Making music with frying pans

My latest fun page is Project Gutenberg. Everything is free. But it has led me to an even more enjoyable set of pages.

I drive about two hours each way to work. It feels like when my father told me he had to walk five miles everyday to school, and that it was uphill coming and going. There is only so much music to which I can listen. So now I have joined the geekish world of audio books.

I thought I had to wear sweater vests or have “Radio Shack Sales Associate” on my resume to listen. Besides the highly unorthodox bit torrent sources for current books, through Gutenberg I have found a few sources that do not have me wondering whether the DOJ will be doing a house invasion to execute a search warrant to inspect my CD collection. These books are all public domain.

Audio Books for Free dot com has a collection of just under 800 books that are categorized well. I haven’t downloaded from them yet. The download is free, but they do offer to make the CDs for you for a fee.

LibriVox is a cool site. Lots of books that you can listen to on-line or download. To download, right click on the file and hit “Save target As.” I got the unabridged Tom Sawyer in maybe 30 minutes tops. Files came without a hitch.

I haven’t hit this third place yet – LiteralSystems dot org. I am sure that the three sources overlap in their offerings, and this last site doesn’t have much to offer yet. A lot of the books are for kids. Overall, the design is nice and I am sure that the catalogue will expand over time.

There are a lot of Mark Twain books and essays on the three sites. I wonder if he was as cool as history paints him to be. Either he was real street people, fun and easy to be around, or he was a complete pompous ass. Seems to me that the middle ground is not apropos. Since Karl Marx completely missed the concept of a middle class, the single defining element of developed societies, why do these sites have the Communist Manifesto? The man was a buffoon, a social and political liberal … oh, yeah, got it. Sorry. Now I understand.

I saw Robin Trower last night in Allentown at the Crocodile Rock Cafe. It was amazing. A complete flashback 30 years. Robin is 61 – born the same day as my daughter, March 9, but 46 years earlier. He looks like he needs a blood transfusion to shock his anemia into remission. But can he play! I remember listening to Bridge of Sighs when it first came out (1974). And listening. And listening. I had it all inside my head. Every note. Perhaps a third of his song list was from that album. He has the same lead singer as he did then, too. An elongated leprechaun that seems to want to break into that Irish step dancing thing all the time but knows he can’t because Robin is English and would kick his Irish ass. The bassist was Dave Bronze. I can’t judge quality on a bass, but if he is good enough to play with Robin and Eric Clapton, then I can’t argue. The drum kit was very cool, and the guy whacking them (Pete Thompson) was great.

I was interested to watch myself regress to some of my earliest memories. Age 15 is about as young as I care to reflect upon. I watched my hands move as they did back then. I saw my mind go isoelectric to all but the music. That singularity is rarely achieved in my life. The only other time I achieve that is when I feel completely safe and relaxed. Safety was not at hand last night, but perhaps it was the music that supplanted it. Music from a long time ago.

The venue was good in that it was small; better because we were leaning on the stage. My boy got dizzy at one point, and I walked him towards the side. A staff member came up and was incredibly helpful. The staff were friendly throughout the place. I was impressed. Too bad most of their music is just noise.

One key element was missing last night, one that would have made the night complete. But more on that another time.

When murdering your spouse or live-in significant other, it is always important to be aware of how the cops will view your actions. Statistics are always good to know. Here is a good article on methods used in domestic homicides.

Blunt objects are used only about 2% of the time. To me, that suggests an opportunity to view a death as non-wrongful if the modus operandi is fatal whacking with such an object. The first issue is to create an environment within which a blunt object, such as the frying pan discussed in the article, could be airborne with the appropriate direction and velocity. (The former subsumes victim location is a given.) The point of impact, presumably, would need to be the head. An alibi, in this instance a location different than the point of origination of fatal launching, is also needed. This requirement suggests either a remote launching or a static design waiting to be tripped.

So how could one launch a frying pan in such a fashion? I like suspended pan racks. The fatal movement would then be downward, able to add the 16 feet per second force added by gravity. The rack could also be located behind the stovetop, thus adding the critical piece of victim location. The two issues of remote launching and alibi could be aided by a cheap computer camera viewed over the internet from a public library.

I could go into more details, but I think you should work it yourself. I do not want you to be angry with me when you get 20 years to life for screwing it up.

Old teeth are weird. Took them right out of his mouth, or what was left of it after 200 years.

I’ve been reading this blog lately. I think she’s pretty funny.

I was going to write more, but just realized what time it is. I gotta go to bed. Up at 430AM. Night.