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The topic today is guitar – specifically the kind that plug in. Why? Because it's my birthday and that's what I want to blab about.

So anyway, here’s an easy lick that enables even intermediate level guitar players to readily throw some ripping scale runs into their improv playing. It goes through 24 notes just to ascend a single octave, so it’s a great way to add a bar of shred while relocating to a new position on the fretboard for the next part of your solo.

It also sounds pretty damn slick.

But what’s really nice about this riff is that it only uses the first and second strings and the exact same frets are used on both strings. That makes it easy to remember and easy to execute.

We’re in everyone’s favorite shredding key, E minor, which is spelled E, F#, G, A, B, C, D. Begin on the E note located at the fifth fret of the B string and then ascend the scale in six-note stairs.

I’ve tabbed it out in the example above as a legato riff, which really makes this lick haul ass. To play it this way, pick only the first note in each triplet, then hammer-on the next two notes. The result is a fast, fluid run of notes that also looks cool as you play it.

This pattern also makes a terrific alternate picking lick. Start with a down stroke and use an “outside” picking style by alternating up-down-up-down all the way through.

Once you’re comfortable with all four positions, start adding some spice by mixing them up all over the place. The results can be pretty cool. I uploaded a full sheet of tablature examples with this post to help get you started. Yay! FREE TABS!

Dear U.S. Senators,

When you have allowed months of torture and rape to utterly disfigure and destroy someone, the only sensible and humane thing to do is to take that person out somewhere secluded and shoot them in the back of the head.

Since you’ve essentially allowed this healthcare bill to endure the very atrocities I’ve described, it is my sincere hope you will have enough integrity left in you to consign it to the same fate. Executions are seldom easy, but considering the jaw-dropping debauchery to which you’ve relentlessly subjected this bill, such paradoxical mercy is the only way I see for you to even look in the general direction of redemption. Poor old “Healthcare” Bill was once our friend, but now he desperately wails in anguish, pleading for final respite from the blind, relentless assault of Lieberman’s tiny but deceptively powerful political penis.

Our friend wanted to give us a Public Option so that even the poorest Americans could get necessary medical attention. You laughed in his face.

Our friend believed a Single-Payer system was another way we could get healthcare to the less fortunate and was shouted down for that, as well.

Our friend wanted to fix Medicare Part D so that drugs were acquired at a reasonable price and beneficiaries didn’t fall into the infamous, medicine-revoking “Donut Hole”. In response to that one, you simply farted (although, to your credit, you did lift your leg beforehand so the gesture wasn’t lost on anyone).

In short, our friend’s overall goal was to HELP THE AMERICAN POOR. And you had a serious problem with that.

It’s a noble goal – aiding the poor – and one that is right in line with the teachings of every major religion, including the one this country so openly embraces (despite Constitutional insistence it doesn’t). But how did you react to such Christian kindness? You got all coy and then suddenly goal-kicked poor Bill in the nuts by adding a mandate that everyone purchase healthcare from private companies.

So kill it. Kill it until it’s good and dead and literally nothing of it remains. Better to have no healthcare reform at all (for now) than to have a panty-waste bill with ruptured testicles limping through American history as a permanent false testament to how the poor and weak simply don’t deserve access to medical care.

You know what you must do. If it helps, think about it this way: if all of you vote it out, then killing our friend Bill will be more like a firing squad execution than a cold-blooded murder. And isn’t that how you politicos sleep at night – by reframing the untenable things so they can be better blamed on someone else?

Oh, and Mr. President,  your recent rhetoric surrounding this bill worries me. You seem to be hedging. I have no doubt you recall making it unequivocally clear when you debated Hilary Clinton last January that you are deadset against an individual mandate, so I'm looking to you to keep your promise to veto this bill if it comes across your desk containing that clause.

Sincerely,

Kirk Starr
Your Employer

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

DG walked up to me and said he needed one of his “silly pretty pixshurs” because he wanted to “hiccup codajoe”.

“Why the sudden decision to hook up Dakota Joe with one of your celebrity pictures?” I asked.

“He sayd I wuz ‘damn’ cute. I am thinkee that is even cuter than Diblet.”

“Yeah, you know, I happen to think you’re the cutest kitteh on the planet.”

“So does codajoe, evindentedly. You gettee teh pixshur for me DG or wut?”

“Sure, but I'm guessing Dakota Joe thinks his own cat is cuter, Deej. And he just goes by DJ now. I don’t even think his name is really Joe.”

“Less talkee, more celery pity pixshur! And also a box to mail it in!”

“I’ll get you an envelope."

Sunday, December 13, 2009

Taking the paper trash out to the recycling bin, a familiar something caught my eye. I didn't need to examine it further; I knew exactly what it was. I went back inside and found DG in the kitchen lounging in a flat of drinking water.

“Say, you ever mail that photo to DJ?”

The Deej blinked. “M-hm.”

“Really? How? You don’t have any stamps. You can’t reach the mailbox.”

“I fond stamps in yur bedroom – dog ones and spacee ones..." He licked his left foreleg for a few moments, then continued, "...then I dressed it and put it with teh rest of teh mails.”

It all came together. “Ha! You put it in the paper recycling, DG! I almost threw it out...”

“Well mail it alreddy wuld you? It wuz sposed to be there a week ago!!!”

*sigh* There’s just no pleasing a cat.

Very sorry for the delay, DJ. It’s on its way now...

 

As much as I love the instant gratification and privacy provided by my digital camera, the one thing that continues to irritate me about digital photography technology is the insane amount of time that elapses between when the shutter button is depressed and when the shutter finally decides to work its soul-stealing magic.

I’m sure you’ve all been there. You see something you desperately need to preserve in photograph form, so you whip out your digital camera, quickly frame the shot, and depress the button...

...but by the time your camera finally does its little preparation dance and captures the image, the moment you so badly wished to immortalize has passed and all you’re left with is another useless photo of a dirty restroom stall.

While watching Zach give the cats a good workout by means of a high-power laser pointer, a thought occurred to me:

When used in a particular way, a laser pointer is essentially a virtual tether with which one can literally slam a cat against a wall.

You can also fling a cat down the stairs or even into a hapless victim’s lap as he sits distracted by his game of Super Smash Bros. Fact is, a cat will pretty much go anywhere a glowing red dot goes. They'll even do it in teams!

Whenever all four of us have to be away from the house at the same time, we make sure all the kittehs are closed off downstairs mainly because Dioji is a moody terrier and cannot be trusted. This past Thanksgiving Day was one of those times and Zach was assigned pet segregation detail. He proceeded to do this, believe it or not, by leading them all down in one big group with his laser pointer.

I was hell of impressed.

Alright, I know the title of the post made it sound like some major scientific breakthrough had been discovered. And sure, adding “major” might be too much, but Zachary’s discovery really is quite a breakthrough!

Have you ever tried to herd cats?

This much cute in one place might be dangerous. CimC could implode under the combined weight of DG's good looks and the incredible cuteness in this video. I only got a B in Physics, so don't hate on me if this blog suddenly gets sucked down some black hole of adorableness.

Squeeeee!

There’s a rather steep, winding road I take on the way to work that understandably narrows to a single lane on the downhill side. The speed limit correspondingly drops a little, as well. This all occurs shortly after a traffic light and for the next mile-and-a-half drivers are relegated to whatever position they were able to aggressively acquire during the furious Competition Merging that invariably occurs at this type of juncture.

It is the right lane that merges into the left, so you’ll usually see the BMW and CRX drivers choose it, particularly when they end up (oh-so-egregiously) stopped at the light. Their logic is simple: only the right lane provides the opportunity not to get stuck behind one of the left-lane lame-asses who lacked the foresight to buy a car that stuck to the road like an AFX* slot car. They crane their necks to watch for the cross-traffic light to turn yellow; it’s their cue to take the RPMs up to 1200 and shift their clutch-foot to the very edge of the pedal for instantaneous release.

Me, I’m one of the lame-asses, I guess. I seldom worry about my spot in the bizarre, unwritten hierarchy of competitive commuting. I’m of the opinion that making it to my destination alive, undamaged and sans citations is far more desirable than getting there seven seconds before everyone else. But you already knew I was a bit strange.

Anyway, this morning I did play the game because tooling down the hill was a dirty, fume-belching truck with a giant tank on the back proudly emblazoned with The Shit Bilge: We’ll Pump Out Your Poop! (or something like that; I didn’t have anything to write with at the time). The huge coil of corrugated PVC tubing verified what was inside that tank. I’m not sure if moving so slowly was also directly related to his occupation, but the fact wouldn’t surprise me.

For the record, I wasn’t the only one to pass him. I was behind at least a half dozen drivers making the same sensible move.

Here’s the thing, though. As I changed lanes and sped up to squeeze in front of him just before the guardrail could cave in my passenger door, I felt a little like an impatient teenager for whom driving like an asshole has become a requisite personality trait. But the guy in the sewer truck didn’t speed up to force me back behind him the way so many people do, nor did he tailgate me the rest of the way down the hill. He just took his time transporting his contaminated cargo, seemingly unmoved by the growing distance between himself and the crowd of cars in front of him.

I guess if you make your living sucking putrid body waste out of other peoples’ septic tanks, you’ve pretty much already broken and tamed your ego.

*Yeah, that’s right, I was an AFX kid. Big time. Had to save up just a little more chore money, but it was worth it not to settle for Tyco’s second-rate, schlocky slot cars.

Karin and I have been into this show called It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia since it started in 2005. It's a tad lowbrow sometimes and silly and Amanda absolutely despises it. Her refusal to even be in the room when it's on should probably be some sort of barometer for me, but the thing is, every time I watch an episode of this show I nearly bust a gasket laughing.

To wit...

What the hell!?

Now, you just know I have some choice words to share about this. Please make yourself comfortable as I proceed to illuminate just how little these Conservapedia nitwits know about the real world. I’ve bashed them before, but their offense then was downright innocuous compared to this mess.

For those of you who can’t visit Conservapedia without donning a Haz-Mat suit, I’m happy to republish their silly content for you here because few things are more fun than cramming Fair Use straight up the collective asses of a bunch of idiot fascists.

Basically, what this self-appointed scripture Gestapo wants to do is alter the Bible so that Jesus doesn’t come off so cotton-picking liberal. Evidently, far-right extremists like Conservapedia founder Andy Schlafly* are made very uncomfortable by Jesus doing things like condemning the rich, turning the other cheek, and forgiving those who crucified him. Those things just don’t jive with their black-and-white, might-makes-right, fright-with-spite mentality. How are they supposed to subjugate the poor, amass enormous wealth and power, suppress all opposing viewpoints and still get though the Pearly Gates if the rulebook for their faith contains messages of love and compassion and warnings against the woes of material greed and unchecked hubris? Action must be taken!

Their solution is to go in and “fix” God’s word.

Thing is, just by suggesting this project, they’ve created a massive contradiction that reveals the inherent guile of their intentions while fully obliterating any cogency of their their so-called religious beliefs.

See, as ironic as it is, the Bible wasn’t always a book. It’s second half, for example, started out as oral recitations composed and continually repeated by Christ’s disciples. Generations later, those recitations were committed to paper by men who never actually met their Messiah. Then, over the span of a couple thousand years, these writings were translated a gajillion times by people of dramatically variant levels of intelligence, bias, and mastery of ancient Greek.

As a kid growing up in a Christian household, I often wondered how anything written in the Bible could convey an idea that was even remotely similar to its original meaning. Considering that the phrase “typically nasty weather” becomes “tickle your ass with a feather” by the time it’s reached its twelfth set of ears, the very idea the Bible had any validity seemed impossible to me.

Then my mother explained to me that the reason the Bible was not subject to the errors of men was because God was all-powerful and would not allow it. She told me that the Bible was “the eternal and unerring word of God” and that I ought to avoid doubting the Lord. That satisfied me for many years. I have since come to find it is the go-to response to the Bible translation question.

Until now, that is.

What is so beautiful about the Conservative Bible Project is that it is based on the assumption that God is a fuck-up – that he is incapable of keeping us silly humans from bastardizing his Word. The defining statement of their mission is that “Liberal bias has become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations.”

Another way they could have said this is: “The single biggest problem with the Bible is that God has been unable to keep man from distorting it.”

So right off the bat, they admit their God is a failure. He can’t even stop us from putting words in his mouth, for crying out loud!

Too easy? Fine. We can go deeper. Let’s assume that Satan was cleverer than God gave him credit for (a lesser offense on God’s part, if still indicative of imperfection). We’ll say for the sake of argument it’s the devil’s fault there are “liberal” translations of the Good Book and that some remarkable Christian needs to step up and defend the integrity of his Savior’s conservative intentions.

 What qualifications, I wonder, does Mr. Schlafly have in translating ancient Greek texts and how many of the original scriptures has he personally studied at length? Does he have any renowned Bible scholars on his team? Can he readily see the glaring flaw in the logic employed by Thomas Aquinas to prove God? What is his IQ? (If that last question seems unfair, consider that he wants to call the Holy Spirit the “Holy Force”. o_O Bothered by this Yoda is… distresses him, it does!)

Hell, does he even know how long a cubit is and, if so, just how important does he consider that data to be? I have to ask because, from the standpoint of having to contain two of every single living thing for water transport, one would hope the Bible’s definition of a cubit would be a liberal one.

There’s no shortage of lunacy in Schlafly’s project to keep me going for a while. I could go off on how anti-intellectual it is to get rid of holy names like Yahweh and Jehovah or how revealing of their hypocrisy it is that they want to remove passages such as the one wherein Jesus tells a crowd to “let him who is without sin cast the first stone” at a suspected adulteress. I could tear apart the idea of hell as a direct contradiction to freewill or simply point out how Conservapedia denizens are so stupid and confused the notation “disfavored here” had to be added next to their link to their own Feminist Bible page.

But, the thing is I have a project of my own in the works I need to get back to. I’m currently in the process of fixing all the silly conservative rhetoric in Gray’s Anatomy. I personally think it’s time we gave things like tapeworms and corsets and lead makeup another chance.

*Andy Schlafly is the son of Phyllis Schlafly, a failed politician who did her hypocritical best in the 70s to stop the ERA even as she enjoyed a lofty career as an attorney.