Bloggle

It’s remarkable the ways the Internet has transformed us. We’ve been quietly beguiled by technology that doesn’t look or feel like, well… like technology. We’re connected — inexorably, insidiously connected — in ways that just a few years ago we might not have imagined, and yet today we take wholly for granted.

For your consideration, Roger Mummert’s slice of modern life via the NYTimes travel section — At a Family Gathering, an Internet Cafe Breaks Out.

“Do you mind,” one in-law asked, as I rounded up bedding and fretted over having enough milk in the fridge to fill 12 cereal bowls in the morning, “if I just pop onto the computer and check my e-mail?”

“Oh, yeah,” remarked another. “Maybe I could just track my son’s flight from D.C.”

“Ooh, perhaps you could print something out for me …”

That was my first inkling of how the vastly expanded electronic and informational needs of houseguests would flavor our time together.

Welcome, to this modern life.

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Seems most everything I do — writing, coding, cupping coffee or catching up on my reading pile — I do to music. I don’t have anything against silence, mind you… but life is richer with a soundtrack. And right now that soundtrack calls for an eclectically bluesy, finger-style guitar.

Topping my play list these days is Kelly Joe Phelps and his astonishing, live acoustic finger-style blues spectacular, Tap the Red Cane Whirlwind. Kelly morphs with ease between Delta and folksy blues styles, thumping a droning baseline one moment, snaking his way through complex modal riffs the next. Often as not Kelly uses his voice as an accompaniment to his guitar rather than the other way ’round — sometimes growling out an alternative baseline or counterpoint between his breathy, syncopated lyrics. An artistic tour de force and stunningly musical, besides.

Also high my on my playlist — and a sometimes collaborator with Phelps — the Tony Furtado Band. Furtado’s style is centered in folksy blues, too — which only makes sense as he’s a Grand National Champion banjo player — and ranges to Bela fleck-styled bluegrass-jazz fusion and Kottke and Juber-inspired finger-picking. Where Phelp’s Tap the Red Cane is “just” a guy and his guitar, Furtado offers a full-on musical soundscape of electric and eclectic, unplugged instruments — acoustic bottle-slide and resonator guitars, fiddle, pipes, banjo and a tall stack of drums. Want more? Check out Furtado’s American Gypsy’s slightly Celtic overlay, and Roll My Blues Away with it’s progressive bluegrass roots.

So… what are you listening to?

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I am inordinately chuffed to see the name Cadmus turn up in a Harry Potter book. ;)

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When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security….

Does any of this ring a bell?

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I’m hugely appreciative of Grist and their take on issues relevant to the environment and sustainable living, but I have to draw the line somewhere. That line is here: Grist’s Guide to Meat-free Grilling.

I come from a cow-town. For me the very definition of a summer’s day involves a grill and many pounds of beef. (Better still, it involves a barbecue pit, and a large supply of beef brisket and pork ribs.) I’m happy to grill veggies — even fruit — so long as it’s understood by all in attendance that these are accompaniments to the main dish, which will be meat.

As an antidote to Grist’s misguided efforts, allow me to present you with an alternative menu:

• The Kansas City Barbecue Society
• The Smoke Ring
• Weber Grills
• Paul Kirk’s Championship Barbecue (The Bible of BBQ)

Now get grillin’.

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CNN reports that a Las Vegas based beverage company is pulling it’s energy drink — named “Cocaine” — from store shelves nationwide. Seems they’ve run into something of an image problem with its label. Redux Beverages company spokesperson Clegg Ivey says they plan to sell the drink under a new name for now –

“Of course, we intended for Cocaine energy drink to be a legal alternative the same way that celibacy is an alternative to premarital sex,” Ivey said. “It’s not the same thing and no one thinks it is. Our product doesn’t have any cocaine in it. No one thinks that it does. We think it is most likely legal in the United States to ship our product.”

Presumably the company’s planned launch of “Crystal Meth” pop-rock candy and “Exstacy” jelly beans are unaffected by this setback.

Sheesh.

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