George Jones - Love Makes It Alright (1971)

I initially posted this song because of George Jones's voice---and because I thought it was simply a catchy song about love!

But after a few listens... the lyrics! I couldn't find a transcript online, so wrote out excerpts from the stanzas after listening again and again. The point is: All of the below awful scenarios re unfaithful wives, Hitler, violent left-wing protesters... Their mutual false credo of "love" makes their actions "alright" in their own eyes and forms an actual pattern of all that is wrong with the world. And the music is so jaunty! You could initially listen to it and not know what is going on.

I can't find who wrote this song, but it's very stunning and sophisticated: the realistic antithesis to the hippy/Beatle/naif version of "all you need is love."

Married woman in a small town

A younger man was runnin' round
Leavin' little kids at home alone
In the middle of the night...

A little thing called "love" makes it all alright...

Paper hanger in a foreign land
Ruled a nation with an iron hand
Called himself a Superman
Said he ought to rule the world...

A little thing called "love" makes it all alright...

Gonna do away with poverty
Invading private property
Watch yourself on TV
And carry you a sign...

A little thing called "love" makes it all alright...

George Jones - Worried Mind (1965)

"I bought you fine clothes, and I bought you wine..." Ha!

George Jones - Hopelessly Yours (1986)

Back to real music.



I love you, I hate you
Forget you, but I'm afraid to.
You loved me, or did you?
I'll never be sure.
But one thing's for certain
In spite of this hurtin'
Forever I'm hopelessly yours.

Styx - Grand Illusion (1977)

Welcome to the Grand Illusion!
Come on in and see what's happenin'...

Deep inside we're all the same...

----------------

Pretty much hate everything about this song. The prog-rock, the attempted Sgt. Pepper/Bowie rip-off sans any thought behind it, the godawful shallow lyrics: "deep inside we're all the same"... (We might indeed be "all the same" on some level, but how exactly? I don't believe your generic proclamation.)

REO Speedwagon - Take It On The Run (Live)

In my 1983 high school yearbook, REO Speedwagon, Styx, Boston, and Journey were voted best bands.

At this point, I'd been listening for a couple of years to the Dallas-Fort Worth KZEW station's "Rock and Roll Alternative" on Sunday nights hosted by George Gimarc from midnight to 1am (at a volume of 1, with towels stuffed under my bedroom door so my mother didn't know I was awake): U2, Vapors, Eurythmics, Clash. (And I'd already discovered The Knack and the Go-Gos on my own.)

The REO mediocrity is so catchy, but so utterly dumb and meaningless!

Masks Required in San Francisco UNLESS...

San Francisco mayor London Breed says: You don't need a mask if the band is AWESOME. (Question for educated gay men in SF: You REALLY elected this idiot?)

Is Covid actually serious or not? Mayor Breed's partying indicates that it's not. I agree. For instance, in my own county of Travis, in Texas, the total number of deaths from Covid is 1,310----out of a total of 1.27 million people.

Don't know what Breed's San Francisco death stats are. Whatever they are, she needs to adhere to the standards that her Democratic party set for her: Either you wear a mask, or you don't wear a mask. If Tony/Toni/Tone make you take off your mask, then the "mask mandate" isn't that serious.

I Wanna Be Your Dog (1969)

First punk song!

Just got through reading "Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk." When I read about the scene in the '70s as a teen, I was so far away from it (living out in the country in Texas) yet wanted to be a part of it, because I thought it was all about how angry you felt inside---and how you expressed yourself and how you did your hair and what tattered clothes you wore to represent how you felt inside. Reading about it today, I realize the music was mainly tangential and that "punk" meant posing and doing drugs to the point of being unable to function and being violent and, in Sid Vicious's case, killing cats by strangling them.

I may have been an Angry Young Woman, but I was also literate and functional within society. Plus too blonde and involuntarily wholesome-looking. 30 years ago, I once threw a grill through a window  while drunk and angry at my first girlfriend, but 99.9 percent of the time, I never could look or act like those scumbags.

And I look at my 5 cats now and wonder what kind of psychopath could EVER look into a cat's beautiful face and even THINK about hurting it. (Stabbing Nancy Spungen, who cares?---she was a scumbag just like Sid Vicious---and his drug-addled mother. But a beautiful, innocent cat?)

My Mediocre "Glassware"

Purchased in the last month:
Upper left: 4 "pizza-place" red plastic and 2 triple-moon/black cat mugs
Middle right: Wine glasses and champagne glasses
Bottom right: 4 juice and 2 bigger glasses (don't know what to call those)

p.s. The empty spaces at middle/lower left: The rest of these are in queue for the dishwasher, or else packed away in a box  with extras.  I'm a single person, but not THAT sparse! :)

 

Charles Manson: Cease To Exit

Charles Manson: Invisible Tears (cover of '64 song)

Charles Manson: Journey into Evil (1995: A&E Biography)

Manson's not "evil."

First Song Heard on Transistor Radio: Neil Diamond - Song Sung Blue

When I was 9 years old, in 1974, I got my first transistor radio. The first song I ever heard on it was Neil Diamond's "Song Sung Blue" (1972).

I was amazed. My parents never listened to music around the house. And now I could, just walking around on the street!

Danny Sargent: Pre-Sexual Angst, Age 10

My mom just mentioned in an e-mail about something I'd written:
Reminds me of little Danny Sargent in Iowa Park who took me aside and asked me in wonder, "How did she get so smart?" 

--------------------------------------

Danny Sargent was a boy that I constantly chased and either "went with" or broke up with in 4th and 5th grades in Iowa Park, Texas. (1974 to 1975)

Danny Sargent was a weird psychological precursor to adult relationships. At only ages 9 or 10! I liked him, and either "went with" him or desired to "go with" him; when he wasn't going with me, I constantly maneuvered to break him up with Deana Galloway because he alternated between Deana and me... At one point, I was on the swing-set in our Rebecca St backyard, and he came to the fence to make sure I was there and watching; then he made a point of walking off holding hands with Deana Galloway, making sure I could see it! (At some point, I challenged Deana Galloway to a fight. She, the calm, rational girl that she was, declined.)

There were also a couple of very weird competitions going on between me and Danny Sargent: One was who could sit in the back seats of the school-bus. The other involved him getting off the bus one stop ahead of the Rebecca St stop and seeing if he could run to the Rebecca St stop before the school-bus arrived and I stepped off. (If Danny failed to get there before the bus, it was a victory for me!) One day, the bus arrived first, as usual, with Danny panting up behind... But the driver (who somehow knew what was going on) purposely kept the bus doors closed so I couldn't get off first... So Danny won that one! :)

After our family moved to Azle, I wrote him a letter (from an 11-year-old!), saying something like, "I don't like any of the boys here. Will you go with me?" He wrote back: "Sure. Will you go with ME? But, what can we do being so far apart?" Good point! (NOTE: We never even kissed, but the psychological competition between us was extremely strange for 10-year-old kids.)

p.s. I later found out online (probably on Facebook) that he married and had one retarded kid and one normal kid. His wife left him and took the "regular" kid with her, leaving him with the retarded one.

Went to the doctor for the first time in 15 years today...

Well, in actuality, I first went 2 weeks ago to get my ear checked out: I hadn't had an ear-ache since 1983, so this was unusual. While making the ear checkup, decided to go ahead and make the first general physical checkup that I'd had in 15 years.

Ear got taken care off with a prescription for sulfite drops and a wash to get rid of ear-wax.

Body didn't get so taken care of. My new general practitioner attempted to do a pap smear; whatever instrument she inserted into me made me scream with pain (well, I wasn't actually "screaming," more like saying "Owwwww" really loud)! So she stopped after 4 tries. And then tried to cover by saying, oh, since I'd never had a pap smear before, that's why it hurt... I had to RE-explain: I've had many pap smears in the past, just not any since 2006---and I don't remember any of the earlier ones HURTING me like this!

Post unsatisfactory check-up, I was sent out to the main desk for "lab work" (blood tests). Where I was informed that it was an hour wait. No, I didn't want to wait around for an hour.

I had been concerned about potential diabetes (my left ankle has been swollen for a couple of years) and about anything else (cancer, liver disease) the blood tests might show. But I wasn't going to wait around for an hour on top of my initial appointment. Screw the list of 20 things that the doctor had put down to test for. (Half of them were tests for sexually transmitted diseases---which since, as I explained to the doctor, I hadn't had sex in a very long time, weren't actually necessary.)

After 15 years of no health-care, I came away from this brand-new encounter with "health-care" thinking that the system was trying to milk money out of my insurance company, and out of me, without actually taking care of me.

I WOULD ultimately like to know what my blood tests reveal... But like hell I'm going to sit in a waiting room for an hour! So I guess I'll never know. And I guess, sans blood results, I'll just come into the office whenever something happens (rather than the currently touted "preventive care").

p.s. Twelve hours after my unsuccessful pap smear today, my cervix still hurts, and my abdomen hurts. What the hell?

Am I dying soon? Past people are showing up in dreams...

People I've been in love with since a teen have been showing up in my dreams recently. Ginny, for instance, recently presented herself in black robes with a smile/smirk of greeting on her face! And Kathy and Kris were my friends. And my brief high-school senior-year boyfriend Joel---I can't remember what he was doing, but he was there.

A week ago, I dreamt I was sitting on my front porch, and saw a woman falling out of an airplane, with skirts flying/flailing. I couldn't believe the horror of what I was seeing, so I ran around the corner of my house, where I then saw the woman, and the plane itself, fall to earth. 

Admittedly, I've recently been thinking of the concept of being re-integrated into the cosmos... Doesn't mean I want to be re-integrated right now! :)

 
9/29/21 update: Ginny in another dream, and she was telling me something serious, but when I woke up I couldn't remember. Ginny used to appear to me once every couple of years, but she's showing up more frequently now...

"The Favourite": Whoa!

THE FAVOURITE | Official Trailer (2018)

Just saw this last night via Netflix. What a great surprise!

Random Austin Cable TV at 4am: The Matters

I almost always don't like jam bands or this type of music, but... I came upon this band last night on public cable TV in Austin and couldn't stop watching them. F-ing energetic and interesting!

The Carter Family: Wildwood Flower

Carter Sisters: Worried Man Blues (Live)

Walker Hayes: Fancy Like

Catchy, cute song (Applebee's commercial).
But the singer and hip-hop-influenced auto-tuning are pretty bad, smarmy.

Machine Gun Kelly ft. blackbear - my ex's best friend

MTV VMA "Best Alternative" winner 2021

In the olden days, we teens used to quote lyrics from pop songs to express our "innermost selves."

Here's what teens are quoting today: "Girl, don't act like you ain't saw me."
(Is there anything sadder/creepier than skanky lower-class white guys pretending to be black?)

George Jones: "Hung Up On You" Live

Happy Birthday, George Jones---September 12, 1931

George Jones: Worried Man Blues (2004)

 From Wikipedia:

The Carter Family recorded this song for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1930.^[1]

The song was recorded by Woody Guthrie in 1940,^[2][3] and in the years that followed by his sometime singing partners Cisco Houston^[4] Burl Ives,^[5] Ramblin' Jack Elliott (with Derroll Adams),^[6] and Pete Seeger. It was included by Seeger in his 1955 Folksinger's Guitar Guide instruction record and booklet (Folkways CRB1) ^[7] as well as his concerts throughout the 1960s.^[8] Lonnie Donegan and his band released a skiffle arrangement in 1955, with vocals by Dickie Bishop, paying homage to Guthrie and Houston in a later interview.^[9][10] The Kingston Trio wrote new verses and recorded it in 1959 as "A Worried Man",^[11] while Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs included it on their 1961 Foggy Mountain Boys Songs Of The Famous Carter Family album with Maybelle Carter.^[12] June Carter and Johnny Cash sang the song with Pete Seeger on the final episode of his Rainbow Quest television series in 1966, and performed it in concerts and on the later Johnny Cash Show TV series. The song has been performed by many bluegrass, folk and country artists, including The Stanley Brothers,^[13] Osborne Brothers, George Jones, and even by Devo, Van Morrison, Elliott Murphy, and numerous others.

George Jones: Still Doin' Time (1981)

Jackie Wilson: Lonely Teardrops (1962, Ed Sullivan Show)

So sick of today's forced, false black/white dichotomy.
Jackie Wilson is GREAT. Everybody should recognize "great," regardless of color.
(And "great" doesn't have anything to do with leftist/BLM/communist ideas of what is good or not. If it were up to the left-wing communist academics, we'd all be singing folky propaganda songs. RESIST THAT SHIT.)

George Jones: I Stopped Living Yesterday (1967)

The Rolling Stones: You Can’t Always Get What You Want (1968)

Mick Jagger is naturally (and more interestingly) weirder/sexier than any performer trying to be "weird/sexy" today.

California Dreamin' (Jose Feliciano) from "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood"

Brad Pitt SAG Award Speech (2020)

Look forward to the year when I can start watching awards shows again sans left-wing propaganda.
Here's a non-propaganda Brad Pitt accepting his award for a great role in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Appreciate his humor and then his simple yet profound take on acting (at 2:05).

Birthday 1966

My birthday was last month, but my mother just sent me this picture.
My daddy's neat 1966 hair, and his neat polo shirt. The proudly displayed Melmac plates of the newly married young couple in the background. The baby's and daddy's shirts match the plates.
(I still have and use that same turquoise Melmac set; didn't know it was called "Melmac" until just a couple of years ago.)

 

Recent Texas Abortion Law

New Texas law: No abortions after fetal heartbeat (6 weeks). 

Aside from all left-/right-wing politics, I was just wondering: Who was it that first came up with the idea of scraping/sucking a human fetus out from a woman's womb to begin with? Seems like a completely unnatural, utterly psychotic thing to ever think about doing in the first place. And why would such a bizarre, awful procedure ever become de rigueur?

And over the past 50 years, how did the academia/media somehow reconfigure such an awful, unnatural thing into a solely intellectual position: "a woman's right to choose"?

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Rick Dalton / Green Door

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Out of Time (Rolling Stones)

More of a Rick Dalton theme song than an elegy for Sharon Tate. Cliff Booth is the real star...

Flawed real men triumphing over their own pasts, and their industry---oh, and over psychotic left-wing hippies.

George Jones: "Take Me" from "A Poem is a Naked Person"