Things I could do right now

... instead of dorking around on-line.

• Find actuarial jobs for which to apply. (Actually, I can't seem to find those jobs at all.)
• Sign up for the CAA meeting, taking place in late March. (I asked a member of the Chicago Actuarial Association for advice and he suggested that I attend. It'll only cost me $50 to go as an unemployed person. I'll really have to be on my stuff that day. That's a definite thing to do, but I don't feel like signing up just yet.)
• Work on our next set. (It's my turn to create the set list for our March 12th gig. I have basic ideas on what should be played and what should take a rest, but it's so far away that I can wait on it.)
• Have another piece of gum. (Amanda, a long-lost college acquaintance who responded to my out-of-the-blue Facebook friend request, sent me a bunch of stuff in the mail. Most of it is edible, but there's a small bottle of Oxi Clean in there too. i can't yet figure why she did it, but it's very cool that she did, and the flavor from this stick of strawberry shortcake flavored gum is losing its flavor now.)
• Try to clean more of the carpet. (With what I thought were shows wet with clean snow, I went across our front room to look out the window and see more drama from across the street, where a nice guy is losing his fight with alcoholism. It was bad for me to snoop like that, and I'll probably continue to do it in the name of being a caring neighbor, but I dirtied the carpet and am trying to clean it up with a bottle of Resolve. I will not use the Oxi Clean on it. Looks like the Resolve is doing okay, and I have another spot or two that needs treatment. Guess I'll do that now.)  (Okay, that's done.)
• Eat the rest of my sandwich. (I got a foot-long buffalo chicken sandwich at Subway, my attempt at finding a healthful food while still getting out of the house. I could've eaten the entire foot-long right away, but I'd be just as hungry at 3:00pm if I ate it all or just half of it. This way, I have a snack waiting for me. Too bad it's not very good.)
• Exercise. (It's nice out and the sidewalks are probably melted enough for me to go for a walk. There's also a nice elliptical machine and a pretty good exercise bike downstairs. I've been doing a pretty good job exercising lately, usually with Margie while listening to the iPod. But Margie's working right now and my lower back has been hurting today - no clue why - so I'll give the big exercising a rest. A walk? Later. Maybe.)
• Create a design for Tito's room. (That's the name of our third bedroom, which will hopefully be our child's room. I painted it vibrant green and white with a touch a green, and I picture the big wall as looking nice with a dark blue design. I just haven't yet created the design. I'm thinking late-era Matisse but can't find the right inspiration. Not the sitting girl. Maybe a few of those spongy creatures like the Jazz era. But they have no lines to them, so I'd have to freehand them. And that wouldn't require much prep work, just winging it. And I'm not in the mood to create like that and clean up afterwards, so no.)
• Blog. 

But enough of this. I've got work to do.

Paul

Today I closed the final chapter of a man that I've known sporadically for 15 years: let's call him Paul.

We first met at a radio station, where I worked part-time as many things, from Saturday night board operator to news desk fill-in to basketball announcer to classic pop host. There were a lot of great people at that station, though no one made any money. Paul became one of my better friends, and we'd share each other's company at work and at whatever place he'd be living at the time.

Everyone at the station disliked the GM and the owner. But maybe that was good, because it really helped morale; they all had something in common. Paul worked there six hours a night, every weeknight, for no more than six bucks an hour. A new guy took over the station with promises of buying the station for way more than it was worth. But he never came through, and Paul bought into this guy in hopes of landing a better position and becoming more financially stable. But he got burned as badly as anyone.

Paul got along very well with me and with Missy, my girlfriend at the time. (At this stage of my life, I had a four-month girlfriend every year. So it was not to last.) But something happened between the two of them - Missy would never tell me exactly what - and suddenly Paul was very mad at me. While I was giving play-by-play at a basketball game, Paul was working the board. He yelled at me and called me an idiot, then put me right back on the air, forcing me to swallow what he said. When I returned to the station later that night, I asked him if he wanted to talk about it. He said "I don't think so" in that breathy voice. And we stopped talking to each other for many months.

Paul could also play guitar. And bass. And keys. And he could sing great harmony. He was a fantastic musician. I don't know if that's what brought us back together, but eventually he got to play with other friends of mine, and eventually, that group became the band that played at my wedding reception. They did a great job, with a friend-of-a-friend filling in on drums. Since I no longer lived in Illinois, I was impressed at how well they organized and pulled it off.

From what I understand, Paul did most of the organizing, and his ways grated on the other members of the band, specifically the lead guitarist, who once called him a dick. Paul held a grudge in response and never hesitated to bring up the comment over and over again, as part of his overall complaint, as part of the chip he had on his shoulder.

A fellow radio friend once told me that Paul thought of himself as a "poor soul." To be sure, when I think of Paul, I think of two facial expressions: the "woe is me" look and the "what did I do?" look.

Two years ago, my wife and I moved back to Illinois. Plans were made to form a band, with Paul on guitar and keys, myself on drums, and the lead guitarist and bass player from before. After several practices, the lead guitarist had enough and wanted Paul gone. I argued against it. After a summer festival gig, the lead guitarist relented. But a fight ensued at the next practice, where he lost his cool for five minutes, and Paul would never let that go. A two-hour e-mail conversation between Paul and myself started at "let's cool down" and somehow ended up with Paul claiming I had questioned his mental stability and was no friend of his. And he was gone.

Until two months ago, when I friended him on Facebook. After some minor discussion on baseball - Paul hates the Cubs, which is no surprise as I love them - it seemed as if we could finally have a decent friendship, even if it was only through Facebook.

Our band is going quite well; we replaced Paul with a guy that lived next door to the lead guitarist. After adding a female lead singer, we're pretty happy with where we are. We won't be opening for U2, but we get to play once or twice a month and make a little money for it.

Recently, Paul said (via Facebook) that he wondered "how much of that old stuff that was taken from me will be used at your gig." You see, Paul thought that that other members of the band had stolen some of his equipment before the prior break-up and didn't like it when we couldn't deliver any of it back to him.

What happened should come as no surprise. In fact, I'll post it here.

P: wonder how much of my old stuff that was taken from me will be used at your gig.....

D: I thought you meant songs at first, but you probably mean equipment. I don't know, Paul. No one intentionally took anything from you, I promise. I can ask again, if you remind me what equipment it was you lost. If not, tell me what I can do to put this right.

P: Well, it was a few guitar cords, a mic cord, a guitar stand, a mic and a boom mic stand. Don't worry about "making it right".
Digger told me a while ago he'd get the stuff back to me too.
Hey, I had 2 oncologists tell me I won't live to see another birthday so you can consider the stuff inherited

(At this point, I asked the bass player about it and he said he'd get back to me. I didn't reply right away, for I didn't know what to say. It's hard to say anything when his cancer prognosis comes up.)

A week later:

P: ahhh, over a week and no response. I'm very sad to say it doesn't surprise me.
Perhaps you tell the truth when you say no one intentionally took the stuff. But then again, no one made any effort to get the stuff back to me either, including people who said they would, and people who claim to be my friend.
Oh well, live and learn...

D: ahhh, boy.
I asked Digger about it right away, and he didn't remember that much stuff possibly being yours, but he thought he had a boom mic stand that might be yours. He said he would look around further and get back to me, and that's the last I've heard. But you decided to snipe at me once more, instead of simply asking where it's at. Paul, to be honest, you make it very hard to be your friend sometimes. You told me not to worry about making it right, then rip on me for not trying to make it right, when I was still trying to make it right. I just can't seem to ever make it right with you. You won't let me.
Paul, I'm very sorry for your illness and hope and pray that you overcome this.

P: There you fucking go again! Before whenever anything went wrong it's because of my supposed reactionary ways (despite others in your clan behaving worse than I ever did), now you're gonna blame my cancer for your not returning messages?
I do not need this.
Hard to be MY friend?
I don't turn my back on my friends...

D: I guess we'll never understand each other. Goodbye, Paul. Best of luck.


And that's it. I'll likely never talk with him again.

I can't blame his cancer for his lack of logical thought. He's done it this way before.

Paul is a porcupine, in a way. If you try to help, you'll get stung. But he can shoot a quill your way too. When he first told me abut his colon cancer, I offered in any way I could, but he said that there was nothing I could do.

He's had a rough life in many ways, and maybe he's never known where to vent his frustration. Too often, it came my way.

Goodbye, Paul. I sincerely hope you get better. But I don't think you will.

Truth, part 2

It's amazing how good and timely "The Simpsons" has been over the years. Decades, I mean. A few years back, Homer got caught in a big lie, and Marge was livid. Homer's response?

"But Marge, I didn't mean for you to find out."

A great thing about the show is that occasional jokes mean different things to different groups of people. For example, the episode where Homer's accidental Las Vegas wife visits Springfield, and Marge kicks Homer out to live with her in the treehouse.

Stressed, the new wife helps him relax by making him a late-night sandwich. We find ourselves looking at Marge, lying in bed with the window open, listening to Homer's Freudian moans coming from the treehouse: "oh yeah," "oh god, that's it," "you're doing it like a pro." Even "use both hands."

Of course, that alone was the main humorous aspect of "Three's Company," and most other shows would stop there. It took the creative genius of "The Simpsons" to take it to another level, and we watch Marge staring at the ceiling and commenting to herself: "oh no, she's making him a sandwich."

Kids wouldn't get that joke. Others might not get past the sexual innuendo. But it was a fantastic moment.

The "I didn't mean for you to find out" joke was generational humor, I believe. Anyone Generation X or older got the humor, realizing how funny it was that Homer thought his treachery would be okay if he didn't get caught.

I bet a lot of teenagers, provided they watched something this intelligent, didn't get it.

Putting a song together

When I was younger, I was only a drummer. Apart from figuring out a nice beat, I had no songwriting skill, at least from the musical angle.

But in college and in my twenties, I wrote a lot. I think I wrote some pretty good stuff. Sure, most of it was about girls I couldn't have or could no longer have - and I apologize for the use of "have," as if the girls in question were mere objects for me to possess and use - but even today, I still find what I wrote entertaining, and not just because my pain of the times shines through.

Nowadays, as I'm more familiar with music theory and can find my way around a guitar neck, I can come up with some basic song patterns. Last night, I found that putting the capo on the third fret and playing Em - G - D - A in a moderate tempo with a deliberate dampening of the strings sounded pleasant. Coming up with the words to accompany this pattern is a major problem, though.

Do I simply take what I wrote as a younger man and add them to my older musical designs?

The only problem is that I'm still at a loss for a melody line. Most of the time.

I did write one song a few years ago. It was called "It's Academic!" and was written for the TV quiz show of the same name. (It's a Saturday morning east-coast thing.) Our teacher-band, Big Daddy and the Slurpies, performed it on the show, and Mac McGarry, the LONG-time host of the show, told me that he'd like for it to be the closing theme. But it never went anywhere after that, either because we never made a clean copy or because I hoped to make a little money off it. Lot a lot; $100 would've done fine. I just wanted to get paid as a songwriter.

It's a pretty good song, sounding like early Elvis Costello listening to an early John Mellencamp song while thinking about Randy Newman. I made sure that four teachers in the band had chances to sing the lead vocal. And I liked the rhyme-play that I had going. The next year, a student who has at the taping told me that she couldn't get the song out of her head. That's good, right?

There were ground rules set up for me. It had to be about education being essential to a good life after school is done. It had to use basic chords, since our overall musicianship in the band wasn't strong, and have the show's title as the chorus, where it would stick in your head like putty.

My current band would be more than willing to do an original of mine, but "It's Academic" is way too niche for our classic-rock audience. The chord structure is too pop-centric, the message is too wholesome.

What we could dearly use is a sound-check song. One that starts with drums, then bass, then rhythm guitar. One that offers lead vocals to Eileen and Digger and myself, and maybe even John and Paul. One with a nice little guitar solo part.

The only theme I have is "Rock and Roll Depends," based on a band member's small bladder when beer is drunk and how it puts us in a bind when nature keeps calling during a gig. I could certainly play off of that theme and make it more about the energy of the music coming from the fans, rather than the musicians. But put enough double-meaning in there as a wink-wink to the mini-bladder.

In what key would be good for both Eileen and us guys to sing? I'd like to avoid G, as "It's Academic!" is in that key. Maybe A? If I then use "red," "knife" and "meander" but avoid "she," I'll finally get to write that song that Margie wanted me to write.

You see, she gave me those parameters a decade ago but I never wrote the song. I keep wanting to stick "meander" at the end of a line, and good luck rhyming that one in a meaningful way. Gander? Pander? Coriander? Also, how do you use "red" and "knife" without turning the song into a bloodbath?

Truth, part 1

Soon I'll start to write about "truth," which used to have a clear and absolute definition. From what I'm seeing, the word is becoming more and more subjective, open to interpretation by those who want to find an easier passage through life and aren't happy with what's really going on around them.

I was a high school math teacher for seven years. The definition of "truth" from my students became further apart than my own. In short, they would lie and lie about the lie, and when presented with overwhelming evidence against their case, lie even more.

They equated "preference" with "reality." Whatever they wanted to believe, that is what they chose to believe.

No responsibility for their actions. No admittance to falsehoods or poorly-attempted deceit.

It got to the point that I realized not to bother with asking them for the truth, because I wouldn't get it. At least, I wouldn't get what I defined as "truth."

So sad.

And I'm the "out-liar." But only because "outlier" was already taken. But I like the portmanteau, as I do notice different realities for different people, especially in politics. And religion. And education. And everywhere else. And I like seeing how statistics describes the world. And though I don't like the feeling of an outsider, which is what I have been in most categories of mankind's self-categorization, being an outlier has an appeal.

Paint

My next painting will be on a bedroom's wall. Not as glamorous, but more appreciated in the long run.

Done!

At least for now. I can change the colors later but I think I'm happy with it.