Random: Recollections

Last night while trying to sleep, but unable to doze off I hear this buzz and feel something land near my head. I have a HUGE problem with insects that fly and sting. I jumped up located the harmless critter and flushed it down the toilet. I feel kind of bad cause I'd normally catch it and then let it outside. Well I guess I can't complain if it comes back for a visit, I’m hoping that little swim didn't take kill it.

T-RIDE: The secret to getting to somewhere fast

This may get me in trouble... but here’s what I’ve noticed: When I’m in a hurry to get to the office from the train I find it’s best to locate a person taller than myself (I’m 5’8 so this isn’t exactly difficult) and follow them. I come up with some basic guidelines for this process. Chances are I’ll never know the tall person’s name, so I’ve taken the liberty of naming them myself. I lovingly call these tall friends “t-rides” There are several reasons why picking the right t-ride should get me where I need to be a little faster. First there’s the obvious…. Well selected t-rides have longer legs; this means they can take bigger steps and therefore tend to get places faster. Next is height advantage…. so they can easily look ahead and hopefully avoid congested traffic areas. This next part you can actually observe this if you are ever at an airport, or any overly crowded area like an amusement park. There’s some science to this, seethe brain functions in different “states” and these states can be triggered by surroundings for example when being hypnotized the brain enters a highly suggestible alpha state, people in alpha states have delayed reactions and can move slowly. Alpha states can be triggered by eye movement. If people need to look up there is a good chance that for a split second the looker will enter an alpha state. When the looker enters alpha they will pause momentarily (this is exactly what you want). If I pick the right t-ride who takes advantage of the lookers slight pause, hopefully they’ll jump ahead therefore seizing the right of way and I can follow the t-ride right through a crowd with amazing efficiency. I always try to maintain a following distance of 2 feet or arms length. Be aware of quick direction changes or stops. T-rides also offer some degree of aerodynamic advantage. On windy days I actually mutter thanks my t-ride when they take the brunt of the gusty winds while I enjoy a less windy commute. Be sure to “lock in ” and walk right behind your t-ride, because opportunists may snake your spot if they think your moving on.



Here are some tips for selecting a t-ride:

• Coffee: an overly caffeinated t-ride is a wonderful thing and that full bladder is sure to add some pep in the step
• Fidgety behavior: this often means the t-ride is anxious and hopefully (for me) looking to get going in a hurry
• Baggage: avoid using a t-ride with too much baggage as it can slow you down

Finally I always say thanks to my t-ride when we part ways

St Paul: A Somewhat Quick Introduction

When my Mother remarried I was introduced to a few new worlds one of them was St Paul Missionary Baptist church. Before my mother and I arrived in 1979 the church was only attended by black folk as they called themselves or African Americans as we say today. I don’t know for a fact that we were the first non-black to attend but I can assure you that we were the first regulars. This was because St Paul was my step father’s “church home” and yes he was a very proud black man. The services were very charismatic, this was the first time I ever saw any one “fall out”, speak in tongues, “be filled with the spirit”, lay hands, and attempt to heal, cast out demons or scream gospel themed slogans at the top of their lungs. I was always amused at the fact that the men were all referred to as “brother” and the women were referred to as “sister” unless they were elder women, in which case they were called “mother”. Oddly enough no one was ever called father, except god. Because of my experiences there I’ve never been able to rule out the existence of a god, although my definition of god is probably different than yours.

We spent a lot of time at church, there was something going on every day of the week and usually I was forced to go unless I had homework. Let’s see, home work or church. Church was an all day event for the family back then. The schedule was 8AM to 9AM Sunday school, 9AM to 12PM-ish depending on who started speaking in tongues, or how longwinded the preacher got. The 6PM to 9PM-ish evening service ended my church dominated Sunday. Different weeks determined our 2PM to 5PM gap. I can recall that on 3rd Sundays we’d visit the sick, elderly and shut in and on 4th Sundays we’d visit and minister to prisoners. Just to be clear about this, about 30 church members went to an actual prison and sat in the same room with actual prisoners, I’m fairly sure this is no longer allowed.

Until St. Paul I didn't care for choir music and had no interest in gospel. One day I heard Sister PB (who was 17 at the time) sing a song called “this world is not my home” I’d never…. in my life…. heard any one perform with the emotion, soul, energy, and conviction that Sister PB did. To this day if I ever need to tap into my inner soul and bring out some emotion I think of her always flawless rendition of that song. I can remember listening and thinking “I want to sing like that” and as I’d look around I noticed that the people’s reactions and energy just feed her performance. After I’d worked up the bravery to approach Sister PB I told her how I love the way she sang that song. She hugged me and said “bless you Brother D” (I had a different name back then) sisters didn’t have to hug you but it was very normal for me to be hugged at least a hundred times on a Sunday. Not all the church embraced my mother and I with hugs, but there were many that did embrace us. Although I lost contact with most of my St. Paul church family I haven’t lost the memories.

....Stay tuned for more

Knowledge I like to share

Know that our world is a better place for having you in it.

:-)

The Factory – Introduction

a long time ago I worked in a factory, there were three shifts and the machinery ran nonstop, 7 days a week except on Christmas and Thanksgiving. I’ve worked all three shifts but preferred the 2nd shift which is 3PM to 11:30 PM. 2nd shift was awesome for being in a band, going out, being creative, but not so great for seeing shows or shopping, unless it was a late show. I met some very very interesting people in the factory. From time to time I find myself thinking, “whatever happened to so & so” and once in a great while I’ll bump into one of my old factory mates. Sometimes I’ll spot one and hide and pray they don’t see or remember me. This may sound crappy but you have to remember there were some really good people and some very bad people there. I looked very different back then and have been mere feet away from an ex-boss and had them look oddly at me but not recognize me. There were at least 30 different departments and each existed in its own world. I wanted to visit as many different worlds as possible, but you had to be careful not to get trapped. Here’s how it worked… to get a raise you needed points. Worker bees got points by being certified in specific tasks. Different certifications were worth different points. Oddly enough people with in departments wouldn’t let people outside their department how much potential points could be earned in their department. Once you earned 30 points you were eligible for a raise. One of the problems in this system was that in most departments you couldn’t earn more than 29 points because there weren’t that many jobs that you could be certified in. Yes there was such a thing as a job that was not worth certification points. These were fun jobs like filling up the AI machine with solder paste or staging & stacking 15 pound heat sinks or my favorite…unpacking materials from boxes. It was always fun to open every box (there could be 20 on a skid) like it was Christmas which included screaming with glee and thanking everyone around you. Anyway…. I wanted a raise every review period, so I was constantly looking for new things to learn, to hopefully be certified in, and by default moved around a lot in search of adventure. I worked in many different positions, met lots of different people, learned more than I ever wanted to know about manufacturing, factories, politics, and my favorite….people.

Dreligion

Ok seriously, I’m going to start my own religion. I’ll be adding more here soon :)

Feel it ?

Think back to a happy time, a really, really happy time in your life. Go back as far as it takes, to a time when you felt so light you thought you might float.

Do you remember it? The carefree feeling? The acceptance of the moment, of yourself, of life? Feeling unfettered by thoughts of the future, and oblivious to the past?

Feel it a little longer...

Glitter Assassin

The first Glitter Assassin album was originally going to be a concept album. The story line was centered around "Alix Martin" who was living in Dallas in the early 90's. Alix has a strange life and even stranger dreams. As a result most of the first 20 -ish songs are about Alix or his experiances. There are many similarities between Alix and myself, approaching the songwriting method from this prospective was both different and refreshing as I'd never created this way in the past with any of my other bands. I set limitations so that I'd be forced to work with "less" which allowed me to focus more on the actual songwriting process and less on the actual musical parts. For example, I deliberatly didn't write a drum part I couldn't actually play. That should explain why the drums are so simple :-)

Making up the names as i go along

Through the process of elimination I've located the train car that's is the least crowded. Almost every morning I see the same group of people. Based on their personalities I mentally name them. The names all match dogs I've owned or known at various points in my life. The exception to this is when I encounter people that resemble people from my past. There should be one word to describe this. If you think of it, please let me know.

Well it looks like I may be in for another round of whatever swine flu is going around this week. Not sure I really got over the last cold, still have this lingering throat clearing thing. The new cold is taking way more steam out of my sails, going to drown & soak in theraflu after I drink some cham-o-meal tea. Damn this non-spell check app :)

I haven't written in a while. Lots of new things to post. Since my "beautiful departure" from Comasoft I've been busy writing/producing with Glitter Assassin (shoegaze/indie), and my own blend of electronic dance loving called....wait for it...Dredillah. I still write on the side & colobarate with other artists. I fairly sure I'm not going to be able to stop this musical hobby of mine. Currently I'm not a part of a gig-ing band, but I think that's going to change soon. As of today there are 25 songs in Glitter Assassin's roster. There are 12 songs that will make the 1st release. I've enlisted some close friends to assist in the various production duitys. Im messing with the order of the 12 to see what gives the compilation the best flow. A downloadable album seems like a great distribution method. CD's are so old school but I kind of miss the fun packaging that comes with a CD release.

?

It's been a while, pesky firewalls & what not.

Test....