Waist deep in the Big Muddy...

I've discovered a "new" (to me) singer/songwriter; a gentleman named Richard Shindell. In particular, there are three songs he does of which I am particularly impressed. Two of them, Transit and Courier are his songs, and, of the two, we here in New Jersey should especially appreciate Transit since it is about commuting in the Garden State. I don't know about you, but I've been where these lyrics describe more than once while driving in this state.

However, it is about the third song on my Shindell List that I want to talk a little about. The song is (the following link is to a streaming audio file...)Waist Deep in the Big Muddy by Pete Seeger. The song is about a training march by a platoon in 1942 during WWII. Listen to the lyrics, though, and think about our current president and our involvement in Iraq, and certain parallels begin to emerge. As I remember it, this song enjoyed a bit of popularity/notoriety in certain circles during the late '60s and early '70s. Similar circumstances, I guess. (One has to wonder about the intellectual acuity of a man who went through the Vietnam experience and, apparently, did not learn a fucking thing about fighting an indigenous enemy. Big Muddy was on the mark about Vietnam and it is again relevant about our involvement in Iraq.

Dear God! We have to live with two more years of this man in office. It scares me to death! Our country's only hope is for the Democrats to take back absolute control of both the House and Senate in November. Then they can keep Bush too busy covering his own ass to spend much time putting the rest of our collective asses in various and sundry slings (such as he is doing now.)

Network Neutrality

I got a note from Moveon.org about the current push to give the corporations who own the physical structure of the Internet control over what content will be available to people like us. Ostensibly, this is supposed to get rid of kiddie porn and hate sites. What it will eventually do, though, is limit our right to speak our minds on the 'Net. I can see Verizon using A.I. programs to sniff out and shut down sites which say critical things about Verizon. In fact, sites that have comments critical of virtually anybody or anything could be censored (because the owner of the "pipes" could get sued for content going over those pipes. (The fact that they could be sued is another question entirely...one that needs addressing now more than ever, but will have to wait until I get past the next few weeks.)

I will be adding a Network Neutrality logo and I urge anyone who reads this to do the same. Maybe if enough people are seen as supporting Network Neutrality, the nabobs in Washington and their corporate lobbyist overlords, will back down on this one. BTW, our own Rep. Mike Ferguson (R-NJ) has already voted against Nework Neutrality. It is time for Mike to be given his walking papers as part of a reassertion of this state's traditional values.

It's been a while...

I apologize, but life here in "meat space" (I got that from some sci-fi book I read awhile ago. If I actually remembered the source, I'd give the original author credit, or blame. The slow death of short term memory as one ages sucks!) has been hectic of late. I've been spending every waking hour either at the paying job, working in the yard or working on the business plan. Of the three, the business plan has taken up most of my time. I'm down to the last tweaks and nudges on that, so maybe I'll have a little more time to write here over the next couple of days. Of course, next week I'm off to Seattle to my daughter's wedding. I'll get access to a computer out there for at least a couple quickie reports on how this goes. (I do plan to ambush my brother-in-law with the business plan to see if he might be interested in kicking in some money if we can get other investor(s) interested.)

Anyhow, I do apologize for the sparseness of my postings over the last couple of weeks. I probably won't do much better until after Memorial Day, but I will try.