Defining  Music

At work I do a lot of thinking about the obscure and abstract. Being a janitor and all that allows me that luxury. So I’m absently cleaning one of the restroom I’m responsible for and in the background there are various music genres that play throughout the casino though most of the guests are more than likely to tune out the tunes. 

At any rate I’m thinking about how some artists get more airplay than others, and how some musicians’ are classed in one sub-genre rather than another. For example, Pat Benatar gets hardly any airtime on the radio stations I listen to, same as Joan Jett, both of which were extremely popular in the mid to late eighties. On the other hand I listen to Cyndi Lauper and Madonna incessantly here. Why? I have no idea. Neither are a big favorite of mine. 

What really strikes me as interesting are musicians such as Daughtry who used to get decent airplay on some stations but none on the alternative stations I listen to now. I’m sure it has as much to do with a radio station manager’s own personal bias of who he or she likes as opposed to how popular that performer is locally. 

I suppose had the Beatles not had Brian Epstein as their manager, but someone else, not nearly as good at marketing their brand, we may have never heard of them or been relegated to some obscure radio stations that had limited visibility. One has to wonder how many others out there were there that were just as good but lacked that one spark that set their star into the stratosphere and beyond. Be it a great agent, a perfect song or the times that evolved around them. 

As a writer I’m still searching for my brand to set me on a course for future success. I’ve been seriously doing this since my stroke in 2002, have four published or self-published books and a couple of short story entries in my resume, but nothing that screams greatness of the magnitude of a Stephen King or Robert Crichton or Anne Rice. I hope one day my ship will come and I can retire happily ever after. 

Space

As is my guilty pleasure for a nerd like me, I watched another episode of Nova last night. This time it dealt with advances in the physics of space. New and fun things called dark matter and dark energy. 

Like many of you who took Astronomy 143, we were just understanding relativity theory, space/time and gravity. The misconception of fifty, or in my case forty years ago was that space was basically a static unmoving entity; no more.  

According to the episode that theory went by the wayside some thirty years ago when physicists realized that galaxies that they observed were moving as fast at the outer rim of their rotations as the same stuff within the galaxy. The reason? Space is expanding and has expanded for billions of years, and most likely will continue well into the future, billions of years to come. 

Now the new and fun stuff is called dark matter and dark energy. The jury is still out as to what dark matter actually is, but in a quick and easy explanation it is that it is not visible to light, it is about 27 percent of the universe, while dark energy that represents 60 percent of the universe is the cement that binds the universe together or the whole show would fly apart. All the stars and planets and other stuff that makes up the universe is but five percent that we can actually see in the night sky. 

Back in the 90s I found a book called The Physics of Star Trek, which is a fascinating book by Lawrence M. Krauss, first published in 1995. It explores the scientific concepts behind the Star Trek universe, analyzing whether technologies like warp drive, teleportation, and time travel could exist within the laws of physics. 

Obviously, what wasn’t included was the concept of expanding universe, galaxies and dark matter because that concept hadn’t been broached at that time. I’m sure had Roddenberry known, there would have definitely been episodes of those topics included to allow Spock to consider the logic behind these new and fun ideas. 

Remembering an Old Friend

Now it’s going on what sixteen years? Anyway, his name was Steve McCollough, and he was my roommate for a number of years back in the early 90s. I lived at his house that was next door to my parents’ place in West Richland. Coincidence? Perhaps, but our lives intertwined from one extreme to the other. We became friends then departed ways, then roommates, then former  roommates, and so on until my sister called me that evening maybe three months after Mom died that he had passed too. 

It was one of those freak accidents we all hear about. You know, you’re home alone and you have to reach for something and get a step stool or chair, and you lose your balance and crash hard into the floor. In his case, a countertop ledge got in the way and his head struck that instead. One of his brothers, who lived near his apartment tried reaching him and got concerned when he didn’t get an answer, went to investigate.  

The news was a shock to say the least, especially for me and my sisters. Cathy as fate would have it, became more than just friends, eventually living with each other and becoming lovers, but that ended as most relationships pretty much do, including mine. 

His brother called my sister and told her the news that Steve was gone. She told me all about the funeral afterwards. I’m not sure if he even suffered but it was revealed he had probably been that way, lying on the kitchen floor for days. His father was devastated. 

Like me, Steve had a substance abuse issue. Drinking and smoking pot was par for him for a number of years. I don’t know if he ever quit. His brother told Cathy he was trying to slow down. I guess she informed Steve of my stroke and that scared the crap out of him. 

But, back in our roomy days, our concerns were work and after work, relaxing out on the back deck where we leaned on a bar top he built and watched the grass grow in the backyard, told stories and got high. 

We played Frisby on occasions when it was summer and warm in the evenings. One day he threw one up on top of the pump house’s roof, obviously out of my reach. Though Steve stood about three inches taller than me, it was out of his reach too. So he hoisted me upon the roof’s edge just enough for me to grab hold and then I threw the disc back out onto the yard. 

He then released his hold onto my foot and down I went, hearing a distinct pop of my left knee as my feet landed on the grass. I was in definite pain and reminded him I had to go to my two-week National Guard annual training the following Saturday.  

Now it’s thirty years later and that episode is fresh in my mind now that my left knee is messed up from my meniscus and my health insurance provider has denied my orthopedic specialist a claim to run an MRI to see how much damage and whether I’ll need surgery, I’m reminded of that summer evening with my friend who I miss so much. 

What Happiness Is 

I read a New York Times article that delve into happiness. It’s not just something obscure or esoteric, but something tangible that gives all of us a feeling of importance. But then the question remains, what is happiness? 

I read the article, and it was engrossing to say the least about how mankind has tried to define what it means to be happy. From philosophical to pragmatic to mathematical, and to marketing catch phrases, we all have sought to define what it means to be happy. 

In a Harvard study also published by the New York Times, happiness is defined as a long life well lived surrounded by family and friends. There was even a graph made that measures happiness on a holistic world view from many different countries from around the world that made these conclusions of how people see their personal level of happiness. 

The one thing I am wondering is how does one measure happiness on a scale? What factors are involved in such a statistical study of this nature? I guess if one’s personal wealth and social status are measurements, then people that are wealthy should be incredibly happy, yet how many people that are genuinely happy?  

I don’t know any rich people, happy or otherwise, growing up in lower middle-class family that struggled to make ends meet. For us happiness was being well fed, being with our family and hanging out with friends. Being rich wasn’t an attainable goal. The goal was just to have a nice job to have and buy my own home—live out the American dream. 

Happiness is as tangible as the nearest friendship, the next family reunion or homecoming game at Washington State University, my alma mater. I wouldn’t know how to live with myself were I was so rich that I could buy anyone or anything without worry. I am quite happy with a life well lived. 

About Assumptions

Last night, as usual I watched one of my favorite TV series, Nova. It dealt with how one group of people makes assumptions about another group, using varying methods to justify their beliefs or prejudices, using “experts” who may or may not know what they’re talking about, but like all lies espoused by narrow minded people, the louder the lie is told the more likely people will believe that lie. 

The program dealt with how African American people have been negatively affected with their health from medical professionals, called “Critical Condition.” It reached its zenith in 2020 when the Pandemic reared its ugly head and people of color were most affected by the Corona virus than white people. These people also were less willing to have vaccinations because they’ve been lied to so many times by doctors and the government that they rather take their chances not to be vaccinated. 

Assumptions are what people think of other people, mostly falsehoods that are perpetuated by one’s own set of beliefs. As Sherwood Anderson wrote in Winesburg, Ohio, beliefs or passions are grotesques that invariably negatively affect one group of people over another group based on that group’s preconceived notions.  

In my own short life I have dealt with assumptions based on me. Because I was born with a cleft lip and pallet, schools in East Wenatchee assumed I was not just physically challenged but mentally challenged as well and placed in Special Education where I was thrown three years back. My mother who also had the same birth defect, rarely if ever went to school. When she came to live with her aunt in San Francisco, she was fourteen and barely had a second-grade education. Her mother taught her to read and write. 

That’s just the beginning. I was consistently denied promotions to higher positions including leadership based on assumptions that I wasn’t capable or looked as if I had leadership ability, again based on my mode of speaking. Since my stroke I was denied better opportunities based on my physical abilities, assuming I was an invalid. 

People now ask me with hope in their voices when am I finally going to retire? They now assume I’m too old to work and must be placed out to pasture. I hope one day I can show these people how far off their assumptions were when I become that successful writer I dream of being. 

Anecdotes

Two of my team members and I shared stories that were our own personal experiences that we can laugh about now. 

My story revolved around the time I spent with my Uncle Lloyd at his homestead outside Jackson, Wyoming. It had been too hot to do anymore work in his log cabin and Uncle Lloyd suggested we go fishing at the Snake River. The actual headwaters aren’t far from his homestead, about sixty miles north. 

Anyway I spotted a spot that looked promising. There was this pool that looked deep and would certainly be a  possible boon for some trout to cool his fins in. I had no problem inching down to the ledge along a cliff face that was ten to fifteen feet up from the river’s surface. 

The pool was promising but not rewarding. I don’t know if it was the time of day, or if those fish just weren’t interested in worms dug up from the ground because I got zero bites. My uncle and aunt were equally skunked as they called down to me that they were ready to go. 

So I’m standing on that ledge and shrugged with resignation that the fish won this time, packed my gear and went back along the cliff face as I had done earlier. To this day, I still don’t know how I lost my footing and down I fell off the cliff and into that pool of cool water. Both the rod and tackle box was clutched with an iron grip by both my hands and using my legs pushed my body back to the cliff and proceeded back up that side until I got to the top and looked foolish, or at least I felt that way. 

“What happened to you?” Uncle Lloyd asked, though I’m certain by that foolish grin of his, he knew exactly what happened. After I explained to him, he burst out into laughter. 

My friend, fellow team member said, “Well, the same thing nearly happened to me.” 

“I was fishing along this lake bank, and I get hold of this big old Walleye. I grasped my pole with both hands and held on for dear life. I didn’t realized how slippery that bank was and fell forward into the lake. I did everything I could to keep that fish and bring it to shore. He was the heck of a fighter he was.  

“After I finally got him and put that fish in my cooler this guy comes along and says to me, ‘I wish I had a camera.” That was the funniest thing I ever seen. It would have been worth an entry on America’s Funniest Videos.’ 

After work my other team member told me about his dog but then switched to his cat. “We had this cat, black and with a white stripe along his head between his ears.” 

“Peppy Le Pew?” I asked. 

“Wait, it gets better,” he told me. “I could set my clock by this crazy cat. He would scratch at the door, go through the house, scratch at the back door and we have to go and let him out. 

“Every night he would do this. It wouldn’t matter, we would hear that cat scratching at the door and either me or my wife would get out of bed, stumble down to the hallway and let that cat in through the front door, then out the back door. He had our number to say the least. 

“Anyway, one evening, I’m hearing scratching at the door. I opened the door and let him in, and follow him out the back, open the back door and let him out. When I got back inside the living room, my son and daughter’s eyes were as big as saucers.  

“I asked them what was wrong?” 

‘Dad, you just let a skunk into the house.’ 

“Now could you imagine the possible disaster that would have wrought?” He asked as I laughed at this story.

Promotion Time

My loyal faithful readers, I have good news to share with you.  I am in possession of promotional material from my publisher, Austin Macauley. 

As shown in the pictures are posters, preorder forms, book markers and the book itself in soft cover. 

Four Seasons Book One: Edge of Darkness begins with a saga of Mark Marteau and Hector Gonzales opposing Che Lopez and his drug cartel.  

Mark Marteau has a meeting with destiny as he and his longtime partner Hector Gonzalez need to return to Todos Santos, Mexico and confront their archenemy, Che Lopez of the Lopez Cartel.  But there is another more pertinent reason that could throw the entire region into chaos, as a little-known terrorist group rears its ugly head.  

While Mark must deal with his own personal demons that make it known in the first of nine suspense-filled stories, Mark relives his past adventures from informant, then bounty hunter and finally FBI agent.  While Hector holds a secret he promised, he would never tell Mark that very well could end their friendship of over twenty-six years. 

“Four Seasons,” is the first of six novels whose sole theme is the sweet nectar of retribution. For Che Lopez, it is an all-consuming desire to satisfy this need, like an addict needing his narcotic to satisfy his craving.  As many of the characters find out though, revenge holds them in a grip far worse than any addiction to an opiate.  It becomes an all-consuming need that threatens to destroy them. And it is for this reason that Mark must never know this dark secret that Hector holds.  

In addition, hidden in the shadows is an organization whose so purpose is to terrorize countries into submission and fear.  Mark experienced them before, but now they are in Mexico ready to give new meaning to Day of the Dead.  

 I will have my web master set up a preorder through my website for you to get these books. They should also be available through Amazon and Austin Macauley’s website. 

Thanks again, my loyal readers for your support.

The Trip Home 

I still could not get my sister to change her mind about my new car, but like a lot of my friends told me, she does not have to drive it so no big deal. But the trip to my sister’s in Burley, Idaho was fun, and I enjoyed her company. 

I left last Monday morning to Spokane and was not too terribly concerned about the traffic since I left just after 7:30. Traffic was not an issue and even in a couple of places where road construction had enforced speed limit zones. 

No, most of the problems were with more than a fair share of truck drivers. There was a time not too long ago where truck drivers were very professional in their driving habits and skills, as well as their general attitudes that they had in their possession a forty-ton killing machine they had to control. 

The first incident occurred after the rest stop outside Buell. The trucker for some unfathomable reason drove his tractor and trailer on the inside lane of I-84. Faster drivers, like me, were forced to move in the right lane to pass this truck. 

After that there were no other issues until I was about five miles north of Ontario, Oregon. I was doing the posted seventy miles per hour speed limit when this trucker blew past me as though I was going fifty rather than seventy. He too was pulling a trailer and all I could figure was that he had to get somewhere fast. Not that a trucker should be bothered by a deadline. 

As it turned out I ended up passing him later near the concrete plant at Concrete. I spotted this same truck driver. The caveat being a drenching downpour and then snow squall that made driving white knuckle scary to say the least. As I was ready to pass this driver, he engaged his left turn signal, I assumed to get into my lane. I had to honk my horn, and he stayed in his lane until I passed him. 

Now this same driver, after getting off Dead Man’s pass, came barreling down the freeway again, passing me and everyone else as though we were bothersome slow pokes. 

I wonder where the speed traps are these days. It used to be that such reckless behavior was not tolerated by state and highway patrol troopers. One friend of mine thought these drivers are not educated to be safe and responsible operators like they were back when I was in my twenties. 

Have You Seen Master

Cosmo here again. I have waited for him to come home these past three days and nights. Master, he up and disappeared. POOF! Gone and I have no idea where he went to. I did noticed that he took that big blue box with him. I observed him placing his garments inside. 

Where could he have gone? He drove off telling me and bird he calls Elsa that he’s going to see his sister. I haven’t seen my sister since that girl took me over a year ago. The one calling himself Nicolas, has called out to me. I ignore him. I pretend to come toward him, then I feign and confuse him. Humans are so gullible! I just jumped over the neighbor’s fence and know if I meow loud enough she will come out and hand me a treat, so I won’t starve. But I hear Nicolas calling out more insistently. Maybe I should go and let him think I need to come in. 

I jumped back over the fence and sneak in like I do to Master. He always appears bewildered when I sneak in and he’s still calling for me as if he is completely oblivious of my fleet paws pouncing and bounding inside unnoticed. I do just that. It helps that it’s dark out and he appears more frustrated than normal. Once again my stealth has the human caught flat footed as I spy the food dish sitting on the countertop. I leap gracefully onto the counter and proceed to eat the kibbles in a ravenous manner. I didn’t realized how hungry I was. 

Nicolas has taken a picture of me eating. Can’t I have a moment of privacy please? I look up and glare at him. He chuckles, rubs my chin and ears just like Master does, then he leaves with me inside alone! 

“What do you mean alone? I’m here dummy.” 

I look over and spot Elsa’s presence in the dark trailer we share with Master. “Oh you, sorry I was hoping he took you and I could be done with you forever.” 

“No such luck, pal. As a matter of fact I may well outlive you and Master calling himself Jerry. I’m still a youngster compared to you two. I’m expected to live at least another thirty years. You, you will be lucky to live past eighteen. Master Jerry is already old and might live another twenty or more years.” 

“Have you seen Master?” 

“Of course not. He said before he left he was going to his sister’s. I had a sister once, but I haven’t seen her since we were chicks. Besides, he’ll be back. He always comes back after leaving for many days.” 

“Well, hopefully he’ll be back soon. I miss him.” 

“Well, he’ll show up and all will be well again.” 

Another Positive Review

““I carry in my satchel many secrets I wish to reveal between now and when he will make his confession known to me.”

Albert’s decision to take a life was made with intended malice. A doctor couldn’t save his daughter’s life, so the pain that Albert experienced needed to be felt by the doctor. He targeted the doctor’s daughter and snuffed out her life with no remorse. Years removed from this premeditated act, Albert Peabody is living out his golden years in a psychiatric hospital where he is confessing his past crimes to his doctor. As Albert reveals his pathological nature to the doctor in painstaking detail, the doctor has questions of his own about what drove Albert to these heinous acts. Albert’s crimes have been concentrated for decades, and his cunning mind has helped him elude capture. However, now Albert is being held accountable for his nefarious deeds.

A voyage into the sinister mind of a killer proves both disturbing and illuminating in this mystery/thriller narrative. Albert’s disclosures reveal a detestable human being who whitewashes his ghastly crimes due to grievances, real or perceived, with either the victim or the victim’s kin. Albert’s doctor believes he can see through Albert and that Albert’s motives may not be as clear as Albert has conveyed. The question of Albert serving as an unreliable narrator surfaces from time to time, conjuring a comparison to American Psycho and where Albert’s confession will ultimately lead. The mind games played between the killer and his doctor form the dramatic dynamic in this story and propel the plot forward to a fulfilling conclusion. This story is intended to leave the reader unsettled and succeeds on multiple levels.

Book review by Philip Zozzaro
RECOMMENDED by the US Review