Trying to understand your data usage? Let's talk.

This is the subject line on a message from Verizon on my website email.

Dear Verizon

Actually I thought that was something you were doing for me. Already.

But if you DO actually want to talk to me, well, you've got my number.

thanks

danny finley   

Leaving this cold and this damp

December 9, 2013 – getting ready to play that old blues number “Goin to the ATM, Sorry but I can't take you”.

Rockvale, TN - - Oh, boy! Thursday afternoon I get to go get on an airplane and fly down to Miami for a private party gig. Things have been worse.

Recently, you may have noticed the absolute plethora, not to say busload, of Make Money On The Internet ads showing up on your browser of choice. We here at the vast Panama Red Music compound have noticed these, too, and have researched them mightily. And for just one payment of $97, we'll show you the one sure-fire way to make money on the Internet. Write us. This method really works.  

Have had an ongoing coyote problem at the cattery lately, lost 4 of our favorite little guys, reducing the population of felines by about 25% before we got hip and started keeping the cats in at night. Old coyote been treating my back deck like a buffet. Gave me an idea for the fruit fly solution:

1. Trap a male coyote
2. Give him a vasectomy
3. Release him back into the coyote population

Lookin' forward to Friday, Miami.

Over and Out

Panama

LIGHTING THE DARK CONTINENT

AFRICA AT NIGHT: check it out: 

Here's a map of the middle of the world, showing Eurasia and Africa.


As you can see, Eurasia has a lot of lights and Africa doesn't have many.

I meet a strange Zimbabwean M.D lady, trained in the United States, and with a thriving practice here in Middle Tennessee, who regularly cycles between lectures in Buenos Aires and Bengladish, as well as the U.N., and she interests me and us into putting together a package to demonstrate the ease of installing 24-hour-a-day solar lighting in clinics throughout the Dark Continent.

A tete a tete is performed. Friendships develop. I get on the internet.

Now, I've run my whole career as a non-profit, though never intentionally, but nonetheless this comes easy to me. It ain't nothin new.

So I find out a busload about solar power available nowadays. I am not surprised that a) it ain't changed that much since I first studied it, and b) the technology side ain't changed that much, either. So that c) anybody can do it.

What's happenin' these days is flexible solar panels. It's a long story, fraught with intrigue, but the upshot is that nobody in America is makin these panels.

I get in touch with some folks in China because that's where it all went when the Koreans and Germans aped it from Stan Ovshinsky's estate in Detroit.

Over the course of months the Panama team deep in their underground warrens, puts together a package cruise that will display two rollup adhesive panels, a charge controller, two 12V 21 Amp hour batteries, a switch, and two 2 lights, which blaze on with astonishing brightness to reveal, perhaps, the young African mother delivering her child in safety, a young life saved because the medico could adequately see the problem. This gets a green light and a check from the African princess and we send off for the parts.

The parts come. 

                                              -30- for now

The Liverpool Lads and Their Contribution to Modern Radiology Rockvale, TN, October 24, – Electric and Musical Industries, Ltd was a British firm which had been in the electric and musical business since the early 1930s. Mostly you read about EMI on Wikipedia in connection with music, but before the Beatles arrived on the scene, EMI was most highly valued for their contributions to the British war effort in World War II. Had there been no Beatles, there would have been no enormous interest in records. And the Wiki article would not be so gushily slanted as a result. EMI did a lot of radar and microwave stuff. Still, they kept their hand in the record biz, but even being a major player in a specialized market, which is what music was before the British Invasion, didn't count as their chief source of income. They made their money the old-fashioned way. They invented. They were scientists, not pop stars. One of their scientists was a fellow named Godfrey Hounsfeld. Along about the beginning of the 1950s he had an idea: If you could take enough x-rays of the human body, it might be possible to mathematically manipulate the resultant images in such a way as to show the area of interest in cross-section. There was one overwhelming problem, however: it would take a lot of math. Later, Hounsfeld realized that a computer would do the trick and began to work on an idea that would ultimately become the first transistorized computer in Britain. This took a long time, however. The research and development was extremelyexpensive, even for EMI, so the idea was shelved and then re-shelved. George Martin was a young A&R guy at EMI Records, and he heard the Beatles, signed them to the label, and produced their records. The rest, as they say, is history. But not quite. The Beatles not only changed the nature of the record business, taking it from small-time, largely regional endeavors to an actual industry, they also added millions and millions of sudden wealth to EMI. Not having anything to throw all this windfall at, EMI funded Hounsfeld and his x-ray idea. The result was what was at first called EMI-scan. We now know it as Computer Assisted Tomography, or CAT-scan. All other modalities, PET-scans and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), are descendants of Hounsfeld's idea.

So next time you're in an MRI tube, with those incredibly inadequate earplugs which do nothing to block out the 4000 decibel clangs, whams and that rhythmic pattern that reminds you so much of "I Wanna Hold You Hand" (I can't hide!  I can't hide!  I can't hiiiiide!) you'll know why.

Panama

Homeland Insecurity: Remembering September 11

Homeland Insecurity: Remembering September 11

Rockvale TN, September 11, 2013 - - Twelve years ago at about this time, 2:55 pm Amsterdam time, I was sitting in the Joost Pub when somebody came in and told Willem the barman to turn on CNN. When he did there was a picture of a building that had fallen to the ground. A couple of minutes later we watched in horror as a passenger plane crashed into the building next to it.

Like the Kennedy assassination, everybody who experienced 911 knows where they were and what they were doing when the Twin Towers collapsed. And like the Kennedy assassination unsolved mysteries remain. I saw the second tower implode and I have opinions that would brand me accurately as a conspiracy theorist. But that's ground well (but not well enough) gone over, and we're not going to go there today.

What I want to write about today is the aftermath of that horrible event.

As everyone freely acknowledges, the shock of that event made it possible for plans to unfold that would lead us into what will no doubt prove to be failed and wasted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the expense of still thousands more lives both dead and ruined.

911 also made possible the creation of Homeland Security, and I have to say that when I heard the word “Homeland” I had an icy feeling of where we were headed, and here we are, with the NSA , capable of spying on our own citizens, but incapable, apparently, of

using data handed to us by the Russians to prevent the Boston Marathon massacre. For me, “Homeland” carries the same tyrannic connotations as “the Fatherland” did for Nazi Germany, or “Mother Russia” for the bolsheviks.

And as everyone knows, (but nobody has done anything about {WHY?}) we were lied into those wars in which billions were lost. Not misspent, not misappropriated, though of course some were, but literally picked up and carried away, to parts unknown by parties unknown.

The fact of the fabrications of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, and countless others who were either in on the ruse or dupes themselves, has been slowly obliterated by time just as messages on a beach fade with each tide. These traitors have escaped into compensated retirement, or the World Bank, or they show up on television now and again as “experts on terror”, which of course they certainly are, having generated quite a bit of it themselves..

Their crimes, and they were crimes, have faded from memory because now we worry about other things: fat cats who figuratively give the Homeland the finger by living here and paying their taxes cheaply elsewhere, for example. Health problems that could be ameliorated with an affordable diet for all, and education levels that are such that thousands of “institutions of learning” make their bones by offering nonsensical glamourous courses to student loan applicants, who do not find work once they graduate, but who nevertheless owe a great deal of money they cannot pay back.

Today, all across the Homeland, there are more payday loan places and pawnshops than there are fast food restaurants. Prices are cheap at WalMart because the pay is so low that many of its employees are on food stamps and Medicaid. If the minimum wage had kept pace with what it was in 1967, it would now be on the order of $20 per hour.,

Whether a calculated plan carried out, or a genuine terrorist event allowed to happen, or a complete surprise to the American government, the shape of America was changed on September 11, 2001. Now it doesn't seem so farfetched that the NSA is functioning with no oversight, that the homeless veteran is no longer an anomaly, that 1% of the population control nearly half the assets of the Homeland. We look on the wealthy with admiration and envy, rather than the utter rage we should be feeling.

The effects of the manifesto drafted by the Project for a New American Century, which called for an event “similar to Pearl Harbor”, is still with us. The specter of unbridled government control is imposed by those simultaneously calling for smaller government. The country has gone to hell in a bucket while we have watched reality television and the Kardashians, and paid our credit cards with more credit until we have none left.

There is no security in the Homeland.

FLUFFY GUY UPDATE

Rockvale, TN, September 9, 2013 - - You'll remember, or maybe not so much, my story of how Fluffy Guy showed up at the Boarding House lookin all completely matted and just horribly disreputable. If you didn't see it, you can go back to June right here on this site, and re-read all about it.

But if you do remember, I thought I'd bring you up to speed on this pilgrim's progress into the world of cats who live amicably with people. You'll recall that he was, when he first came, the actual living breathing definition of the word scrofulous. He was so completely fur all stuck together and infested with ticks and fleas that we were unable to tell much about him except that he didn't like people or other kitties very much. It took us two months of work and snipping and brushing and combing and gentle sweet talking to get him, or at least his hirsute parts, straightened out. He only hung around during all this for the food.

When we had taken care of the obvious grooming challenges that were Fluffy Guy(we called him that, perhaps in hope), we could tell that he had come to us with other defects as well, among which most worrisome was the fact that somehow his nether parts, those back there towards his tail, were out of whack. He was unable to use his hind legs for jumping, so that we were given cause to wonder if this were the result of some trauma involving stick, broom, or car because he was certainly malformed back there.

We decided to wait and see. Waiting and seeing was a lot cheaper than taking him to the vet where we already have a bill as large as the gross domestic product of San Marino.

So we waited and watched. Gradually, amazingly, his little bottom began to fill out. He became more and more capable of actually leaping. And running.

And as time went on we also became aware that this cat, who had come to us looking almost exactly as disgusting and old as this wino Sam that I used to know back in the Est Village, was in actual fact a very young cat. Indeed, he was a kitten. With an extremely large head and upper body for sure but a small bottom, now filling out. Also now filling out were a couple of other parts, round in nature, so we took him to the chop shop and had these parts dealt with. We hadn't closely observed the not very largeness of them before due to all the matted fur and the yowling and scratching and biting.

So, over time, Fluffy Guy has become a clean kitty, who now takes extra special care of his personal grooming himself. Patty has gotten into the habit of combing all the cats to get the occasional stray flea off their little faces, and Fluffy is always first in line.

So I guess he's here to stay. He's a clean little guy now, and sometimes I'll wake up just before dawn to find him snuggled up to my back, snoozing away. He has a few toys to play with, as the older cats are too dignified for such foolishness as exercise with no reward. Sometimes when I'm walking past the breakfront he'll be playing MONSTER! and reach out and grab my feet (but ever so gently) from underneath it.

He has discovered that the parquet floor in the kitchen is fabulous for sliding, and now skates around the island in the middle. If you pick him up he starts purring.

I know. I have a lot of cats. But I'm glad that this just one more came into our lives while he was still malleably young, and didn't grow up wild not ever knowing love or human kindness.  Pray, if you do that sort of thing, for Peace on Earth.

Panama

Dropping out electronically

I like Democrats, really do, am one myself.  In my family we's all Democrats except for my stoopid brother.
This past week I got a notice from ATT, which handles all my commo stuff, my computer blather like this, my internet TV, everthang.  What it said was that I was nearing my limit of kilobytes or somethin.  Burnin up my time on the internet, in short.  And every extra 50 kb or so would cost me $10.

So I got to looking and realized that half of my incoming mail was from the Democrats wanting more $ so they could continue to battle the Repugnicans.  Well, really, what with the spying an all, I figure they's all on the same side anyway, that is, the OTHER side of the one I'm on, whatever that may be.

Then, of course I also got mail from upworthy, newsmax, the list is practically endless.
So I began to go through the list of messages and unsubscribe from everybody.

Now, this morning, I find that I am not getting any messages asking me for $3 so Barack can continue being everything he said he was not going to be and everything he is not that he said he was going to be, or so that some Congressman hopeful from Boogaloo County in Louisiana can compete in a primary so he can compete in an election in Boogaloo County, a county that has been 99% Repugnican for the last 40 years.

I still donate to Alan Grayson, but I do that without getting any kb usage; they just call once a month or so and if I have a few bucks I give it to them.
If you notice that you're getting a lot of stuff from the Democrats (or Republicans, depending on your faith), I not so humbly suggest that you disassociate yourself from it all.
It's calm here this morning.  
panama

Fluffy Guy Shows Up At the Katterij

Fluffy Guy Shows Up At the Katterij

Rockvale TN, Sometime in Mid-June: Lord, you shoulda seen him. Christ! Where did this cat come from here in Rockvale that whoever has let him deteriorate to this state?

Big disgusting mats of fur hangin offa him, poor guy. Ticks. Fleas. Took weeks to get his trust, calm him down, get a few snips with the scissors before the growling set in.

Gradually, though, he's been coming around to a more civilized viewpoint. Now, don't get me wrong: I don't hold with no tryin to civilize a cat that wants to be feral. And if Fluff decides he's ready to take off, that'll be fine. He'll just do it having been repaired.

It is amazing to me how flat-out mean and irresponsible people can be when it comes to other critters. Then bitch about how many feral critters there are. However I've been flat-out mean and irresponsible myself. But anyway, lately he's been enduring the wire brush getting alla that undercoat out – it is amazing how much fur keeps coming off in the brush. Winter hair that he shoulda been able to do himself. But I can only surmise that he didn't spend enough time with his mommy, because she woulda taught him better. Most of em do, anyhow.

Anyway, as time has gone on and he's lived in a community of cats who do not fight but instead have a close-knit tribal relationship thing goin on, he's begun to exhibit traits of civilized behaviour. Been starting to come out of “in there” and take calmer notice of his surroundings. Still got too many parasites on him to gain complete entrance to the Inner Sanctum, but he knows it's a good place.

When he first came we fed him on the patio table – (up high, pretty easy to leap and run any direction) – by putting the plate of food on the table and then completely ignoring him.

But it's been about a month now and the cats have their own access to the house, which he's recently found out about, and so he's been coming in to take his dinner on the floor (separate plates) with the natives.

So he's kind of been trying to be a good kitty lately, whatever that is, is my point, and startin to be political. He is starting to think he might like it here, and he's workin it. He's a hoot. Been sneakin into the house whenever he can. 'Course he doesn't realize what's in store for him, go or stay. A little snip. Et viola! Yet another social problem solved by the Lone Pensioner.

What's time to a planet?

What's time to a planet

with no one to measure it?

Still got them ants

Still got them spiders

Got a lot to work with here

And all the time in the world.

These people they so big

For the little good they are

All they do is replicate

Real carbon copies they are.

Started down a path that led

to a million possibilities

And ended up at nuclear.

Still doin caveman stuff

Still bangin rocks together.

What's time to a planet?

There is nothing so expensive as free eggs

.  I buy 'em from my neighbor Anne down the road.  This early winter past she lost all hers to....wildcat? incredibly irritated hawk?.... the list of suspects is usual.  So we been gettin ours from Aldi.  Called her on the way to Cullman the other night,,,says her new'uns are only about five months old so gonna be another month before the girls ramp up production.   I am so lookin forward to them brown shell, sometimes there used to be  a aracauna egg in there as well. 

The wife bought some olive oil by the case and along with it she got the most wonderful egg pan, unbelievably flippable, expecially with the olive oil.  Lately I've been typing expecially so much that it no longer looks weird.  It would seem not to have any connection at all to especially, so probly some hillbilly thang.  Ex meaning outside, but still es seems to mean to set aside.  You with degrees or even an opinion please contribute linguistic thoughts. 

Anyway, love them eggs. 

panama

i think i want one a them steven hawking computers.  I hate this finger stuff.  i wonder if steven hawking's computer understands HIM or if he has to depend on the vocoder he uses to talk to bags of meat.

TUXEDO IN LOVE

TUXEDO IN LOVE

It's nearly March here in Rockvale. I have a gig on March 1st, at Berkeley Bob's Coffee House, down in Cullman, Alabama. This is what's on my mind.

My little cat Tuxedo has other considerations. It's almost spring, and his thoughts have turned to his unrequited love for his cousin, YumYum.

Now all the cats have been neutralized around my house, but don't let anybody convince you that the boy-girl paradigm goes away with a snip and a stitch.

Tux has always been a little backward, bewildered, even, by the stuff going on around him. He’s a little, slow, I guess. But nothing gets in the way of his ardor, his unflagging affection for YumYum, who wouldn’t give him the time of day, if cats cared about that stuff. She growls as soon as she sees him, letting him know how despicable she finds him to be. But he loves her.

I try when occasion seems to warrant to dispense worldly advice to my critters, sit ‘em down and try to explain to them how the earth moves and life is fleeting and alla that, but really, I’m no Billy Joe Shaver. I’m just an old guy with some cats and a dog. So that even if I could explain and Tux could understand, the problems of a young tomcat and a old guy couldn't be made to amount to much.

It's almost spring and Friday night I'll be playing my stuff, hell, maybe for the last time, I don't know.

But Tuxedo. Tux is in love.

BIG GAME HUNTING IN ROCKVALE

BIG GAME HUNTING IN ROCKVALE

Rockvale, TN Feb 1, 2013 –

“POW!” sounded like nothing so much as a transformer blowing.

“What's that?” Patty asks.

“POW!” once again.

“I don't know. I'll go look,” I say, opening the sticking kitchen door.

“Put on your jacket.”

“No time, I'm out the door already.”

I step off the deck in my T-shirt and slant across the yard, by the pickup and around it and look across the field. There is a kid (okay, in his twenties, but when you're as old as me...) standing under the large carport at the neighboring church. He is holding what appears to be a small-bore rifle, but judging by the report it's a shotgun.

“What are you shootin' at?” I ask.

“That skunk there,” the kid replies, indicating the roadside in front of the church and my house. There is a small black critter convulsing feebly beside the road. Two shots, I think to myself, and this little guy is still alive.

“Why?” I ask.

“Uh...because he was sprayin' the church.”

Looks to me more like the skunk was walking down the road and this kid drives by in his pickup with his shotgun, sees it and decides, I got a gun; shit, I'm gonna murder somethin'. Then swings his pickup into the church parking lot and slams it into park, jumps out and aims (poorly) at the harmless member of the mephitidae persuasion, blasts away with his thunder stick. I see this situation, make these deductions, but remember that this little asshole is armed and don't divulge what I've figured out.

“Well, you might want to go over there close enough to hit him this time and put him out of his misery,” I say.

“Well, you're welcome to get closer to him if you want, but I don't want the stink on me,” Billy the Kid replies. And it's true: I can smell, wafting across the frozen field, the

unmistakable odor of fresh skunk.

“I think he's squirted his last,” I say, and walk over to where the critter has now somewhat regained his feet and is crawling across the road. But he's crawling in circles.

I put my foot down and turn him toward the other side of the road. Each time he makes a right, I nudge him with my foot back to the left and toward the other side.

The kid is watching me, but has nothing to say.

I shepherd the little guy to the side of the road across from the church and onto the shoulder. He rolls down the shoulder, gets up again and starts crawling along the ditch.

He's a goner, fersure.

I say nothing that comes to my head regarding the kid's humanity, or his marksmanship, and I turn back across the road and go into my house. I wish I had a pistol to put the skunk out of it, but I don't. I have killed bigger, smarter, more dangerous creatures and have put that stuff behind me. I know that death will soon come to the little guy and he will welcome it.

**********

When we get ready to go shopping this morning I go to get the mail from the mailbox across the road. I look to my left, where I had last seen the skunk. There, about thirty yards down, I see that he has dropped his body, for it lies, unmoving, in the fresh snow.

                                                               -30-

Panama makes it into the Top Ten

hey, i made it into the reverbnation top ten blues artists for rockvale. this is really great because there aren't ten blues artists IN rockvale. but it's been a long hard struggle, and thank you fer puttin me over the top.

Andy Lakeland, Michaela Purcell and 2 others like this.

Vid Mars John Lee would say: "boogie chill'yun"!

2 hours ago · Like

Norine Mungo I am still hearing Popeye The Sailor Man in my head, so when you talk Blues, I'm like, really? LOL. But hey, your picking will take you anywhere my friend. Still, I cry every single time you do that song!!! Dang, now it's in my head again. LOL. Enjoy your Blues success, I will still hear your incredible Cat Stevens like song rendering in my dreams. It inspires me to write even better every time I start a song! Always, Norine.

about an hour ago · Like

Danny Finley Norine: Yeah. Basically I think 'blues' and 'bluegrass' are the flavors of the moment. But since you know my repertoire, then you know that I'm not any one of those or other genres. I just write what comes down through the fog. I'm not even folk, except once in a while. For a while I thought I might be Americana, since that implied some sort of American-ness, but lately even that has seemed to elude me. I could go on and on, and perhaps will. I do appreciate the favorable comparison to Cat Stevens. See you in Tampa/St Pete in March/April, I hope?

This genre business has been a thorn in my side since we're talkin fifty years of forever. Too country for rocknroll, too rocknroll for country. Too blues for folk, too folk for blues. Sometimes I write in a style that prompted one old black jazz club owner I met in the psych ward at VA to say I reminded him of Hoagie Carmichael. Hell, I floated on that for days. Invariably there will be disappointed audience members, club owners, presenters, critics. Sometimes I wonder if it's all been a waste of time, if perhaps a light plane crash will increase the desirability of my catalogue so that my heirs at least can benefit from the privations I've put them through.
Then I get a note from some sweet person like Norine. And the sun comes out.

SOULFUL TRIP REVIEWED: PANAMA DOES NOT PLAY THE AURA LOUNGE

Murfreesboro, TN January 26 @ 3:22 am --Well, I didn't achieve my lifelong dream of playing the Aura Lounge in Murfreesboro, last night, but it's understandable.

Blame it on a lack of communication. Blame it on the Bossa Nova. Nobody involved was Wrapped tightly enough to make a difference. I include myself.

I booked myself through the owner's putative agent, while my friend Ryan booked himself through the owner directly.

So I don't know. The guy who owns the bar was back in Gatlinberg or someplace for a short while, and no conversations ensued between his august self and his putative (I love that word, but it just means “reputed”) agent.

(This is more than somewhat speculative on my part. It's only a possible scenario.)

So he books Ryan. She books me. Nobody notices this until Wednesday night.

So it came down at the Wednesday songwriters' thang at 3 Brothers, that they wuz a conflict. Of dates. Ryan, who has the upper hand (quite rightly, per musician rule #21), having booked directly says we'll work something out. Well, he also says he needs the bread. Like, hello? Who doesn't? I think, but despite the Facebook boring effortful stuff, I figure, what the hey?, probably ain't my kind of joint anyway, trust in it and let it go.

The lord will provide.

Except that yesterday, Ryan called and said the owner, see?, he still doesn't have a name to me. He asked him (Ryan) to text him my number so that he could ring me up. Blame it on a bad intelligence apparatus or on I don't give a shit, it don't matter.

I figured if the guy wanted to talk to me he'da given me HIS number so I could call HIM.

It's an amazing trip these guys who own bars and these guys who play guitars get on. Always gotta have a drama. It's like any initial contact has to be like psychological arm-wrestling....

So of course I never did hear from the guy (if you know him, tell him I said Hi) who owns the club.

Tomorrow, Saturday, Jan 26 \ WMTS, your local, sometimes extreme, sometimes hip college radio station right here in Mumblesbury, Yay! Is having a benefit at 3Brothers2-nite. Bring a small negotiable donation.

I go on at 8, and I'm gonna do a whole set. Please leave your weapons at home.

3 Brothers. On the north or west side of Main Street certainly not the south or east at least I don't think. They're really bubbas to each other, too. A nice buncha beers. Best dang sangwidges in town. Three Brothers...they have the art of hospitality and good food flows through their life...

It simply is not hard for you to find 3 Brothers. Get on West Main. You'll figure it out. Corner of walnut I think

panama

Mr Mackey Fracking is bad

 
Fracking is bad, mmmmkay?