brykmantra.com

Well, after a whole #$%@%&$# month of not being able to blog for no apparent #*&$*&$%# reason … now, all of a sudden, I CAN!!!!

And again, for no apparent reason.

%$@#.

SO anyway, I’m back, and have a few things to post, and hopefully I will, assuming I don’t get %$@#ed around again.

I didn’t post last night because I was busy cramming for a job interview that I had today.

Yes, I’m such a nerd I study for interviews.

Anyway, I won’t go into detail at this point, but it was actually an enjoyable interview, because they seemed to really be impressed with my wide variety of experience.

It’s good to have your abilities respected every now and then, especially when I’m job hunting, and especially after I was having to do all this random stuff that had nothing to do with my skills for my last two years at my previous job.

Also, it’s a great little company with smart, friendly people, and I learned a lot of fascinating things about the business they’re in. Bonus points: The owners love dogs, and often have their poodle at the office. Unfortunately, they don’t have a health plan, so I don’t know if we would be able to work out enough to pay compensate, but it would be a chance to use both my creative abilities and my office skills.

Anyway, there’s my obligatory post, and now I’ve got to get back to working on the music thing …

For the first three days of the challenge, I put together one good tune beginning each day, and the third day was the best one.

That third one got me overconfident, apparently. On the evening of the fourth, I sat on the back porch with my guitar and pounded out a couple of hopeful-sounding chord progressions … but alas, when I got them punched into my music software, hopeful turned to hopeless.

So the next night, I was too dispirited to try to start from scratch again, so instead I went back to what I started on the 3rd … and I’ve got to say, what I ended up with, after tinkering with it again today, is pretty cool. Kind of Bruce Springsteen/Tom Petty sounding, except I don’t really like their stuff a lot.

(And BTW, thanks much to Yay-Kim for her tips and pointers!)

Still, though, I really need to pick up the pace if I’m going to compile another 9 of those boogers before this short month is through — and if I’m going to do any vocals at all, it’ll require a personal effort comparable to D-Day and class-picture-day all rolled into one.

And another area in which I’m lacking is the song-naming arena; the song that I’ve pretty much finished is called “A Minor F C Chords 2-5-08″, for lack of anything more descriptive. Another song is called “Simple Tune 2-2-08″.

Somewhere, Springsteen is laughing his butt off.

Anyway, I just keep on plugging, and maybe along the way I’ll learn enough survival skills to be able to churn through these chores a little faster.

And now for something completely different, here’s a really, really fat guy, firing a gun really, really fast:

(Via Attack of the Show)

Hmm, that’s a catchy little rhythm … I think I’ll download it and build a song around it …

… or rather TRYING to be musicking, and failing miserably.

But still I need to post, so here’s a picture I took yesterday of my exercise buddy, Gracie:

Gracie is a sweet little doggie on my walking route, a couple of blocks south of my street. I met her just less than two years ago when I had to start my walks to rebuild my lung power, and now she usually runs to the fence when she sees me coming, so I can pet her through the links (she’s too short for me to reach her over the fence).

I got to see her again today, since it was extra-warm again (record heat for this date! 84F!) and it might be the last warm day for a walk for a while. This time when I stood up after I petted her, she stood up too, and whined for more petting, and leaned against the fence so I could scratch behind her ears.

Yeah, I’m a sucker for puppies. But look at those beautiful brown eyes! Isn’t she sweet?

(BTW, I’ve talked to her owner a couple of times, that’s how I know Gracie’s name. I’m not going pet psychic or Dr. Doolittle or anything.)

Anyway, that oughta hold ya; now I’m going back to not being any good at doing music.

UPDATE: Welcome, new visitors from Pam’s Carnival of the Canines! Please bookmark the main page here and keep coming back!

Wow, I’ve heard about this for years, but I’m just now realizing that I’ve never seen or heard it before.

And it’s much, much more horrible than I could have ever dreamed!

I’m speaking, of course, about William Shatner’s trailblazing version of “Rocket Man”:

I’ve seen and heard The Shat “perform” (some would say “mutilate”) many songs over the years, and seen even more parodies, so I’ve just always assumed that I’ve heard this one too.

But now I can clearly see that this is a horror which I have not previously faced. I didn’t even realized that it was as long ago as 1978; I assumed it was the mid-80s.

“She packed my bags . . . last night pre-flight … “

Now I’m going to have nightmares.

And this is coming from someone who has listened to Shatner’s “Has Been” album all the way through …

Hope you’re having a great one!

This time of year all you hear about is Santa, Santa, Santa — no love for the elves!

Well, almost none: NPR this afternoon did a report on something I had heard before: Most Icelanders believe in elves, so much so “that Icelanders halt construction projects or divert roads to avoid disturbing the mythical folk.”

They even have a national Elf School.

That’s what happens when your national liquor is given the nickname “The Black Death”.

Moving a bit further south: Did you know: In Dutch tradition, Santa doesn’t have the help of elves, he relies on the assistance of Black Pete.

You’re welcome.

But enough of this educational junk:

Check this out: Full Metal Elves. (Don’t let the scene from “Rudolph” fool you; there’s some rough language, some don’t play this with the kiddies around.)

Next: Skydiving elves!

And finally: Christmas Bohemian Rhapsody:

Tomorrow (Saturday) is the Solstice, aka The First Day of Winter, aka The Shortest Day of the Year (in the Northern Hemisphere), anyway. Our Nordic friend Renny, who is particularly affected by the long nights where he lives (Oslo), has documented the short day with pictures.

I was just thinking last night how much I love winter … but it’s really more about how I love winter in Dallas — more to the point, how much nicer Dallas Winter is than Dallas Summer.

I used to love summer when I lived in Lubbock (low humidity, less misery) and hated winter (colder than here, snowier, and with frequent dust storms).

Funny how I how much my seasonal opinion has changed since then — but of course that’s easy when daytime temperatures have gotten up past 70F this week. I’ve been able to comfortably go on my 30-minute walks for three days in a row.

That all changes tomorrow, when, just in time, the weather will be celebrating winter with a high around 50F and freezing temperatures at night.

I feel like such a slug; here I am unemployed, and yet I sent out three Christmas cards just today (yours is on the way, Yay Kim!). In my defense, under the circumstances we’re only sending cards to those who sent to us (and not even all of those), and we had only received one of those incoming cards yesterday (from my former supervisor of 12 years). But for the cards I’m sending Curtis (former co-worker and office mate who jumped ship last month) and Kim, my only excuse is: Hey, I’m job-hunting! (BTW Kim, you get a bonus photo of The Brat!)

And finally: The legendary David Bowie/Bing Crosby Christmas special duet from 1976:

Just a few things that I hope I can keep quick:

TIME Magazine reveals their Person of the Year tomorrow, and I get the sick feeling that it’s going to be Al Gore. Why do I think this? Because he has just had all the Nobel publicity on him, on top of all the other Me-Too awards this year, and TIME is such a shameless bandwagon jumper, just as all the Old Media dinosaurs are these days.

PLUS it’s a liberal cause, PLUS it’s an election year and what a better note for them to start the year on.

I won’t start on the Gore and the Global Warming thing here — except to say that I do believe that we need to drastically reduce our emissions (and also our fuel consumption, and thus our national SUV addiction), and that, contrary to Gore’s policy, so-called developing nations like China and India need to make sacrifices right along with us, since they pollute more.

But I think that was isn’t realized internationally is that Gore is actually hurting his cause in the U.S. more than he’s helping it, because a lot of us here realize that Global Warming is his Golden Meal Ticket, and that he conveniently disregards any data that doesn’t support what he wants to preach.

See, you got me started. I’ll rant more at a later date, but for now … You just watch, those idiots will pin him for this prize too.

Okay, I already ranted, so I won’t go on about how much I HATE HATE HATE Windows Vista.

Suffice it to say that I’m glad we’ve only got it installed on our laptop PC.

We’ve been watching Clash of the Choirs on NBC this week, and it’s pretty good. My wife is a huge Patti LaBelle fan, plus she loves being in the choir, so of course she wouldn’t miss something like this. And apparently, unless there’s a sequel (always a possibility), I think the whole thing will be over by week’s end. Tonight was the second night, so if you’re going to watch, better start tomorrow.

It’s pretty interesting, but I wish Michael Bolton’s group had been the first kicked off tonight — and no, not because of all the crappy music he’s brought us over the years, and not because of the people in the choir.

I just felt — and my wife agreed — that he did the worst job with his choir, trying to form it in his own image as a solo singer: He had one singer (male, of course) sing most of the song, with the rest of his choir as his backup … singing only the melody, and very little harmony!

That’s right: Just like his act, but worse.

Okay, I’ll stop ranting now.