Good Afternoon, Sweet Baby,
I'm back until 4:15. It was a busy morn, first to the podiatrist with Pearl, then to drop her off at church for Golden Agers, then I drove out to Corriganville to get that magic feeling again. Brought my camera with me and took a stroll along the trail. I'll take a look at the photos this evening when I have more time, see if I got any good ones. There's just something wonderful about that place, and I can feel you with me every time I go there.
Lol for the Eric Whitacre photo. :) But, that was the Era Of The Hairdo! They play his music all the time on KUSC, he is a fantastic composer. Well, I am gonna jump in the shower because I am all full of dust from the trail. But I will be around one computer or the other until walk time at 8:30.
It's such a magical feeling, Elizabeth. It's nature, but something more, too. And I know you can feel it.
I Love You So Much . :):)
(back in a bit)
7pm : I saw your post from The Oatmeal. He nails it when he says, politics aside, conservation aside, etc, how can someone find solace in shooting an animal. Although I would change the word "solace" to "excitement", because that is what I think some of these hunters feel upon making a kill. It's a headrush for them. I mean, hell, there have been soldiers who have talked openly about a similar feeling, being in a tank and blowing away some Iraquis at a distance. So if those guys get a rush out of killing humans, you can be sure the hunters get a similar adrenaline surge from killing an animal. And, they use all these high-tech devices now to do so. They use towers, and high power scopes, and that latest trick I talked about - putting a barrell full of donuts down to attract the bear they want to kill. It's like shooting fish in a barrell, as they say.
I always make sure to point out that it would be hypocritical of me to go after all hunters - or hunting in general - when I still eat some forms of meat. I still eat fish and some chicken. I still have a hamburger once or twice a year. I am not perfect, and like many (or even most from my generation), I was raised with the all-American diet. I have certainly enjoyed steaks, ribs, chops, you name it. And even if I never had another bite of red meat or chicken ever again, I still eat salmon and tuna, and who is to say that fishing is any better than hunting, at least as far as the death of a creature is concerned? I would have to be a complete vegan to have any right to condemn all hunters and fishers, and even then I suppose I'd have to stop driving my car because I am polluting the atmosphere, and that is helping to cause all kinds of problems for humans and animals alike. It's helping to cause global warming.
So, I can't (and I am speaking just for myself) speak out against all hunting without being a hypocrite. And of course, I am certainly not suggesting for a second that the guy at The Oatmeal is being hypocritical. He goes to lengths to explain his position.
And the thing is, whether it is partially or fully hypocritical of me to say so, I totally agree with him.
Here's the deal : humans have to eat. Ideally, we would all be vegan. Now, to be vegan (no animal products whatsoever), you've really gotta have it down to a science so you don't suffer any protein or vitamin deficiencies. But it can be done. Still, that is an ideal situation, and ideal situations rarely if ever happen in real life, because you can't police the world. And I suppose that some animal populations might get out of control if they were not "thinned" by humanity. Animals have litters, after all. And carniverous animals, if their populations were out of control, might start using man for food, a reversal of the current situation.
But that's all a moot point, because man can reason, man can invent, man can build, he has tools for all kinds of things. For whatever reason, God or Nature put man and all kinds of animals together on the same planet, and in the beginning it was man who had to fear the wild beasts, at the very least equally to the fear they might have had for him. Life was a struggle, every day, just to eat. And over tens of thousands of years, man figured out how to, if not win that battle, at least to gain a permanent advantage. We are the ones who run the slaughterhouses, not the pigs and cows and chickens.
In the beginning, it was man vs. beast. Both had to eat to survive, and man had to find ways to keep the beast from killing him, so he invented bows and arrows. He needed an advantage, because the beast was not only stronger but could outrun him as well. So, hunting came about for a reason.
I cannot condemn meat eaters because I have been one, and am still one. Fish is meat, too.
But, and I will get off my soapbox now, I will go ahead and risk being hypocritical when I say that hunters like that lady with the ecstatic grin on her face, are complete a-holes. They are killing, just as Oatmeal Guy says, because they get a huge kick out of it. They get a rush. They don't even feel (or seem to be aware of) how cowardly it is to use all those tricks to lure their prey, or to hunt from a tower.
And then to grin on top of it, and/or display what you have killed in a triumphant pose.
It makes me sick.
I can halfway (only halfway) understand the war-crazed soldier who gets a rush from aiming a rocket at a pack of Iraquis or Taliban, and then cheering as they explode. Those guys may have seen their buddies killed. I don't support any of the current wars, but I think I can understand the mind of the soldier. And, I have no sympathy for those Taliban guys anyhow. They are pure scum.
But the people who kill an animal with the same glee have no excuse. I don't care if they are gonna eat the whole thing and use every piece of it's hide to make something with. It's the same psychosis as the soldier, but without the excuse. The soldier is shell-shocked, war crazed.
Hunters who get off on killing, and grin about it, are psychos pure and simple.
And, they're Gun Nuts, too. But don't get me started on them.
That's all I wanted to say about it, my Baby. I know you have much more personal experience with hunting culture than I do, and in fact I don't have any. So, I am not talking about "regular" hunters, whatever that may mean, nor am I talking about responsible gun owners. Just the nutjobs in both categories.
My philosophy is that we will always have idiots in our midst, and psychos, too. And while it is manditory that we reduce the number of psychos in order to have a more sane society, my advice on idiots has always been to ignore them. Most of them are convinced of their beliefs and proud of their ignorance. Don't waste too much energy on 'em.
I'll be back later, after my walk. :):)
11pm : The guy in Periphery sounds like he has taken a page from 80s metal, in that he knows the importance of color. Too many guys in metal just play the "fast fifths", parts of chords, the E and A string to get that clipped crunchy sound. And, many players are either/or : they are either playing crunch rhythm or playing single note. They don't "cover". The best players know how to cover, to add color, to add the in-between. Eddie Van Halen is a master of it. You never know what type of phrase he is going to employ, but it's never just simple barre chords alternating with leads. To play with color, you really have to know the neck by heart, and that takes a ton of practice. This guy sounds like he knows his guitar history, and is using it in a modern format.
The bottom line will always be that you have to have melody, something that pulls the listener in emotionally. You've gotta have a song. In rock, at least. In jazz, you can go off on any tangent you want, and that is an entirely different thing. I repect jazz, but it doesn't grab me.......(now I am going off on a tangent, haha).
They got a great drum sound on that song. The drummer is a beast, like a lot of modern metal drummers, but what helps make that song is the drum sound, very full but clipped to fit the riffing.
The one thing I would like to see re-introduced to metal is the guitar solo. That always added a "story" in the middle of a song, and while solos should only be played where they are called for, and should never be perfunctory, they did provide an emotional crescendo in the rock songs of the past which was very effective.
Hey, my Baby! Now we are talking music, just like the old days. I like to analyse the different parts of songs, of sounds, of different instruments. Well, it was an excellent day. Tomorrow morn, Pearl has a Women's Club crafts meeting, so I may try to take another day trip, and if I do you are coming with me.
I will see you in the morning, and I wish you sweet dreams.
I Love You. xoxoxoxoxo :):)
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