Are Compact Discs Going the Way of the 8-Track?

“Doin’ me a concern,” as the meme goes.

I moved from Columbia, SC, to the big city of Atlanta in mid-July 1984, hoping to turn my recently acquired college degree into an adult paycheck. One of the rock/pop stations there boasted of its (severely limited) playlist “from the compact laser disc.” Compact. LASER. (ooo-weee!) Disc. Small and shiny silver, they made the big black vinyl LP records, even the picture discs (a brief fad) look cumbersome and antiquated. 

No more going over your records with a corduroy dust wand or whatever they called those things. No more degaussing the static. (There were actually little pistols you pointed at the record to do this. Squeeze the outsized trigger slowly, then let it spring back slowly.) No more of that snap, crackle, and pop you got regardless of how hard you worked at cleaning the thing. 

And CDs would last forever! You could never wear them out, like you could the best cared-for vinyl you were dumb enough to wear out beneath a needle. 

This was all hype, of course. The auditory quality and volume levels of those first digital remasters were all over the place, depending on who did the transfer of analog to digital. With few exceptions—The Doors’ and The Grateful Dead’s catalogs are the most notable in my experience—CDs made in the 1980s through the early 1990s are best avoided. The sound is subpar, especially in regards to tape hiss that was often carelessly allowed into the mixes.

The discs weren’t indestructible, either. Compact discs might not melt in a hot car, but the heat could cause a reaction in the chemicals holding the plastic laminate to the microgrooved tinfoil and render the disc unreadable. I didn’t start buying CDs until 1990, and I’ve noted that in the not-quite 30 years since then, some will not play on some systems. My computer’s Blu-ray drive can’t read them. That chemical I spoke of degrades over time, depending upon how well you store your CDs.

They were great while they lasted, though. They got the sound and everything else right just in time for streaming to kill the format—or, rather, give the people who take our money for the music an excuse not to permit us our own hardcopies. It doesn’t matter. I’ll hang onto mine, and get what I can while I still can.

Doors and Dylan, with even more Dylan on the rack behind me. How boomer is this?

We bought our first CD player in the summer of 1991. It had a cassette you could load six CDs into, and shuffle function. This enhanced my music listening experience immensely. For one, I could listen under my favorite circumstance, namely, inebriation, and not risk damaging vinyl discs and record player needles alike trying to find a song. Also, with all my songs on shuffle, I could get as close as I could to my perfect radio station. I always liked making mixtapes with juxtapositions of The Go Go’s and Black Sabbath, for example. Here, a computer chip was doing it for me.

That smug proto-hipsters hated them made me love them all the more. I find the triumphalism of the “Vinyl wins!” crowd pathetic inasmuch as it’s been over one-hundred years since the invention of the phonograph. The technology should have improved beyond needle-to-groove. We need a more stable medium with which to store our music. The fire at the warehouse in Los Angeles in which many precious master tapes were destroyed demonstrated the importance of getting the best digital imaging of everything out there, and making copies far and wide. 

As it is, I need to make a checklist of albums I’d like on disc. If I outlive the discs themselves, that will be fine, especially at my age. I’ll be ripping them for maximum quality, of course. But it’s nice having those little shiny round things around. When you can find them, that is. Many all-time great albums have already disappeared into either trendy vinyl or streaming. It’s a matter of time before disc players become impossible to get even for custom-built personal computers.

It’s the twenty-twenties, baby. Whatcha gonna do? Adapt and overcome, as always.

Colorado Man Gets His Werewolves Direct From London

A short story long on lessons of our changing cultural and economic landscape. Also, werewolves and headless Thompson gunners.

There’s a months-old draft of a post describing my personal history with the compact disc as the medium goes slowly extinct. Recently, I had an experience ordering one that I thought would make for a fine anecdote within the longer piece. However, that piece is too long and has languished too long already. I might as well attempt making those same points here.

Ever since I realized last summer that compact discs, even copies of recent album remasters from mere months before, were becoming harder if not impossible to acquire—my copy of The Cars’ Shake It Up remaster from a year back came from Germany!—I’ve made a point of keeping a lookout for the now-classic (might as well call it “classical”) rock/pop albums from my youth. For some reason it occurred to me to look up Warren Zevon’s Excitable Boy on Amazon, and I learned that a 2007 Rhino remaster was available for five dollars and change.

It wasn’t on Prime, though. Why? This is the album with “Werewolves of London” on it; even people who didn’t grow up in the 1970s know and love this song. Still, at that price, and with a stack of discount points burning a hole in my digital pocket, I added it to an order that included a calendar, an aluminum reusable pump-spray bottle, and a four-pack of compressed air in cans.

With my rewards points added in the cost for the CD was zeroed out on the overall manifest. That was the good news. The bad news was the CD was shipping from overseas, and was not expected to arrive until the 27th. I was ordering this on the 9th.

I couldn’t complain, as what little I was paying for shipping was also zeroed out. Also, consider this—it came well over a week early, taking all of eight days for a super-discounted compact disc to leave a warehouse in merrie olde England, cross the Atlantic, and then 2/3rds of the United States, through a mountain pass to my little potato farming community in southern Colorado. I never take such wonders for granted. 

Such a strange thing, though. I probably could have found Zevon’s Excitable Boy in Walmart or Best Buy where they still sell them, with an emphasis on Dad rock for cheap. I got the first Boston album and Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell that way. It’s hard to believe there wasn’t a single warehouse in all of North America that didn’t have Warren Zevon’s best-selling album, with a song that was heard as recently as a 16 January episode of the television show Supernatural. (Two werewolves dance to it.) 

There it is, though. Thank you, Amazon UK for coming through. Given the vanishing medium in favor of all things streaming, I’m grateful I could get it at all.

When the Only Way Out Is Through

...or, as one of my favorite depressive functional alcoholics put it, “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” A recap of a long week and the (we hope) longer game ahead:

The one thing that kept me going throughout this week was the Friday evening date my wife and I had scheduled at our favorite restaurant. The Mountain View was closed the day of my wife’s birthday on Monday, I’d committed to some things outside the house on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so Friday would be the day we properly celebrated.

Given the expenses of the Christmas season and our limited cash flow, we’d been unable to make our once-weekly appearance at our favorite eatery for a while, so this had to happen. Dealing with our failing elder cat, and realizing we’d be dealing with more failing elder cats later on top of own failing elder selves, even as our grown son talks about moving not just from the house (where we prefer having him; it’s good having a professional handyman around), but from the San Luis Valley where the opportunities more closely match his considerable skill sets...all this change, worse, all this going away, was very hard on the spirit, to say the least. 

These are more than transitions we’re dealing with. They’re departures. Finales. Endings. And even sitting in the restaurant last night, smiling for the Valentine’s decor everywhere, I reflected that the owners of this most excellent establishment were getting on in years, too. How long would it be until they had to give it up to new management? It would, of course, never be the same.

And the obvious answers are stick around and find out; you know it’ll be sooner than you’d like. Just get there and enjoy it while you can.

Still, it’s difficult to maintain good cheer when all you’ve got to look forward to is one thing after another winding down into oblivion.

Sunsets are pretty. Until it’s dark.

My wife was astonished when I told her happy birthday. I had to remind her this was why we were at the Mountain View in the first place. Monday already felt like a month ago to her and I knew exactly what she meant. I hesitated to bring up, as I’m prone to do, that Christmas Eve was exactly one month ago. And imagine how far away New Year’s Day seems already! January can really mess with your sense of time. 

Things are so much different than when we moved here three and a half years ago, and much of it is for the better. I think of when I was on a Facebook page for a school I went to over forty years ago, and leaving because it was so depressing seeing how many of these people I knew from the 1970s hadn’t changed. Not even a little bit. I’m not even the same person I was three and a half years ago, and I thank God for that.

Things have to change. People and cats grow old. There is nothing else to do but press on and take comfort in the slowly lengthening, oh-so-slowly warming days. Meanwhile, we take care of ourselves so we can take care of those depending on us. That is all.

Otis on the bed upstairs with Jack and Puff, 25 January 2019, exactly one year ago as of this writing. What a difference a year makes.

The Lion in Winter: Our Last Days With Otis T. Cat

Our first pet ages out on us. You’d think it would be easy, with us being all old and mature and stuff. Of course, some people drop their elderly pets at the shelter to die alone and confused in a cage, or leave them alone with a veterinarian and a needle. Don’t get me started. This is one cat’s story, and we’re doing the best we can.

I can’t remember the last time I heard him meow. Otis was a very vocal cat throughout his life. He’s still with us after nearly 18 years, but the cat that once double-meow barked at me when he wanted attention hasn’t made a sound in long, long while.

I never thought I’d say this because it used to get on my nerves, but I miss his voice.

It was towards the end of the first week of September that Otis started leaving minor ponds of pee beside the litter boxes in the mud room. We hoped it was something he would get over, but the changes were already in motion over the last year or so. I’d already been carrying him up and down the stairs, given how painful it seemed to be for him.

He’s come up the stairs only once since then, and that was when he was hungry and looking for someone to feed him. He goes on memory, hearing, and smell, in shifting order. As near as we can tell Otis’ eyesight is all but gone. He can see movement, but individual shapes escape him.

Otis had already been with us nine months by the time of his first Christmas with us. Note the ancient CRT monitor he’s napping on.

Given his incontinence, his days of sleeping with us were over. I imagine this has to be the worst for him. Since the day Otis came home with us from the Anchorage Animal Shelter in April 2002 he’s spent the night with someone. 

As of September 2019, that was over. Otis was a downstairs-only kitty. He began with a special spot we made for him in a chair in the laundry room. Sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving my wife bought a foam rubber bed to rest his bones in he stays close to the mud room where the litter boxes are. He’s becoming more and more incontinent by the day. Sometimes he hits the puppy-training pads we lay out for him. 

At least his incontinence is confined to an area designed to take a wet mess. For the most part. We expect this to change.

Dawson Creek, British Columbia, 5 October 2003, on our way to our next duty station in Washington state. For perspective, the little girl in the van with Otis turns 27 this year. All the children in this photo are long-since grown adults. And Otis....

When Otis didn’t even sleep with Emily on the air mattress this Christmas I knew it was his last Christmas with us. Now, I’m not sure he’ll see the spring. My wife and I have agreed that the day we find Otis sleeping in his own filth in his bed will be when we’ll medically assist him over that Rainbow Bridge.

Eighteen years is a long time for a cat to live. It’s a long time in ours, too. After Otis, we have four more cats to go. My wife and I can only hope we survive, and with enough vim and vigor to take care of them in the sunset of their lives. Mickey is 11 years old. Jack and Puff will turn nine this year. When Otis is gone we’ll have a few years of business as usual, and then one of them will take ill. Then another. Our youngest, Luna, is four. My wife and I will be in our 70s when she’s Otis’ age. Let’s hope we make it.

Otis in his foam bed where he spends nearly the entirety of his days. With his bones so fragile, his hygiene not so optimal, we have to brace ourselves to pick him up. He purrs when paid attention thus, but cats also purr when they’re in pain. We do what we can to let him know we still love him, though. Again, I imagine the loneliness of these final days has to be the worst for this once most-social of cats.

When you bring a pet into your family, you’re not just giving them a place to live. You’re giving them a place to die. Here’s to those out there doing what they can for those who should very much count as members of the family. Otis came into our family when our children were small. He’s been with us from Alaska, to Washington state, to Virginia, from Colorado’s Front Range to what will be his final resting place in the San Luis Valley.

Attention will be paid.

From that same journey in 2003. Otis actually enjoyed the long road trips.

The River Over the High Valley, the Mountains of Mid-January

After my bilious last post, let’s chill.

My tires, brand new as of last September, were all but flat on the passenger side earlier this month. It turns out that leaving my Jeep parked in the same position with only one side facing the sun in sub-freezing, sometimes sub-zero Fahrenheit temperatures will do that. After pushing a small stack of quarters into the air pump at the gas station down the road and getting all four back up to specs, I resolved I should take off in the peak heat of each day to warm the vehicle and its tires on the high-speed parts of the road on either side of the town where I live.

I drove west out of town and turned around on the cemetery road. Blanca Massif stood tall and proud, magnified from 50-60 miles away as I drove back in.

It’s made for a nice, relaxing break in the middle of the day. If I get a notion to explore, I might run into something worth photographing.

I knew I’d gone a little far north on the country road when I encountered the frozen remains of the fourth longest river in North America. I turned around and took these photos.

Squinting back towards the source of the mighty Rio Grande in the San Juan Mountains.

I passed by this view of Blanca Massif on my way back to federal highway.

Zooming in on one of the four mountains sacred to the Navajo Indians. Which one is Mount Blanca, I couldn’t tell you. It’s mashed in there with at least three other mountains of 14K elevation plus numerous lower peaks.

Twitter Interviews the Author

It’s gonna get cranky. Not cute cranky, either. If you resemble any of these remarks, reconsider your life. Don’t come screaming at me. I’ve obviously got my own issues.

It’s something I’ve noticed since I’ve gotten a little (and only a little) more proactive with my Twitter account, so I don’t know how long this Ask a Question to Spur Engagement with Your Fellow Narcissists Who Can’t Stop Talking About Themselves and Build a Community/ Fanbase thing has been going on. “Long enough, and with no reason to quit” is likely the correct answer. 

Aside from joining in the occasional #writersboost in which I’m encouraged to post links to my books and blog, I generally roll my eyes and keep on scrollin’. That is, until a couple of days without a blogpost, and I realize I’ve got a minor motherlode of material to work with on my Twitter feed.

As you can see, my answers take longer than average Tweets. I like having room to stretch my legs and throw my fists. With a respectful nod to the spectre of my spiritual uncle Harlan Ellison, who haunts these proceedings:
 
Without actually saying your age, what’s something you do or say that gives away your age?

It’s the same thing that gives away my ethnicity and social background: my taste in music. Mostly “Dad rock,” which should probably be called “Grandpa rock” by now. No hip-hop, only a smidge of country, and very little of anything else made and released after Y2K. 

I like some instrumental jazz, but mainly the kind normal jazz fans hate, the melodic, atmospheric, expressive “smooth” stuff. Jazz is one of those things often ruined by its fanbase. For instance, whenever I read of someone boasting how he listens to “Miles,” i.e., Miles Davis, the racist, wife-beating trumpet-tooter adored by smug, politically liberal, pseudo-intellectual white guys everywhere, I’ve got good idea what I’m in for. Saying they listen to Miles, or [name that keeps coming up here] is a tribal callout by way of weird virtue signalling, and all opinions are consensus approved—and vigorously enforced.

Grandpa is old enough to remember when modern music was rebellion, a stand against the crooked established order. Now it’s about conformity to fashion and—just as critical—attitudinal poses. The delightful irony of it all is I don’t feel at all old or out of step because I don’t know who _______ is. They all look like they’ve been sharing the same outfit since 1992. Even sartorial fashions have fallen inert.

You want a controversial opinion? After a certain age, say, 16, you shouldn’t take your identity from the musical entertainment you listen to consume. It was bad enough in college when you had young men and women in their early 20s going around with their noses in the air because they listened to _________ and were therefore cooler than thou. I probably have to explain how silly this is, which is why we’ll stop here.

Cranky author is cranky, but these summer evening skies after a thunderstorm look ready to get full-on apocalyptic with us. That’s why I thought they would make great image macros for dramatic excerpts from my books. Which is to say, you’ll be seeing these photos again, but with grim narrative typed all over ‘em.

Name a band or artist on your #writing playlist this week.

Although I have made playlists specific to the series I’m writing, I don’t have a “writing playlist.” Just music I like in the background while I work. I could as well be replacing someone’s front brakes or reconciling a balance sheet. Typing up a bunch of stuff and hoping it all means something just happens to be what I do.

Oh, you want a name? I’ve got the first five of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s complete albums among the 2,000+ individual tracks on my computer’s hard drive. I said that to deliberately not impress you, though you would be impressed if you weren’t such a snotty little Philistine. I never get enough irony in my diet.


This is how I’m feeling this morning. Tell me how you feel in a .gif.

This is taking “show, don’t tell” to the extreme. As the young folks say, or, rather, peck into their phones, “lol no.”

Who knew the rood over a garage could look so ominous? Lighting and context define the shape. Only in July and August do you see skies like this.

Let’s do a positive #UnpopularOpinion! What is something you love that many people don’t like? 

“I like pineapples on pizza! Tee-hee!” Nice try, Twinkles. We all know no one is allowed to utter easily observable facts that refute popularly enforced opinions under pain of losing their livelihoods. I see this changing over the next couple of years, but for now..... 


Hit me with your most controversial movie opinion!

I generally hate sitting down to watch a movie. All artists are narcissists to varying degrees, but filmmakers believe they’re the most artistic and sensitive and smart and observant people in the world, and most can’t tell a simple story for tripping on their Big Message cards, e.g., “girls rule, boys drool,” “racism is bad, mm-kaaay?” That said, I did enjoy a couple of films that came out last year, but not enough to talk about them as if they were the most profound and moving things I’ve beheld since my children were born. They were nice date nights with my wife, that’s all.

As for the superhero stuff everyone is still getting worked up about, hey, you kids enjoy yourselves. You poorly accoutered 40- and 50-something year old kids...as for actual children, I don’t see how they could follow the average Avengers movie, of which I sat through the first two, and couldn’t begin to describe the plot of either. The irony here is I don’t even care what Martin Scorsese regards as what’s “cinema” and what’s not. Go back to the paragraph before this one and read the second line over. Then read it again.

To hell with Hollywood. I’m not even talking about the really nasty stuff that’s come to light in recent years.

It all broke up in time for a lovely starry night, with lightning on the north and eastern horizons.

What is one thing you know you need to work on/pay attention to when you are writing? 

The words on the screen in front of my face. Do they make sense? Do they paint a picture? Does that picture move? 

Was this a trick question?


For those #writers who are also #readers, do you read only in the same genre(s) you write? Or do you read anything you can get your hands on?

What? This is actually a good question. I can get an entire post from this. A calm, thoughtful, reasonable little thing we can all learn from. 

It’s settled, then. I’ll find some nice pictures to break up all the seething text above, and post this with the confidence that comes with knowing what’s next.

4 a.m. Thoughts While Rage Reading the Internet

Transcribed from the original stinky Sharpie on the yellow legal pad I scribbled on while doing this. Might as well get something out of this wake-up-at-2:30-a.m. insomnia.

“Heh. Where’d ya read that, Vox? Buzzfeed? “Yeah, well, I bet you get your opinions from Breitbart. HAW!” And the beat goes on.

• I have to continually remind myself that this is nothing more than a very limited, very enclosed sandbox. The stuff that angers and arouses us here is not simply foreign, it’s extra-terrestrial-class alien to the “normies” (normal people) just going about their jobs, relationships, lives, etc.
  
• If you rage-read stories on the Internet for entertainment, lurking in the comments sections for the best snarking banter, fine—but you’re not normal. And you’re not necessarily the good kind of not-normal, either. You’re not getting anything done. You might as well be following one of the big money pro-wrestling stars and yelling about how they were cheated (or maybe even exalted) in their scripted conflicts.
  
• Given how many times over the decades that the New York Times and the Washington Post have been caught fabricating stories to push various narratives, it astounds me that anyone takes any of these newspapers seriously at all. These should not be respected institutions, but recognized for the mendacious mouthpieces they are, only slightly more sophisticated than the broadsides peddled in the dirt streets of the 18th and 19th century. That people on either side of the political spectrum will reflexively use either one as a reference to prove their points speaks volumes for the moral and intellectual rot of 21st century civilization. Try explaining this to a normie—”Hey, I don’t read that crap anyway. Who does?”—let alone an educated partisan parrot. The latter will likely agree with my sentiment, and most vociferously until it comes times to make a point about something. “The New York Times cited a study by a big-name professional quack....”
  
• Hey, remember “quacks”? The term described a credentialed expert, most frequently a medical doctor, who promoted sketchy diets, cleanses, snake-oil cures, etc. It could also be applied to the social “sciences” as taught in the universities today, which is probably why we don’t see that word anymore. The censorship is even crazier than it was when the evangelical Christian Moral Majority were the holy terrors 40 years ago.
  
• It’s more than censorship, though. There’s a minor moral panic going on out there. I was touched by it last year when I learned that someone I’ve known for over 30 years considers me a Nazi. Yes, a swastika-sporting, seig-heiling Nazi, because I had the temerity to mention some things I saw on Forbidden Websites by Badthinking Unpersons. “These guys don’t reflexively worship the police or the troops like the right-wingers I’ve known all my life until now,” I said, and boom! Guilt by association. It probably didn’t help that I declared these developments “interesting” as opposed to screeching denouncements of it all for simply existing. The blustering old bully had the temerity to demand what I was doing reading this stuff. This chest-thumping ape is telling people who and what they should read and I’m the Nazi?

Obvious punchline is obvious. 

Then there was this other guy...anyway, these stories were going to make up Part 2 of “How I Lost Weight Over of the Holidays,” which I’m still debating writing because, let’s face it, ghosting out on people you’ve known for so many years is flat-out sad, and nothing to be celebrated. You do what you have to do, though. Most of you reading this know what I’m talking about.

If there is anything to celebrate it’s getting all this out of the way so I can get going on that narrative bridging scene in my novel that’s been holding me up for a week already. The sun is just coming up over the Sangre de Cristos as I post this. It’s a lovely, colorful sign o’ the times.