WHAT JUST HAPPENED HERE???
...the case of the Disappearing Medical Specialist...
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I have overactive ears. I won't go into excruciating detail; let's just call it "that annoying wax buildup". For a couple of weeks earlier this year, I could hear almost nothing out of my right ear. Everything that sounded stereophonic sounded monophonic. But finally, I was given relief by the Ear Doctor who used something like a miniature vacuum cleaner to muck out my ears. As I left, I arranged for another appointment in Six Months. Ear maintenance. So last week, as I headed off to the doctors offices, I assumed that he'd scoop out what little that was in my ears, you know, like a sort-of 10,000-mile checkup, that kind of thing.
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I was on time for my appointment, and waited for another half-an-hour before my name was called. The nurse took me back to where the ear-scooping was done. And I waited there for another quarter-hour until the doctor finally was ready to see me. He must have been waay behind in his scheduling and used me to make up the difference. He looked into each ear, pronounced his verdict ("Nothing is in there") and left, just like that. He didn't spend two minutes with me. He was out the door while I was trying to figure out "What Just Happened Here?" I thot he was gonna clean out whatever was in there, in best checkup fashion. Instead, he zipped off like Speedy Gonzales, which was a novel site, since he's either a Japanese or Chinese-American person. "Which way did he go, which way did he go?"
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So, for the two minutes he spent with me, he probably got paid close to a hundred dollars for my visit; $10 coming from my Social Security co-pay. I'd complain to him about this, but he'd probably zip so fast around the office that I wouldn't be able to nail him down. Is this an issue, or am I a Fool? When you take your car into Les Schwab, they don't just touch your tires and come back and say, "You're Done"! And, they rotate tires Free Of Charge. What's my conclusion here? That it's a good thing Doctors don't work at Tire Stores, otherwise, they'd charge a hundred dollars for a tire rotation. I realize Doctors have overhead, and must insure themselves to the hilt, and besides, the young ones are still trying to pay back College Loans; I understand that.
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I don't know if this is a valid indictment of the medical system, or if I have a reason to gripe here. I just hope that when this doctor dines on a thick juicy steak for dinner, that he remembers me, for I contributed a portion of that steak. Or "pork". Or whatever you wanna call it. But I left the doctor's office with a gnawing feeling in my gut. Two minutes in which the Doctor got close to a hundred bucks. That's quite an hourly wage. So why do I feel like I got a medical wedgie here? I got no real explanation, just "Nothing In There!" and, whoosh, he was gone. But then again, my main doctor is just busy, busy, busy all the time. I'm sure he feels like he's running a medical clearing-house sometimes. 15 minutes for an appointment is a long time for him.
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I suppose I should be grateful that I've found doctors that accept Social Security. At the same time, I really do feel as if I was taken advantage of. Once again, Everything I Know Is Wrong. Sure feels like it, anyway.

A SHORE ACRES CHRISTMAS...
...the savage beauty of this area in winter...
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Although Shore Acres State Park isn't far from where I live, I don't visit often. It costs $5.00 to visit the place, unless you access one of the coastal trails that link it to other parks in this area. Otherwise you've gotta place the receipt on your dashboard where a dutiful Park Employee will make sure you've paid your fee. But I make sure to visit every year on Christmas Eve. I get there before sunset to do some serious wave-watching, and once Mr. Sun sinks over the horizon, it's time to go and see a Christmas Lights display. More about that later. Continuing, one of the most vexing things about Wave-watching is that it's difficult to time the wave so you can catch the giant sprays they leave in their wake. But I try.
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I'd been out trying to get a Wave Picture. I'd focus the camera on an incoming wave, and it would turn out to be a Dud. Very little, if any splash. Well, it was close to low-tide, I'd met with little success and began my walk back to the main park area when, all of a sudden, I heard "BOOM"! I whipped around instantly and took this picture of a monster wave which wanted its presence to be duly noted. Ocean waves are menacing yet fragile. They're huge, and they disintegrate in an instant. Sometimes when you stop looking, they find you. There's probably some sort of lesson in there somewhere. I liken winter wave-watching to a really great Fireworks show. You never really know how huge or how loud the fireworks will be. Then, "POW!" the lights emerge into a huge yet delicate pattern, disappearing almost immediately.                                                                                                                                               
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On the way back to the main area of Shore Acres, there are ample opportunities to catch the sunset with the camera of your choice. (Mine's a Canon "Powershot", a fairly basic model, which is good, because my camera skills are basic. No frills. In this picture you can see three outcroppings extending into the ocean. For some reason, the strata you see in the cliffs are at a 40-degree angle, which probably has something to do with land masses and plate behavior. I'm no geologist, though, as you can no doubt tell. Still, the view is fascinating. Due to a bank of clouds on the horizon, the Sun disappeared from view 5 or 10 minutes early, and once it was gone, the temperature dropped faster than anything seen lately in the Stock Market. (See? I do pay attention to the news. What, do you think I take Pictures All The Time?) Okay, now that I've alienated readers who suffer through this blog, time for a Christmas Lights celebration...
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Imagine thousands upon thousands of Christmas Lights all over the place, and chances are you'll imagine something like this. This is the botanical garden at Shore Acres State Park. (If you click on the photo, it'll get really big.) It's impossible to enumerate a lot of them here, but you can get an idea of what's done here each year, at least in sheer numbers of lights needed to complete this gargantuan lights display. Not only are there lit Christmas Trees all  over the place, but you'll see lights strung up in the shape of a whale, or a seal or penguin or seagull or pelican...you get the idea. There's a pond in the middle of it all, and to say this display is merely 'huge' is a classic understatement. And, at the end of your stroll, you can stop at the Gardener's Cottage, which is also lit, and dine on chocolate-chip cookies and a glass of Hot Apple Cider. The park is open the entire month of December. And this time of year, it becomes a wond'rous place indeed.
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I have more pictures of this huge light show on www.webshots.com, username digitaldave.72. Shore Acres is right on the coast, about 6 miles south of Coos Bay. Now that Christmas has been here and gone, I can now wish everyone "Happy Holidays!" Have a great 2012. Hmmm...2012...I guess I've gotta get used to typing that... 

Merry Christmas, everybody...
...it's just the way I was brought up, I guess...

Our family always had a Christmas Tree, and some of its ornaments were secular, others were religious. My Mom was a churchgoer, so the whole family went to Church, where the sermons in the weeks before Christmas were, of course, of a religious nature with frequent mentions made of God, Jesus, Joseph, Mary, the Three Wise men, King Herod and Shepherds. So there were some things I eventually became hard-wired into believing.
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I think Christmas should be about reverence, no matter what beliefs you may suscribe to. I would like to think that we all pray to the same God, and that all of the different religions are just different ways of Getting to the Same Place. I'm sad that Religious things at Christmas have become politically incorrect. I am far from being a furtive believer, but I do believe. People who say there's only one way to get to Heaven are trying to put themselves above others, in my opinion.

So, I'd like to wish the Entire World a Merry Christmas. Take care, everybody.

REELIN' THROUGH THE YEARS...
...hang onto your hats, folks; we're traveling all the back to 1910...
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I Love Thrift Stores. I'm too lazy to go to all the yard sales. I'm almost a resident at the local Goodwill Store. Mostly, I go mainly for records, CD's and cassettes. Recently I bought a little Acoustic Guitar for Six Bucks. Now I can sit in the La-Z-Boy (which was also bought at a thrift store), watch TV and play the guitar during commercial breaks. I have a baritone ukele, and this guitar is as small as the Uke. The guitar's a little hard to tune; it doesn't have the greatest hardware, but Six Bucks for a guitar? Ooh yeah. Today, however there was no music I wanted. So then, it was time to look at the books. In the History Section, I found this little weather-beaten volume that was so worn, I could barely read the words on its spine. It was obviously a very old book. The cover was worn out super-bad, but other than some pencil writing on the inside front cover and a few smudges and small tears on some of the pages, it's in remarkable shape.
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I went online and looked up the title, "Leading Facts Of American History" by D.H. Montgomery, and discovered it was a schoolbook! And sure enough, towards the end, there are pages and pages consisting of questions for every chapter. Imagine, if you will, a history book that was printed two years before the Titanic sank! That's what this is. Evidently Mr. Montgomery authored quite a few history books, of which the one I bought (for $2.99) is part of a series. It's the "revised edition" with the latest copyright date being 1910. Think of that. 1910. Mr. Montgomery is long gone, passing away in 1928, and students who studied this book did so 110 years ago. As such, this book is a true Time Capsule.
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The book is full of maps, drawings and engraved depictions of the Original Great Men of our country, such as ol' one-dollar-bill George, at left. It also features maps of America, showing how the nation evolved from a collection of states along the eastern seaboard to more of a coast-to-coast entity. Alaska, back then, was just a territory. Most of the western states had existed for only about 20 years when this book came out.  It's amazing, how well these old pages have been preserved. Clearly, if this book had been printed nowadays, pages would be falling out and bindings would've come undone. Although, when I go to Goodwill, I see other old textbooks that hold firm against the onslaught of age; it's like the Textbook Companies were thinking, "Kids are gonna be using these books and you know how THEY are!"
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Next up is a page featuring a perspective of Honest Abe Lincoln that I've never seen before; he's in profile, he doesn't have any facial hair, and in this rendering, he looks young and healthy, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was the pre-Presidential Lincoln.. We're about a third of the way through the book at this point, and although I'm not sure how many years this book was actually used, I'm surprised by the condition of the pages, most of which are fairly clean. The glue holding this all together must be one Really Fierce glue, to have not fallen victim to oxidation over the years. For its size (a little over six and a half inches from top to bottom), it's heavy. Its pages are a little bit thicker (and slightly smoother) than your standard Paperback Novel Page. Yep, back in the old days when Work was Work. Back when they said, "if you can't do it well, don't do it at all". (I think I'm starting to sound like my Dad here...)
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What really surprised me about this book (and the time period it was printed in) is that it actually features Color on some of the maps. We take full-color pages for granted; we just read the book, after which it's closed and put back up on the shelf until the next time it's read. Putting color on a page involves at least two press runs through a maze of machinery. So there was a lot of technology going on way back then. And the times indeed are still ever-changing, what with the existence of newspapers and books being threatened by the ever-expanding internet. And one day,maybe, flipping through pages of websites will be replaced by perhaps a computer chip hooked to your eyeballs, instantly accessing information from your brain cells. Think "dog", and, BAM...You're at Dog-dot-com.
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Anyway, after examining the book once I got it home, I flipped thru the pages to see if any sort of bookmark contained therein, and there was something, a dollar bill from an old Monopoly game. Stamped on the bill is "copyright 1935 by Parker Bros." and since the bill is an off-white, beige type of color, I can't tell if it's yellowed by age, or a newer bill stuck in there sometime in the last 20-30 years. And at its oldest, how would a 1935 bill get stuck in a 1910 textbook? I guess there's some things we'll never know. Me, I'm thinking about the old days, taking textbooks home with me, taking pen (or pencil) in hand, laboriously trying to get thru my homework. Just like now, trying to slog my way through another overblown blog-post.
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If only inanimate things could speak. So much time has gone by. I was thinking about that as I held this old book in one hand, with a portable computer sitting in my lap. I wonder what Honest Abe would've thought if he somehow could've been teleported into the now. And I wonder how obsolete my laptop computer be in another hundred years. Hundred years? Heck, it'll probably be outdated in another couple of years...                                                          

IS THIS NOW A SPORTS BLOG?
...next thing ya know, I'll be placing bets...
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DID THIS YEAR'S FOOTBALL SEASON SEEM SHORT?: Most of the time, when I watch football, I'm also online annoying as many people as possible. It's easier to post while watching baseball; the flow of most games allows quite a lot of surfing-time between plays. Last Monday night, I thought I heard one of the sportscasters saying something about "this is the final Monday Night Fooball Game" of the season. Huh? What? Baseball season nowadays ends roughly halfway through the Pro Football season, and Football Season starts earlier than it used to. I remember when there were actual gaps between the end of baseball season and the beginning of football. I've missed virtually the entire Football season now. Usually by now I begin to sort out my playoff favorites and scheme about who'll be in the Super Bowl. But I've been too busy licking my wounds from following the Seattle Mariners ultra-ugly season. It wasn't pretty.
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This year, I have no idea who's good and who isn't as far as football is concerned. Although Green Bay seems to be on their way to an Undefeated Season...wait...I just checked, and the Packers lost this past weekend. Told ya I had no idea! The 1972 Miami Dolphins who are still alive and well celebrated heartily, I'm sure. (They were the only team to achieve an Undefeated Season.) I didn't watch the Green Bay game, but I've seen games where, once a league championship was secured, the coach would put in the Second Team. Why risk injuring the Star Quarterback? I'm not sure if this happened during the Green Bay game, but if I was paying NFL ticket prices only to find that the scrubs were going to play most of the game, I'd feel tremendously Ripped Off. Sorta like Hopalong Cassidy taking Clark Gable's place in "The Grapes Of Wrath".
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ONE REASON I DON'T WATCH PRO BASKETBALL: I guess the NBA is going (relatively) strong, with teams playing 66 games in this strike-shortened season. And after the regular season's over, they'll play another 66 games in the playoffs. Well, that's what it feels like. In a closely contested NBA game, there are so many time-outs towards game-end, that the last two minutes end up being as long as the entire 1st half of action. I used to run a Radio Board for a station that carried NBA playoff games. A player in-bounds the ball, the ball bounces once. TIME OUT!!! Then the ball is in-bounded again, to one of the forwards. The other team changes its defensive look...TIME OUT!!! Substitutions made, the ball is in-bounded again, one player passes it to another who jumps up and shoots; instead he passes the ball back because the defense is all over him. TIME OUT!!!

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After getting the latest play from the bench, Team "A" in-bounds the ball. Team "B" steals the ball!!! Both teams get down to the other end of the court...TIME OUT!!! Offensive Strategy mini-conference.  Back to the court: Before the ball can be in-bounded, Team "B" needs to regroup for an offensive strategy mini-conference. The ball is in-bounded, team "B" passes the ball around the court, not getting a good look for a shot, and one of its players calls 'Time'...you guessed it; TIME OUT!!! Then, play is ready to be resumed. The Whistle Blows...TIME OUT!!! Team "A" needs to counter the offensive changes team "B" made. Play resumes, after which a referee spots a puddle of sweat on the floor. TIME OUT!!! Back to the action. Player Substitution! Before the ball can be in-bounded, however, team "B"'s coach needs to substitute someone to counter the previous player substitution by Team "A"...TIME OUT!!! And in the meantime, you've just been subjected to something like 4,000 commercials. Gotta keep them sponsors happy!
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That's what it was like in 1999, anyway. It's probably worse now. Remember the "fast break" that high school and college teams would use to change the tempo of the game? Watching an NBA game is like watching one long fast break. I have not watched Pro Baketball since the days of John Stockton and Karl Malone. They really did work well together. I rooted for Stockton, the little guy who always came up big against the giants he faced. But really, I think Basketball is Too Fast. Soccer is too erratic. Football Season is over too soon. Baseball...is  j-u-s-t   r-i-g-h-t. Even if you're a Seattle Mariners fan. And so I wait for spring.
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This post was going to be about something else altogether. But it wasn't. Which means I already have a couple of ideas for subsequent posts. Unless I forget them. Which could happen...

       JOHN LENNON, October 9th, 1940-December 8th, 1980

The years pass, but it doesn't get any easier to deal with. I hope he's resting in peace. 

IT'S NOT LIKE HE'S SOLD OUT OR ANYTHING...
...Bob Seger climbs in bed with Wal-Mart...

Consumer Warning: This is a long, setentious Post.  You'll need to Bring a sack lunch.

Somehow I expected more from Bob Seger. After all, he came from Detroit, and he's never seemed to have the attitude of "I'm A Star and You're Not". Bob Seger is not really my favorite performer, although legions do fancy him. Rock and Roll!!! From a True Survivor!!!, etc. etc. Sometimes he seems to go into a Bruce Springsteen-type-over-melodramatic style ("We've Got Tonight" comes to mind here), other times he rocks softly (The dinky sound of his LP "Against The Wind" album comes to mind here), and sometimes he is really, really great (His"The Distance" LP comes to mind here). Bob Seger was sorta the voice of Working Class America, a survivor who, after years of neglect, all of a sudden Became Famous in the late '70s thanks to a double-live LP.
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He released a "Greatest Hits" CD a couple of years ago, but then again, so has every other artist. That way, they don't have to keep writing new stuff, and yet, still keep their music in front of people. I'm not saying this is a bad practice, and if I was a star, I'd probably do that too. But I'm not, which is neither here nor there. Okay, let's switch gears really fast here: (screech!) I went to Wal-Mart today. My birds needed food; Wal-Mart has bird stuff; quite a selection, so occasionally I stop in, and when I'm there, I check out the latest CD's, and sometimes there's stuff I want, but more often, there's Not. Recently, though, I bought the newest CD by "Yes" there, which I'd never seen anywhere else and which I hadn't heard about. So yeah, I committed a Federal Atrocity by buying from Wal-Mart. I'm so ashamed...now for another directional shift...
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The Jimi Hendrix estate manages to squeeze out new CD's once a year, and as you know, a Dead Guy isn't gonna come up with any new tunes anytime soon, and still the CD's keep coming out. At Wal-Mart today, I noticed a new Hendrix CD in the racks, some concert appearance somewhere that I'd never seen. So I picked up a copy and looked at the song list, and I have all those songs on CD's and LP's, and I don't really need new versions of "Voodoo Chile", "Foxy Lady" or "Red House" anytime soon, so I passed. There are fans who want every version of every song he did, but as great a musician as Hendrix was, it all begins to sound alike. If I hear a specific "Live" Hendrix track over a loudspeaker system, I couldn't tell you where it was recorded unless I had the Album In Hand. At this date, Hendrix himself hasn't objected to his music being stocked at Wal-Mart or elsewhere (So far I've seen no Wal-Mart exclusivity thing involving the Hendrix Estate), or having endless versions of basically The Same Old Stuff being made available time after time. I don't slight Jimi for that. Being Dead sorta gets in the way, so I understand, and I'll cut him some slack. The "West Coast Seattle Boy" CD that you see in this section features a few previously-unrecorded Hendrix tunes as does "Valleys Of Neptune", another recent release...I recommend these! A nice way to Support the Hendrix Estate. No, you can't write it off.
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But then I came across Bob Seger's New CD, entitled "Ultimate" Greatest hits. Funny thing tho; this new 'Best-Of' has many of the same songs as another 'Best Of' CD...the one where he is standing, guitar 'round his neck, on railroad tracks, and trying to look his bad-ass toughest. What GOT me about his newest "Ultimate" hits CD is that there's an 'Extra' song that's available only if you buy it from Wal-Mart! Forget the fact that you have Everything Else by Seger; you STILL have to buy songs you already have in order to get one song You Don't Have Yet. So really, you're shelling out somewhere in the neighborhood of $10-$15 for One Song. Not good Music Economics. Plus, the logic in the title loses me. Bob Seger had great songs, marketed previously, but one additional song makes the New Greatest Hits "Ultimate"??? I realize I might be one donut short of a dozen, but I'm not STUPID. Somehow I expected better of an artist who is supposedly a"member of the working class" type of rocker. What I'm led to believe, according to the packaging is that you can buy it elsewhere without the Wal-Mart Bonus Song. But while you're at Wal-Mart, you can buy food, drink, clothes, electric erasers and 200 pound bags of dog food...so really, Seger is helping Wal-Mart sell groceries. Speaking of which, stay away from Wal-Mart's "Good Value" brand of Fruit Punch that comes in tanker-truck sized Big Plastic Bottles. I bought a bottle of the "Grape" flavor and it tasted like a hundred Grape Tootsie-Roll pops melted down and squeeeezed together.. Ugh. I dumped it out. It probably corroded my drainage pipes.
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Back to things musical: A couple of years ago, The Eagles did pretty much the same thing as Seger, only they went One Better. Their "Long Road Out Of Eden", a double-CD set, was a Wal-Mart-only item for a while. So I bought it. It was a good value. $11.99 for a double CD album. I stopped back into Wal-Mart a few weeks later, and saw copies of the Same CD I'd bought, only the sleeve was tinted in Red (same sleeve picture), and that issue came out with Two Songs that weren't on the CD I'd bought several weeks before. That really pissed me off. No Way was I gonna buy the new version of the CD for Two New Songs. Perhaps after a time, the original Eagles CD became available elsewhere, so the band shelled out a couple more highly precious New songs, and That Version of the album then became available nowhere-else except for Wal-Mart. I do believe the second "new" cut was their heartfelt rendition of' "Please Come Home For Christmas", which I don't need to hear anytime soon.
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As I was proof-reading this post, something struck me, which was, that Wal-Mart (or any other music outlet) isn't catering to my generation anymore. These older-than-I-am artists market themselves in order to reach those who are half my age. And, a surprising number of younger listeners groove on classic rock which I bought on LPs when I was much younger. So, Older Artists are hoping they can continue to reach generation after generation. At Wal-Mart, you can find CD's by Boston, The Beatles, Creedence, The Moody Blues, Neil Young, Journey, The Who and other big acts from Long Ago, in addition to "Kid Rap" or "The Bumbling Psychotics" or "Empty Mason Jars" or whatever new band of the week is currently for sale. Well, what can I say; Rock and Roll will Never Die...as long as it continues to sell. In fact, the Sears store here actually stocks New Vinyl; those heavy vinyl limited-edition releases that you see selling for twenty-five bucks a pop. I bought a brand-new, still sealed "Abbey Road" album there a couple of years ago. (psst...those three bands I referred to a few lines above don't actually exist. Not yet, anyway.)
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And, there's a dynasty for ya there...Apple, EMI, Ringo, Paul and the estates of John and George. There's all kinds of Beatle Product on the shelves, including a set of four specially-boxed 45's for Record Store Day, (huh?), packaged in picture sleeves that look just like the original '60s issues, retailing at over fifty bucks. Also to be had...wait for it...Official Beatles Tee-Shirts stuffed in with CD's in big packages (!!!) and sold that way. If you enter "Beatles" into the search bar at the top of this blog page, you'll find my rantings detailing how blatant the Beatles' organization has been in terms of keeping itself alive. Hey, I'd hate for Yoko Ono suffer a monetary crisis anytime soon. (My sarcasm meter is in the red). As far as I can tell, Beatles music will be marketed until the day the world ends. And I'm such a collector, and there is so much new Beatles material to buy (same old recordings, different repackaging) that I'm having trouble deciding, "do I want to keep buying their current stuff?" or "stick with the old hard-to-get original records?" From what I've read, Abbey Road studios contains piles and piles of Beatles Tapes, a lot of which have been locked away forever with songs they never issued. Hey, guys, make 'em available and I'll buy em! I'd love to hear the complete, unedited 29-minute performance of Helter Skelter! It does exist, according to Mark Lewisohn's Book, "The Beatles' Complete Recording Sessions". Paul taped himself a copy and took it home with him! How 'bout it, guys? I wanna hear it too!
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There is a small record store in town that's been run by the same solitary guy for ages; he's a Californian-tie-dyed hippie sort who I've never seen not wearing his bandana. He's been in this area for decades. If I special-order anything, I go to him. It might cost a little bit more dealing with him, but I feel good helping him to put beans on the table. So am I a hypocrite buying music (occasionally) from Wal-Mart? I haven't quite decided that one yet.