Zappa.com

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All right...this is really a good series, the latest entry just released




I'm trying to decide which is my favorite modern day series, this one, or..



I think Destiny's Crucible is the best one, it starts our just fascinating, but it's building a foundation, it's amazing how it seems as though it could have really happened, and you never has so much fun with muskets and trying to figure out why you can pour a 6 pounder cannon, but the 12 pounders always explode... Then when the action does hit later, in Destiny's Crucible, it's sustained, non-stop for 1/4 of the book...as compared to Expeditionary force which is briefer action, but all the way through, and really cool humor.

The Old Man's War Series is up there too, vying for a top 3 spot.



But I'd guess I'd say Destiny's Crucible is the best series in the last decade or more... It's a close choice, but for it's realism, it wins

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Lesser-evilism is war.

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Hey Punk, where you goin' with that passport in your hand?

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Lesser-evilism is war.

Good read but goes all over the place sometimes and you have to put it down to breathe.


The history of electronic music from the invention of electricity to the advent of digital music production. Fascinating read, this should be translated because it's the bible of electronic music.

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"Welcome to the Frank Zappa Memorial Country Club & BBQ" at wgt.com 75 members and counting.

^^^Wondering if it talked about early (perhaps "Grandfather-of" electronic rock), Simeon Coxe, (b4 Emerson).

He's still performing today (I saw him in Boston 2 years ago), but in the 60's he hooked up a dozen oscillators and some other home brew effects, and started rockin(:

His latest album is my favorite, although the earlier SA albums have memories. He's quite a poet. On Clinging to a Dream, the lines are blurred between his poetry, his voice, and his instrument...which is loosely called The Simeon. While listening you almost forget there are no keyboards on here...until the next song starts...and you think, oh yeah, that's Simeon, he can do anything

The first version (pictured below), got washed out into the Gulf of Mexico during Katrina.




Here he is performing today:




Here is a song, THE RAIN


from the 2016 album: Clinging to a Dream

BTW, the only other instrument on the album is samples from his bandmates' Danny Taylor's drum kit. They were a duet, (Danny joined him after playing with Hendrix in before The Experience). Danny had an amazing style, and is worth a journey in itself:


Danny's Drums...Fire Ant Noodle

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Lesser-evilism is war.

Nothing on Coxe, the book does not dwell much on the users of the machines, but more so on the adventures of the inventors. Lev Termen (inventor of the Theramin) or Laurens Hammond get whole chapters about their inventions. There is also mention of the synclavier and Zappa's use of it.

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"Welcome to the Frank Zappa Memorial Country Club & BBQ" at wgt.com 75 members and counting.

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This one to get a better understanding of what my ancestor in 1655 was doing in the Quebec/New France area, (and trapping the inland waterways across the great lakes, (I'm 1/64 Algonkian, a tribe that got meshed with the Huron)).

This novel is about a similar emigration (France-Canada) who came to the same area a little later, and it's about what life in the forest was like.

Interesting, my paternal side ancestors came from France to New France, the same area as this book, and then down through New England...the book is by Annie Proulx, and in a Y37 marker DNA test came up with a Denise Proulx as a second cousin...

...lol, somebody from her family was doin the hanky-panky with someone from my family in the woods!






Thanks for the tip The_Arcadian_2, I did it a couple of weeks ago.



Points on nuclear winter from even a "small" exchange could actually be the end of the species, and that we've come so close so many times...lol, "It can't happen here." Double lol, it might be the end of the world, but it's a less evil end of the world.

The latest Trillion dollar US nuclear weapons upgrade focus' on small nuclear devices which can use small, traditional delivery systems...so if we launch a conventional weapon, the other side would have no way to know if it was nuclear or conventional... the retaliation could be a nuclear retaliation strike on a conventional US first strike.

Besides, a trillion dollars for nuclear upgrades, don't we have medical bills?

Just what the world needs, another trillion dollars worth of nuclear weapons.

I'm thinking about changing my signature to "Lesser-evilism is terrorism."

Masters of War - Bob Dylan

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion'
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud


You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead

"The United States has the largest military budget by far, larger than Russia and China combined. Yet we are adding money to a Pentagon budget already bigger than it was in comparable dollars at the height of the Cold War. That doesn’t make sense.

The U.S. has the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world. We have weapons that could literally destroy the world, unleashing a deadly nuclear winter. Yet President Barack Obama and now Trump committed to spending over a trillion dollars on another generation of nuclear weapons. That doesn’t make sense." FULL STORY HERE

"And we are so dumb, they're lining up at our door."

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Lesser-evilism is war.

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Lesser-evilism is war.

USA trilogy: John Dos Passos

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" . . . On the outside now . . ."

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T. H. Huxley (1825–1895) was Darwin's bloody-fanged bulldog. His giant scything intellect shook a prim Victorian society; his “Devil's gospel” of evolution

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" Music is the only religion that delivers the goods " FZ

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"bit of nostalgia for the old folks."

Best book ever...

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I'm petulant, and I'm having a frenzy...

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"bit of nostalgia for the old folks."

This is a great book!

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Hey Punk, where you goin' with that passport in your hand?

Ok, book 1 was getting a little wordy, but now it's getting really good

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Lesser-evilism is war.

Finished a Penguin collection of short stories by Honore de Balzac.
Here's a review I wrote for it,

Nice brief collection of a dozen stories of this 19th c. master. Standouts include "Domestic Peace" (1829); "The Red Inn" (1832); "La Grande Bretèche" (1832); "The Atheist's Mass" (1836).
Balzac again shows his wide-ranging skill in eliciting time, space, character, emotion, action, dialogue and setting them all into tumbling motion, and does so in so many various settings one wonders how it's even possible. Everything is present and not just present, but immediate, and not just immediate for the reader, but needed for this author's plot. And there he is again, peering over your shoulder telling you, 'No, it's not like that. There's yet more detail you haven't heard yet."

If he starts in a bucolic domestic scene, whether in the city or the country, he is as likely to end in tragedy. If the intrigue is set in war, or violence, the characters still strive for honor, consistency. But the honorable fail just as well when they strive too far, or too much. The humble and ever-persevering may just as well come to the end of their rope and die forgotten but for this author's tale.

If the story starts with a crash there will be surprising heroines who care. If the misanthrope seeks a way out, there will be a cunning practitioner of well-oiled arts. Knowing just what to say, and when: the stranger becomes confidante, the diffident becomes enthused, the passer-by gets caught up, as the reader does, then Balzac zigs when we would zag, and we tumble further in his mesh. Resolutions as such become less important in these far-reaching chases. Old stories when finally told overtake present events and move both the hapless and the determined into uncertain futures. Well-worn lies turn out impossibly to be what's told to maintain integrity and character. Hard-set intellectual convictions become fertile ground for new emotional flourescence.

The senses continually overwhelmed, the poesies and costumes, the summer air and rain, the wooden tables, the dripping tallow, the cramped carriages, horse's sweat, a ruined garden, the scent of myrrh, a coat with missing buttons, rusty sheep shears, a finely wrought door knocker, all make the scenes lived in, and present as a gleaming eye and frosted breath.

The dialogue which as well can go on for pages yet, gives up just enough to make the reader wish for more. The protective, so careful wariness of court, or city street, or tavern, gives way to heated exchanges on the slightest of pretence. The sceptic old widow, the impassioned young bumbler, the weary untried soldier on his nightly rounds, a merchant at table, a curious tourist, a pompous left-adjutant, you never really know where things will get them when they bump against another in a hotel landing, or a doctor's office, or a damp stone hallway, an awkward crooked staircase, or an uneven table set with chips and cards. The game is set for what will be revealed and what kept hidden.

Yet these tales aren't about short-sighted goals of who will win or lose, or breathe their last, or begin anew. The morals and the cautions pile up on every page in stunning revelations - how can he say that in so few words? - but even though his age yearned for these gnomic maxim, Balzac toys instead with more delicate matters of the heart, leaving convictions of a lifetime discarded in a pile of mulch, or thrown out like three-day-old lilies. What lingers instead is clearest air and sparkling water, ripest fruit, dazzling sun and deep within, the most insistent human yearn, a noisy bellows of passion, craft, curiosity. He reveals us.

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" . . . On the outside now . . ."

Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari

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No doubt, we're doomed !
For a real Democracy: abolish Electoral College