24bit .wav files don't really take up much space

on a 2 gig flash/thumb drive. i tell ya it's a crazy world of technology we live in. when i bought this 2 gig drive i think it was 18 dollars or something close to that and now 18 dollars will get you a 30 or 60 gig flash/thumb drive. crazu huh? pretty soon, all digital information will be stored in a zillion gig drive the size of a stick pin.

My Wish

Is that more people would read and learn to live by Don Miguel Ruiz's "Four Agreements."

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
2. Don't Take Anything Personally
3. Don't Make Assumptions
4. Always Do Your Best

They really work.

Hamilton Pool

This is a shot of Tess and me at Hamilton Pool located about twenty miles or so outside of Austin where we live. It's a beautiful place. It's like the land that time forgot. Yes there are people there, but it's almost like you expect to see Gnomes and Gobblins hanging out on the rocks, in the shade, or in the clumps of algae hanging from the rocks. Not only is Hamilton Pool a beautiful place so is my beautiful lady, see that big grin on her face. Well dearest blog and or blog readers, I hope you get to see Hamilton Pool one day. You certainly won't regret it.

Bria Valente : Elixer

Don't bother picking up Bria Valente's new one: Elixer, oh wait, you don't really have a choice not to buy it because it comes packaged as one of the three discs in Prince's new summertime special. Don't blame me, I was shopping at Target one day and saw it on the shelf so I decided to see what Prince was up to in this day and age. So if you're like me and you bought the record you do have the option of not listening to it. I'm trying to figure out why I'm even writing a blog about it, but never-the-less here I am. I think these songs would have worked well if Prince would have sang them instead of Bria. I'm left wondering why Prince actually felt compelled to release this record at all. I will say the music sounds like real musicians actually played on the recordings (most probably Prince himself) and there's some nice drumming and guitar work on some of the songs, but other than that, there are plenty of other records out there in the world to listen to besides this one. But since I'm here I'll give an example as to why I'm dissing this record, take a listen to track number three "Home" it sounds a lot like a direct rip-off of Cassie's major R&B hit "Me &U" I wonder if that was intentional? The album as a whole really falls flat around "Everytime," this song is completely dull and lifeless. If you're looking for any witty lyrics you can look elsewhere because there's hardly a line to hold on to or remember once the record is over. The drum intro on "Something U Already Know," is quite nice, slow and groovy. But on the whole I hear Prince singing on these songs instead of Bria and I wish it would have been that way on the whole disc. Stay tuned because I do think MPLSound is a good listen and LotusFlower has some nice guitar work on it.

Why Kids Kill : Inside the Minds of School Shooters

Call me morbid but death has always been a fascination of mine, as well as life, but for some strange reason I find myself curiously attracted to learning about people who actually take action in their darkest feelings to commit the ultimate sin, murder. I guess what fascinates me the most is the "lone gunman" myth we've created here in our lovely US of A. Within the last month, I finished "Columbine" by Dave Cullen and once I put it down I was on the prowl for another book. I'd seen the title "Why Kids Kill: Inside the Mind of School Shooters," and me being me hopped immediately on to the next book. Lucky for me, instead of having to wait for it to arrive in my PO Box after ordering it off Amazon, I had a foggy notion I might find it at the UT Library. After a wee bit of searching lo and behold, there it was. There are some interesting points raised by Peter Langman in this book, but on the whole everything he touched on seemed to be common sense to me, especially on how to stop these senseless, violent acts. The heart of the book really came about in the last couple of chapters. It is in those last couple of chapters where Mr. Langman touches on what we can do to stop this from happening. He describes five kids he worked with who were hospitalized because either their parents, or their friends or their teachers at school uncovered a plots or a rumor they had planned to not only blow up their school but to kill as many people as they could in it as well as themselves and often times their parents too.

Langman demonstrates that there is no sure-fire answer to know what makes a kid turn to murder like this. He lays out many factors which lead these kids to plan and plot these horrific events. What most people believe is not the truth, most of these kids were not picked on by jocks or bullies. They were not loners. For the most part, they were brought up in trouble free homes with parents who were still married. They had many friends, some went on dates, some played sports, some help jobs and were honor roll students. Basically as Langman demonstrates, it's a combination of many characteristics that make up the school shooter. Most of them have some sort of insecurity, a me against them type of mentality, some are extremely narcissistic, some have been traumatized, but most are just your typical kids. He describes 4 types of shooters: Psychopathic, Psychotic, Traumatized and Schizoprhenic.

Even though Columbine sets the reference point in our society, Kip Kinkel to me seemed like the worst one of all. He was an honor student. His parents were both teachers at the school he attended. He heard voices in his head and his friends egged him on to carry out his attack. He even brought a loaded gun to school the day before he came back to shoot 27 people. He was caught that day and suspended. That night when he went home, he killed both of his parents, then went to school the next morning to kill as many people as he could. He wrote a story in school about killing and dismembering bodies of students.

I like how Langman takes 10 shooters and does a surface level evaluation of them and what lead them to kill and I like how he picks five kids who he hopes he stopped from carrying out their attack pans. He stresses that communication, openness, vigilance, paying attention to and being a part of your kids life, locking up your guns (or keeping them in a locker at a gun club), listening to what their teachers and parents of friends have to say about your child is important to stopping kids from killing.

It is true, no parent wants to hear that Johnny has some issues in school or that he turned in a violent paper, but to take into account that these teachers read thousands of student stories and papers and they interact with thousands of kids in any given school year so if they are calling for a meeting over Johnny's issues at school then something needs to be addressed and the solution is not moving them from one teacher to the next or suspending them from school which only makes the more upset.

I'll leave all the rest of this book to you as to whether you like it or not. It is insightful and a few times I couldn't really comprehend just what these kinds went through. It is what it is however and unfortunately it's the world we currently live in: Pre-Columbine vs. Post Columbine which leads me to the next few books I'm reading on Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately the same can be said for this catastrophic event: Pre-Katrina vs Post-Katrina.

Life is Blurry

Once again, since I have no real digital camera, this shot was taken with my cell phone. It's from a series I call "Life is Blurry" because for me a lot of my life is blurry. My eyes are older and are not like a fine wine, they've gotten worse with time, not better. I do wear glasses but I'm at the point where they are more of a nuisance sitting on my face than they are helpful. I think part of the bother is the frames. I need something bigger for my face.

It's not even close to summer time here in Austin yet once again it's hotter than hell. This year I have a sneaking suspicion it's going to be hotter than any summer I've lived in Texas before. I already find myself looking forward to mid/late August when Tess and I will make a trip to Montrose for a week's stay at the bay house. It shouldn't bee too much longer now, eh? We're waiting for her to get out of school and finish her Capstone. To keep myself busy this summer, I've singed up for some Informal Classes at UT, one was already canceled because there was not enough participants, which is a bummer because it was a guitar class I was looking forward to taking but so far the other one is still open. It's painting with Acrylics. That's all for now folks.

Athens vs Sparta: The History of the Peloponnesian War

This photo of the group was taken for the cover of the San Antonio Current a couple months ago in which we had a feature article on the group and the making of our record. The official album release show for "The History of the Peloponnesian War" took place at Casbeer's which I gotta tell ya' is a superb venue, as long as you can deal with San Antonio sound guys. I'll let you in on a little secret, good sound guys don't exist in San Antonio. If you like them drunk and clueless then maybe SA sound men are what you're looking for. In the picture, I'm the dude in the striped shirt, with the Greek mask on standing behind Charlie Roadman who is sitting down smiling. If you'd like to learn a little about the project, take a journey on over here. If you'd like to listen to our performance and an insightful interview about the project promoting the show on NPR head on over here, we're on show #451 Segment 3.

The live shot was taken during the show, that's me standing in the back on the riser, playing bass, with the mask on once again. We had a grand time playing the show and look out world because we have a two night stint lined up in October at the Hyde Park Theater in Austin, Texas. I know you're probably thinking October is a ways away from today but that's what happens when you get older, you plan ahead. The first night we will be playing for the Classicist Society and the second night will be for the general public. If you are the least bit curios the briefest synopsis I can give you is this: it took us close to four years to make a musical drama, complete with bits of narration about this war and now we're ready to play it for you. I think you'll like it.