For the last 10 years, I’ve been posting personal health / fitness updates on pages under my menu topic “Sweat Equity“. I was doing this to create an open site for me to refer to if I ever needed to, while not having access to my home computer. I have used the pages very rarely – no more than 2 or 3 times per year and I’m fully settled into retirement now so I don’t really have the need for this type of access.
As such, I will no longer be updating or adding to these pages. If anything of note happens, I will simply publish a “normal” post. Typically, it will be as an additional post for a given day.
I will be updating my “Tributaries and Eddies” section (on my sidebar). Two of the blogs there have (more or less) stopped updating, so I’ll be removing them. One has changed location, so I’m just updating the address. I used to do this updating (removing and adding) every six months, but I’ve kind of let it slide, so this will be a bit of New Year’s housekeeping.
Third, for now at least, I will no longer be posting music videos every day. I’ve been doing it for almost a two years and it started off as a “lark” – just to share music (lyrics) I’ve enjoyed. Once I got past a month, I thought, I’ll just do it for year (365 days straight). Then I thought, well, just do it for a full calendar year. Now, that’s done, too… I will post a music / song video every now and then, I just won’t be doing it every day.
Finally, I’m going to try to write more posts of my own. I started this blog to practice my writing and to vent at the universe. When I began to run out of bile I began using quotes and book / movie reviews more and more and using the post titles as my “creative” tool. My intent was to express a view / twist of the quote / review with a pun or hi-lite of a few words from the quote(s). This was my way of pretending to be a newspaper headline writer. I feel this was mostly unsuccessful, but I’ve enjoyed trying, so I will keep at it (on post titles anyway).
I hope everyone reading this has a prosperous year and that you keep on blogging! Excelsior!!
Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.
— Frederic Chopin
[After barely 200 hours of practice, I can not claim to say I’ve played “a vast quantity of notes”. But, in seeking my own “voice”, I believe I am already seeking simplicity. I can (already) see why some become obsessed with playing an instrument and making the music in their head come out. It is very much like the first time you get a computer program to run successfully and then successively pare the program until it feels elegant (to you). — KMAB]
A few days ago, I posted about watching music videos on the “V” Channel. I could not remember the name of the artist I saw and enjoyed the most. Well, persistence pays off! I found him… His name is: Daler Mehndi and one of the songs I used to see every day was this one (“Ho Jayegi Balle Balle”). There were a couple of other artists and videos I really liked, but I haven’t been able to pick them out of the line-ups yet. When I first got to Saudi, my family didn’t come out for almost eight months, so I watched a LOT of cable: sports (cricket, tennis, rugby, track), movies, and music videos. As I recall, you could see Mehndi on “V” a couple of times a day and this video AT LEAST every day – if not twice.
I don’t speak any Indian dialect, but a quick Google search says this is Punjab. Like the K-Pop video I posted about a few years ago, you don’t need to speak the language if the music / video “speak” to you. As a quick aside, I’ve also read this song is actually a series of songs based on a mega-hit by this title. I’m pretty sure this is the one I remember, but I could be wrong if the video sequels (beat and videos) are all about the same. LoL.
I think the “V” experience also primed me for my Netflix “Bollywood” binge viewing a couple of years ago. But, that’s another story…
I remember first seeing the movie (back in 2008), hearing this song and thinking: “Great music, but I don’t remember a single word from the lyrics.” Truth is, twelve-ish years later… I still don’t. Can you have “favorite lines” if you have to look up the lyrics? Probably not. But the music / song still rocks!
Today my wife and I both got our COVID booster shots!! We got same day scheduling at the pharmacy in our local supermarket.
Six(6) months and two days after receiving our second original vaccination.
No ill effects to speak of other than a slight soreness at the shot location which passed after a couple of hours. (That was me. Hil had NO effects.)
If everything works out, we should be good to go until next year when they’ll probably have an annual regime in place. Time will tell…
If you have not received your vaccinations yet… Get on it! Protect your health and let’s get living our lives back to normal. If you have received your initial vaccinations, but not your booster shot – get it scheduled as soon as you are eligible. Life (and health) is too precious to risk losing it over politics.
I sent the club a wire stating: “PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.“
― Groucho Marx
I, on the other hand, will make a few exceptions to my own “no joining” policy…
It normally takes seven to seven and a half years of retirement for the average American to “recover” all of the funds paid into their Social Security retirement funds during their forty odd years of work. I’m over half-way there! — KMAB
This song is (IMHO) a “classic” disco tune. My “issue” with disco music wasn’t that I didn’t like it (the music). Generally speaking, I liked it a lot (and still do – in doses). My problem was that disco music (/ dance style) became a super-fad while I was in the Army and I had a psychological block against memorizing moves and dancing in formation. I had the same problem when the next “fad” was country line dancing, YMCA and Macarena. The “interesting” thing, for me, was I enjoyed marching in formation – when we had to do it. I just mentally objected to carrying it (acting in formation) over into the civilian part of my life. I still do…
So, this was our house last year after the new paint job…
And here it is after updating our front garden to help conserve water…
As you can see, we’ve removed the front grass and replaced it with (mostly) white stone. We’ve circled the two trees with larger riverbed stones and red pumice (like) stones. We’ve high-lighted the roses on either side of the brick path and added river stone edging on the sides. We added a “fake” stream bed curving from near the top of the path, around our big tree, down to the sidewalk. And, finally, we sprinkled various plants in the white stone areas. We hope they will fill out and add a bit of color to the otherwise plain white space.
Many (not quite most) of the houses in our neighborhood have already done the same to their front gardens. I don’t know how much money we’ll save, but every drop of water counts in this age of climate change. Over 25 of the last 30 years have been drought years here in California, so our action is long past due. Hopefully, better late than never…
And, of course, the best news is: NO more mowing the lawn, while reducing the expense of our water bill.
The video’s a little slow due to a “longish” intro, but it’s still interesting to see the original performers, even if it is (obviously) lip sync. — KMAB
[This weekend, when you are celebrating with your family, please take a minute to think about these soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who throughout our nation’s history have made the ultimate sacrifice for us all. Please try to think of them, not as warriors, but as sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters… as part of a “greater” American family – which all (they and us) surely are.
I know that Memorial Day is specifically set aside to honor these brave souls in uniform, but please also take an extra minute or two to remember and be thankful for the over 3,600 medical and health care staff around the country who also fought the good fight – just doing their jobs – and who gave their lives in the last year defending us from COVID. They too have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.
All five images were found on the web. No claim of ownership is intended or implied.
Not the best audio or visual on the web, but I feel like this version captures some of the cheeky innocence of Bowie’s personality in a live performance. Lots of artists transform their personas as they mature, but Bowie’s ability to do this every few years or every few albums was a distinctive mark of his career. IMHO, anyway. — KMAB
Not the most intellectual of lyrics, but if you knew the song title, you knew 95% of the song. (And that was kind of typical for this genre and decade.)
You’ve got me sneakin’ and a peepin’ and runnin’ you down
This can’t go on
Lord knows, you’ve got to change, baby
Comment(s):
I’m sorry, this is not the best sounding video version on YouTube, but I just can’t believe how young Carlos Santana and his band members look in this version – of course, it was 1969! — KMAB
Kevin Barrett's Blog 
New Year Changes To My Blog
Posted in Blog Changes, General Comments, tagged Blog Changes, General Comments on January 1, 2022| 1 Comment »
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