Dusting this thing off, once again...

I keep thinking the same thing every single day- I am going to get off my arse, and post on this blog at least every now and then. Until now, I have failed miserably, but hey, I've been doin' stuff. Important stuff. Like trying to finish building my deck. That's a biggie right now, and I'm getting pretty close. The photo is me, taken yesterday, while alternately freezing and building. Ugh.

Anyway.

I think that I'll be back on this thing, starting now.

Trying to find my ass with both hands and a mirror.

I've let this thing sit and lag for far too long, and really need to get going! Motivate! Motivate! Motivate! Okay. I've gotten that over with.

I decided to take the plunge into the blogosphere based on the writings and teachings of this young lady, Erin O'Brien. A veritable Zen master of the non sequiter, she has also successfully enlightened me on a broad range of subjects, mostly related to Doin' The Wild Thing. There's other stuff in there as well, but hey, you need to stick with what you enjoy the most, y'know?

Anyway. I'm not stuck on much right now, but what I am stuck on is so freakin' cool I can't stand it. I drove out to my local indy record store last week, in search of something new. Damn if I didn't find it! "100 Days, 100 Nights" by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. This is the real thing, folks. Mid-sixties R&B/Soul the way it was meant to be. Damn this album smokes! The best part about it is that it was released brand new last year.

http://www.daptonerecords.com

She's available on iTunes, but just go ahead and buy the CD. There is a bonus disc called "Binky Griptite's GhettoFunkPowerHour", which is a collection of other songs off the Daptone label tied together with some old-timey DJ patter. The reverb alone is worth the price of admission.

I also bought Bob Mould's new album "District Line" on vinyl. Awesome album. The best part is that the label, Anti, has included a coupon which allows you to dowload the album off of the website for free. Best of both worlds, and well worth the price of the album. I saw several albums from different labels that did the same thing.

Sunset

I live on a small lake. I think this photo highlights the reason why I love it so much. I'd been working on my deck (a building project that has been going on for far too long) and paused long enough to take a shot of the north end about 45 minutes before the sunset. The light was so much better than what it looks like here, with vibrant reds and yellows.

Don't know about this...

Okay. I tried posting for the first time, and obviously screwed it up. So, for my next effort, I'll repeat what I said in the first one, but in a much more glib and cheeky fashion. I've debated as to whether I should even try this; putting yourself on the inner-tubes is a bit scary and far too self revelatory at times, but then, why the hell not?

My primary motivation for all of this is my passion for the written word. When Willa Cather wrote about an approaching thunderstorm in her book My Antonia, she used two words to describe the rain hitting the hard dirt of that Nebraska farmyard- "felty beat". That blew my mind. I read and re-read that paragraph over and over until I'd brazed it on my memory. Those two simple words open a world of smell, texture, sound, and sight like no others. I want to be able to write like that. Effortless, lean, spare prose is what I live for, so maybe I can actually create some of that here. We'll see.