The Magic Yamaha G-55 I Guitar with the Kid's Dad's Soul in it

I do not claim to be a "good" guitar player or even an adequate one. The one thing I claim for myself is that I can get people to dance when I play -- which is ironic as I am not a good dancer by far.

I sold all my guitar equipment a few years ago and have never regretted it. I worried occasionally that I was losing a part of myself but about a year ago a young man came up to me and my wife at a Starbuck's and handed me an old Yamaha classical style guitar and asked me if I would take it off his hands for free!

I said, immediately, "Yes!"

Several strings were missing and it was scratched and nicked here and there , but was generally in good shape.The wood behind the frets in the first five frets was visibly worn from someone's playing. To me, this gives an instrument, soul.

The kid explained that it was his father's guitar and that his father had given it to him -- but he had his own guitars now and never played this one -- so he was searching for a good "home" for the guitar and felt that I would give ir a good one.

And , so I have.

Today I put new Savarez strings on it , polished it up, and played some blues on it and Alice Cooper's song, "Eighteen". And, I still have my harmonicas.

More Biker News from Headless Lucy

Sometimes a biker has to get back to basics. I know I've been slacking on the biker news and I have so many tales to tell, it's a shame I haven't taken the time to do it. Especially since my more-or-less biker-newsless blog is mostly about politics --- so far...

Let me first start out with a simple list of the bikes I've owned in my lifetime:

1- Schwinn "junior size" paperboy bike.

2- Schwinn "Paper-Boy Special" with high rise bars and "knee action" front wheel.

3- Conversion of "paper boy special" to small lawnmower-motorized bike

4- Honda-90 Trail Bike.

5- Various "found" tenspeeds.

6- Murray "Trail Bike".

7- 1983 Red Suzuki 1100 GSX crotch rocket.



I would have loved to have had a Harley for its chick-attracting capabilities, but never had an opportunity to acquire one at a reasonable price and "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" has never been my bag , if you get my drift.

LIVING WITH WAR, by Neil Young: link

Here's a direct link to the album. Please give it a listen. It's already number three on billboard. Love and Peace to all:

Headless Lucy

Review Neil Young's New Anti-War Album:"LIVING WITH WAR" link

YOU BE THE DECIDER!

Conservatives propose Liberal/Conservative Rebel Alliance against Neo-Cons: link

The only thing I object to with this writer is that he feels that Liberal philosophy is much like Joseph Stalin's. I strongly disagree. I think Conservative philosophy is akin to that of Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin, with a dash of John ( Mr. Alien and Sedition Acts/Patriot Act ) Adams.

Th latest on the Boeing/Airbus corporate welfare dispute is --link: here

They say it's over, but I don't think so.

War Between the U.S. and Mexico!!!!!! THE TOMATO WARS --- link:

How NAFTA and U.S. publicly subsidized corporate agriculture destroys indigineous economies. If the stuff that we are dumping in Mexico were truly produced on the "free market" and not on U.S. taxpayer assisted corporate farms ( corporate welfare ), Iwouldn't oppose it.

But this is not free enterprise. It's corporate socialism, and I'm against it!

The Tomato Wars, cont'd.: link

Background information on the Tomato Wars.....

Airbus and Boeing accuse each other of receiving corporate welfare: link

Both are absolutely correct about the other...

Boeing, Airbus, Mexican Tomatoes, Adam Smith, Republicans and the "Invisible Hand"

The Ballad of James Tobin: Innocent Beleagured Republican --NOT!!

sung to the tune of, Ghost Riders in the Sky:


In New Hampshire Justice was a probin'

And they found out about James Tobin.

Seems that James had jammed the phones

Tryin'to keep the Democrats home.

Their bogus scheme it was uncovered.

"I didn't do nothin' ", Tobin blubbered.

James's calls went to Mehlmans phone

But Mehlman dropped James like a doo-doo scone.

Now Tobin lies convicted in jail.

For jammin' phones he was nailed.



Yippee- yi- AAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!!

Yippee- yi- OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

James Tobins iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnn

the POKEY>>>>>>>>>>> Rideout>>>>>>>>>>>>

Republicans are to blame for illegal workers: CEO's should do jail time!

The following is from a letter in the Seattle Times from 4/10/2006. The letter was written by Don Sly of Seattle:

OUR NATION'S METHODS of DEALING WITH ILLEGAL WORKERS SHOW HYPOCRISY


Editor, The Times:

" Because our fractured society doesn't confront the, "hordes of illegal immigrants ... running amok in our streets", letter writer Warren Wilson [ April 2nd ] of Kirkland is moved to ask: "Have we become a nation of sniveling cowards?"

Actually, illegal immigrants have made us a nation of sniveling hypocrites. On two fronts.

First, we bleat how the "illegal hordes" are needed to do work Americans don't want to do. This is total garbage. Listen. In my checkered career as an industrial chemist I have at times been up to my ankles inraw sewage. But, I was happy for the work because I was paid a living wage. There is no work Americans won't do: THERE ARE ,HOWEVER, SALARIES THAT DEGRADE THE HUMAN SPIRIT and Americans rightly refuse to prostitute themselves to make some employer rich for a minimum wage.

Second, instead of crouching in the hedges and bushes of a deserted border, the Minutemen types would be better to deploy themselves within the boardrooms of the corporations that use immigrant labor to avoid paying Americans a living wage. The problem for the Minutemen is that they would target not illegal immigrants,but illegal employers : that is: their fellow Republicans.

And when is that going to happen? Not any time soon.

Pattannica Pancakes, cont'd.:

So as I said, mother had made a dinner of potato pancakes, porkchops,and green beans --- with a little apple-sauce on the side. Everyone loved potato pancakes and my mother was kept busy making more pancakes and sipping wine.

Dad asked, "Oh, Dot! Could I have a few more pancakes?"

" 'Fraid not dear. I just gave the last one to your son!"

My father must have been stressed that day. He usually was. Most of the time about work and occassionally about Democrats and Communists --- whom he felt were about equally to blame for Socialistic Programs, the sexual revolution, and the Rolling Stones --- and generally anything he disliked or that went wrong with his life.

He blew his cork this time.

" Goddamn-it-all anyway! Why, in the name of Sweet Bleeding Jesus, can't I, the guy who busts his ass forty hours a week so you all can have a roof over your heads and all the food you can eat -- for free -- get a few extra potato pancakes?!?!"

My mother was standing next to Dad's large, long, red apoplectic head and casually poured a half a glass of wine over it. "You're a blithering idiot!", said she.

His head, already red from anger turned an almost alarming shade of purple as the wine dripped over the wispy hair on his balding head and dribbled over his face and eyes as he screamed:

" ALL I WANTED WAS A LOUSY P-P-P-PATTANNICA PANCAKE!!!"

Generally, Dad's outbursts were greeted with fear and trepidation. Bad things could happen when he lost his cool. But this time it was different. We all looked at him with suppressed grins and someone asked, "What was that you said? Pattannica Pancakes?"

To this very day me, my three sisters, my children, their children and their spouses will, when someone gets red-faced angry over some small thing, look at each other with amusement and say:

"Pattannica Pancakes!"

Pattannica Pancakes, cont'd: My Son: The Internet King

I've got this one almost finished in longhand. I'll post the rest of it later. It has , partially, something to do with a cardboard Burger King crown that I converted to an Internet King crown...

He may not want to wear it while working on the computer, but I think that wearing a crown while working on the computer will convince him in his subconscious that he is, indeed: the Internetking!!!!

The Pattannica Pancakes Incident, as I remember it,happened like this: We were having a family dinner of an evening in the summer. It was in the early 1960's, so my older sister and I were in our early teens, my younger sister was about eleven or twelve and my youngest sister was still a toddler. Mother had been drinking a little wine that day.

Families ate dinner together in those days

Pattannica Pancakes: how they got that way

My youngest sister is forty five. I'm fifty seven and my oldest sister is two years older than me and the sister directly behind me is two years younger. I was born on January 1st. The first official information that the Federal government received about me was on April 15th of that year. My father reported on his income tax form that I had been born on December 31st of the previous year.

Dad got the full year's deduction for me anyway. After all, why let one day stand in the way of a full year's Federal tax deduction? My father, Carl, was a Boy Scout about morality and was never particularly proud about it, but my pride in his action was enough for the both of us.

But, more about that later.

The really important thing about my family, the Rosetta Stone of all incidents, is still -- to this day -- the Pattanica Pancake incident. Oh, I could tell you only my version of the events, but to get the full picture you would need the independent viewpoints of my sisters , as well. I need to e-mail them and get their recollections.

Point of view is so telling in a story such as this. I am certainly not the first person to have this insight, but I think the telling of the story will reveal the unique position that families like mine occupy in the social landscape of America.

The story is all about a serving of Patannica pancakes...

U.S. Media Controlled by Billionaires

Grover Norquist, whose corrupt ties to "Casino Jack" Abramoff and Tom DeLay become more apparent daily, has a Wednesday Morning Group of 80 billionaires that meet once a week to set the media's agenda for that week and, since the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress, to actually write ( for their own benefit of course ) the laws of the nation.

Norquist, a chubby "inherited-wealth boy" from Boston, learned his attitude toward taxes at his rich daddy's knee. According to Norquist himself, when he was but a tyke, his father would give him an ice-cream cone and with each bite instruct little Grover to imagine it as a GOVERNMENT TAX. Little Grover learned his lesson well and learned to hate taxes, for, if there were no "taxes" he could forever possess a useless, melted ice-cream cone!

Really, I don't think Grover or his Dad were capable of that amount of forethought.

Democrat Contract With America

Here is an interesting article in , The Nation, that addresses the issue of Democrats using the Katrina debacle to illustrate how Republicans have failed to live up to the promises they made in 1994 and cynically never really tried to.

Getting the Best of WingNut "Debaters"

If you are new to blogging and decide to debate wingnuts you have a fun and somewhat challenging task ahead of you. Your goal is to so "fshimmle" your opponent that they are practically screaming through the computer at you.

You've bugged your target wingnut a little if you are called a moonbat, kooky liberal, or a Socialist. You know that their face is red with rage and their jowls are flecked with spittle if you are called a Communist, Stalinist, or Leninist -- or any combination of these words -- and you can imagine a beer can being thrown at the monitor. This is the desired emotional state you seek to put the wingnut in.

Most wingnuts are quite stupid and extremely inflexible. They do, however, refresh their grab bag of arguments by going to a website ( like Free Republic) that is there specifically designed to fill their heads anew each day with logically twisted arguments that are so breathtaking in the lie they are attempting to propound that you will be taken aback. These lies are provided each day by professional wingnut liars who have been twisting the truth for so long that they no longer know themselves what it is.

The main thing you must understand in debating wingnuts is that they have about ten basic ( and easily refuted ) assumptions about the world and everything they say revolves around these simple assumptions.

A few of these core wingnut concepts is that a reference to Ted Kennedy's car wreck over 30 years ago in which his girlfriend was tragically killed automatically trumps any argument that you ( the Stalinist) is trying to use. Similarly, The oral sex that Bill Clinton received from Monica Lewinsky also trumps any crime, no matter how coarse, crooked and venal, that any Republican has committed. This especially applies to the President and the vice-President.

I have included a link to a site that will inform you about any subject you wish to debate a wingnut on. I think you will find the site very interesting, informative and educational.

Zero Sum Games and Economics

I, Headless Lucy, have been reading a bit about zero sum games and also conservative commentary about how tax cuts for the rich and the oil business as currently structured are NOT zero sum games but, rather, "win / win" situations.

They look an awfully lot like zero sum games to me.

Any comments?

GOP VOTER SUPPRESSION CHALLENGES IN KING CO ., WA (link)