BLOW UP YOUR T.V.

I've always adminred John Prine's work, both as a songwriter and performer.  Many years ago he wrote a song called Blow Up Your T.V., with these words: Blow up you t.v., go to the counry, build you a home.  Eat a lot of peaches, have a lot of children, they'll find Jesus, all on their own.  Well, it was something like that, and it was good advice, John, very good indeed.  But you could add to that these days 'cause the television isn't close to being as bad for us as all the other electronic gizmos we now have.  And it probably is just a Spanish pipedream to think we can do without them.  We've been victimized by the comforts of easy access.

My wife wanted a Kindle, so I bought one for her a few years ago.  She's had her nose stuck in it ever since, and not long after that, she bought me one.  That was a waste of time 'cause I hate it.  About all I've ever used my Kindle Fire for is to play Angry Birds and look up a few things on the internet.  I think it's a slick little device, but it's not a book.  It's not even close to being a book, and when I read, I like to hold a real book.  I like owning a real book, and I've got lots of 'em.  I've loved books since childhood when I was made to read them, and if I wouldn't do that, my mother read them to me.  Being introduced to literature is a good thing, and it doesn't hurt a kid to make them read something that's not on an electronic gizmo. 

There's never been a generation of kids who've had access to information like the current one, but I don't think we're getting much out of that as far as real learning is concerned.  I like some things of convenience, but too much of it is not good.  I used to complain and say, "Why do I have to read that?"  And my father would say, "To keep you from being a dumbass."  And as it turns out, I'm not a dumbass, and I owe that to reading.  You can't learn much without reading, especially if you are introduced to worthwhile literature.  Not everything in print is enlightening, and most people don't read to be educated.  They want to be entertained most of the time, but there's still the few out there who read to gain information.  Most of the really smart people I know are good readers, and although it's not a perfect system for gathering information, is way ahead of the next best thing.

We are not a nation of readers, and therefore we're nowhere close to being the world's most literate society.  Forget all the bullshit you've heard about American literacy and face facts.  My home state of Texas, a long way from being America's dumbest state, has a population approaching 25 million, and close to 40 percent of them can't read well.  A full 20 percent of this state's population is functionally illiterate, and you can add to that another 20 percent who can just read well enough to get by.  They can fill out job applications, write checks, and do other fundamental things, but they're not capable of reading anything that requires a thought process.  That's frightening because it means some states are worse off than we are.  But that same dumbass who can't read a decent book can sure watch television, of use a cell phone, or fart around with a computer. 

It gets worse.  Add into that forty percent of non-readers another hefty pecent that can read but refuse to do so because there's too many other easier ways to obtain information.  I'm not talking about people who can't read well because if you can't read, you can't use most of the easy access digital gizmos to much of an advantage.  But using those things turns us away from the book, the real deal, that thing with a cover and pages with printed words on it.  Yeah, words and not picutures or symbols or anything else that makes it easy on you to to learn.  If you don't get anything else I've written here, please get this: Learning shouldn't be easy and it doesn't have to be fun. 

So, are we having fun yet?  Learning anything?  Probably not 'cause this is the internet, you know.  It's easy, too damn easy.  If you want to do something good for the human race, buy a book - a good book.  But don't blow up your T.V., and you don't have to throw away your cell phone or Kindle or any other gizmo you rely on.  Just don't let the damn things rule your life.  Don't let them make you so brain lazy you can't read real literature . . . if that hasn't already happened to you.

IF YOU BUILD IT . . .

If you build it, they'll come . . . and tax the crap out of it.
If you build it, they'll come . . . and stick zoning rules on it.
If you build it, they'll come . . . and require a license for it.
If you build it, they'll come . . . and inspect it.
If you build it, they'll come . . . and charge big utility rates on it.
If you build it, they'll come . . . and . . .
Well, you know the story, right? 

THE MAN GOD FORGOT

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND GO TO FRANCE

I've never been to France.  I've never been anywhere outside the U.S. except to Mexico, and that was just over the border.  Like lots of other people, various obligations keep me tied down to where I can't travel much.  But I dream about it, and I do the next best thing.  I study about other countries.  That all started when I started taking graduate courses in foreign governments - Latin America, Europe, Russia, and even China.  And I got fascinated with geography somewhere along the way.  These days, I do a lot of traveling through Google Earth, and my number one destination is France.  I've been interested in France for a long time, and if I were a younger, less encumbered man . . . I'd be there in short order.

I wouldn't go to France for reasons most people go.  I don't want to be part of a tour group, don't want to sample wines, eat French cooking, or anything like that.  Id be more interested in seeing the countryside, meeting the people, and checking out the historical things.  But I'd be that way about any country.  I've always been interested in New Zealand, Norway, Austria, Morocco, Italy, and Spain.  I'd go there for the same reasons - to take a close look at they way they live.  We've got the mistaken idea in this country that we're the best at everything.  The French, for instance, are better than we are at health care.  They're better at taking care of their environment, and they're better at education.  I could go on and on about stuff like that, and you could make some comparisons where we do things better than they do. 

What I like most about the French is that they aren't American ass-kissers.  We like people who kiss our asses, suck up to us, act like we hung the moon . . . and they don't do that.  Lots of Americans don't like the French for that reason.  They don't always support our military interventions abroad, and that pisses us off.  We had an organized effort going on a while back, supported mostly by right wingers, to boycott French products.  But when it started becoming apparent to American consumers as to what they'd have to give up, that boycott failed.  Like any other American, I don't like to be looked down on, but I do admire the foreigners who don't kiss our asses.  I liked Hugo Chavez for that reason.  If my American pride was so fragile that criticism from someone like Chavez got me all in a twit, I'd be less a man . . . and less an American. 

Some of my best friends don't agree with me most of the time, and that's fine with me.  They've got their thing going, and so do I.  I like the French, and if they don't, that's their problem and not mine.  Maybe if I experienced living in France for a while, I'd change my mind . . . but I don't think so.  I seldom wish I was a young man again, but on occasions I think of what I could've done and didn't.  I should've gone to France a long time ago, but I didn't, and that's my bad.  What I did do, however, was stop thinking that we here in America are tops at everything, and I didn't have to go to France to learn that.

THE BEST ANIMAL ON THE PLANET

The best animal on the planet is a live one that is not endangered in any way.  And there's lots of endangered animals, and we're at the top of the list.  Yeah, humans, the most predatory of all animals, the top of the food chain, the smartest - and we're endangered because we treat the other animals mostly with contempt.  We eat them, enslave them, and pretty much use them any way we please . . . and it's killing us.

I love animals, just about all of them.  My favorite animal is probably the cat, and not just house cats.  I think they're the most beautiful animals on earth, with horses being a close second.  People?  We're ugly compared to most animals.  Plain as white paper at best, butt ugly at worst.  It's a good thing we're the smartest of animals because we sure won't win any prizes for looks.  And sometimes, I wonder if we're all that smart.  Would a smart animal eat itself to death?  Would it procreate itself into oblivion?  Would it screw up its enviroment to the point it can't live there anymore? 

Don't get me wrong because I'm not trying to say all animals are good animals.  They can go wrong just like people occasionally do; they just don't do it on a monumental scale like we do.  If you judge us based on Forest Gump's saying that stupid is as stupid does, we're the absolute dumbest of all animals.  And we're the most dangerous.  I trust most animals to do what they're supposed to because they've still got instincts.  We have the ability to reason, but we usually do a damn poor job of using it.  Don't believe that?  Be an observer of human nature and you'll discover how badly flawed we are.  Observe animal behavior and you might learn something.  The world of animals is a brutal world, a predatory one where the fit survives and the weak perishes most of the time.  We can domesticate animals and take some of that out of them, but they remain what they are - an animal. 

I've learned something from my association with animals.  Like all human beings, I have some big time flaws.  I don't really like people all that much.  I have some friends and family, and I love these people.  When it comes to people I don't know, I usually avoid them.  I love animals better than most people because I can accept them as what they are, and I've had difficulties doing that with people.  People piss me off, disappoint me, and I've been hurt more by people than animals.  Maybe that's because I understand that some animals are dangerous and stay clear of them, admire them at a distance.  I have a hard time recognizing that in people.  They don't look dangerous most of the time.  I can't look at a person and see them as a tiger, and they just might be more dangerous than any tiger ever had time to be.  But I'm getting better about recognizing good people as I get older.  And there are lots of good people in this world.

My doorbell rang the other night just about the time I was cutting myself a big slice of pumpkin pie.  So, I go to the door, and find a couple of young men standing there.  Mormon missionaries, same garb - black and white, dressed nice, and bearing backpacks with their religious progaganda.  And they're standing there smiling, like a couple of big dogs wagging their tails, and I said, "Do you guys like pumpkin pie?"  They said they did, so I invited them in for a slice of pie.  And they stayed for two hours, and we never talked about religion.  We talked about Utah and guitars and things like that, and it was a pleasant visit.  And before they left, I asked if they had anywhere to go for Thanksgiving.  They said no, so I invited them back to eat with us.  They accepted, and looked surprised in doing so.

I don't know much about Mormons, but I know that these young men aren't up to anything dangerous.  They're just doing a duty, fulfilling a requirement of their Church, and showing them a little kindness sure won't hurt me any.  These kids are a long way from home, and they run across enough hostility as it is without getting more of it from me.  If a dog wags his tail at me, I'm more than likely going to pet him.  I might be cautious about it at first, but if he shows me good intent, I take it as such.  Why should I be any different about people?  I'm not sure, but it's just possible that the best animal on the planet might be one with a tail.

THE LINE CAMP

It started as a guitar shop, but it has evolved into a home for refugee cats and lots of stuff.  It's an old house that was built sometime in the 1920s - just a little place of about a thousand square feet.  Someone added a room to the back later on, and that became home to my building tools.  I turned the rest of the place into a showroom for musical instruments, more space for working on guitars, an office, and a small den for just hanging out.  And, it's got a kitchen and bathroom.  I keep things there like vintage guitars, mandolins, fiddles, accordions, old cameras and movie equipment, and some old audio equipment.  It is also home to most of my cowboy collectibles - hats, chaps, boots, even a saddle and old rope.  Not many people get inside the Line Camp, but those who do say it's more like a museum than anything else.

And that's where Lionell, Urkle, Muffin, Lulu, Pekabo, and Yoda live - cats.  Good cats that don't destroy my stuff and get well taken care of.  I go there twice a day to feed them, and I spend some time each day playing with them.  Outside the Line Camp is more stuff - a flat bed trailer with lots of trash piled up on it, an old boat and motor, and a little SUV I bought back in 1984 . . . and some benches for working outside . . . and more cats.  Yeah, there's Big Mama, Ruty, Tinker, Toby, two full time kittens (Gidget and Gizmo), and four other kittens that show up most days.  Oh, yeah, and one chihuahua dog that mooches treats most days.  The Line Camp is therefore a cat rescue area.  Not that I need more cats.  I've got a dozen of them here at home, but they're big time spoiled cats and not like my cats across town.

It's hard to work on a guitar with a half dozen cats all over you.  Maybe you've noticed, but cats are curious critters, and these cats are only 7 months old.  I've got an older computer over there (still one of my favorites), but it's hard to write there for the same reason.  Once it gets colder outside, I'll take my laptop over there and work some (when I'm not in the shop working on guitars).  That's my domain, a place where everything is done the way I want it.  No woman to deal with there, no demands and no restraints.  Here at home, I'm under zoning restrictions when it comes to rooms.  I've got an office and a music room, and she's got the rest of the house.  I'm not complaining.  She puts up with me and my animal friends, and that's a biggie 'cause I'm a pain in the ass most of the time.  Actually, some of the cats here started life at the Line Camp.  And my son in Austin has four cats that came from the Line Camp.

I can build almost anything out of wood, not just guitars.  I've loved wood since I was just a small boy, and I can't remember a time when I didn't have a hammer, saw, and other tools to work with wood.  I've built furniture, cabinets, and even a few houses.  And I've been in love with guitars for a very long time.  I learned guitar making by reading and asking lots of questions, and my guitars are usually good instruments.  I once had ambitions of making money building guitars but gave up on that in a hurry.  Dealing with the demands of a buying public is irritating, even depressing, so I gave that up in favor of building guitars to keep.  I've given away quite a few, but most of them are right where they belong - either here at my house or at the Line Camp.

I build guitars for the same reason I write books.  I enjoy it.  In fact, without those two things, I'd have no interest in staying alive.  I'm old and time is short for me now, but I've still got work to do.  I want to have twenty books in print before I die (just got 7 now), and I want to leave behind at least 100 guitars.  My son is a guitar enthusiast, so he'll probably reap the harvest of guitars when I'm gone.  I tell people that I make guitars to last for a long time, maybe centuries if they're cared for.  The books I put in print might last longer than that.  My grandfather left me an old shotgun and a gold pocket watch, and I treasure both of them.  But what I treasure most about people is the memory of them, and having something they gave me jogs the memory.  I'll post some pictures of the Line Camp later on.

I HATE BLOGGING!!!

I try hard to get interested in this blogging crap, but my heart isn't in it.  It's not an old man's thing.  Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think old people read blogs.  In fact, I'm fairly well convinced that all this internet stuff is mostly a young person thing . . . and I don't have much to say to young people these days.  I spent most of my life talking to young folks, and that's because I was a college professor for a long time.  But that's over, and I'm out of the loop now with what's trendy and on the minds of younger people.  In short, I don't give a rat's ass anymore.  And that means I don't really have anything to say via the blog route that anyone out there would be interested in reading. 

There's a lesson here, maybe.  Uh, like, maybe I ought to just shut up and do something else with my time.  If and when I get a new book out, maybe I'll talk about that.  About a half dozen people might read it, the blog that is.  And that gives me even more of an excuse not to do it at all.  If I think of something to say, I'll scribble a note from time to time.  Otherwise, I'll just read a book or something
more mind expanding that this.

After two paragraphs, I'm already feeling too stupid to continue.  What was I talking about?