I have long listened to and enjoyed Phil Collins, with and without Tony Banks and Mike Rutherford. I have even a fondness for some of the stuff he did with Steve Hackett and Peter Gabriel. Most of Genesis' discography has substantial merit and Phil Collins solo material is kind of hit and miss, especially his follow ups to 1993's BOTH SIDES, which is one of my favorite albums period. Genesis' INVISIBLE TOUCH (1986) is sort of my lifetime soundtrack. When I was having a difficult time transitioning/adjusting from a carefree toddler to a reasoned young boy, I found solace in listening to that album and now I listen to it and it has a strange combination of freshness and familiarity. There's a few songs in Genesis' discography that I heard for the first time after delving into their back catalogue with the aid of the internet that I seriously could swear I'd heard before, and I could almost visualize having heard them before, although the visuals were not clear enough to make out a clear enough memory to describe to anybody.
I was a little interested in reading Genesis' biography CHAPTER AND VERSE which was published about a decade ago and is already out of print. I never was convinced enough to take the plunge. I feel like I know all I care to know about Genesis as a creative force and a group of individuals. I don't think Phil Collins dominated Genesis like some people accuse him of doing. However, from what I can gather, I think between the chemistry he, Tony and Mike shared with one another, and the diversity in approach that Mike & Tony seemed to have and that of Phil, I think Genesis' demise was largely due to Phil Collins' departure. I don't blame him. He's not even really capable of the quality of singing he was 20 years ago, and his drumming is medically not recommended. Most of all, his last full length studio album of new material was extremely lacking in quality. I think his absence from the music industry is for the best. If his heart is not in it, why bother?
Anyway...
I don't consider myself a fan of Phil Collins or Genesis. However, I feel like I have some kind of personal connection to Phil Collins. I know I don't, and I feel funny saying that, but it's true and I think that's the only reason I keep mousing over this product URL @ Amazon.com
I don't have $20. When I do have $20, that's just about all I have, and it seems absurd to spend that much money on a book. I don't even remember the last book I finished. I might have finished Elliot Perlman's SEVEN TYPES OF AMBIGUITY if picking it up and reading it didn't remind me of how much I *don't* read The Bible. My mom bought a one year Bible for my birthday this past November (20th), and I'm still having trouble getting into the routine. I'm still 4 days behind.
I find myself saddened when I think of all these movies that have a "message" or a "meaning", and then I realize how much God is neglected any kind of honorable mention in any of it. GROUNDHOG DAY is a very warm hearted and often hilarious romantic comedy with very heavy themes, but the joy of the Lord is not acknowledged at all. It gives off this phony ideal that all you need is to open your heart to another human being to be a worthwhile presence in this world. Granted, being a smug snot is not the way to be, but if you put all your faith and trust in one person (or a group of people), then you fall flat in your destination. You're either resigning yourself to the hostile nature of man and the anger and violence it fosters or you're extremely misguided/uninformed and don't need to be advising others how to behave. It makes more sense to think that GROUNDHOG DAY was written as more of a darker dark comedy before Harold Ramis got ahold of it and re-tooled it.
Anyway; I guess I'm now about to ramble so I can find a way to tie this up in a pretty little bow. I don't know what to say to end this blog post other than I don't know how to end this blog post and this is the end of this blog post. END TRANSMISSION
Friday, January 27, 2017
Saturday, January 14, 2017
if there is something strange
With respect to the DMCA, thank God I do not look like Bill Murray. Seriously. that would drive me batschitcrazy.
doing OK (no really, I mean it!)
Read two passages of my 1Yr Bible.
Now listening to "Along Comes A Woman" by Chicago / CHICAGO 17 (via Amazon Music Unlimited)
not lyrically applicable, but the whole CD is just a bunch of fresh out of the shower just hatched spring chicken feel-good viberhation festivity. Wooohooo!
Maybe my lack of medication and overuse of non decaff coffee is aiding in my mood...
Oh, and it's a friggin' BEAUTIFUL day. Managed to get out and mail a couple things, one item I sold the day before yesterday late in the day and another item I have to return.
I got the Roku Express+ I ordered from WalMart.com Marketplace yesterday. The best $35 I ever spent. Yikes!
Now listening to "Along Comes A Woman" by Chicago / CHICAGO 17 (via Amazon Music Unlimited)
not lyrically applicable, but the whole CD is just a bunch of fresh out of the shower just hatched spring chicken feel-good viberhation festivity. Wooohooo!
Maybe my lack of medication and overuse of non decaff coffee is aiding in my mood...
Oh, and it's a friggin' BEAUTIFUL day. Managed to get out and mail a couple things, one item I sold the day before yesterday late in the day and another item I have to return.
I got the Roku Express+ I ordered from WalMart.com Marketplace yesterday. The best $35 I ever spent. Yikes!
Friday, January 13, 2017
KINGS
I read two entries in my 1Yr Bible yesterday afternoon. It's helped put my mind at ease some, but I know I gotta get to it again today, as I'm still behind by like 5 days apprx (haven't counted 'em...) and I was behind by what seemed like a mountain. It was probably only a week...I had last read January 6th, so it couldn't have been that long ago, because I was not caught up when I had last read from it. I was almost caught up, so I think it must have been January 7th...hmm (January) 12 - 7(th)(of January) = 5...? 5 days? Hmmmm...that doesn't sound right...and it's still not right, but anyway....idk....
I missed two weeks of church now. I'm kind of afraid I'll enter the house of God w/o enough reverence or something. The guy who sits beside me keeps asking "Are YOU OK?" after I ask him if he's OK and he's got this kind of worried look on his face. Idk...maybe I'm misreading him. Ugh.
Anyway. I always get this way a little on Friday. By "this way", I mean worried. It's usually not so much about my spiritual composure or aura or whatever, but more related to the weight of it. I go most of my week w/o any schedule. Then Sunday comes up and I end up needing to be awake and ready to go. Thankfully church doesn't start until after 10am. We usually leave at apprx 10am, b/c it's a 25(+/-) drive to the church. Most of the churches in the immediate area are Baptist churches, which are not my thing. I haven't looked into the specifics, but my mom said that the baptist church has a bunch of member-bylaws or whatever they're called and not all of them are commanded by The Bible/God. I doubt it's nearly as extreme as what had happened to Jewish law by the time Jesus had arrived, but I don't believe the commands that Paul gave to the Gentiles need to be expounded upon. If they needed expounding, The Bible would have provided that expounding. That's not to say The Bible doesn't expound upon them, but it doesn't expound upon them in list format and I think there's good reason for that. The founders of this nation understood that reason which is why they fled from The Church Of England and made Christianity a choice rather than a government mandate.
Anyway. The morning is still young. I went to bed at 6:30 PM yesterday. I was feeling really like stuffy headed or something...and had a headache + my teeth were all gunky feeling. I had been neglecting my teeth big time. I've never been good at just going ahead with brushing my teeth, and I've let them go even more so lately. I brushed yesterday and the day before. Here's hoping for Day 3. And Day 2 of Bible reading. >>>>GO GO GO!
Ok, I guess that's it.
I missed two weeks of church now. I'm kind of afraid I'll enter the house of God w/o enough reverence or something. The guy who sits beside me keeps asking "Are YOU OK?" after I ask him if he's OK and he's got this kind of worried look on his face. Idk...maybe I'm misreading him. Ugh.
Anyway. I always get this way a little on Friday. By "this way", I mean worried. It's usually not so much about my spiritual composure or aura or whatever, but more related to the weight of it. I go most of my week w/o any schedule. Then Sunday comes up and I end up needing to be awake and ready to go. Thankfully church doesn't start until after 10am. We usually leave at apprx 10am, b/c it's a 25(+/-) drive to the church. Most of the churches in the immediate area are Baptist churches, which are not my thing. I haven't looked into the specifics, but my mom said that the baptist church has a bunch of member-bylaws or whatever they're called and not all of them are commanded by The Bible/God. I doubt it's nearly as extreme as what had happened to Jewish law by the time Jesus had arrived, but I don't believe the commands that Paul gave to the Gentiles need to be expounded upon. If they needed expounding, The Bible would have provided that expounding. That's not to say The Bible doesn't expound upon them, but it doesn't expound upon them in list format and I think there's good reason for that. The founders of this nation understood that reason which is why they fled from The Church Of England and made Christianity a choice rather than a government mandate.
Anyway. The morning is still young. I went to bed at 6:30 PM yesterday. I was feeling really like stuffy headed or something...and had a headache + my teeth were all gunky feeling. I had been neglecting my teeth big time. I've never been good at just going ahead with brushing my teeth, and I've let them go even more so lately. I brushed yesterday and the day before. Here's hoping for Day 3. And Day 2 of Bible reading. >>>>GO GO GO!
Ok, I guess that's it.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
What's King's problem?
Stephen King's two best books are being shortchanged.IT (1986)
and
PET SEMATARY (1983)
A mass market paperback re-issue of Pet Sematary is finally being released January 29 (3 weeks to go!) and I haven't seen any evidence of a softcover on the horizon, which would be much preferred. It's a relatively short book, so it doesn't really *need* a strong hard binding like IT does. However IT was released in softcover back in the summer of '16 and while it's apprx 300 pages shorter than the mass market printing, it's still 3x bigger than the number of pages in the old paperbacks from the days when you didn't need membership into the old people's club to appreciate Stephen King. I swear, you know how many trees you folks are wasting?
IT was once, not too terribly long ago (maybe 3 years ago?) available through book clubs and nowhere else, but now it's just nowhere. It costs at least $50 to buy one that's in nice shape. Yesterday I found one on e-Bay that was actually in quite nice shape. It costs $75. Yeah f****ing right.
I've read on the Amazon forums that Stephen King has a low opinion of PET SEMATARY. I can sorta see why based on this one reviewer on Amazon, citing Stephen King's optimistic streak that is completely absent from PET SEMATARY. However, what does he have against IT? Maybe nothing. I guess it's probably more a matter of cost than anything. If Doubleday or whoever re-printed it, it would probably still cost $40 minimum. I really liked the original cover-art. It was so finger looking good they re-used it for the paperback. That's a far cry from PET SEMETARY, which has never had a good paperback, hardback or softcover pressing aside from one that was printed as part of a set of S.K. hardcover editions back in the early 1990s. It was included on Amazon's website, but hardly anyone selling it was offering the edition pictured in the listing.
Meanwhile, I'm still awaiting CHVRCHES third album, which sounds to be more interesting than their 2nd album. It's being recorded now, and will probably see release in spring '17 but I might get lucky and see it's release late(r) this year... I've grown kinda tired of their debut, but I can tell you it's still good as it was. I just need a break from it.
couponcoupon
I got this stupid email at 1:04 PM today (eastern time). It's from PayPal and the subject line says "Thanks for your generosity". What generosity? The answer seems to be null.
Taken from the email:
Thanks for supporting your favorite cause with PayPal this holiday season. You and millions of others helped to make 2016 one of the biggest holiday online giving seasons ever. We are grateful for our generous community of users.
Yeah, uh...what? I have no idea what that's about. I have no interest in "charitable organizations" aka "charities". The work most of them, almost all of them, do is minimal and costs the donors way more than it ought to because the people doing it are doing it for the money. The CEO of United Way and all these things makes millions of dollars of donations from people. There is nothing the United Way does that the U.S. gov't couldn't do just as efficiently with higher taxation of the citizens. I don't support all of the money the gov't spends on everything, but I can comprehend that I am not in the majority in that line of thinking and that cancer research and environmental impact studies and peace talks between nations at war are deemed worthy of the billions upon billions upon billions that we spend on that stuff. I'm not against cancer research, nor am I against understanding the environment, but surely if the gov't is expected to pay for it, can't anyone with these concerns fund these things individually? The gov't is not what makes America great. The gov't gives and nobody is considering the cost. If cancer research is important, then a free country is able to decide that on its own and make its own fate with its decisions.
So yeah. I don't recall being a part of whatever b.s. this email is referring to. I did donate to The Salvation Army several times in 2016. There are so many charities that do the same thing with a much higher paid CEO & co and thus more overhead. The Salvation Army spends very little on advertising. You know The Salvation Army exists because they get out there and they ring the bells every Christmas and Thanksgiving. For some reason it's not good enough to donate to them. Why? Obviously there's some things they don't budget for, like "raising awareness" about racial issues and animal abuse...the hatred and oppression that occur in this world are not going to go away because of any charity that pops up. God can change an individual's heart but the consequences of past sin and the shortcomings that even sincere hardcore Christians face make a sin free world an impracticality. God will eventually have to destroy the planet because the sin in this world will eventually accelerate into a filthy swamp of tar.
You'll probably have to scroll to the bottom of this blog post to see the rest of what I'm talking about here onward. Their "thanks" for something I do not condone much less participate in is apparently targeted to the same demographic...
COUPONS! YAY! THE SAME COUPONS YOU CAN FIND AT A MILLION OTHER WEBSITES.
COUPON CABIN
THE KRAZY COUPON LADY
RED PLUM
COUPONS DOT COM
RETAIL ME NOT
Seriously, just type the word "coupon" and there's pages upon pages of results that come up.
These sites are sometimes useless in and of themselves depending on what coupons are being offered at any given retailer and what retailer you want to shop with/at, but these PayPal coupons are totally garbage. There's one midpage w/ the WalMart banner. It says "save 30% on rollbacks and free s/h with $50 purchase". WalMart.com offers free s/h with a $50 purchase. That is not a "deal" anymore so than "don't kill me and you won't go to prison" is a "deal". Just any handshake or a signed contract is not newsworthy. People barely take notice when the President is sworn in. Why? Same reason the privacy policy on most websites go unread (by most people). IT'S NOT IMPORTANT. I'd like to just tell Google "SHOOT THEM IF THEY TRY TO COME ACROSS THE GATE AGAIN!", but I don't think Google is sophisticated enough to offer such a service even if you were willing to pay for it. The correlating "Unsubscribe" button would cut me off from "NEWS" ****AND**** promotions. If people can't quit being idiots, at least show some respect for people who aren't as smart as Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking but are still pretty damn smart in comparison to whatever people read and found use from this email.
Taken from the email:
Thanks for supporting your favorite cause with PayPal this holiday season. You and millions of others helped to make 2016 one of the biggest holiday online giving seasons ever. We are grateful for our generous community of users.
Yeah, uh...what? I have no idea what that's about. I have no interest in "charitable organizations" aka "charities". The work most of them, almost all of them, do is minimal and costs the donors way more than it ought to because the people doing it are doing it for the money. The CEO of United Way and all these things makes millions of dollars of donations from people. There is nothing the United Way does that the U.S. gov't couldn't do just as efficiently with higher taxation of the citizens. I don't support all of the money the gov't spends on everything, but I can comprehend that I am not in the majority in that line of thinking and that cancer research and environmental impact studies and peace talks between nations at war are deemed worthy of the billions upon billions upon billions that we spend on that stuff. I'm not against cancer research, nor am I against understanding the environment, but surely if the gov't is expected to pay for it, can't anyone with these concerns fund these things individually? The gov't is not what makes America great. The gov't gives and nobody is considering the cost. If cancer research is important, then a free country is able to decide that on its own and make its own fate with its decisions.
So yeah. I don't recall being a part of whatever b.s. this email is referring to. I did donate to The Salvation Army several times in 2016. There are so many charities that do the same thing with a much higher paid CEO & co and thus more overhead. The Salvation Army spends very little on advertising. You know The Salvation Army exists because they get out there and they ring the bells every Christmas and Thanksgiving. For some reason it's not good enough to donate to them. Why? Obviously there's some things they don't budget for, like "raising awareness" about racial issues and animal abuse...the hatred and oppression that occur in this world are not going to go away because of any charity that pops up. God can change an individual's heart but the consequences of past sin and the shortcomings that even sincere hardcore Christians face make a sin free world an impracticality. God will eventually have to destroy the planet because the sin in this world will eventually accelerate into a filthy swamp of tar.
You'll probably have to scroll to the bottom of this blog post to see the rest of what I'm talking about here onward. Their "thanks" for something I do not condone much less participate in is apparently targeted to the same demographic...
COUPONS! YAY! THE SAME COUPONS YOU CAN FIND AT A MILLION OTHER WEBSITES.
COUPON CABIN
THE KRAZY COUPON LADY
RED PLUM
COUPONS DOT COM
RETAIL ME NOT
Seriously, just type the word "coupon" and there's pages upon pages of results that come up.
These sites are sometimes useless in and of themselves depending on what coupons are being offered at any given retailer and what retailer you want to shop with/at, but these PayPal coupons are totally garbage. There's one midpage w/ the WalMart banner. It says "save 30% on rollbacks and free s/h with $50 purchase". WalMart.com offers free s/h with a $50 purchase. That is not a "deal" anymore so than "don't kill me and you won't go to prison" is a "deal". Just any handshake or a signed contract is not newsworthy. People barely take notice when the President is sworn in. Why? Same reason the privacy policy on most websites go unread (by most people). IT'S NOT IMPORTANT. I'd like to just tell Google "SHOOT THEM IF THEY TRY TO COME ACROSS THE GATE AGAIN!", but I don't think Google is sophisticated enough to offer such a service even if you were willing to pay for it. The correlating "Unsubscribe" button would cut me off from "NEWS" ****AND**** promotions. If people can't quit being idiots, at least show some respect for people who aren't as smart as Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking but are still pretty damn smart in comparison to whatever people read and found use from this email.
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Sunday, January 8, 2017
been awhile...again...
No church today b/c the weather. No church -- for me -- last week b/c my mom was out of town and I didn't feel like trying to find someone willing to give me a ride. I'm going to need to knuckle down and get serious. At the tail end of the day, I got down to reading two entries of my one-year Bible I think I wrote of last month or late the one before. I'm still not caught up, but if I get the same accomplished today, that fact will no longer be true, but of course will be true once again starting 12:00AM, which as of *right now* is 4 hours from now. I can't say I'm moved beyond words to act, but I can just sense myself disassociating with Christian living. The methodology of God seems to be warnings and promises. I don't know why, but I don't feel compelled to act based on either. I don't remember if I ever have been. So where does that leave me? Phone lines are open....
Been having a hard time to find music worth listening to. Pandora on my blu ray player is so screwy. It plays a song or two then starts playing another one, stops that song, and then proceeds to the next one. This 2016 model LG player seems OK, I guess, but the apps are iffy. The Amazon app streams GHOSTBUSTERS (1984) (from my video library) with a resolution that looks marginally better than 8-bit. One concern I have about the blu ray playing component is when I tried to stream TAXI DRIVER (1976), the child lock feature had apparently been activated. I don't know if that was from the previous owner or if this is like what was going on with the SONY blu ray players of 2016. At least I was able to get the disc out of the player, so it's not quite the same problem the SONYs were having, and like I said, it could have been something the previous owner had set. I'd imagine some DVDs and BDs, depending on the software they're made with, could evade the child lock mechanisms. The CL was for both DVDs and BDs, so...uh...
Listening to this CD by...uh...not even sure...lemme check---a band called MuteMath; the album is VITALS. Pretty boring stuff. Singer sounds like he's on drugs and the keyboards are equally drugged sounding. The melodies sound sorta emotional, but just aren't getting to me. I started listening to it and haven't been disgusted by it enough to press 'stop'. I'm using Amazon Music Unlimited b/c I got a $20 credit for buying a CD back in November. I still got $4 credit to utilize, so I'll probably pay whatever $ they require on my billing date of January 29. My Prime membership expries February 20, so I don't know if they'll charge me 30 days for $9.99 or 30 days for $7.99 (the rate for Prime members) or if they'll do a hybrid of the two, since I'll be a Prime member for 20 or so of those days and not a Prime member for the rest of 'em...
I ordered a Roku Express+ yesterday b/c of this b.s. with the apps. Hopefully SONY will put out a worthy 2017 model and I can use that soon. I got a Wal-Mart in-store credit card, with a $700 credit limit.
I actually ordered a SONY blu ray player most recently, but Overstock.com sent me an LG player instead. What's weird is the LG player is higher priced at both Overstock and Amazon. I contacted them and asked them if they would find out what happened and demand I send the player back, and in response they gave a $5 credit on a future purchase. Yay. I'm thinking of selling this LG player. I'll probably hold onto it awhile longer. Idk.
Been having a hard time to find music worth listening to. Pandora on my blu ray player is so screwy. It plays a song or two then starts playing another one, stops that song, and then proceeds to the next one. This 2016 model LG player seems OK, I guess, but the apps are iffy. The Amazon app streams GHOSTBUSTERS (1984) (from my video library) with a resolution that looks marginally better than 8-bit. One concern I have about the blu ray playing component is when I tried to stream TAXI DRIVER (1976), the child lock feature had apparently been activated. I don't know if that was from the previous owner or if this is like what was going on with the SONY blu ray players of 2016. At least I was able to get the disc out of the player, so it's not quite the same problem the SONYs were having, and like I said, it could have been something the previous owner had set. I'd imagine some DVDs and BDs, depending on the software they're made with, could evade the child lock mechanisms. The CL was for both DVDs and BDs, so...uh...
Listening to this CD by...uh...not even sure...lemme check---a band called MuteMath; the album is VITALS. Pretty boring stuff. Singer sounds like he's on drugs and the keyboards are equally drugged sounding. The melodies sound sorta emotional, but just aren't getting to me. I started listening to it and haven't been disgusted by it enough to press 'stop'. I'm using Amazon Music Unlimited b/c I got a $20 credit for buying a CD back in November. I still got $4 credit to utilize, so I'll probably pay whatever $ they require on my billing date of January 29. My Prime membership expries February 20, so I don't know if they'll charge me 30 days for $9.99 or 30 days for $7.99 (the rate for Prime members) or if they'll do a hybrid of the two, since I'll be a Prime member for 20 or so of those days and not a Prime member for the rest of 'em...
I ordered a Roku Express+ yesterday b/c of this b.s. with the apps. Hopefully SONY will put out a worthy 2017 model and I can use that soon. I got a Wal-Mart in-store credit card, with a $700 credit limit.
I actually ordered a SONY blu ray player most recently, but Overstock.com sent me an LG player instead. What's weird is the LG player is higher priced at both Overstock and Amazon. I contacted them and asked them if they would find out what happened and demand I send the player back, and in response they gave a $5 credit on a future purchase. Yay. I'm thinking of selling this LG player. I'll probably hold onto it awhile longer. Idk.
MCD: PT II
after reading Wikipedia's WalMart article, one can only wait and wonder what kind of sick transmutations occur in the world after 2025.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart#Animal_welfare
Walmart's cage-free eggs will not come from free range producers, but rather industrial-scale farms where the birds will be allotted between 1 and 1.5 square feet each, a stressful arrangement which can cause cannibalism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walmart#Animal_welfare
Walmart's cage-free eggs will not come from free range producers, but rather industrial-scale farms where the birds will be allotted between 1 and 1.5 square feet each, a stressful arrangement which can cause cannibalism
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