brainsplotch

Hi folks, thought I'd take some time to check in. I am still at home and doing the "shelter-in-place/stay-at-home" thing, and I have to be honest with you, I am in no hurry to get back to "normal" (whatever that even IS anymore). It's not that I don't want coronavirus to end (of course I do), but with over 100,000 Americans dead--and the rate of infection only slowing slightly--I am still not quite chomping at the bit to return to my physical work space. The news is almost constantly depressing, but even more so lately with yet more black people being murdered by cops, our idiot president acting like, well, an idiot every single day (and offering no leadership during this pandemic). When the news isn't about the ever increasing death toll and unemployment tally, it is racist bullshit occurring and our "president" behaving like a racist asshole. It is exasperating, exhausting, and nerve-wracking, but I at least feel that I am in a somewhat ...

I feel as if I've settled into a routine now. The "new normal" is just "normal." With the pandemic still continuing with no end it sight, this normal will also continue with no definite end in sight. I say no "definite" end in sight because my workplace's tentative plan is to slowly open back up after Governor Whitmer's stay-at-home order expires on May 28. Of course, if she extends it, then that goes out the window. I am in no hurry to go back into the public. As long as there is no effective treatment or vaccine for this horrible Covid-19 disease (and whenever I read about it, Covid-19 sounds like a disease out of a horror movie), I would much rather stay at home and limit my outdoor adventures to the bare essential trips. I will work and stay at home for as long as necessary. I do not want to put myself or my family in any unnecessary risk. I have been spending my time editing and correcting ebook and eaudio records for the library, whic...

This has been a shit year, there's no other way to put it. (Well, maybe there is a more artful way to put it, but I don't feel like it. Describing it as "shit" just seems more appropriate). I don't think it's necessary to enumerate the many ways in which 2016 sucked. Any year in which David Bowie and Prince died, while Donald Trump was elected president, is automatically a horrible year. All of the other bad things that happened are just more poo clogging the toilet. (Sorry for the scatological metaphors, folks). So why not take a look at the good stuff from 2016, at least from my perspective. The year was a good one for music. It has been a long time since I've been as excited about new music as I was in '16. It started in January when David Bowie released Blackstar ,  an album that has to rank as one of the best of his career, and there is no hyperbole in that statement. It was as if Bowie knew that this was his final statement to t...

Sometime in 1983, David Bowie's Let's Dance album penetrated the hinterlands of Michigan's rural Thumb region and helped to change my life. The hipster cognoscenti may pooh-pooh  Let's Dance and dismiss it as Bowie's concession to commercialism, but to many of us growing up in small towns across America, the music and imagery of that record couldn't possibly be much more odd and otherwordly. So what folks in New York, London, and Los Angeles considered pop confectionery was a small town kid's ticket to a world he or she previously did not know existed. A gateway drug to a wider and wilder realm of experience. The greatest quality of Let's Dance was that it was commercial enough to make it into the living rooms of middle America, and it was just weird enough for us middle-class, white bread kids to turn us on to ideas, sounds, and visuals we had little (or no) idea existed outside of our boring little bubbles. It's so long ago that I was tur...

"Look up here, I'm in Heaven"--David Bowie, "Lazarus" (2016) I woke up this morning to the stunning news that David Bowie had died. I'm almost speechless. On Friday, Bowie turned 69 and I was in a celebratory mood, listening to Hunky Dory in the car while driving my son to a friend's house, then listening to Low in the kitchen on Saturday morning while making breakfast and putting groceries away. Yesterday morning, after dropping our sad, dead Christmas tree off at the township tree recycling location, I stopped by the local Best Buy on a whim to see if they had Bowie's new album Blackstar in stock. Sure enough they did, and though I do my best to do most of my music shopping at the local stores, I figured "I'm here, they have it, it's $9.99, let me just buy it now." I listened to part of the title track "Blackstar" and was pleased to hear how at this point in his career, Bowie simply follows (followed) his inst...