puzzles

It's late and I'm tired, but I didn't want to forget... The second Sudoku World Championship will be held in Prague from March 28 to April 1, 2007. Julie, you should go, Lindsey will still be there I think.

Mom kicked my ass in the puzzles this week.
Good night.

the job front

Well, I didn't get the CTO-type job. They said I was too Microsoft-centric, and that if we moved ahead using Microsoft, and things didn't work right, they didn't feel confident I could switch to a different technology. This is an illogical comment though, as technology choice has nothing to do with whether things work right - it is implementation of technology that does this. I wrote them a short note to thank them and try to explain this to them such that they dont get stuck hiring a programmer as their CTO.

Hi Bob, Brian,

I wanted to thank you both very much for the opportunity to present to you my development philosophy and discuss the myriad of other items we touched on during our meetings. It was a pleasure to meet you both, as well as Jamie and John - I am sure you will make them very happy investors. I am sorry that we were not able to come to terms, and hope that perhaps we can work together in the future.

While I do understand that you feel I was too "Microsoft-centric," the truth is, I am technology-agnostic. As I said to John, I believe technology is a means to an end, not an end unto itself. I have mainly used Microsoft in the past because it is has robust support, the largest user base of any platform currently in existence, near infinite resources to be found online, scores of free tools and development applications, a RAD (Rapid Application Development) architecture, and is always on the forefront of new technology. However, I have numerous times worked with clients who felt that Microsoft was evil incarnate, or who needed specific applications that Microsoft was not the best fit for, and have thus also developed sites using technologies such as XML with XSL transformations, PHP with MySQL back ends, Cold Fusion, VoiceXML, FlashMX, and more. There is a fun article on Web technology choice at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/01.html.

Also, it was my understanding that the position you were looking to fill would not be that of a developer, but of a leader and a manager. As such, as you move forward with your other candidate, you should keep in mind that choice of technology is not what makes or breaks a business, but rather the implementation of technology - this is especially true in a Web business. The key to a successful Web business lies in value, both perceived and real, as well as usability. A good example: MySpace uses Cold Fusion, Friendster use PHP, FriendFinder uses CGI, Classmates.com uses JSP, Orkut uses Python, and Xanga uses ASP.NET - but all of those sites would be just as successful if they all used PHP, or all used JSP, or all used .NET.

Take care, and good luck,
Eric

So, this is a letter I drafted to the current Democratic frontrunners. I am not sure I will send it because I am not really into politics, plus I don't know much about politics so I am not too confident about my theories... but their party cannibalism pissed me off.

What do you all think?

Hello,

I am sending this letter identically to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. While I am not a strong supporter of either of you, or politics in general, I will be voting for one of you. I despise the current President and believe he has funneled the country towards ruin, and I hope we can survive the repercussions of the global morass he has gotten us into.

I woke up this morning to read, perhaps a bit later than others more into politics than I, that the two of you are “sniping at one another as if the campaign were in midstream” and “trading jabs in their first public spat” due to some comments made by David Geffen which caused a bit of understandable defensiveness in Mrs. Clinton and a… let’s call it an “escalation in attitude” between both of you.

The cause of this escalation doesn’t matter. The media is portraying Mrs. Clinton as a little baby, crying because she thinks mommy likes her brother better. And while Mr. Obama is (in my opinion) correct for not apologizing for someone else’s personal view, taking a stonewall-reaction approach to debatably offensive comments is not the best way to deal with them politically (Look up Donald Rumsfeld in your history book if you need proof.)

Let me be blunt – you are both fools for fighting each other on personal issues rather than concentrating on destroying the weakened Republican party, which, after the last election, is poised for self-implosion. You should both immediately, while standing next to each other and shaking hands, tell the media that you have worked out this minor misunderstanding and are concentrating on your plans to improve the nation and reverse the destruction wrought on this country by the current regime.

One of you will be the Democratic choice for President, but that doesn’t mean you’ll win. Mrs. Clinton, I’m sure you want to try and slow down Mr. Obama’s momentum, but this is begging to be spun into yet another “democrats can’t agree on anything, all they do is fight each other” story. Bash each other during primary season. This early in the game, the right move is for both of you to unite against Republicans - this is the best way to ensure one of you will win the Presidency. You need to pound the Right into the ground. Are you so confident you can beat McCain/Giuliani that you want to spend fifteen months fighting the undercard and only three in the main event, rather than vice-versa?

Thank you.

backgammon

Backgammon isn't the most popular game, so I don't know if any of you know it at all. But I just had an amazing rolling streak. In a 5-game match, I was up 4-0, but my opponent took one to make it 4-1. In what would be the last game, he immediately came out with a double request, which I accepted. By the 7th roll of the game, he had made points on his 2, 5, and 6 slots, and on his 8th, he hit a blot of mine to knock me onto the bar. Most of the rest of his checkers were in my territory, so I wasn't too worried. Until the following ensued.

9) 66:	42: 13/9* 13/11
10) 55:	21: 11/9 9/8
11) 66:	21: 24/23 23/21
12) 22:	23: 7/4 6/4
13) 52:	43: 16/13 13/9
14) 22:	55: 9/4 16/11 11/6 21/16
15) 62:	32: 9/7 24/21
16) 22:	42: 16/14 14/10
17) 56:	52: 10/5 4/2
18) 62:	16: 21/15 8/7
19) 65:

Translation? If I roll a 1, 3, or 4, I'm off the bar. If I roll a 2, 5, or 6, I'm stuck. The math is simple on this one - it's a coin flip. 50% chance per die, per roll. I rolled 22 dice. My odds of not hitting a 1, 3, or 4 on 22 die rolls are 1 in 4,194,304, or 0.00002384185791015625% That's right - 2 hundreths of a percent chance.

At this point he made another point, and quickly closed me out and I got gammoned and lost 5-4.

As far as opening rolls, it's evened up a little. The current stats are:

Player	Openers Won	%
me	137	36.92722372
him	178	47.97843666
tie	56	15.09433962

A couple of links

Dorito Ads
Those guys at Doritos are pretty smart, having the public make their ads for them. They are pretty funny, and short, so I thought I'd give them a shout-out.

Freedom To Fascism
This is Aaron Russo's documentary. Now, I heard an hour-long interview with Russo on NPR and he (and the host for that matter) said he believes 9/11 was perpetrated by the US government, and the movie is a bit outlandish, but I spent a couple of hours researching the things he talks about, and lot of it is true. This is a 2 hour long movie, and Russo is clearly politically motivated and warps some facts, but I do suggest you give it at least a few minutes. Among the highlights:

-There is no law that says Americans must pay individual income tax (The IRS disagrees)
-There are 800 FEMA-run detainment centers in the US which (in his view) exist to imprison Americans
-The Federal Reserve is a cartel of private banks with no government oversight
-24 people were arrested for tax evasion, and they all asked the IRS to show them the law that said they had to pay income tax, and when the IRS refused to (because there is no such law, according to Russo), they were aquitted.
-There are Executive Orders that say, in a Presentially declared state of emergency:
-pharma companies can invent and provide untested medication without liability.
-the government can force you to take said medication
-the goverment can sieze anyone's (seriously... ANYONE'S) airplanes, cars, houses, buildings, roads, food, weapons, and medical supplies, without any sort of approval. They wouldn't have to return it
-Congress cannot question the state of emergency for 6 months
-The gov't can arrest anyone, without cause, and hold them, without trial, for as long as they want
-The gov't can force anyone to work on a forced labor camp

Sounds like a joke right? Who made this shit up??

Yeah, a lot of it is true. Look it up for yourself if you don't believe me... I did. A lot isn't of course, or rather, is, but only if you ignore other things... for example, he gets all upset that we have a graduated income tax when the Consitution says that this is illegal. Well, that's true, the Constitution does say it's illegal, it says that all taxes must be equal to all. But in the last 225+ years there have been a lot of changes in the law.

Anyhow, here is a review that I agree with, which says pretty much what I'd blog if I wanted to keep typing, which I don't.

Back to Bullshit

I know some readers don't like reading my wonderful stories about losing money. Listen, it's just the truth of the situation. I don't ever write about the times I win (except for yesterday) because that's boring. Remember, I only lose $23.20 on average when I play poker. Which actually is down to $21.80 after what I won the other night. I'm not losing $10000000 out here.

So I went to Suncoast last night with Matt and his girlfriend and Matt's friend, who was very weird. Played some blackjack. I lost about half what I had put in (it wasn't very much), and then figured what the heck, and bet the rest of it all on one bet. I got a 97 (total 16) and the dealer showed an 8. I hit.

These were my odds before I hit:

--Player Hand: 6,10, Dealer upcard: 8 Decision: Hit
Hit:-0.44217 Stand:-0.51885 Double:-0.88434 Split:0.00000

Julie says this means I had a 29.8% chance of winning if I hit the 16, and a 24.5% chance to win if I didn't. I correctly chose to hit.

I got a 3, so I now had a 19 against the dealers 8. Man was I psyched!

---Player Hand: 9,10, Dealer upcard: 8 Decision: Stay
Hit:-0.70573 Stand:0.58548 Double:-1.41146 Split:0.00000

I just went from a 29.8% chance of winning, to 79.5% I also had a 13% chance of tying. So an 83% chance of not losing.

Anyhow, the dealer's downcard was a 3, and the next card was a king of course, so she got 21.

If I had stayed on the 16 (totally the wrong move) I would have won. The abyssmal beauty of the situation though, is that 2 days ago at Harrahs the exact same situation presented itself when I had a big bet on the line ($100) and I stayed with my 16 against a dealer's 7. The dealer downcard turned out to be a 9, giving her 16, and then hit... and got a 5. I would have had 21 had I hit.

So after losing at Suncoast we went to grab a drink, I put $100 into a video blackjack machine (In Vegas, they give you free food and drinks at bars if you are playing the machines, so a lot of people just stick money in there and play really slow, so they can eat and drink for free). I brought my total up to $162.50 and cashed out. We were on our way out, but we bumped into Matt's girlfriend's sister, and she was playing slots, so we hung out for a little while and I put the $162.50 into the machine. At $5 per hand, I figured I could easily pass the 30 minutes we'd be hanging out. Well, I played for about 20 minutes, and was down a little, to $152.50. I decided I'd just get back to $162.50 and cash out and go home, it was like 3am.

I lost 33 out of the next 34 hands. Poof. $162.50 gone.

Now, I complain a lot about having bad luck. Most people think that in gambling and gaming there is no luck, there is just odds. As a highly logical person (I try to be at least) this should be my opinion as well, but years of continually coming in last in situations that I am the heavy favorite for have convinced me otherwise. But, scientific in nature, I want to prove it.

I've been playing a lot of backgammon on MSN. MSN has a great article about how incredibly random their die-rolling algorithm is. I have terrible luck during the games (someone just rolled 55 55 66 66 55 55 against me this morning, a 1 in 2176782336 chance, for example) but that's not really something one can prove. However, at the beginning of every game, you each roll one die, and the highest roll goes first. Ah, now, here is something I can test.

So far, I've played 267 games. Here is the breakdown of who wins the starting roll:

me	92	35.9375%
him	128	50%
tie	36	14.0625%

I'll keep this log for the next year or so. SHould be interesting to see what happens.

winning, yay!

just got home from the casino - its 730am. i won $1000. yay me. but my bad luck is still truly ridiculous. i lost another $1000 (meaning i could/should have won $2000) on 3 hands where i was dominant and some hack ended up calling for no reason and winning on the river. for example, i had 2h4h and the flop comes Ah3d5c and i bet $25 into a $25 pot, one guys calls, one guy raises to $75, i put him all in for $400, the caller calls with 3c3s, and the raiser calls with Kh5h and then the next two cards are hearts. Awesome.

im watching wednesday's american idol, its hilarious. definitely the best of the season. girls crying, begging on their knees to go to hollywood. guys dressed up as bananas, roaring and hissing like some sort of dying jaguar.

i was dead tired on my way home, but feelin pretty good now. we'll see what time i end up hitting the sack.

On the Meaning of Music

A few months ago when I was in Boston, my buddy Larry, frontman for the soon to take ove rthe world Hopeful Monsters, asked me "What does music mean to you?" It was clear that he meant it on a deep level, and wasn't looking for an "I love rockin' out to the Zep and drinkin myself into a stupor! YEAH MAN!" kinda answer. At the time, the question felt kinda of out of place (not that it wasn't a good question, I just wasn't expecting a philosophical query at the time), and I froze - I really didn't have an answer, certainly nothing near as good as this one. Today (Editor's note: I actually wrote 99% of this yesterday, but didn't post it until today, so in this post, "today" refers to Thursday ), I have my answer. It will take some time to describe. There will be tangents on this sojourn to elucidation, and perhaps tangents to tangents. 2006 was not a banner year for me. As everyone who reads this is aware, I lost a few thousand dollars attemping to realize my some would say sophomoric dream of playing poker for a living. In truth, I only lose an average of $23.20 when I sit down at a poker table. But I've played a LOT of poker. Of the money I've lost, about half of it was on a small handful of hands in which I was a huge favorite and ended up getting beat in a emetic manner. I haven't had much work for Jerico - a few projects, but nothing all too lucrative. I started ClickProtector, but it hasn't gotten much traction. A good part of that is my fault, as I could be marketing it better, or looking for investors. Melissa moved back to Boston, and now she has a pretty serious boyfriend and we don't talk much. This reminds me of something Mom said once. I used to think, and sometimes I still do, that some things can and should last forever, particularly friendships. It's the reason I tend to stay friends with my ex-girlfriends, although naturally it rarely works out. Anyhow, the precise circumstances elude my fragmented memory cells, but a situation presented itself whereby I learned she was no longer going to spend time wiht one of her best friends, Becky Rich. I asked her why, to which the reply was "Sometime people stop being friends." This comment was utterly ununderstandable at the time, and although I soon learned it to be true, ending a friendship with my best friend Tom Constabile (I wish I remembered why we "broke up"), I've never really been able to truly understand that sort of thing. I just try and stay friends with everyone, and assume they want to stay friends with me. It doesn't always happen of course, especially since I am not great at keeping in touch with some people. But that's the way I roll. For most of my life, if any of my friends, or even ex-friends, ever needed anything, I'd do whatever I could to provide it. A kid I haven't seen in 10 years and barely even knew then, needs a place to stay for 2 weeks while he's job hunting? No problem. That's how my Dad rolls, to an extreme. He goes out of his way to do favors for people, always at the expense of time, and frequently at the expense of his hard earned dinero. Anyhow, it's an interesting dichotomy I see between my parents when it comes to friendships, one logical and realistic, the other self-sacrificing and idealistic. As I get older, I see myself becoming more logical and less idealistic. I probably wouldn't let that kid stay for 2 weeks anymore - 2 days, fine. It's nothing strange, most people follow this time-release path to enlightenment. But it's kind of cool to see myself changing from my Dad's mentality to my Mom's. I hope this doesn't mean that in 10 years I'll only eat baked salmon! Back to the main discourse. 2006 sucked. There were some bright spots - going to Boston/NY for a month, for my sister's wedding, visiting friends, and Haloween. Coming home for Christmas after missing the last couple of years. The rest of the year I'd just as soon forget. The culmination of the crapfest came when my psycho roommate flipped out over some dirty dishes and smahed up the entire kitchen, breaking glasses, bowls, cups, and throwing shit around so hard that it left a dent in the refridgerator and bent the rungs in the dishwasher. If you've seen the movie Jarhead, it was kinda like the scene when Jake Gyllynhal (sic) spazzes out on Fergus. Anyhow, shortly thereafter, he announced he had bought a house, and we (my other roommate and I) had to move out in 30 days. Chaos. The came New Years. I put together a last minute party, which turned out to be pretty fun, if somewhat sparsely populated. I closed the chapter entitled "2006" with enough of Mr. M's sangria (my friend Lanna's dad has a great family recipe) to kill a horse. Since New Years, things have picked up. My college buddy Chris came to visit Nick and I in mid-january, and we had some good times. We had dinners at N9ne and Nove, both at the Palms. I'd been to N9ne twice before, once for Chris's bachelor party in 2003, and again with my friends Aidan and Aoife when they came to visit last year. It was incredible those times - but this time, only average. Nove, however, a new top-end Italian restaurant, was exquisite. Of course, evenings at the joints the celebs dine at don't come cheap, especially in Vegas. Then we went to Tabu at MGM, where we won a little money and got comped a buffet dinner, although we didnt have time to use it and I think I lost it since. The day after Tabu Chris and I flew to Boston. He was heading back to home, and I, to a job interview. I am in the midst of interviewing for a CTO/Director position at Non Profit Capital Management, where I would be in charge of a number of online endeavors they are looking to start. I put together a 20 slide presentation for it, which I was pretty unsure of, because I've never really done much more with Powerpoint than install it. In prepping for the second interview (which was on Jan 22nd) , I realized I had forgotten to bring a shirt for my suit. So Shawn and Julie and I went out to Men's Warehouse, but they were way too expensive, so we went to Kohl's, where we found a nice bright but deep blue shirt, and a pretty cool mixed-hue-blue tie (like this but blue), to go with my black suit. I also picked up a new belt, since mine was starting to tear. On my way to the interview the next day, I somehow lost the tie. I didn't realize this until I was in the parking lot. See, the tie wasn't around my neck, I had stuffed it into my suit's breast pocket, planning to incorporate it into my attire once I arrived at my destination. We still don't know where the tie went - it wasn't in Julie's car, it wasn't in their apartment, it wasnt outside of their apartment, and I never opened the car windows. But finding the lost tie wasn't the what mattered at that moment. The issue was, I had 8 minutes until my interview, I wasn't quite sure where I was (I was in some random parking lot near Downtown Crossing in Boston), I wasn't quite sure how to get to where I needed to be, and I had no tie. I made my primary goal to get to the interview on time. I asked a few people where Bedford Street was, but no one knew, not even a cop. I knew it was off Summer St, but Summer St was about half a mile long, and I didn't have much time. I got my bearings in about 2 minutes when I saw Filenes, and realized that I'd gone the wrong way down Summer - if I kept going, I'd hit the Commons. So I turned around, now sure that I was at least heading in the right direction, and set my mind on solving another problem. I made up a story for why I had no tie - the tie had been sitting on the car seat when I noticed my door wasn't securely shut. When I opened the door at a red light to re-close it, it fell into a muddy puddle. The light turned green, the cars started honking, and so I decided to abandon the poor tie. It sounded plausible, mixing the right amount of feasibility with situational humor. I was running through the story in my head, massaging it into beauty, kneading it into greatness, when something wonderful happened. I looked up to see a Men's Warehouse. Glancing at my phone (4 minutes to go) I did a quick cost-benefit, weighing the cost of being 5 minutes late to the benefit of having a tie. The cost seemed too high, until I added in the X-Factor - could I get out of the store in under a minute? I glancing inside and the store was empty. I went for it. Grabbing the first blue tie I saw that didn't look like something one's grandfather gets buried in, I put the tie on while paying for it, laid down the $30 cash (which would come to bite me in the ass later, but then ultimately unbite me in the ass), and ran out the door. As it turns out, the tie was awesome (the colors on mine are blue and black, and much brighter). The more I looked at it, the more I liked it, the more I felt I looked good; ultimately, this converted itself into confidence for the interview I was about to have. I found Bedford Street, and fortunately 99 was the very first building. I was 1 minute late. When I got up to the right floor, I was 2 minutes late. But I had a tie, and I wasn't sweating. Great success. When I got to their office, I found that they had no projector with which I could give my presentation. Nor did they have a monitor they were willing to move into the room I was in. So I had to turn my laptop to face them and give my presentation without looking at the screen. I had printed a copy for myself along with my notes, but since the presenation involved a lot of effects (mainly fading text a little at a time so I could discuss line items individually) it would prove challenging to synchronize what they were looking at with what I was saying. I ended up screwing up the synch a few times, but they knew I couldn't see the screen, so it wasn't a big deal and we all just kinda chuckled when it happened. But apparantly I did a decent job, as I have a third (and final) interview in Boston again, on Feb 15th with the investor board. The day after the interview, on my way to the airport to return to Vegas, we went to return my tie to Men's Warehouse, but a different store, this one near Julie's place. It was a $30 tie and I didn't need it. But get this - the fat clerk said everyone had paid with credit cards that day, and he had no cash in the drawer, and since I paid cash, he had to reimburse me cash, so he couldn't accept the return. Somehow, this sounded logical to me, and I said okay and left, planning to just return it in Vegas, no big deal. I told Julie and Shawn and Shawn called them out on it, basically saying "Of course they have cash, they open every morning with cash in the drawers, how else could they make change for people who pay cash? And if everyone today has paid by credit card, then they definitely have cash." He was probably right, and the fat clerk was, for some reason, just being a dick and didn't want to take the return. But I had a plane to catch, and so we continued on our way. The flight home was pretty uneventful. The next day, I got a couple of Web projects. One, de-framing a recruitment site, took me a couple of days. The other is a project for Bain and its much more work. It's mostly done at this poin, but often there are all changes and revisions after the client sees the first draft of the site, and they take the most time. It is hard to say no to these sorts of things, adding a word or making something bold, minor details, they are so simple... but they can accrue into a real time sucker, and it's impossible to charge for it. "Well, I'm going to have to charge you an extra $500... you know, for all the italics and carriage returns I added." Yeah right. It's bad enough billing Viv & Dave for the 15 minutes I spend every few weeks on their ad campaigns. A few days ago I went to see The Good Shepherd last week with Nick's girlfriend Wendy, and won $125 playing blackjack at the Suncoast while we waited for the movie to start. The movie was good, we think. It was labyrinthine and amalgamated atemporaly within a 30 year span, so we both agreed that we'd need to see it again before passing final judgement. But it was certainly well acted and attractively sinister. Last week I got a couple of phone calls from this company VMDirect, saying that they wanted me to come in for an interview. Having never heard of them before, I asked what for. The lady said she didn't know. She was just told to bring me in for an interview. So I went in today. I was going to stop by Men's Warehouse and Kohl's on the way to the interview to return the tie and exchange the belt, which was too small. I don't understand how, the healthier I eat, the fatter I get. But that's another tangent, and we've had too many already. As I was saying, I was going to return these items, but, looking at the tie, and seeing how totally sweet it was, I realized I should get another use out of these accessories, and return them on the way home. Yoking the tie (excuse the stretch of the word usage here, but I found it apt) gave me this strange, verile, visceral aura of power and confidence, like Prince Adam raising the Sword of Power, intoning, "By the power of Grayskull, I have the power!" and becoming He-Man. It was almost romantic, in the introspective, idealistic sense of the word. It was, as they say, a power tie. VMDirect's office is way on the other side of town, about half an hour from me. I met with their Director of Marketing, a nice woman. We spoke for about 45 minutes, and it turns out, they have a very cool product. It is kind of a combination of MySpace, Picasa, WebEx, and a number of other multimedia applications. Kinda an online digital media creation and organization tool, plus a social network. It is hard to describe, but it is pretty cool, and has a number of features I had no idea one could do through a Web browser. She and I got along very well, but it turns out she was looking for a .NET developer, which is not me, but we spoke further, and it turns out they are looking for a Director of Web Operations and/or Director of IT, or something along those lines. They are a company of about 50 and they just went public, so things are shifting around a bit and roles are being destroyed/created. It reminded me a lot of a Boston/Silcon Valley company. A diamond in the rough out here in the desert, for sure. There have a pretty unique business model, they don't have any official internal salesforce, not a single person. They instead use independant affiliates to sell their product. The company is a little fishy though, it's kinda of an MLM, and articles like this one only make the waters muddier. Anyhow, she's going to pass my resume along to the IT people. As I walked back to my car to head home, a feeling of positivity came over me. Balls were rolling. Grass was growing. Beans were sprouting. 3rd interview for a pimp position in Boston, good first interview with these VMDirect guys. I looked down at my tie - it kicked ass, although I still planned to return it on my way home. I mean seriously, who needs a $30 tie? A spiralling coincidence of events was about to unfold. The highway was only a mile away, and as I approached the on-ramp, there was a car in front of me with a bumper sticker that read "... And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden -CSNY" Some of you reading this may immediately know what this means, but as for myself, I thought it had something to do with CSI:NY. it took me a moment to figure out the sticker referred to Woodstock, the theme song to the event that changed the course of the world. Once I realized this, and thought about the metaphysical meaning of the lyric, a correlation began to click in my head. I thought, "How apropo. Here I am on my way back to the garden." I probably didn't use the word "apropo" in my head though. I got onto the highway and turned on the radio. L.A. Woman came on. Normally, if this song comes on, I change the station. Not because it isn't a great song - but because I have heard it millions of times, to the point where it can sound jingle-istic to me. But, this time, with corporeal positivity flowing around me, I felt it. I mean, I felt it. I opened my window, cranked up the volume, and belted out what would surely have gotten me to Hollywood had I been standing before Simon Cowell. I don't know all of the words, but I know the tune, and no one knows the words, anyhow, he slurs his way through it, like Eddie Vedder's Yellow Ledbetter, albeit that was more like mumbling, plus both songs, and artists actually, have a tendency for rambling, as does this sentence. "Well I did a little thing bout an hour ago! Took a look around, which way the wind blow... Said I met a little girl at a Hollywood bungalow... She was like a little lady in the city at night... or just another lost angel... city at night... city at night!" The lyrics were irrelevant; the rhythm and amative throes of Morrison's voice infused me with a feeling of exhultation. After a few years of stagnant meandering, I was finally back on the train, moving forward. I got a couple of gigs for Jerico. I moved in with my buddy and things were going well with that. I had a couple of potential buyers for Melissa's old jalopy. I was eating much healthier, hardly smoking at all. Julie is rockin the GI diet and losing weight. Shawn isn't drinking, they dont even keep liquor in the house anymore. Melissa is moving in with her boyfriend, and finally got a job... for 50% more than she's ever made, and with full benefits to boot. She even negotiated her way to 15% more than she was offered when a bidding war opened for her! I was deep into a job interview, and just starting another, and even if these jobs didn't work out, I'd continue plowing forward, and I will find one that does. Everything everywhere was on an upswing. I was pumped. I listened to to poetry of Jim Morrison, and I sung. And I thought about the Doors, and specifically Jim Morrison. I thought, "How many people are there with this kind of power via music, power to which others gain access by being let into his passion? The kind of music that impacts people's essense of being, and influences society, with a meaningful voice like Jim's, with lyrics like this, with spirit and soul like this?" Jimi Hendrix, certainly Elvis. Zeppelin is undoubtedly the best band ever, but they didn't really change people. I thought about this: Who in the last 30 years has been a truly infuential (on people, not within the industry itself) singer or band? The only name I could come up with was Guns N' Roses. They ended a 10 year stint of meaningless music. Then I thought perhaps Nirvana would qualify as well, ushering in grunge (along with the aforementioned Pearl Jam), which I believe was a crucial, although short-lived, musical movement, giving millions of young people an outlet for their angst and anger over a period of political correctness and the stifling of sound (musically and societally) that was going on during the early Clinton years. One of the great albums in history. Cobain was definitely an artist, and while I think it would be a stretch to call Axl Rose the same, the music GnR produced was radical and did bring a sort of new reality to many people who had been stuck listening to El Debarge, Sherriff, and Anita Baker for a decade. Not. Well, here I was, feeling good, listening to the Doors, and experiencing a relatively intense internal moment, the kind you dont often feel much after the high school high-as-a-kite days. Towards the end of the song, after I'd thought about Nirvana and the like, the memory of Larry's question entered my mind, seemingly through my frontal lobe, lodging itself in my cerebellum, although some of it seemed to ooze into my temporal. High School philosophy class. I thought, this feeling I'm feeling now, is what music means to me? What IS this feeling I'm feeling? These thoughts were just starting to coelesce in my head when the song ended, and a song I didn't feelin like listening to came on. I prepared to cycle endlessly through the other 5 presets on my radio, and, naturally, started with button 1. Now playing? Patience, by Guns N Roses. A timely coincidence. As I started singing this quasi-aria, I felt foudroyantly empassioned, given what had just been running through my mind. Music, what it means to me. Music has the power to augment feeling, to embellish emotion. To make the best of times better, the worst of times... worser. As my brain put the final touches on the assembly and ultimate creation of this thought, I pulled into Kohl's as the song ended. I turned off the car, went inside, found a belt one size larger, and exchanged it. I started to head next door to Men's Warehouse, when it hit me. I could not return the tie. The tie was music. Music was, is, the tie. I got back in the car, turned on the ignition. I'd left the radio turned way up, and so exploded unto me... And I forget Just what it takes And yet I guess it makes me smile I found it hard Its hard to find Oh well, whatever, nevermind Nirvana's chef-d'oeuvre.