Beenard

What happened Ro bernard Edwards?

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Iphone4

Yes loses the signal if you cover rhe lower left side of the phone with your hand - not good,

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Sheep

Very strange creatures with scary eyes - for whom the landscape, hills and valleys have been decimated, hills that were once covered intrees are now bare - the green and and pleasant land which should be forest, it can still be seen in less 'developed' countries such as Romania - hills and mountains that ate are actually as nature intended . Covered with trees and foliage ,,
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Dead stars

I wAs listening to 181 rock fm and had rhe sad realisation that the songs which were playing were invariably from dead stars - queen , Lennon , Hendrix , conain , jeff Buckley and so on - that does not sadly tell me that musicians are dying younger but instead that I am in fact getting old and stations like this Are aimed at people of "my age" and at my age my peers are beginning to die off, aaaagh.

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emergency pinhole reading glasses

Yes its a been a while since my last post, been busy buying a chateau in France.. So anyway, for all you long sighted, aging, bishop bashing folks: talk about 'fur coat no knickers' I was trying to read the paper last night with my scratched, broken-held-together-with-sellotape glasses when they finally imploded. Well that's not true (must stop lying) actually they were in the car, it was raining, I could not be bothered to go for them. That's not true either - they ARE broken, and they were actually in the cup holder of my new Kubota garden tractor. But it was raining. And dark. There that wasn't so hard was it?

Well the point is I was glassesless and in a moment of unspiration and being always one for a thrifty solution before a practical one I picked up a thin postcard and popped in two holes with a 1 inch nail (25mm to you yanks) about eye distance apart. Whilst admittedly not particularly becoming, or suitable as a long term Milan accessory, they did the trick - using the 'pinhole camera' principle/al (can never remember) of small apertures increasing depth of field (aka focus) I managed to read clearly, sans headache, for at least 48 hours non-stop. Bright sunlight has a similar effect on the eye's own iris (worth remembering if you are caught in a hot sunny place but are too tight/poor to buy decent reading glasses or can't be bothered to go up to the hotel room to get them.)

Fig 1.
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Or something like that. And yes I know I could patent this idea and make $20, but it is now in the public domain and just in case you are of an evil, money-grabbing, opportunistic persuasion - I hereby declare this idea to be my own original invention and retain all rights to designs and principles derived thereof.

what makes a guitar?

Well .. a little late, but you know, better late than never I am in the fortunate position where I can buy myself a nice electric guitar when I want one. Now we have to ignore guitars bought for nostalgic reasons and investment/collections - those are personal goals, I mean guitars to play. So you want a great electric guitar for the sound and playability. You can buy new models, imports, copies, reissues, frankensteins, luthier-built, beaters or vintage and everything in-between .. what do you buy? Well here's how I see it - you buy a guitar for several reasons - its sound and 'mojo', the feel, the neck, the look, the body wood, the pickups, the image, the shape and so on. But say you buy a guitar that's expensive but not quite right - what can be changed? The pickups and electronics can easily be changed. And the neck even - its important but can be replaced. The body can be refinished for 'the look' together with all the cosmetic features - the pickguard, the knobs, pickup covers, screws - so what does that leave? The body. No not Elle MacPherson. OK that was not funny I know. But yes - its all about the body, or more specifically the wood of the body. Thats how I see it. I can buy right now a '57 reissue Fender American Vintage, thinskin nitro finish with custom shop pickups. What stops me? Well I can do everything myself with modding - apart from one thing - the body wood. Yes maybe the whole is greater than the sum of the parts - but I do not think so with guitars - unless that body is resonant, light or medium-light, nice wood in other words, perhaps with a nice finish not too thick and kludgey (?) - then the guitar is going nowhere because everything else can be changed - the pickups, circuitry, pickguard, nut, bridge, strings, tremelo, logo and even neck. So is that it? - buy a guitar based on the quality of the body? Maybe. But .. that's a little concerning because it's difficult to check without trying out and even living with a guitar for some time .. hey maybe that's how it should be though, no?

vive le Kevin

Well a mystery has unfolded following the relaxation of the rules
governing French names for newborns in the early 1990s. It is now
clear that for some bizarre reason the Anglo-Saxon name Kevin was
apparently sitting in the wings waiting to take over the in a fanfare
of egalité and fraternité to be the new Jean or Pierre and perhaps
emerge as a new leader of our socialist and ever so earnest channel
cousins, President Kevin?

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=98741&sectioncode=26

Perhaps its all about the exoticism of Ks - they do not really occur
in normal French .. (together with Ws, unless Le Weekend counts)

cool sigs 2

" .. the law is an arbitrary boundary .. the trick is to lean as far
as you can without stepping over the line." Jake Pravost

Alexander McQueen

Very sad to hear about the death of Alexander McQueen under such tragic circumstances. I send my deepest, sincerest condolences to all his family, friends, colleagues and acquaintances. My wife is also distraught to discover that the profiteers may have already moved in. It is amazing how quickly the entire stock of the online fashion outlets have sold out. For example all the desirable McQueen items on Net-a-Porter have already been snapped up by hungry resellers. Not even are they saying the usual:

"Unfortunately this item has sold out. Add it to your wish list to see if more stock becomes available"

rather:

"Unfortunatey, this product is no longer available."

So they have completely gone. Watch out for them reappearing on ebay in a month or two. The fashion outlets must be kicking themselves that they cannot withdraw these items from stock to hoard until the prices balloon, but presumably as authorised dealers they are not allowed to do that.

art quotes 1

"To me there is no past or future in art. If a work of art cannot live
always in the present it must not be considered at all. The art of the
Greeks, of the Egyptians, of the great painters who lived in other
times, is not an art of the past; perhaps it is more alive today than
it ever was" (quoted in Picasso: The Classical Period (ex. cat.), C&M
Arts, New York, 2003, p. 21).

cool sigs 1

spotted on a guitar player forum ..

"The faster you play, the fewer chicks will come to your gigs"