. . . can ANYONE rationalize a "president" saying these???
(https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-s-biggest-whoppers-2017-n830746)
". . . Here are the nine biggest falsehoods of Trump's presidency so far. . .
1. More people watched the inauguration than ever before
2. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote because of fraud
3. Michael Flynn didn't do 'anything wrong'
4. 'Look what's happening last night in Sweden
(. . . criticizing Europe's refugee policy at a rally in defense of his travel ban, appeared to invent a terrorist attack in Sweden to make his point)
5. Obama bugged Trump Tower
6. Russia investigation is 'a made-up story'
7. Counterprotesters in Charlottesville lacked a permit
(. . . The first required no permits — it began on the UVA campus, where none are needed — and at the second, both groups had permits)
8. America pays the most in taxes
9. Tax reform will 'cost me a fortune'
You said our love would last forever
It depends on what you mean by ‘forever’
You said we’d always be together
It depends on what you mean by ‘together’
You said you’d always want me near
And if I’d ever leave you’d welcome me back
It depends on what you mean
It depends on what you mean by that
You’re not distracted by another
It depends on what you mean by ‘distracted’
You took a vow said you’d be faithful
It depends on what you think
‘Make a vow’ means
You told me never have a fear
Nothing would change
No matter how the cards were stacked
It depends on what you mean
It depends on what you mean by that
I always hoped that you would be
Able to stop
And turn around in your tracks
It depends on what you mean
It depends on what you mean by that
(From https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/01/11/here-is-what-my-shithole-looks-like-african-countries-and-haiti-react-to-trumps-remark/?utm_term=.5c56b51a1368)
". . . Illinois state Sen. Kwame Raoul, son of Haitian immigrants, said there was no “apologizing out of this.”. . . “He’s demonstrated himself to be unfit, unknowledgeable about the history of this country and the history of contributions that immigrants, particularly Haitian immigrants, have made to this country,” Raoul, a Democrat, told CBS. “It makes me embarrassed to have this guy as the president of my country.” . . . Republican pollster Frank Luntz quoted a report and said that 43 percent of immigrants from African countries have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared with 33 percent of the American population overall. . ."
The old and the musty
The bitter and tired
Useless toxic clingings
Of a bygone day
Serve no lover of life
No matter the amount
Of rationalization . . .
(based upon https://www.quora.com/How-do-recording-artists-decide-on-the-order-of-the-songs-on-their-CDs)
There isn't a rule of thumb , but there is planning. Look at it as a Classical concert, grouping songs in "moods", then intentionally create longer pauses between the groups.
When Lou Reed was ordering the tracks on New York. He struggled to find the right musical and topical arc until someone suggested he put them in the order in which they were recorded. In that order, the tracks told the story he was hoping for. Y
In a traditional pop context, records were sequenced with the hits or prospective singles "up front" - typically the lead single would be the first song and the other expected singles would follow to round out the first side.
Some try to make sure that successive songs are not in the same key.
The number one track (and usually the last) are the 'great' tracks that leave an impression.
If it's a concept album that tells a story through the songs, then the order is pretty much fixed to begin with. If it is just a collection of singles, they might look at the dynamics - try and mix up the heavy and the soft, the fast and the slow, etc.
Put a lot of thought into the order of the songs to create a good “flow” and the best overall listening experience from start to finish. Open with a song that represents your overall sound fairly well, and break up the “mood” every 3 songs or so.
The whole process is just about placing familiar tracks somewhere in the middle, intros and soon to be released tracks at the beginning and the less appealing at the end - it's about fluidity and using the songs at the beginning as singles as they help sell the album.
It's given a lot less thought than it used to. Nowadays most albums are bought online and when you download it you can put it in any order you want. If you are like me you will put your favourites first and the fillers at the end. Another thing to come into it is the shuffle mode on most players nowadays.
de·brief
dēˈbrēf/Submit
verb
gerund or present participle: debriefing; noun: debriefing
question (someone, typically a soldier or spy) about a completed mission or undertaking.
"together they debriefed their two colleagues"
synonyms:cross-examine, interview, interrogate, question, probe, sound out, examine; informal grill, pump
5th of Piano
after Saturday's weekend studio work on 'Bleeding the 5th' from OHO's upcoming "Gazebo"
OHO is Jay Graboski, David Reeve & Ray Jozwiak
. . . with respect to honoring the arts (only) . . . “And today our nation has crowned her greatness with grace, and we gather this evening to honor five artists who have helped her to do so,” - Ronald Reagan at a 1980s Kennedy Center awards ceremony.
"What separates the winners from the losers is how a person reacts to each new twist of fate. " -Donald Trump
(https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-insists-he-very-stable-genius-amid-questions-over-mental-n835191)
. . . “Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” the president said in a tweet. . .
(from Catch-22 by Joseph Heller)
". . . General Peckem laid great, fastidious stress on small matters of taste and style. He was always augmenting things. Approaching events were never coming, but always upcoming. It was not true that he wrote memorandums praising himself and recommending that his authority be enhanced to include all combat operations; he wrote memoranda. And the prose in the memoranda of other officers was always turgid, stilted, or ambiguous. The errors of others were inevitably deplorable. Regulations were stringent, and his data never was obtained from a reliable source, but always were obtained. General Peckem was frequently constrained. Things were often incumbent upon him , and he frequently acted with greatest reluctance. It never escaped his memory that neither black nor white was a color, and he never used verbal when he meant oral. He could quote glibly from Plato, Nietzsche, Montaigne, Theodore Roosevelt, the Marquis de Sade and Warren G. Harding. A virgin audience like Colonel Scheisskopf was grist for General Peckem's mill, a stimulating opportunit yto throw open his whole dazzling erudite treasure house of puns, wisecracks, slanders, homilies, anecdotes, proverbs, epigrams, apothegms, bon mots and other pungent sayings. He beamed urbanely as he began orienting Colonel Scheisskopf to his new surroundings. . . "
(https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/us/politics/trump-voter-fraud-commission.html)
President Trump on Wednesday abruptly shut down a White House commission he had charged with investigating voter fraud, ending a brief quest for evidence of election theft that generated lawsuits, outrage and some scholarly testimony, but no real evidence that American elections are corrupt. . . On Thursday, Mr. Trump called for requiring voter identification in a pair of Twitter posts because the voting system “is rigged.” “Push hard for Voter Identification!” Mr. Trump wrote. . . Mr. Trump did not acknowledge the commission’s inability to find evidence of fraud, but cast the closing as a result of continuing legal challenges. . .“Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry,” Mr. Trump said in a White House statement. . ."
(http://theweek.com/speedreads/746587/stephen-colbert-some-ideas-saving-world-from-trumps-buttonsize-fixation - Stephen Colbert)
". . . Trump . . . reportedly did not really want himself to win the election . . . neither did his wife. "Really, Melania cried on Election Night? That is the first thing we have in common," he (Colbert) said. . ."This proves once again that when it comes to Donald Trump, everything is exactly what you thought it was," Colbert said after running down some other snippets. "His entire schtick is just trying to convince you you're crazy for seeing what's obvious — which makes sense, I mean that's basically how you sell luxury real estate." But according to Stephen Bannon, the Russia collusion is what you thought it was, too, Colbert said. "So he thinks [Paul] Manafort, Don Jr., and [Jared] Kushner did something treasonous, unpatriotic, and bad s--t. Coincidentally, those are also their Secret Service code names.". . . "
(http://www.newsweek.com/trumps-threat-lawsuit-against-bannon-stupid-and-could-hurt-president-says-770251)
". . . Threats of “imminent” legal action against former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon from President Donald Trump’s lawyers could have unintended consequences that would hurt the Trump administration, says a national security lawyer. . .The letter to Bannon followed the release on Wednesday of new excerpts from an upcoming book about the Trump presidency by author Martin Wolff. Among other things, Bannon is quoted in the book calling Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower in June 2016 “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” Trump Jr. met with the lawyer after being promised dirt on his father's presidential rival, Hillary Clinton. . . In a statement late Wednesday, Trump’s lawyer Charles J. Harder, of the firm Harder Mirell & Abrams, said a legal notice has been sent to Bannon accusing him of “defamation by libel and slander, and breach of his written confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement.”. . ."
(from https://www.npr.org/2017/12/14/570190218/new-year-to-bring-new-test-for-trump-administration-on-key-russia-sanctions)
". . . The New Year will bring a new test for President Trump and the United States' relationship with Russia. . . Five years ago, President Obama signed a bill imposing sanctions on a group of powerful people there charged with involvement in the death of a Russian lawyer who uncovered a $230 million tax fraud scheme — and then died in government custody. The sanctions infuriated Russian President Vladimir Putin. . . Since then, the State Department has put more people on its sanctions list, usually at the beginning of each year, and the choice it makes next month about who or how many people it adds could be consequential. . . "This is the big test for Donald Trump about whether he is really a friend of Putin's or whether he's a tough guy as to whether he actually adds names," said Bill Browder, a financier-turned-advocate who pushed for the sanctions. . . "This is highly significant and highly pregnant with meaning whatever he does or doesn't do, if he really wants to take the wind out of the sails of this collusion narrative" . . ."
(from http://pianogonzology.blogspot.com/2011/02/then-there-was.html)
". . . I've always been curious about blogging and wary of tweeting. I mean, who really wants to know every fleeting thought that crosses my warped little mind? And I base this curiosity and wariness on my own tastes. In all honesty, I have little to no interest in the fleeting thoughts of too many people. If I think about it hard enough, I may be able to conjure up two or three names. But pop 'icons', actors/actresses (or other 'entertainers'), media 'celebrities', 'news' commentators, talk show hosts and politicians for the most part, have difficulty enough formulating a coherent sentence let alone expressing any thought, sentiment or observation about a topic that would be of even the most remote interest to ME.
So having said THAT, I begin my first blog. Yes, the thoughts, sentiments, observations, incoherent (and hopefully a few coherent) sentences and fleeting thoughts of MINE for all to see!
Add Travis Smiley to the (artistically-inclined) list with Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Spacey et al, not to mention those 'un-worship'-worthy additions, and it becomes clear that one must, especially in THIS day and age, be very cautious in any 'hero-worship' in which we may choose to engage.
Not that I am ahead of my time or particularly brilliant, but I dispensed with the entire concept of hero-worship when I was about twelve years old and read a book about Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Disappointing but eye-opening.