Trying to Stop being Clever

I'm glad someone is thinking beyond Drake's Equation and considering more aspects of the possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations. But there is something they don't seem to be considering (I wonder if they are). It may seem juvenile to bring up dinosaurs, but there, I just did. In considering the evolution of an intelligent life form, and the development of civilization, do they consider the role that dinosaurs played? When narrowing down the likelihood of a life form going through a similar process as Earth humans did, you have to recognize that the odds of the catastrophic event that killed the dinosaurs happening on these other planets at around the same time in the evolution of said sauropods would be very slim. So, on a planet similar enough to Earth, where similar events have taken place in the evolution of life, doesn't that suggest that something akin to dinosaurs would develop first? With the unlikely event of a catastrophic end mirroring that on Earth tak

I know there are ways to buy notoriety and recognition, but I'd rather earn them honestly, by having people decide they like me rather than shoving me down their throats so they have no choice but to recognize me, to then have me "grow on you." Do I want success as a musician? Yes, that would be nice. Do I want superstardom? No, I'm pretty sure I don't. How, then, would I define "success"? Well, I feel I am successful in life. Heck, I've even been successful as a musician, in that I've learned to play and continue to improve, I've performed for people and had positive reactions. I've even sustained myself financially as a member of a music group. The only thing I have yet to do is to provide for my family by way of playing/writing music. That's still my eventual goal, however long that takes. That's the dream. The question lingers about whether, once it becomes my "job" will it then feel like a burden and ruin it for me.

I want to tell you about my friend. My friend is a very talented instrumentalist. I met him a long time ago, a guitar player, a friend of friends of my brother's. After just hanging out and partying, like amateur rock-and-rollers did in the '80s, we ended up together around a cassette 4-track machine. He recorded one of my songs. It was one of the first times I can remember that someone else showed an interest in my music. Later on, it happened that we were in touch and decided to form a band. I still had my songs, and he still had an interest. Chocolate Zulu was born. Existing in the dining room of a house in Monrovia, CA (211 S. Alta Vista Ave), Chocolate Zulu wrote, played and recorded around the Los Angeles area for maybe a year and a half, two years. After that I moved to Atlanta. I had tons of new material from a musically active period, and I recorded a whole new collection of songs ( Up From Here ). I played around with the songs at open mic nights around the city, a

The Rosemarys was a band from San Francisco in the '90s known for their light-tastic live shows. They were generally categorized as "Shoegaze" in style (Wikipedia calls then "shoegaze-dreampop"). I had never heard of them when I used to trade cds at my local used record shops, and I came across a used copy of their second, eponymous album. Some of these shops had listening stations where you could sample the used product before buying it. I picked up "The Rosemarys" based on the cover, and I went and put on the headphones. The vibro-guitar and the understated vocals grabbed me immediately, and I bought the disc. I, too, was dreaming of Manchester, and it really "struck a chord" with me. This was in the '90s (they were probably still playing shows at the time) before the internet was a household thing, so all I knew about them was what was printed on the sleeve of the cd (come to think of it, I might have started with a cassette and bo

It disturbs me that people ignore serious side-effects of leadership on the presumption that they are getting what they want. People turn a blind eye to one or more drastic things because they believe they're getting what they want on one or two other issues. This is partisan politics, I guess. We need to burn this whole shitshow down. I know people like to feel a part of something, a member of a team, accepted on some level. Because of this, people allow their opinions to be informed, if not formed, by the collective opinion of the group. Because of this, and because of the wide variance of the two invisible ends of the sociopolitical spectrum, people get buried in a belief system that they may not even understand or recognize. All they know is what they've been raised to believe, and that others are the enemy. The first thing we learn about politics is that we oppose each other. It's important to recognize that we disagree, but it's also important to learn how to do