Laid Bare: Alles Neues

Tell me this shouldn't be interstitial music for BBC News. No, go ahead. I can take it.

A short clip using a nifty bubbly synth arpeggio track in Ableton.

Laid Bare: Sure, leave.

Finally, some sound up in this piece!

This marked the first time I was happy with using an electric guitar patch as a melodic lead. Might not sound like a big deal, but truth be told, I'm a picky son-of-a-bonchhozzle.

Clicky below for the rest of the story.

Laid Bare: Almost Time.

From Things Laid Bear

They're calling for 6-12" of snow before Wednesday passes.
They got me thinkin', they got me thinkin'.
What album is right when Winter is fleeting?

Tweet? Twaaaaaaaaaat?

A big hey-hey to anyone who landed here via Twitter! There will eventually be some stuff here. Stuff worth checking out. Mark it.

Pay it Forward and Back Again: An Oso's Tale.

While driving home from work one day, Don Oso decided he'd take his chance at listening to some AM radio. AM radio, he thought to himself, is like "the other white meat." Well, he thought, not so much like the "other white meat," but like the actual phrase "the other white meat." Everyone always knew that pork was there with its curly tail and squeal-of-being-eaten delightful tenderness; it took a mad-hatted genius in an ivory tower somewhere to coin a phrase that both promoted itself and yet deferred superiority to another animal's flesh. How polite.

After briefly chastising himself for allowing his mind to wander on such mental fodder for too long, he remembered the point of the whole excursion; AM radio is a lot like pork, or at least its famous catchphrase. But by now, Don Oso had forgotten the point of it all as he was supremely impressed by the advertisement he was hearing for a company that could "eliminate the tax debt that YOU owe the government!"

"Fantastic!" thought Don Oso! "I can finally get out from under these tax liens!" He marveled at the thought.

So, Don Oso arrived home, picked up the phone and called the tax-debt-relief lawyers. They explained that previous clients, clients who owed the Federal Government over $40,000, settled their debts at pennies on the dollar, paying Uncle Sam merely hundreds of dollars instead of the tens of thousands that they owed.

How did it work? Simple! Don Oso simply had to sign a contract stipulating that he would pay the lawyers a percentage of the amount that they were able to negotiate off of his back taxes, which Don Oso was assured could be a 5-figure number. So, after some discussion, assurances and platitudes, Don Oso signed a contract and went home to wait.

Six months passed, and Don Oso was tired of collectors calling his home a few times a day, trying to collect money for services rendered by some law firm that claimed he owed them 6% of $80,000. As he was driving home that day, he decided to test the waves of AM radio again, as he was wont to do. While listening to a captivating advertisement for debt-consolidation services, a service he would call when he arrived home that evening, he couldn't help but experience deja-vu as his mind was inexplicably fixated on sweet-and-sour pork.

Laid Bare: A Primer

As I toy with a better layout for this space, allow me to introduce the "Laid Bare" tag. Simply put, it'll be a photo that I've taken or a clip of some music that I've composed. You should be able to filter by the tag "laid bare," in case you REALLY get interested in seeing the non-wordy creative content on this blog.

Laid Bare: Before the Fall

From Things Laid Bear

Meet the autumn Aspen. Clicky for biggie(r).

Lost in Thought

So, it was a prematurely snow-bound weekend in NoCo. By snow-bound, I mostly mean "a long-awaited quiet day spent inside." Because the Osita and I had a late (and big) breakfast, we weren't really hungry enough to rationalize a gut-busting dinner. So we made popcorn.

The Osita chose to season hers with olive oil and "Italian seasoning," while Don Oso chose a more fitting and malodorous blend of Parmesan cheese and Cholula. The next thing I know, The Osita was calling me back to reality with that ever-so-familiar question: "Honey, what's on your mind?"

Apparently, popcorn physics was on my mind. I had drifted off into a fantasy challenge issued by a king of some far off medieval land. The king had issued a decree, challenging his underlings to separate his popped corn from the mandible-cracking unpopped kernels that remained on the bottom of whatever grail or platter he consumed his popcorn out of.

The challenge was this: it was apparently not fitting for the king to separate his popcorn by use of something like a prospector's pan, where the unpopped gold would simply fall through the bottom of a screen leaving his majesty's buttery treasure behind. No, this particular (imaginary) patriarch wanted the popped corn to escape through the top of a device, leaving the waste kernels behind. Why? I don't know. But for some reason, I felt up to the challenge and I told him so.

That's when the king added the following provision: the popcorn must escape this sorting device unscathed. Even damaging a single kernel would result in beheading. Throwing caution to the wind, I replied, "no problem."

So, I unveiled my device to the king. Immediately, the fan-blade mechanism at the bottom of my popcorn-sorting device knocked one lobe off of a popped kernel. Before that damaged morsel hit the ground, my head did.

That's when I heard The Osita ask, "Honey, what's on your mind?"

Don Oso = Mister Bear