3,251

(5 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

When I was a kid I wanted to be a glamour photographer.  Then I got an apprenticeship to a glamour photographer and met some model wanna-bes.  The actual models were all cool.  I met some very beautiful, very nice young women.  It was the wanna-be models, who were also very beautiful but not so nice.  What was surprising to me is how normal the most successful models looked when they came in.  Most of them had their hair in a pony tail and wearing sweats.  No makeup either.  While "normal", you couldn't take your eyes off of them because every one of them had what my gram would have called "carriage." 

The wanna-bes.  No "carriage."  They came in prettied up and squawked like a parrot when the hairdresser or makeup artist wanted to change something.  The wanna-bes also liked to blame  their lack of success out on the photographer, despite not being able to critique the shots to say what it is they wanted them to do better.  The models could.  The models could also tell the photographers what their clients wanted, or if the client was present he/she could say himself/herself.  Then it was up to the photographer to produce it.  The guy who I worked for had a small studio and simple equipment in an old building, but he really knew how to use it all to good effect.  The nicest room in the joint was the dressing room.  He was a 70+ year old squat man with a twinkle in his eye, a spring in his step, was usually enveloped in a cloud of Captain Black pipe tobacco smoke, and could get away with calling all the young women "Missy" and somehow still making them feel special.  Anyway, I gave up on glamour photography.  I was a good glamour photographer's assistant, but not a good glamour photographer.  I just didn't have the people skills.  Then I wanted to get into wildlife photography or sports photography.  I did get some sports opportunities, like all-state football games, regional amateur tennis tournaments and the like.  It was fun, but really really nervewracking.  I needed much better equipment than I could afford.  I worked too many hours to get time in the field for trying to break into wildlife photography, and again there was the limit of equipment.  Then I wanted to be a musician and got a paying gig.  It stunk.  Got some good stories from it, and as a young man you'd think the too hot break room where actresses disrobed to cool off would have been exciting (and sometimes was) but wasn't near as often as you'd expect.  Plus, there were a lot of things going on at cast parties that I did not want any part of.  So my photography and my music are now hobbies.  They keep a smile on my face.  I enjoy my work, but I wouldn't ever confuse it for entertainment.  For me, that works out just fine.

3,252

(23 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

I think it was a Harmony.  It was my wife's guitar, but she didn't play any more.  So I gave a whack at it.  The neck was twisted, so there was always one string out of tune.  Next was a Stella that was given to me when I helped a friend move.  My sister-in-law said she was interested in learning to play, so I gave that one to her along with a few videos.  Then I bought my sister's Epiphone from her and it was a very, very nice guitar.  A while later, I gave it back to her.  It was more of a face-saving "here's some money to help you get through without it being charity" kind of thing for me.  But I got my feet wet.  Then later I helped another friend move.  He had been widowed.  His wife's boyfriend from just before they were married had been a guitar teacher.  So as we were cleaning out the house, we found five old beaters in a closet.  He gave them all to me, and I gave three of them away, gave one to my daughter, and kept one for myself to learn on.  THAT is the one that I learned to play on, which was a Yamaha classical.  Same guitar nearly everyone everywhere learned to play on.  It was beat to heck, but it tuned up and it sounded good.  That's the guitar that I gave to my sister a couple months ago.  In that mix, I also picked up an Ibanez GS that sounds terrific but I'm not much of an electric kind of guy.  I keep it around because I'm thinking of tuning it to an open G or A and learning slide on it. 

- Zurf

3,253

(17 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

I have several specific problems with it.

1. It is a situation of guilty until proven innocent.  So, let's say I have permission to post a Dirty Ed song.  I post a Dirty Ed song.  Someone else sees the Dirty Ed song and knows that I am not Dirty Ed.  So he notifies the site that there is copyrighted material being distributed.  HOW IS THE PERSON REPORTING SUPPOSED TO KNOW WHAT PERMISSIONS ANYONE HAS?  They aren't.  BUT if the site doesn't stop not just the offending content, but the entire account of the individual who created this non-event, then the government has the right to cease the entire domain.  All over someone's mistaken but well-intentioned report of a violation.  That's bad.  Bad, bad, bad.  Anytime "guilty until proven innocent" is a reasonable description of something, I'm against it. 

2. It addresses the U.S. issue with piracy, but most piracy is not U.S. based.  It is primarily taking place in Asia, specifically Eastern Russia and China.  So we have a VERY heavy-handed law that encourages the confiscation of sites without due process, reduces income without due process, and which misses the target by several thousand miles. 

3. Because of these two issues, we are likely to have a large number of erroneously false reports, severe repurcussions as the result of well-intended but erroneous action, and NO RECOURSE FOR THE FALSELY DAMAGED INDIVIDUALS because they aren't permitted to sue the government for actions taken in the course of performing their duty. 

To me, that is three strikes. 

- Zurf

3,254

(17 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

In my opinion they are over-reaching bills that throws out the baby and keeps the bathwater.  It will do nothing to reduce piracy but will have severely deleterious effects on on-line commerce and discourse.  There is no portion of them worth maintaining.  It does to the U.S. what Americans have long found disgusting that the Chinese government does to their citizens.  They're...just...bad.

- Zurf

3,255

(16 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

None.  Is it a real banjo with six strings, or is it a banjotar which has a banjo body but is tuned like a guitar.   I've never heard of a regular banjo with six strings and so I'm curious. 

- Zurf

3,256

(11 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

I guess I had better not describe all the sorts of things that used to show up as pack animals.  Perhaps the racing slug was the oddest.   Poor thing.  It met its demise at some salt flats.  All that was left was a saddle and a puddle. 

- Zurf

3,257

(23 replies, posted in Acoustic)

thistles wrote:

(but it was old and wouldnt keep the time properly)...

How about the cat?  Does it keep time?

Boing boing boing.  That's me bouncing around.  I can't do one song for more than about three times through.

3,259

(10 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

I want one.  I haven't tried them.  But I want one anyway. 

- Zurf

3,260

(11 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

I have been sleeping lately, which is a good thing.  The amazing thing about it is that I have been dreaming again, or at least being conscious of dreaming again, which I'm not exactly sure how that works having to be unconscious to do it in the first place.   Anyway, I have been a capital A#1 bizarre dreamer in the past, but these dreams have been very realistic.  For instance, if I fall asleep on the couch, I'll dream that I'm sleeping on the couch and getting awakened by my children, but when I awake of course my children are sound asleep in their beds where they belong.  Extraordinarily mundane.  I hope to be getting back to dreaming of dwarves with interchangeable canoe feet and clinically depressed saber-toothed vampires with hilarious overbite accents again soon.  Those were dreams worth dreaming.   And the flying.  Oh.... I miss the flying dreams.  It felt so wonderful to fly, even if it wasn't real.  Tripping at the top of a long set of stairs, having a  moment of panic only to realize that I ought to have been bouncing off cement by now but was not and then the feeling of weightlessness sinking in (well, I suppose that's a misnomer).  Those were wonderful dreams.  But dreaming of sleeping.  Seriously.  How boring could my subconscious mind be?  It's practically an insult.  Been going on as a recurring theme for a while now.  I must get back to weirdness and defiance of physics as quickly as possible.   

- Zurf

3,261

(56 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

Thanks Bunbun for the words of support, but I don't think CJ is anywhere close to forming an army to storm Jerome or any of us others.  He  expressed strong opinions firmly.  I haven't talked to him about it, but I expect Jerome didn't feel at all threatened.  This was a sharing of opinions about creation.  Some of believe there was a divine factor, some of us don't.  It's curious that the most strongly worded disagreement were between people who agree that creation was a divine act.  Let's focus on the similarities, consider the differences, and to the degree we are not challenged by the Holy Spirit to do otherwise, hold to our own convictions. 

- Zurf

3,262

(9 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

Great name.

Willie Nelson

3,264

(56 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

whitewater55 wrote:

it is refreshing to not be told that I am hell-bound, or evil, or under the influence of Satan, which is where these discussions usually end up. It is nice to be able to agree to disagree, amicably, giving no offence and receiving none.

It is written, "a gentle word turns away much wrath." 

There's no point in going down that road.  I was once kicked out of a Christian fly-fishing forum because I dared to criticize a pastor who had requested constructive criticism of something he had written, and also I didn't accept that the King James Bible was the only legitimate translation of Scripture.  There were video clips and everything to prove me wrong, so they couldn't understand how I could possibly think that the New International or American Standard versions, where the translators listed themselves and their credentials, clearly identified their source materials, and plainly described their translation methods so that people could validate and verify their approach were acceptable.  The fellow promoting the King James Version said that the people who produced those false versions were working for Satan.  When I printed the list of names and credentials of the people who produced them and he began to realize that these were real people from prestigious and well-renowned institutions, instead of being contrite he got even angrier and accused me of tricking him and being in league with the devil myself.  Everyone's got opinions it seems, but what matters is the heart.  Use our heads and lead with our hearts.  We probably won't go too far wrong that way. 

- Zurf

3,265

(12 replies, posted in Acoustic)

Too light of a string on an acoustic sound tinny to me.  Anything .10's and under for sure.  .11s are better but .12s are where I feel as if you start to get some volume and ... "flavor" to the sound. 

- Zurf

3,266

(12 replies, posted in Acoustic)

However else you do it, start slow, play a bazillion times, and as you learn the song better and better increase your speed until you get to the speed where you want to perform.   Then play it another half a bazillion times. 

- Zurf

3,267

(56 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

whitewater55 wrote:

There is beauty in the underlying truths about humanity that are contained in the Bible.

There's something I think we can all agree upon. 

- Zurf

I saw your picture on Facebook.  Sweet bass!  (even if it is a green one) 

- Zurf

3,269

(56 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

Yes Auxi, some of what you are saying makes sense.  Except saying that the Bible talks about science.  It talks about observations and events and how those played out over time, which are things that might INFLUENCE science, but it's not science itself.   The whole idea of there even being something like what we call science today didn't come around until something like 15 centuries after the events of the New Testament.  Further, ancient Jews frequently altered the order of events of stories, left things out of stories, and highlighted other parts of stories for the purpose of making a point.  It is a habit that is very useful for learning what the author was trying to teach, which is really what readers of Scripture ought to concerns themselves with.  On the other hand, it is a habit that is not useful for using the stories in the way Western minds treat history or scientific thought. 

- Zurf

Edit: Second to last sentence edited for grammar (still terrible, sorry) and last sentence added.

3,270

(56 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

On the issue of science versus faith for what happens if science and faith disagree, here's my take on it.  I believe that Scriptures are always right.  So we'll start from there.  However, I recognize that Scriptures had a particular audience to whom they were targeted (not me, by the way), that audience existed in a particular time and culture (neither of which is mine), and was written in a particular language well understood by that audience (but not by me).  So, given that it is up to me to understand Scripture to be able to apply it to my life, and given that to do so requires me to trust translators and to research the culture of the original audience then try to myself in their mindset, I recognize that there is a great deal of opportunity for Scripture to be completely right but my understanding of its meaning be wrong. 

Genesis is a good example.  If I read the creation story in Genesis and believe it happened exactly like it was described without consideration of the audience or the message the Lord may have been trying to give them when it was given, then I'm likely to get the message wrong.  So, Scripture can be right but my well-intentioned effort to understand can be wrong.  If there are several ways to understand Scripture (there always is, or everyone who reads it would always understand exactly the same way) and I choose one of those ways, and if there is a huge amount of evidence that has to be ignored or explained away to make my understanding accurate, then it's probably not the evidence or Scripture that's in error.  It's probably me.  Faith requires... faith.  It doesn't require ignorance.  God will NEVER AGAIN require us to remain ignorant.  He did that once - in the garden - and it didn't work out. 

- Zurf

I finally was able to listen.  I think naoslager's point is valid.  Her music is simple and earthy and it doesn't need to be any more difficult than that.  That said, I didn't care for it much on a personal level, though I can see how it would appeal to many. 

- Zurf

It won't play on my computer.  Other Tiny Desk concerts have.  I haven't become a fan yet.   So many people whose musical tastes I appreciate enjoy the Tiny Desk concerts.  I keep getting sent copies of them, and I keep thinking that they're almost interesting and enjoyable but not quite.  I have no idea whether this one would be like that or not as it won't play for me. 

- Zurf

3,273

(5 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

Ah, the low brass ethic of "when in doubt, play loud" has infested your singing tastes has it Toots?  No worries.  The same is true of me.  Not that my singing is any good, but it does feel good to sing loudly.  In fact, I think in most instances volume substitutes for quality. 

- Zurf

3,274

(5 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

This guy:

http://www.ehow.com/video_2388044_elimi … nging.html

has a whole bunch of short snippets dealing with various aspects of singing.  The advice is free and worth twice the price.

3,275

(5 replies, posted in Acoustic)

zguitar wrote:

That's weird. Default should be 440. I wonder how much of a diff it will make at 433.

7.