I don't think the headline has anything to do with this entry. It would be cooler if I had been able to make this entry the morning after the dream(s) but it was about a week ago. I can't even remember the first dream now, but it was something about matches and the tension of wondering whether the person holding the matches is responsible in handling them. And my next dream was similar in a weird way. We, that is, me and whoever else it was, were driving away from a dangerous situation, like people who may want to harm/kill us. And one of us was holding a rifle in case we needed it. He was holding it out the window but didn't seem to be paying strict attention to where it was pointing. I was trying to get him to point it to the sky, and I recited a recently learned rule about gun safety: don't point a gun at anything you don't intend to shoot. Or some such wording.

The next dream found me in a canal or something swimming with people and alligators that were supposedly friendly. They were awesome, and supposedly friendly, but that didn't keep me from being really, really nervous.

Okay, I would love to be a dude who made TV commercials, if I could choose who to do commercials for.

There's this really cool commercial that I don't like the ending to. There's this piglet walking around this woman's house, she gets a glimpse of it; she sort of follows it around for a bit and then the just look at each other.

I would love for the commercial to have ended there. I liked it without a punchline or a payoff. But it ended up being about some diet food that is so delicious and yet only has so many calories or some such that pigs have flown; she looks around and the pig is gone, then out the window we see the pig, which now has wings and is flying away.

I just like the surreality of the pig walking around the house.

(!) Okay, I just saw it again and paid attention to the product details (kinda). It's Flat Earth chips. Paraphrase: can a chip have a full X ounce serving of vegetable and still be delicious? When pigs fly.

That makes me want to try it. Makes me wonder if it's one of the demo tables I have walked by without looking, say, at Giant or Whole Foods. But if I try the product, I will be falling for the lie. If Flat Earth sends me some chips, I will report back to you.
(you hear that, Flat Earth? Rocky Jones, PO Box 1079, Dunkirk MD, 20754)

4/22/08
How I spent my Irf Day

Not very irfy. Except I did write a poem about Spring (not flattering). Hey, isn't irf day on the 21st? Google has a decorated logo in honor of Irf Day but I didn't thing that was actually today. It was a form poem. Or at least that's what I call it. Michael Glaser spoke at the Library and handed out this fill-in-the-blank form for a poem. I like that kind of thing; one might think it an insult to real poetry but it's really not, if you a real poet. Or so I tell myself.

3/12/08
Various

Yesterday's quote of the day and yesterday's other quote of the day: You don't blame a moth for eating your socks."
-Bill Maher

I'm in a state of paddle-free creek uppage. I'm in a state of paddle-free creek uppage.
-Julius Pernell

Once I was looking at a website that talked about an old idea of artificial men (Victorian robots). The star of that site was Boilerplate, a handsome, metal man whose adventures are many and impressive. Well, fake articles take on a life of their own sometimes.

2/29/08
This day only comes around every four years.

And all I have for you is this thought: With the help of the octopus, the horseshoe crab will one day conquer the world. Or perhaps, with the help of the horseshoe crab, the octopus will conquer the world..

2/24/08
I, I don't know what to say . .

Ever since I wrote that poem about Accokeek being a wondeful, magical realm, I have been hearing about all sorts of crime and gore and misfortune in Accokeek. Did I do that? Let's stop it, shall we? And, sorry.

2/22/08
A drum and its need for touch . . .

On this day in 1985 . . . and don't ya know it was a Friday too? I fell in love. It was revelatory. Surreal. She had mixed feelings. I think she ended up marrying a guy who reminded her of me. That's just a guess.

Check this out, once there was a girl who had a crush on me when I was a teenager. I saw her in a library not long ago. She had a boy with her, and the librarian was calling him by his first name, which was my last name. Rocky Jones's last name, by the way, is not Jones. It's one of those last names that could be a first name.

This sounds like the monolog of a very lonely man.

2/12/08, dark thirty in the a. m.
Great, Raging Crap Cakes!

Nevermind. I don't want to talk about it.

1/24/08
The Executioner

I am now referring to my DVD player as the Executioner, because, nowadays when I eject the disc, it comes out spinning in the platter. Looks like it could come flying out on a path of destruction, but so far it stays in the platter until it loses momentum. Is momentum the right word?

1/23/08
Hey, man!

Galactus! Stop giving Rocky Jones a head ache!

1/19/08
Quoth the raven: give me a minute to collect my thoughts...

I was at a writers' critique group last night and I voiced one of my pet peeves when another writer's piece used the clause "a few moments". I did my best to explain why I see "a few moments" as a clunky fallacy in english usage. I didn't do a good job of explaining. I'm not very articulate in realtime. I think that's why I write.

When my story was read, the fellow whose usage I was complaining about pointed out that I used "a long moment". He asked me the difference between his usage and my usage. Pretty much the whole group surged in a sort of got ya reaction, as if my logic had folded in on me, or some such.

And I tried to explain, but, like I said, in realtime, I'm not much good.

Here's my logic: "a few moments" is used a lot in American english. What it implies, as best I can see, is that the speaker/writer believes it is interchangeable with "a few minutes" or "a few seconds". The problem is, the meaning of "a few minutes" and "a few seconds" is dependent on minutes and seconds being fixed measurements of time. To the best of my knowledge, a moment has no set duration. Whether someone gives you the stink eye for 2 seconds or 10 seconds, it still a moment. It's not a few moments, it's not two moments. It's not ten moments.

I think 2 seconds of stink eye is a moment, and 10 seconds of stink eye is a long moment. There is such a thing as a long moment. If you don't understand that, you've never been in a car accident, you've never been turned down for a date, and you've never told a joke to a room full of people who didn't laugh. You are one of the lucky people.

Having said that, I think, still, although a second and a minute are fixed measurements, they can be experienced as either long or short, so, depending on the context, if someone wrote "...for a very long minute", I could accept that. It's a poetic comment on the contextual experience of time. He gave me the stink eye; it was the longest two seconds I've ever experienced."

This writer mentioned above mentioned, as we were discussing "moment", he said that it was, in engineering, a force. I'll have to look into that. Seems to make sense, like momentum.

Anyway, not to totally dis the writers' group. They're good people, as well as brilliant and insightful. And maybe I'm wrong about usages. I am far from being an english scholar. Far, far.

bcc: WBB partial list
bcc: Pharaohs of West River

1/2/08
Granny's Polyester Pants

Answered! To see my letter to Remo's Ask Remo forum, go to 10/15/07. They responded as follows:

Hello,
At this time we do not have any plans to change the Ngoma finish. We do however have the capability to do custom finishes. So if the finish is what's prohibiting you from purchasing the Ngoma I would recommend calling our customer service department and inquiring on what other finish options would be available. Custom drum prices would apply but it may be worth checking into.

Thank you for your interest in Remo world Percussion
Brian

That response was posted by Brian at Remo on 11/9/07. Well, it's good to know they can do custom shell design orders.

12/29/07
In The Chasm Between Christmas & The New Year

Some of the most resonant drama comes from comedy. The sitcom "Soap" was very well done. The most memorable part of that series was when Burt Campbell, played by Richard Mulligan, believed he had become invisible. His family had become so expert at ignoring him, he believed he had disappeared and was but a phantom among them.

It was top notch comedy, goofy as goofy can be, but it was so stirring.

There are so many ways a person can be ignored, some of them so potent they could drive a person to think himself completely unseen.

I had no such complex last night. It was an open mic, and I tried out some new poems. They were very well received. One of them was a flop but I think it entertained people nonetheless. I gave up in the middle of it and read the last three lines of an earlier poem that got a good laugh.

The poem wouldn't have flopped, I am so bold to speculate, had it not been for such things as the cafe lady accidentally turning on the radio, or something, maybe it was a ringtone; and something else shooting music into the air not a minute later. On top of that, I was trying to add vocal loops on the fly as background for the poem, unrehearsed. It was doomed to failure. Maybe that's a cosmic sign I should have a look at the poem and see if it needs work, or needs to go to the island of abandoned poems.

I hadn't been writing much poetry for several months but I managed to get 3 or 4 good ones out in the few weeks leading up to Christmas. That's good. It's not that I haven't had creative output; working on music, video, stories and articles. Some other things too that I can't remember.

12/24/07
Christmas Eve

Yesterday was the final performance of this season's A Christmas Carol put on by the Twin Beach Players. I engineered the live sound effects for the clock bell ("Big Ben"), Scrooge's alarm clock, and Marley's chains. I used an old cast-metal record platter for the big clock bell sound. I've had that platter for years, harvested from a broken record player, because it makes such a great bell tone. The alarm clock consisted of one finger cymbal (zil), and one kitchen sink drain stopper, and two mallets I made with dowel and nails. Marley's chains, well, the actual chains the actor was wearing were an unimpressive hardware store affair. I reinforced the sound off stage with a couple of sets of metal chimes I was using.

It was gobs of fun hanging out with all the actors and crew, including the child actors. I wonder what will become of them. They're getting more culture than I got when I was a child. I got a lot of culture, and some culture but not much culture.

So, anyhow, Happy Christmas and that kind of thing. May the Christmas monkey retrieve your gifts from the thieving Santa Claus and have them returned to your home before the break of your morning eyelids. I have no doubt that he will.

Cheers, Rocky Jones

11/30/07
yo yo yo check dis out

I suppose it's interesting and strange that this octopus is disguising itself as algae, but what gets me is the bipedal walk.

youtube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF3Mlp5ETrM

Kinda spooky.

10/15/07
Just a little bit of straight talk...

Here is something I sent to Remo, the makers of various synthetic drums such as djembe-like drums and other pseudo-ethnic type things. You ever fall in love with something but there's something about it that you just can't hang with? I had to post a question to the Ask Remo web thingie because, well, I can't get this out of my mind:

Hi Remo,

I played your Ngoma at Chuck Levin's Washington Music in Wheaton, MD. It was equipped with a Nuskyn head. It's an absolutely magical beast.

http://www.remo.com/portal/products/6/15/31/af_ngoma.html

I hope you will grant me some poetic latitude in my question and please know that I mean this in the nicest way and hope that the feedback is useful to you.

The design on the shell looks like somebody's grandmother's polyester pants. Will you be producing different shell designs?

I do realize the thing I am criticizing might be some sacred African design with deep meaning. With respect to that, still, to the western eye, or at least my western eye, it really does look like somebody's grandmother's polyester pants. And it doesn't help that it's shaped like somebody's grandmother's leg.

Keep the shape; consider some other color/pattern possibilities.

When I say "other" I don't mean a tie-dye version or any other color-explosion design.

I would love to see Remo come to understand and embrace the greater market potential for the World Percussion line of products. There is a swelling population of musicians who love tribal-vibe experimentation but are really mortified by the Remo World Percussion visual aesthetic.

One I've always liked is what I think you call "Earth". Very earthy. But nearly everything else you put out is not appropriate for me.

Your modular drum finish http://www.remo.com/portal/products/684/693/eds_modular_drum.html does demonstrate that you are seeing beyond the usual Remo scope and that you are understanding the market a bit better. Yet it puts you in danger of becoming another Hot Topic, alienating the very market you are attempting to reach out to. I like the fact that it's a black. But maybe a solid color, or something subtle and not subculture-specific would have been more useful. Solid colors with no design aren't a bad thing; something to consider. The second set of doumbeks on your flash page look pretty tasty. I could see myself playing one of those. (that photo is on your main page but it's in a random flash video that has to cycle through some other stuff)

My point is, those of us who need your World Percussion products are not all children of the Grateful Dead. And we don't all buy from Hot Topic.

Moving away from the bright color / pattern thing would be a good experiment. And still, it is possible to be, at once, brightly colored and subtle. Do a google IMAGES search: Toca Djembe Fiesta to see a good example.

I can't buy the Ngoma in its current state. Even if I had not taken aesthetic offense to it, I take neurological offense to it. I'm afraid to look at it for more than a few seconds at a time - I've never had a grand mal seizure and I'd rather avoid one.

What can we look forward to in Remo Ngoma and World Percussion shell design?

I wrote that just in case they might actually take the plea seriously. I posted it 3 days ago and am still awaiting a response. Today's Monday, so they are probably catching up on things, but, really, I don't expect to be heard. So, it will be a pleasant surprise when it happens.

UPDATE! - They responded in November; I found and journalled the response in a January 2, 2008 entry.

10/7/07
I filed —
your poetry book —
between two —
UFO books today …
— I hope it doesn't get taken away.

9/16/07
E.L.O. — Sounds of Donnie Darko — Who In The World Is Miranda July — Your Town Is Made Of Twigs And Branches And Zucchini Muffins …

— I had been watching weather forecasts all week, and the projections for Saturday the 15th sounded good. I didn't want another sweaty gig. It would be Cliff's and my second time doing the annual Concert in the Woods at Hard Bargain Farm in Accokeek, Maryland. It thought it would be dandy if this butt-up-against-Autumn time of year actually felt like it this time. It's an outdoor Amphitheater (is that redundant?). The predicted temperatures kept improving (to me, improvement is: the colder the better). Maybe it's my pessimism but I didn't even think to bring anything other than my tee shirt. Make that three tee shirts because I usually sweat-up the first during setup and have to change, and maybe sweat-up a second during performance.

When the heaviness moves out of the Maryland air, it lightens me considerably, so by Friday evening I can feel a couple of microns of space under my shoes; personal levitation has begun.

I have most of Saturday to relax and prepare, because the gig is 8PM. I'm a music-in-the-shower kind of guy when I slap on the suds. I thought Electric Light Orchestra seemed a good idea. I was right - sometimes I'm jsut in the mood for ELO. How can I express the genius of ELO? What is it with people named Lynn(e)? Okay, so the ELO, along with the beautiful change in the weather, it manages to slip me into a state that the brutal summer and Guns & Roses could never do.

Now, as if I weren't enough clobbered with magic already, I decide there's time to watch the first half of a DVD borrowed from the library. I have a habit of not letting my conscious mind engage too much when I'm looking through the movie bin. I grabbed something called ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW. It's full of magic - I don't mean spell-magic or stage magic, but the kind of stuff that puts me a few microns above the floor I'm standing on. Miranda July wrote and directed. She's listed in the cast too, so I assume she's the artist/driver character who gave me the impression that this whole movie could have come out of her head.

Maybe I am a naive film viewer and I don't really know what movie magic is. But when something puts microns under my shoes, maybe it's awesome. Felt awesome anyway. I was gobsmacked by the entire film and will bet that you will at least find 2 minutes in it that make the whole thing worth watching. I'll bet you a penny, but it's got to be an old penny.

So I can't watch the whole thing now - I have to leave for the gig. On the way, I listened to the incidentals CD for the movie Donnie Darko. More microns; nearly a quarter of a milimeter by this time. I also had brought along a Ghostland CD which I think was called Guide Me God. It's a mesmerizing celto-gotho-ambio-groovy something or other that had been known to mess with my chakras in a good way. And it did again.

The gig rocked; people were delighted with it. The new stuff was enthusiastically received, the old stuff was enthusiastcally received. It's like being a rock star.

    Speaking strictly as an outsider,
    Accokeek is a magical realm
    made of twigs and branches and zucchini muffins.
    It's where little girls laugh without knowing why.
    Maybe it's that tongue-twister Indian name
    that gives it its magic.
    Maybe it's the spooky out-of-context forklift
    occasionally witnessed
    patrolling Brian Point Road
    after sundown.

Micro-levitation!

Superstar!

5/17/07
This is—

—an example of one of the many, many notes to myself. I write notes to myself and they can be, well, anything

on scrubs, the dude says give me some hungry chicken

he's holding his hands out and elliot and the other dude form chicken heads with their hands and start pecking at his hands like they are feeding.

4/28/07
Say!

Do you know what's scarier than clowns?

Mascots!       Go to this page http://wikicompany.org/wiki/Tayto. Scroll down just a bit and check out that one picture where he's sitting with the girls.
UPDATE 9/18/07: they must have found out I was poking fun - I don't see the picture anymore - it was a guy in a foam Tayto mascot outfit sitting next to a bunch of teen girls with hair nets. It was spooky and delightful.
O.M.G.! UPDATE 9/27/07: they must be monitoring my journal! He's back! Though the picture of which I spoke is not there, some other young workers photos are back! Tayto mocks me as I write about his misapplied charm. You haunt me, Tayto.
UPDATE 10/15/07: Gone again! Taytoooooooooooo!

4/8/07
Well. What's up?

I sent some feedback to Apple yesterday. I think it was yesterday. The weekend is a ball of mush in my head. I lose track of the days sometimes. Yes, I made the switch from SM, uh, I mean, MS, to Apple/MacIntosh. Not because I think so highly of Mac but I just thought they continue to be less slimey than MS for a few more years. Although, I can see the slime forming. I have a lot of issues. MS is superior on a lot of counts, but I feel liberated just the same. My biggest issue is one you might not share, since you might be a regular earthling -- Here's what I wrote to Apple under the feedback heading "OS X".

Due to eye strain, I have been working to get as black an environment as I can. I know about the white-on-black Cmd-Opt-Ctrl-8 setting but, since so much of my use of a computer has to do with images, it's not useful since it makes images negative. (if you made a version of white-oh-black that kept images positive, it would *not* be functional since so many backgrounds are made of images files).

So, I nervously download ShapeShifter (the program that enables the change of colors on OS X). I use the Cold theme and it took a while to figure out how to tweak it. It helps a lot but still doesn't render new colors to all areas of interface. For example: iTunes. I have found no way to render new colors. It's screaming brightness at me. Yes, I can Cmd-Opt-Ctrl-8 just for those programs that don't re-color, but the amount of task jumping I do makes Cmd-Opt-Ctrl-8 a royal pain in the iris.

Safari: Rumored to have some special security features, so I'd love to use it, but it has no re-color options. So I have to use Firefox, which has text & Background re-color options (as do most browsers these days) *and* you can plug-in themes.

Mail: I forget what my issues for Mail actually are but I think they are the same as Safari, so I use Thunderbird and theme it with PitchDark 1.5.6.

iMovie HD and GarageBand are two more that come to mind for eye strain.

If you don't have a system-wide, detailed re-color option, you should at least have re-color options within all your programs.

Tackling this issue would not only be an aid to the handicapped, it would do two other very important things:

1. Someone has measured the energy consumption of computers with dark screens vs. screens saturated with white, and the results were outrageous. The researcher focused his thoughts on Google, specifically, which is short-sighted, but the conclusion was pretty outrageous. http://savingenergy.wordpress.com/2007/03/01/saving-energy-one-web-page-color-at-a-time/ Think of what system-wide color manipulation would do for energy comsumption.

2. The darker I can render my computer environment, the awesomer goth chicks will think I am.

3/25/07
Krikey! Has it been that long since I have written here? Well, I have had some personal lows that were so bad that writing in a stupid web journal would have only made it worse. Some health scares that I hope are behind me. First time I've had a cat scan. When the doctor let me know that I didn't have sinus cancer, she pressed for a high-five and a hug. I guess some doctors live for that kind of thing. But while I had her attention (and doctors don't tend to be overflowing with attention to give you) I was more interested in brainstorming the notion: if it ain't cancer, then what the bleepity bleep is it? I only have guesses. And for now, the symptoms are trailing off.

And my arm is still not healed -- I was all set to see a specialist when I had to make a bunch of unrelated doctor appts and cancel this one. I don't know if I will play the conga again but the injury has caused me to broaden my horizons and turn my attention to other, less percussive instruments. This is widening the scope of my personal circus. Do you have a personal circus? I have a personal circus. The tiger tamer likes his whip too much and the clowns drink blood.

1/05/07
Still, I think the new year comes only when the chinese calendar says it does. What kind of year will it be for the dragon?

12/24·25/06
... Merry *%¿~£@* Christmas. ...

11/05/06
Sometimes I feel like Jerry Seinfeld's girlfriend's bellybutton.
I'm lonely — talk to meeeeeee!

11/03/06
So, it was a nice October. Always one of my favorite months. Did I tell you I had an elbow injury back in August? Still not healed. I have been staying off the conga for now. No, I don't mean the conga line. Regrouping a bit and seeing where my other musical strengths lie, in case it's a real long-term injury. I will spare you the detials of the injury, but if I see you in person, and you bring it up, I will re-enact it for you just in case you have advice on the matter. Is re-enact hyphonated or is it reenact? I-don't-know. I continue to write and perform poetry. The experience continues to rock. Two spooktacular holiday themed readings were tres scrummy. The first, the season opener at the Calvert open mic, was full of good stuff. We call our October open mic Creep Fest and encourage people to bring halloweenesque material.

I have described it thussably:

[discussing pictures of children I had made life-size prints of] pasted them to cardboard and added horns. Originally I had planned to put them on the outside of the windows and backlight them for a creepy silhouette but the outdoor plan failed. Contrary to the picture above, earlier, the taller one was taped up high on that upper window. There was a moment that evening that seemed to suggest a ghostly visitation: The Culvert^sic County Undertaker was speaking on the subject of death, grief, and suicide, mentioning Sylvia Plath, the famous suicidal poet; then he introduced one of her poems and began to read it. I think it was the one called "Cut". On a very appropriate syllable, the girl figure lost hold of the tape and fell to the floor, still upright, the bottom of the cutout unintentionally shaped like the blade of a torture pendulum, it smacked the floor -- if I could only remeber the exact syllable. Might have been "The Indians AXED your scalp." Might have been a different syllable, or a different poem, but it was a cutting reference, and it was a Sylvia Plath poem. Whether she wanders the earth with her ears open for mentions, I don't know, but if so, I hope she was only giving her blessing that night. SMACK!

10/06/06
The other day, I stepped out my back door to inhale nature in all its nice day. There was something scratching about under a tree, among the weeds. I could't really make out what it was; in fact didn't really see it at all. We do have squirrels, many of them, so I figure probably a squirrel, but I wasn't sure. I picked up a wallnut and threw it in the direction of the action, feeling fairly certain I would not hit an animal in the process but might make it stir so I could maybe get a better sense of what it was. Should I have been so careless, throwing a heavy wallnut (I mean fresh off the tree with the fleshy outer still attached) not being sure whether I would hit anything or not? Should I have been so heartless doing this with the intent of frightening a little animal?

I don't know, but the next morning, I opened my door yet again, to get some air into my lungs, and there on the doorstep was a BM of a squirrel. Now, I am no scatologist, so I can't say with 100% certainty that that was what it was, but it looked pretty glorious and squirrely, and I interpret it as revenge for my juvenile act the previous day.

9/30/06
Decent Vacation, Eh?. A midnight truck-nut collecting, live bluegrass listening, art festival going (and ridiculing), live poetry reading, toy piano tinkling, spreading the gospel of proper tea, restaurant dining, home-cooked breakfast eating, fool acting, aisle dancing -- good time! And good people.

9/09/06
Let's see, how many adventures have I failed to tell you about lately? I am doing yet another regular co-emcee gig with the incomparable Cliff Lynn. This time, it is THE POET EXPERIENCE at Ahh, Coffee(!). Pretty popular, festive, in a cozy coffee shop in the Eastport shopping center.

There was also a Rocky and Cliff show at Hard Bargain Farm in Accokeek, Maryland. They gave us a 45 minute slot after poet Diane Wilbon-Parks and singer/songwriter/guitarist Lynn Hollyfield. Diane and Lynn were impressive. We were having a hard time trimming our set down to 45 minutes. We might have taken an hour, but nobody got up and ran off. We were a smash. We had dancing girls, a four man boomwhacker orchestra plus a vocalist. I had both my hand drums on stage. It was the most elaborate show we've done yet. When I say dancing girls, nothing Vagas, just some pretty women doing good steps.

I have begun composing parts for Caesar, the Razor Sharp Tetanus Chimp. Don't know when we will go live with him.

The high school wants us back but I don't like getting up at 4:30.

We have discontinued our monthly ADMIRAL JIM'S FESTIVAL OF TETHERED EXPRESSION at Corky's Hard Bean Cafe next to Joanne's Fabrics in Severna Park, Maryland. We did our last 3 shows on the sidewalk because the cafe was on summer hours and therefore closed during our time slot. The last show I brought out my floor tom and mallets; it was a booming good time.

8/25/06
I actually wrote this to a friend this evening: "Dreams. They're so dreamlike. Do you find this about dreams? Or at least some dreams. Other dreams don't seem as dreamlike."

8/22/06
Some radio WHOEVER IN THE MORNING guy was asking the question: have you ever cried when a celebrity died? He was asking about it because supposedly it's a ridiculous way for an adult to react to a celebrity death. I don't know if I have ever, as an adult, done that. As a kid, I was dumbfounded by the death of John Bonham. I don't think I cried. I was just dumbfounded.
     Dumbfounded as well by the similar death of Bon Scott, the original singer for AC/DC. Both are said to have died due to complications from overconsumption of alcohol. The "complications" vary depending on which article you read. Take your pick. Supposedly if you have too much alcohol in you, and you fall asleep, you are in danger of having some of your stomach fluids come up and then block airflow to your lungs. I believe this kills you because you are too relaxed to react to the abstruction. This actually eases my mind to think of it that way because the usual characterization of this phenomenon ishe choked on his own vomit.
     That always sounded so horrid to me, a distressful end of life. When I first heard of how Jimi Hendrix died, I was so sorry for him, not only that he died young, but that he choked on his own vomit.
     The other thing that can happen when you have had so much alcohol that your senses are dangerously dulled, is hypothermia. If you don't react to cold, you can accidentally subject yourself to so much cold that your body can't handle it. I think even a summer night can be dangerous if you are sitting drunk in a car, not covered up.
     Ronnie Van Zant and Steve Gaines, of Lynyrd Skynyrd, died in a plane crash. Again, dumbfoundedness. These were all legends in my teenaged heart. John Lennon's death, though creepy and sad, did not affect me nearly the way these others did. It was a mind boggling little flap of rock star death. Between 1977 and 1980, we lost Bonham, Scott, Gaines, Van Zant, Elvis Presley and Keith Moon. Crazy. Randy Rhoads would die in 1982, inciting my high School classmates to call for a wearing of black arm bands the following day. I think some of them did. I did not.
     When Roy Orbison died, I thought, well, that's sad, I suppose, but his career was feeling a surge of activity, he had recently been recording and (I think) touring with the Traveling Wilburys, who worshipped him, he died under those conditions, instead of the great lull that spanned the gap between his early popularity and that later surge. So, I saw it as a sort of victory.

7/3/06
I do this regular drum–n–poetry gig at a cafe in Severna Park, only this time they didn't tell us they were going to be closed (switched to summer hours). Well, I tell ya, there's no stopping us; I had my tiny PA system that runs on eight D batteries, and we had our event right there on the sidewalk in front of the cafe. It was really one of our best shows at that venue.

I am missing a microphone, so if a mysterious mic has shown up in your life, maybe it's mine.

6/3/06
Last night, the most incredible thing happened. It was a house party full of freshly graduated high schoolers and their parents and friends and siblings and a dog (Rusty, a CockerPoo). They all gathered in a room and sat for a poetry reading (me and Cliff), and they enjoyed it! They didn't just ceremonially enjoy it, they heavy applause and laugh out loud enjoyed it. The dog barked at all the right times, including the very moment I finished my leg humping poem.

5/27/06
I had a dream that I was in a department store and Opie Taylor accidentally skated into a dwarf who was a diplomat from somewhere in the middle east and the dwarf wanted to make an international incident of it. He got distracted so I hid Opie. I don't know what happened thereafter.

If you don't know who Opie Taylor is, He is a little boy character in The Andy Griffith Show.

I did my first High School gig. Spoken word -n- drum featuring Cliff's poetry and my own. Very well behaved yunksters. They seemed to appreciate it. We got some good laughs. The school approved me to use their concert bass drum, which is the biggest drum I have ever had the pleasure of playing or even standing next to. Might have been 4 foot across. I should have measured it for the record. It was THUNDER. I used it when Cliff recited my piece featuring the hollow earth and the skunk ape. I also verbally made skunk ape noises.

A girl approached the stage after one of the four shows we did that day; she was smiling and she placed a little piece of paper on the stage. It was a drawing of me sitting at the conga. That was so sweet. Gosh, now I really need an archivally safe scrap book.

We had some students and even teachers come up and read their own work. One teacher, as he sat in the audience, wrote a response poem to my poem that asks "did smokey robinson really try to keep his sadness hid?" He came up and read it. Pretty cool. Some of the student poetry was superb. A pretty impressive lot.

5/22/06
THE GIG at Maryland Faerie Festival was pretty good. The drum stand was very slippery on the stage so I had to keep hooking it with my foot and yanking it back into place-- I probably looked like a struggling idiot. The audience was bigger than it looked. The show seats were hay bails and not many people where on them, but there was a roofed picnic table area to the side and wolfgang said that a lot of the applause was coming from there. Then went I went to the merch booths, I found out the merchants could hear everything I was doing -- I got a few surprise compliments from people I didn't even know could hear me. I said to this one gal, "I was performing earlier..."
She says "wait! Who are you?"
I said "Rocky Jones."
She goes, "YESS!! You were AWESOME!"
(actually I can't remember the exact adjective)

That felt good.

Among the other entertainment was Pat Panther, a woman who sat down with an old hollow body electric guitar and finger-picked some blues; I didn't know the songs but it sounded good. She wore a flowered headring, which I thought went well with the blues in a strange way. Also, some lady that was a singer for Ritchie Blackmore lipsynched to what seemed a pagan equivalent to christian contemporary music, or Barny on estrigen, or something.

5/15/06
Too many gigs!! Including one where I dressed like a pirate. Well, I had a colorful beret and a Yemeni daggar belt. Sure the beret is something I wear all the time but it worked as a pirate hat. This gig took place on a huge outdoor stage and my drum had two mics on it. Crazy. It was a Peter Frampton moment. This was the Maritime Heritage Festival. Now we are doing an August gig in Accoceek. It's crazy.

I can't think of any more adventures of note; they escape me. I feel like I am busier than I have ever been.

5/11/06
My gig at Maryland Faerie Festival is scheduled for 11AM, SATURDAY, MAY 20, 2006.

4/30/06
This is turning out to be a busy season for me. I will be featured poet in Westminster; I don't think I've ever been to Westminster. I am drumming for a poet at the Maritime Heritage Festival in Annapolis. And so many other things I can't remember -- plus my regular gigs. Maryland Faerie Festival is approaching and I am on the program again.

4/1/06
Holy (something random and not necessarily holy here)! I am sick as a cocker spaniel. I do think my life has improved since I have been back on dairy but boy the germs do love to incubate in the system once you have dairy muck there. I hardly had 2 colds in the several years I was dairy free and now my system is icked up and perfect for colds. I know, thanks for sharing. I'm ticked off because I have one of my regular co-emcee/drummer/poet/goofball gigs today and I can't make it. I picked the guest speaker and all.

It's all good I spoze. I have continued to appear at various performance venues with my poetry, drum, Orchestral Xylophone Piano, and sometimes guitar, and usually sidekick (or vice versa???) Cliff Lynn. Audiences have continued to be delighted. Cliff is starting to talk about the possibility of what I would term mini tours. My salable items projects (CD, book) have not been speedily produced, so naturally I would feel a bit silly doing tours with nothing to promote. «typographical frown»

2/3/06
Cliff and I travelled down to Saint Mary's City, to Saint Mary's College of Maryland. They were holding an open poetry read. The poet laureate of Maryland teaches there and he showed up at the read. He was very complimentary of my performance(s). I mean, I kinda wished I had it on tape he was so enthusiastic about my work. That really feels good. Much of it is owed to Cliff, as he does the text while I do musical things. They re-entered me on the list after the intermission because they wanted to hear more! That was dang cool. It was a very encouraging night; that's all I'm saying. Oh, and I read a new poem about snot; oh, and road-tripping with Cliff was fun.

1/27/06
I have started performing with the Chicco Orchestral Xylophone Piano. It's not a super smooth playing instrument; I would describe it as hair trigger. But the sounds are pretty nice. There are keyboard and hand percussion sounds, as well as animal sounds. I am currently using the duck quack exclusively but that could change as the muse leads me. Duck 'n' pig closeup; photos don't do them justice. They are much handsomer in person.

I have devised a great way to amplify it. An old pillow speaker for sleep hypnosis fits nicely onto one of the item's speakers, the pillow speaker acting as a microphone. I run the mic into a smokey amp, or my tiny RMS portable amp. Perfect for smallish gigs. These are not full-on musical performances but multimedia of sorts: me quacking on the keyboard and a henchman reciting Rocky Jones spoked-up word material.

Ellen Cherry has asked Cliff and me to be part of her February show. How can we refuse? It's Ellen Cherry for ×¢%#$@* sake! But we are becoming too popular. I had to tell Cliff that a new monthly gig down by the boat docks in Annapolis was too much for me.
"I'm tire, really; it's too much." --Andy Summers

Site Of The Moment: www.JayLincoln.com. He does a lot of caricature illustration. Nice color. Some of the celebrities are pretty obscure, which I think is cool. Some of the portraits have a link under them that activates some kind of script that allows you to drag new facial features onto their faces.

1/7/06
The Rock-n-roll Poetry Revue with Cliff Lynn and Ellen Cherry was lots of fun. During the Ellen Cherry concert portion, the Bird Dog rushed the stage because he had something to say or recite. That was surreal and wonderful.