course, be somewhere where no human would know I was there, much less hear anything I was doing.  I would do this at my leisure – probably not every day, just when I felt like it.  I would be ok to do this until I no longer wanted to be in this life.  Even more ironic is the fact that I’ve thought about trying to get the message out to the world that we were being duped and royally screwed by the rich and the ruthless, that we’d better wake up, or our kids and grandkids will be fighting – literally – for their lives.  Again, I don’t know why I care.  I probably won’t do the latter, even if I do ever find myself on a platform that would enable me, I guess I don’t have the energy anymore.  I would, though, spend a lot of my time under the old trees, sending music out there for anything non human.  One of the many benefits of playing for animals and cactus plants – they wouldn’t be calling cops or management companies to shut me up.  I’ve actually had non humans come around on the rare occasion that I was able to play under the trees – mostly lizards and dragonflies, but I’ll take it.  Mountain lions, bears, deer, I’d play for any and all of ‘em, and the more the merrier.  And no, I’m not afraid of mountain lions or bears – I respect them, but I’m not afraid of them – and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be afraid of me.

There is the possibility that I would want to continue recording, and, while I cringe for saying this – selling my music, but I would do it when I damn well felt like it, and I would probably hire somebody to do all the bullshit – press kits, bios, marketing, and other such society and money related crap.  I hate the idea of selling my art in order to make a living, I hate it, but I do it because it’s the only way I know of to bring in any kind of income.  The Powers That Be have destroyed the music business as we knew it, and it’s been a rough road the past three years, so now I search for other music related avenues to muddle through.  On that subject, they’ve pretty much destroyed most businesses, along with many lives, families, and countries, but that’s a whole ‘nother.  For me, should there ever arrive a time when I can no longer play music, or hike out to a place where I can be free of intrusion by other humans, or I simply lose interest in making music altogether, I would definitely not want to be in this life anymore, and would happily lay down for eternity beside my proverbial little bucket.  If I cannot do something constructive, pleasant, or whatever else, then I don’t see any sense in being here.  I will never resort to spending all of my time doing mindless stuff -  you won’t find me in any casino, or playing some god awful, mind numbing video game, or sitting in front of a television set for more than an hour or two or three a week.  I may go out hiking if I’m able, but nobody will find me hovering over cheap, crappy entertainment.

So, if Pat and Bill are happy peeing money away in a casino – that’s up to them, and I’m not here to state how horrible that is, I’m only trying to make the point that that would never work for me.  And please, I’m also not here to profess to be some noble being, I’m just making an observation – that observation being that while I generally detest people, and while I don’t see the universe as having been all that kind or friendly to people like me, I still seem to, on some level, feel the need to do something “good” for the universe while I’m still here.  I can’t seem to state this without sounding “holier than thou”, so I’ll just write that off as my inability to express in a neutral, concise way what’s in my little brain.

So, should my CD bring me any kind of monetary compensation – enough so that I can have my own life, boy howdy will I ever have my own life – and I can guarantee there will be some really mad people should that ever happen – and that makes me happy.

 

You can find me on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/ImTheFid