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I don't know if it's my greatest fear, but my most common fear is snakes.  Freakish little non-legged wierdos. 

I remember once a couple years ago I was fishing at a spot that I had been fishing all Spring.  I got there particularly early one Summer morning.  I had my waders and wading boots on and was heading out to a boulder that marked a cut in the bed of the stream where the fish congregated.  I had been there a number of times before and so was looking for feeding activity in the slick water behind the boulder rather than where I was going.  I stepped on something odd feeling and looked down before putting down any more pressure.  It was a SNAKE.  I hate snakes.  So I picked up my foot and let it swim off.  OK, so I'm out in nature and there are snakes there and I know that so I figure to get back to fishing.  I make a few casts, and about that time another snake comes swimming across the stream and strikes at the juncture between the leader and my fly line.  Uncool.  Most decidedly uncool.  But he keeps going and so I figure out of sight out of mind.  My heart rate's up pretty high, but I get to fish so infrequently that I was determined to make the best of it.  About then another snake hit at the fly I was presenting for the smallmouth bass.  I did NOT want an angry snake on a hook on my line!  About then, I figured the snakes owned that spot and left.  It took me a good long while to get my heart rate back down once putting up my rod and stripping out of my waders at the car.  I had to get my adrenalized body under control enough to drive cautiously.  I did, and promptly drove to a grocery store where I bought a case of cold beer.  Then I drove home just as cautiously as I had to the grocery store and proceeded to drown any remaining adrenaline in a flood of amber-tinted courage.  I have not returned to that particular fishing hole. 

For the record, three cold beers in a row before morning coffee is not generally recommended, but it does wonders for snake fright. 

- Zurf

You are, of course, entitled to your own opinion.  He is hugely successful and his management team has surely done a terrific job of promoting (and likely packaging) him.  Still doesn't mean he can't play. 

Michael Jackson is a heck of a honky-tonk style piano player.  Does he ever play piano in a video or do honky-tonk anything on stage?  Nope.  Marketing is marketing.  Kenny Chesney's being paid to be a big show-off, and tearing up some fingerpick bluegrass style guitar isn't part of that.  That you draw conclusions based on his public persona is appropriate.  It's how he's presented himself.  So totally fair game.  I'm just saying that he CAN play, not that he does it in his videos.  Another buddy of mine who was with him in a green room one time said that he did a parlor trick on a bet to play two songs at one.  He played "Dixie" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic" both at the same time.  I heard a recording of it.  Pretty wicked good, I'd say.  Apparantly it's a trick he used to do when he was a solo act in roughneck Nashville bars for a decade or so. 

- Zurf

Sure they do.  Get to some local band shows and see.  They just don't sell them like that anymore. 

- Zurf

If you combine the two, you may finally get an answer to a question that starts out "Who gives a...". 

I had an odd dream the other night myself.  It didn't involve worms, but it did involve odd fish that were kind of a hybrid between flounder and piranha.  I dreamt that I was fishing with a buddy.  We were using fly rods to lob heavy baits for bottom fishing (totally a mis-match between presentation and equipment, like using a Smart Car to pull a heavy trailer).  Then we sat on a grassy bank that was at the bottom of a gently sloping hill.  At the crest of the hill was a stone castle.  In the outer yard of the castle, there was a low wall enclosing a small courtyard.  In the courtyard was a bistro like I would imagine you run across on the streets of France (or so I guess from the movies, having never been to France myself).  There was some music drifting down.  My buddy and I didn't like the music, so I started playing songs on my guitar, which I miraculously pulled from my small tackle box, and my buddy started singing.  The particular buddy is a terrific singer in reality.  That's when the fish started to hit.  We pulled in the fish while continuing to sing, and a waiter brought down some ice water to us and bought the fishes from us to serve in the restaurant.  Because they had big mouths full of sharp teeth, we made the waiter take the fishes off the hooks.  That's the last bit I remember. 

I would love to know what makes G S E laugh out loud enough and long enough to wake his funny little honey. 

- Zurf

I just want to know why your guitar is suspended over your bed. 

- Zurf

Um, I'll send an e-mail to explain.  I think the above has gotten pretty much right to the edge of what ought to be acceptable.  Suffice to say that it does not have to do with leather or whips, and neither is it anything you would want to do to, with, on, or depending on your diet near your guitar.

- Zurf

You guys are totally out of touch.  Using a vice on your dangly bits hasn't been in vogue since the Inquisition.  Many people did not know that the Inquisition was started to get people to do their chants more in tune with others, but that's how it got started.  A vice, some dangly bits, and a chant that had to be done in Dm. 

Nowadays, what you need is hydraulic underwear.  This has been the way it's been done since the glory days of Motown.  If you look carefully at the backup singers of any good Motown band, especially the Four Tops and the Temptations, you'll see that they rotate one forearm around the other during certain parts.  Then they'll reverse directions.  This is how they used to control the hydraulic flow into the lead singer's hydraulic underwear.  Left over right for tighten, and right over left for loosen.  Later, stadium rockers got an underarm pump.  There's a switch in the heels of their boots (explaining why the heels are so large and clunky).  When they lean back on the heels and pump the arm holding the microphone, it engages the hydraulics and allows them to hit those high falsetto notes more easily.  In that many stadium rock songs were done entirely in falsetto voices explains a great deal about the pained expressions and quantities of sweat peculiar to that style of music.  Hey, I'd smash a guitar too, given the situation. 

A little known fact is that Michael Jackson had figured out a way to use hydraulic underwear by walking backwards.  This was the development of the moonwalk.  Unfortunately there was a minor problem with the technology, further explaining his frequent "adjustments" while he dances.  Apparantly he was a bit too fond of the technology, which further explains the glove. 

As far as music goes, I seem to prefer songs in D that have no more than four chords, of which none are barred.  The occaisonal Bm is OK.  Um, given the unusual nature of the earlier paragraphs, that Bm refers to B minor and not the other meaning for those letters used in that particular order.

- Zurf

My wife cannot stand to hear Macy Gray sing.  However, I rather like that whiskey and cigarettes voice.  There is a whiskey and cigarettes voice I don't like, but I can't remember it right now.  She sang that song about leather and lace.  What was her name? 

Any number of blonde, young, glamorous women in Country music.  I wish that Country would stop worrying about how good a woman looks while barely wearing clothes and start worrying about how she sings.  I guess they figure no one will ever be able to approach Patsy Cline and so they'll just have overly made-up women in tight, low-cut clothes in the meanwhile.   Guess what? I CAN'T SEE HER ON THE RADIO!!!  The more off key, the lower the neckline. 

Yeah, there's a few Grateful Dead songs where Jerry Garcia gets on my last nerve.  There are others where he does a good job.  Hard to categorize him. 

The high-pitched falsetto thing from pretty much every guy who ever sang "stadium rock."  The 1980's were rife with them.  Fortunately, men singing like men is back in fashion. 

- Zurf

I plant stuff with my kids every year.  I think it's a great way to teach them about nature.  We have a particular space as a garden, and some landscaping beds.  Our "garden" is always a disaster, but my kids are proud of it.  I think it's a good way to teach them about stewardship as well.  They learn that if they don't water it, or weed it, that the plants wither or the 'wrong' plants grow.  My kids have not quite gotten the concept of 'wrong' plants yet, though, so I often have to go weed it again after they're done. 

Sage has absolutely taken over the garden.  It's half the space now.  We'll be digging up some of it this year and cutting the rest back a LOT. 

Speaking of which, it's about time to plant.

- Zurf

Down by the?

It's a great place to go if you've got a heavy load.

- Zurf

Welcome Andy2691.  Glad you like the monkey quote.  At my house, "monkeys" is an appropriate response to just about any question to which someone does not know the answer.  So, I was watching King of the Hill and Bill was teaching Bobby how to barbeque.  Bill said that his family had a tradition of only lighting the fire with a page from the newspaper that contained good news.  Bobby saw something about a monkey being sent to the space station or some such and Bill says "Space monkeys are always good news."  Now, it was just not possible that I could hear a line like "Space monkeys are always good news" and not do something with it. 

- Zurf

Nah.  I didn't do squat.  Publicity nonsense to make folks who squander energy and resources all the time feel good about themselves by turning off the lights for an hour.  Not my thing. 

I did write to my state about biosolid permit hearings, volunteered at my church, played all day with my kids and taught them about natural things and protecting water resources at an aquarium, and gave my neighbors beer and whiskey in the back yard so that they weren't home with the lights one.  The last one was just fortuitous circumstance.  I got back from my outing with the kids and my neighbors were all hanging out in the back yard with the kids playing on the playset (this is normal in our neighborhood), and so I just naturally broke out some booze.  I was eager for a beer (Bass - the UK knows their ale) and didn't want to seem stingy. 

Hey Ken, that's a great idea of going for 24 hours.  Almost like an Earth Day.  Now if someone would just come up with something like that, I'm sure it would catch on.  Probably something in spring, but not too early.  About a month in.  Around April 22 would be good... 

- Zurf