I felt very useless and depressed when I got up yesterday, but somehow I got tons of things picked out of the warehouse (except for one little gadget I can't find and 50/50 will find today) and by the time Ken came by I had cleaned up and listed 9 large things (it was going to be 10, but one thing is a treasure cave of tubes and neat parts so I decided to part it out) and had those all put away, had cooked and eaten my dinner (salmon miso soup) and had the place neat and squared away.
Ken even came by early and of course had more stuff to dump on me like some motors, a big CO2 laser, and other assorted junque. Some of it really was junk.
We hung out and he had tea and we talked about the usual assortment of things like why mom'n'pop restaurants go downhill, and we watched some Money Python and Saturday Night Live videos and had some laughs. He left at 11:30 which was about an hour earlier than he often leaves.
I must have felt energized by the socializing because I took the outer covers off of the thing I'd decided to part out, and took the big laser apart, and took some other stuff that was just junk, and put it out by the trash enclosure.
I was awake around 10, did this deep breathing stuff I've discovered makes me feel better, and just relaxed, then got up at noon because I wanted to see if the junk had been taken. Nope. Lazy bums are lazy. There are usually types who go through with a truck or even a truck and trailer and pick up stuff because the HVAC place a few doors down tosses out things all the time. But I think by 1 or 2AM they'd done their circuit and the stuff will be there until after working hours tonight when it'll get picked up.
I've been really getting into the band They Might Be Giants, the leading duo of which are, I believe, a couple years older than I am. And still having fun, apparently. Years ago, from the very late 90s to the early 2000s I was really into a bad called Man Or Astro-Man and it's a neat band. But they were really only active for maybe 5 years. Another musician I was really into before that was Joshua L. Pearson who fronted EBN/Emergency Broadcast Network and still seems to be putting out videos but he's pretty obscure.
Rated in terms of "playfulness", I'd say Man Or Astro-Man is least, then Joshua L. Pearson, then The Beatles, then They Might Be Giants. One of the things that made The Beatles great is they could be playful. Songs like Penny Lane and The Octopus's Garden were just plain playful. There was a lot to worry about in the 1960s/early 70s like being drafted, serious riots and demonstrations, The Bomb, and Paul Ehrlich had just put out a blockbuster book about another bomb, of the population variety. A lot of other bands really tried to be playful, but The Beatles meant it.
OK it might have helped that The Beatles were filthy rich, but the humor and playfulness was pure Liverpudlian working-class cheerfulness in spite of it all.
This is what They Might Be Giants have managed to do. Songs like "Dr. Worm" and "Ana Ng" show that you can really make a song about just about anything, or nothing. They're an inspiration to me.
One idea that seems to keep coming up in Buddhism is that a person is not the same person over time. You're not the same person at 20 you were at 15, or at 50 when you were 40 and so on. Change is permanent. So I notice I really got into Man Or Astro-Man? which were basically about "Surf guitar and space tech R cool" in other words, heavy metal for nerds. And now I'm really interested in a band that has ideas. Even the way they've kept going for the last 30+ years is a work of art.
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