Saturday, January 07, 2006

One Banana is Worth $25,300


...seems it's more like $20 is worth a banana after taxes. I couldn't help but to think this when I saw Yahoo news this morning. '$20 Bill Printed Over Sticker Nets $25,300 ', screams the headline. I'm thinking someone at the Treasury Department is:
a) asleep at the job
b) has a sense of humour or,
c) was canned shortly after this thing went into circulation!

Friday, January 06, 2006

You'll Never Find Another Voice Like Mine...


AP Wire 01/06/2006 Singer Lou Rawls dies of cancer at 72 in LA

Thursday, January 05, 2006

And speaking of Ernst Mach...

Here's an update on being able to see the photo below as it truly is.


With practice I've been able to veer in and out of the reality and the illusion of the photo and by looking at the top speaker and changing it's position by concentrating on the left line and telling myself that the speaker is sitting on top, pointing upward...does that make sense?


The Analysis of Sensations, Ernst Mach: "No point of view has absolute, permanent validity*. Each has importance only for some given end..."

I've been trying to tell people this* since I was 8 years old!!!

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Perception And Illusion


This is something I don't talk about too much and yet this is something I've always wanted to talk about -whew- Whatyoo smokin' over there Uncle George? Well, I've always wanted to express on this Weblog how the creative mind [my mind, especially] works. This may take a few hundred posts so please bare with me.

Let's start with this photo I found on an Ebay auction. These are the innards [okay, it's the inside of a bass cabinet] of a Fender speaker cabinet [that's what I said... Readers, take note: I'm a Gemini; I can have this conversation with myself in parentheses...]

When I first looked at the photo I couldn't see it for what it was. My eyes told me that the center cones were poking outwardly. Then I saw the bottom speaker. This started correcting my perception of what I thought I was seeing. It took me five minutes to see correct angles and when I did, the optical illusion was over. So, I tried to get it back to see the protruding center cones...I've lost it. I can't can't get the illusion back.

I've done the same thing when listening to music where I thought the top of the measure [or,1] was in an entirely different place. So, 1 becomes 2 [or 3 and a half] and I'm grooving to a different song altogether. And when I find '1' I'm amazed to hear a completely different song, sometimes shocked to think that one tick of the meter opens up something entirely different, sometimes disparaged to know that my perception is off...

...and sometimes the actual song sounds, often times, not as good as when I heard it with the displacement of '1'. Have you ever done that? Stay with me now...

...which leads me to life and one of the reasons why I haven't been writing often this past year. I was hearing the song wrong for so many years and one day I heard where '1' was supposed to be- where everyone else was hearing the '1'...and I was shocked. Life can be like that.

This Gendankenexperiment is brought to you by Ernst Mach...

Sunday, January 01, 2006

Thousands in Times Square Ring in 2006 - Yahoo! News

Thousands in Times Square Ring in 2006 - Yahoo! News

Ah yes, I rushed home from my theatre gig to spend the last remaining minutes of 2005 with my family. Couldn't find a channel that was carrying the Times Square ball until we switched to Univision...other stations were running their last minute commercials at 11:58 and a half.

Finally found ABC AFTER the ball dropped and thought I heard Dick Clark. I thought it was Dick Clark by default but it didn't sound quite like Dick. I heard he was coming back this year but I'm thinking maybe another year in speech therapy would be in order...

What really got me was right before commercial break he started talking about how New Years got its start in Babylonia 12,000 years ago...I'm thinkin 'Dick, you must've been there,' and I'm not being mean spirited! We were just in shock seeing this man we've watched since we were in our single digits [coming up in the 'old days'] sounding like a drunken grandfather... I must say he looks younger than he sounds.

I have to express these things because we're aghast watching this whole thing take place in front of our eyes: Our own aging. Hilary Duff comes on after DC singing some lame tune that would be humanly impossible if she wasn't track singing and I watch my daughter in front of the TV singing the song in unison with Hilary. I didn't know Jenna even knew this song but she sang the whole thing. She's in tune with what's going on. We've let go of the hype years ago along with Santa...

I'm looking at Dick Clark in disbelief. If he's aged, what's happened to me? Having this scene in front of me is teaching acceptance of where I am and where I'm going.

PS.I'm looking at Hilary Duff. I'm thinking Disney put a curse on her. Can you see that contract? "If you leave us, we will turn you into a praying mantis."

I'm sorry...not trying to be evil here...but, to me HD looked different when she was on Disney.
Okay, enough of my New Years rant...

I guess I'm just now realizing time waits for no one. It's a new year...

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYBODY.