HolyMoly

Does that include fees and excise taxes? Even if so, that's $13 more per month than Vonage's most expensive plan. But even if you have their 2 cheaper plans with a 500-minute anytime/anywhere limit, they have a way around that. Let's say you have a friend or relative you call most often who lives in Bangor, Maine. For $4.99 extra per month, you can establish an ancillary number in Bangor ... allowing your friend/relative to call you "local." Not sure about you but, frankly, I'm not on the phone that much. I'd have to talk on the telephone an average of 17 minutes a day before I'd exceed the 500 free minutes of their cheapest plan. And, if I got their $24.99 plan, I can't foresee in my WILDEST dreams spending 17 minutes a day for a whole month talking long distance. And, even if I exceeded the 500-minute limit, long distance calls after that are only billed 3.9 cents a minute.

If you're still scratching your head, a brief explanation. VOIP is simply an acronym for "Voice Over Internet Protocol." Comcast and a number of other major players have either launched or will be launching services allowing broadband users to make and receive telephone calls over their Internet connection. No, I'm not talking about wearing headsets and such. I'm talking about plugging a real telephone into a special box (that's plugged into your cable/DSL/T1/T3 connection). When someone calls you, the telephone rings. When you want to call someone, you pick up the telephone and hear a dialtone, and dial your number. Baby-Bell companies and long-distance providers are literally shaking in their boots ... or trying to diversify into VOIP before they go the way of the dinosaur. I'm going to be moving to a bigger house in about a week or two and went to Comcast to see if they offered VOIP yet. They do, but only in selected areas in my locale ... and my new location isn't one of them ... yet. Until then, the only option I know of is a company called Vonage.com. Vonage currently offers 3 plans: (1) $14.99 monthly - 500 minutes anytime/anywhere in the USA/Canada. (2) $24.99 monthly - unmetered local/regional calls + 500 minutes anytime/anywhere in the USA/Canada. (3) $34.99 monthly - unmetered calls anytime/anywhere in the USA/Canada. And, all plans include the following add-ons FREE OF CHARGE: voicemail, caller ID with name, call waiting, call forwarding, and call transfer. Anyhoo, I've been checking my local phone bills lately through my Baby-Bell provider ... and noticed that my costs for basic-basic service exceed the cost of Vonage's most expensive plan (ahem, don't forget to add in all those fees and taxes that VOIP users are exempt from). And, I've been thinking of taking the plunge into the future. BUT ... before I do, I'd like to ask anyone here if they've had any experience with a "true" VOIP provider. Advantanges? Disadvantages? Let me know.

The RIAA (grin). Take a good look at the catalogs of these online download services and count the number of non-RIAA-label songs you have access to. Then count the number of songs you have access to that the major labels no long produce for sale (ie., oldies ... especially the ones that didn't top the charts). Hehe, still counting on only one hand? Seriously, I've not seen any legal online download service realize the "dream" of music consumers - namely, an unlimited selection of songs from all artists (notice I didn't say "labels") willing to submit them - including selections that can no longer be bought in a retail store.

Until my dying day, I will never buy a computer from a retail seller, online or storefront. I'll go to a local-area "computer builder" and have a system built with interchangable parts ... and a "guru" I can call during office hours ... or visit during office hours, even if the computer I end up with costs more money and comes without all the retail-hyped "Great software we just know you'll love" as part of the "package." Gurus have solutions. Companies have "policies."

I'll believe it when I see it and so far I haven't seen it. For $11.95, you can buy a legal utility called Total Recorder from http://HighCriteria.com that captures a digital audio signal on its way to a sound card and saves it as a WAV file (a WAV file that can be burned to a CD and will never expire) as you're listening to the sound.

Enya has never been a "New Age" performer. It's just that the industry that sells her music classified it that way ... which she finds offensive. Check out this briefie from her interview:

... or the latest attempt by Jackson's legal team to find out what they're up against. Jackson hired a private investigator months ago when the boy's mother first complained of Jackson serving her son wine ... and they've surveilled her ever since (which is why Jackson's legal team was able to start slamming her early). But, at the same time they raided the Neverland Ranch, they also raided the private investigator's office looking for evidence. This might very well be a "quid pro quo" on the private investigator's part.

I saw them, too ... a bit further back in the auditorium, though. I started listening to them when they released "Heavy," their first album. And, I consider one song on that album, "Iron Butterfly Theme," to be one of the first songs (if not THE first) that could easily fall into the "heavy metal" genre. CLICK HERE for a short sound-byte of "Iron Butterfly Theme" from CD Universe. Braunn wasn't with them at that point, though. Danny Weis was on guitar with Jerry Penrod on bass, replace by Lee Dorman on "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida."

This 3-CD set comprises the 4 albums released on the Reprise label ... and previously unreleased music they'd recorded for Atlantic. The 4 Reprise albums were titled Tenderness Junction - It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest - The Belle of Avenue A - and Golden Filth. It was in stock, then out of stock, and now scheduled for a re-release on Christmas Eve Day! It's a bit spendy but I may go for it. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...id%3D1070158601

An Interview. Belgium. December 14, 1988 Enya - Ireland is full of mysticism, mysterious stories, folklore and old histories. Because of Gaelic being such an old language, these stories have been passed on from generation to generation. Luckily this region has preserved it's character and peculiarity, maybe because there was nothing to get for the English businessmen. Finally our poverty was our salvation. HUMO - I was recently in Dublin and that poverty has touched me deep: Ireland lives in rags. Enya - Oh yes, it's frightful. But everything is so terribly expensive, and the goods than you can afford are of such a low quality...We don't have much, yet live isn't bad. There is a sort of connection with life and the land that I perceive nowhere else. Ireland lives very isolated from the rest of Europe, we are light-years behind. A new idea from let's say Belgium takes years before it gets over here. Not every new idea means progress, but it's becoming time that the ordinary Irishman has it equally good as the modern Belg or German. Then he doesn't need to let his children beg for money on O'Connell street. There is money in Ireland but it's not fairly divided. Generations-old potentates and politicians have reduced the whole nation to beggary. I'm not a very good ambassador for Ireland I'm afraid (laughs). HUMO - Where you a poor family? Enya - Not really, my parents were musicians that worked hard to give us good education, also musically. They played hits from the '40s and '50s in a dance orchestra but at home we listened often to classical music and authentic folk. I try to weave all those elements into my music. HUMO - Watermark reminds me of the music from the classical composer Henry Purcell: your music bathes in the same ethereal atmosphere, is of the same lightness and still extremely catchy. Enya - Purcell? I'm afraid I never heard of the man (laughs). I know something about classical music because it was part of the education in boarding school but I almost never listened to music. I never bought records and what happened in the hit charts completely passed me. HUMO - Than it has to be a shock to be suddenly confronted with hectic pop music and the record companies. Enya - My music is too important for me to pine in a small attic room. Music is my life, and because you can't eat scores I play momentarily the part of the marketing person that shouts that she sells good wares. Not my favourite occupation, but it seems to be necessary. And by travelling I also see parts of the world. I have worked for months with the same two people between the same four walls on Watermark and ultimately it makes you become a social zombie. Your friends don't call you anymore, you don't know what happens in the outside world or what people think of your music. Because of the many talks and the travels I keep up a little. Not that I really need it: I'm very happy when I'm busy with my music. Then the real me comes to the surface. And that real me is rather self-contained. HUMO - Maybe that is the reason why your music sounds so original: you practically can't compare 'Orinoco Flow' or 'Cursum Perficio' with other music. Enya - I agree, I try to keep the inner me pure, or better, I try to feed it with only beautiful things. That also puts a limit to your influences, the less influences, the broader is your world. We like to experiment frequently. Often that leads to nothing but just as many times the little ideas you pick out of the air and develop further turn into beautiful pieces of music. Our only criterion is the artistic value of what we do. We don't tolerate people from the record company in our studio because we learned from experience that they don't give a piece of music the time to grow and ripen, or give it room to breath. It happens many times that were in the clouds about a new piece of music to find out later that it lost it's attraction... then we throw it away. Good music keeps on living. HUMO - How must I imagine the relation between you and Nicky/Roma Ryan? Enya - Because we work together all the time I moved into their house. We tried to do it in a different way but that caused practical problems. By the way, if we tried to record in a conventional way, say from ten to six, and with guest musicians, our music always sounded like other music. We really had to work hard and search to break away from this, to find something totally new. Guest musicians, in spite of their talent and willingness, never seemed to come to the same wavelength, so we had to invent, record, sing everything ourselves. Enya is in fact a sort of trinity. HUMO - And how would you describe your music yourself? As New Age music? Enya - New Age music is less structured than my music, there's no spine in it. You never get the feeling somebody's trying to tell you something, tries to evoke something. It's air, thin air. It's a musical drug. It's a miracle that the record company wanted to bring out our music, because I swear there was panic in the main office because they couldn't put our music in a compartment. Luckily the success of 'Orinoco Flow' solved that problem, the public doesn't need compartments it seems. HUMO - Aren't you afraid after this success to lose the purity of the music? Enya - I am strong, I guard over it. When the record was already in the shops and turned out to be also very successful the record company asked for extra songs for a CD single. The making of those songs was the first big test, and it went well. We recorded two new songs: the Gaelic song about my grandparents is one of the best things I ever did I think. If the record company was looking for 'Orinoco Flow Part Two' they certainly didn't get it. No, I do my best to keep my work fresh. I'm very much aware of the traps where other groups have stumbled into. Nicky Ryan made back then with Clannad all the mistakes thinkable and learned his lesson. Our force is our peculiarity and we have to keep it at any cost. HUMO - I often don't understand the Gaelic lyrics of your songs, but is that really important? Enya - Not really. Our lyrics our often only colours. Unconsciously many people seem to understand what they are about. They feel it, they share the emotion. That is also the essence of music. HUMO - In 'Cursum Perficio' you even use a mountain of words without any meaning. Enya - There the sound was more important than the text. The choir is important. HUMO - You sing all those voices yourself? Enya - O yes, layer after layer, sometimes hundreds on top of each other. 'Cursum Perficio' comes from a documentary about Marilyn Monroe. It means: 'Here ends my journey' and that saying was engraved in the entrance of her last house. But that's how it often happens,you know: those two words haunted me for weeks and than I finally used them in a song. 'Evening Falls' on the other hand is based on a ghost story that Roma heard. A woman has recurring dreams about a house till the moment she one day sees the house, knocks on the door and finds out that the inhabitants are full of panic when they see her: she had haunted their house all the time. We made a musical interpretation without retelling it word for word. We keep the lyrics simple. Hopefully the listener evokes even greater and more beautiful images with our music than we had originally hidden in it. The mystery stays important.

Hehe. I actually SAW the Stones live when their big hit was "19th Nervous Breakdown." I got a seat in the 3rd row. Price? $3.95 Does that age me or what, hehe? Incidentally, shortly after the Beatles came out with the "Sgt. Pepper" album, the Stones came out with an album titled "Their Satanic Majesties Request," which I then thought (and still think) was stylistically superior to "Sgt. Pepper." But, while the Beatles continued to evolve in their next album, "Magical Mystery Tour," it seemed to me that the Stones went backward -- to their roots, so to speak. Not saying that Stones music since then is bad. But, I hoped they would continue to evolve musically along the lines of TSMR. If you've not heard that album, download a song called "2000 Light Years From Home" and compare it to any Stones song you've heard before or since ... and you'll see what I mean.

I'll be darned. It actually DID freeze over!

"something about the person who posted before you..." (Well, that's what you told me to say.)

Genesis.

ass.

Afterglow (Genesis)

The Prelude to the Donna Diana Overture by Emil Nicklaus von Reznicek (circa 1894) performed by an unknown orchestra. For people who lived through the 50s/60s, they might know it better as the theme song to the radio and TV show, "Challenge of the Yukon" aka "Sergeant Preston."

Klingon interpreter sought for mental health patients May 12 2003 Position Available: Interpreter, must be fluent in Klingon. The language created for the "Star Trek" TV series and movies is one of about 55 needed by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County, Oregon. "We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," said Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves about 60,000 mental health clients. Although created for works of fiction, Klingon was designed to have a consistent grammar, syntax and vocabulary. And now Multnomah County research has found that many people - and not just fans - consider it a complete language. "There are some cases where we've had mental health patients where this was all they would speak," said the county's purchasing administrator, Franna Hathaway. County officials said that obliges them to respond with a Klingon-English interpreter, putting the language of starship Enterprise officer Worf and other Klingon characters on a par with common languages such as Russian and Vietnamese, and less common tongues including Dari and Tongan. AP http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/11/1052591677008.html

Ho Ho Ho!

Jesus is walking through the Holy Land one day and comes into a village. Oddly, it seems that no one is around. But finally, he comes across a merchant and asks him, "Where are all the people?" The merchant tells Jesus that a woman in the village was found to have committed adultery. And, the village elders sentenced her to a stoning. So, he told Jesus that the villagers had taken the woman to a nearby quarry to carry out the sentence. Jesus ran through town as fast as he could. Finally, he reached the quarry and saw people with stones above their heads ready to throw them. Rushing up to the edge of the pit, he shouted, "WAIT!!! Let the person among you who is without sin cast the first stone." When the villagers heard his words, they all realized they'd all fallen short of the grace of God and began to lower their arms. But then, on the other side of the pit, a little old lady walked up to the edge, shouted "Death to the adulterer!" and cast her stone. So, when the villagers saw that the first stone had indeed been cast, they raised their arms again, cast their own stones, and seconds later the woman in the pit was dead. Jesus stood in shock. But, as the dust began to settle, he heard the faint sound of laughter coming from the other side of the pit. There she was - the little old lady who cast the first stone. Jesus angrily stomped over in her direction, grabbed her by both shoulders, looked her right in the eyes and said, "You know, Mother, sometimes you piss me off!"

I put this in another area ... but what the heck: Q - How do you know when it's bedtime at Neverland Ranch? A - When the big hand touches the little hand.

BTW, with all the hoopla about Michael Jackson going around, you'd think he'd show up on the list a lot. But, he only has one album coming in at #202 - Bad (not only the name of the album but also an adjective describing his lack of a better showing on the list, hehe). I can't resist this, hehe -- a Michael Jackson joke: Q - How do you know when it's bedtime at Neverland Ranch? A - When the big hand touches the little hand.

Already accomplished. My landlord has a Mac G4 running OS 9.22 and runs KazaaLite 2.4.3 like a champ using "Virtual PC" software.

True, but the general public doesn't decide which "letters to editors" get published. Gannett Corp. owns the Detroit News ... and I imagine a larger media conglomerate owns Gannett. Media tends to be pro-Media ... and my thoughts are anti-Media.

It'll probably never make it to the typesetter. Nobody likes a kiljoy, even if the kiljoy speaks the truth (grin). But, I love venting my spleen.