Tick talk
I hate ticks. I effing hate them. All of them.
Seriously, is there a niche in the biosphere that ticks actually fill? Is there a species out there that’d die off if we eliminated all of them? Because I’m trying to make a good start on giving all of the little bloodsucking bastards their marching orders…straight to my toilet, where they get flushed en masse.
I suppose I should both back up and jump forward to where this story begins and ends: the dog. I really need to get some Frontline for her, and she needs a new collar from the vet (which is hideously expensive) (the collar, not the vet) (well, now that I think about it…), because, as she’s still coming into the house during bad weather, she’s hauling in an amount of bloated grey ticks that would probably best be described in terms of tonnage. Tonight after everyone else had gone to bed, I smooshed one under my bare heel by accident, and then started looking at the floor around Xena with a flashlight…and in the course of just a few minutes’ searching, sent 16 of the hideous things to a watery death by flushing.
The poor dog, for all of her trouble, got kicked out of the house. Sorry, Xena, and I know it was right before the storm hit, but I’ve got a problem with this situation. I will remember to get Frontline at the store – I promise. Even then, you’re looking at spending at least another day outside while the little hell-spawned beasts die off and fall off of you. I’m not having them in the house with the baby. But for cryin’ out loud, it’s almost April. I know the weather’s been crazy, but crap…a 100-lb. dog needs to be spending more time outside than inside. Plenty of big dogs around here get to sit through these storms outside with even less protection than you have (a covered porch and a perfectly good doghouse) and I haven’t seen them melt away.
Seriously…ticks. What the hell’s up with them? Are they a cornerstone species or something? If anything out there, some kind of bird or something, actually consumes them, surely we can draw their attention to dietary alternatives that are orders of magnitude less disgusting by default? Because I want them GONE. Get off my planet, ticks! And take the fleas with you!
On a completely unrelated musical note (ha!), I got an Amazon UK notification of a new Eric Woolfson album that I hadn’t heard anything about before. For those not in the know, Woolfson was half of the creative team behind the Alan Parsons Project, and sang lead vocals on such songs as “Eye In The Sky”, “Don’t Answer Me” and “Time”. He brought a lot of the stage musical sensibilities to the Project that made some of their music, quite frankly, epic – though he was always counterbalanced by the more progressive-rock-minded Parsons, who would frequently reign in the more “stagey” excesses of the music Woolfson wrote. They finally split during the making of the 1990 album, Freudiana, which ended up being released not as a Project album (despite sounding extremely Project-y) but as a studio concept album for a musical about the life and influence of Sigmund Freud. Both of them could be found doing interviews for liner notes on the series of remastered Project albums over the past couple of years, but it always seemed like they were being interviewed separately – it would seem that hell stands a better chance of freezing over than the Alan Parsons Project has of getting back together in its entirety.
But it would seem that Woolfson has no problem cashing in on his connection to the group. Numerous bonus tracks on those remastered CDs offered glimpses of early, unfinished takes of numerous previously unheard songs, a tantalizing chance to hear works-in-progress that never got further. Apparently Woolfson decided they needed to go further, and as a result his new album has the slightly top-heavy title of Eric Woolfson Sings The Alan Parsons Project That Never Was. It basically consists of some of those unfinished songs, now presumably fleshed out to full length with a full set of lyrics, and there’s also some overlap with his previous effort, Poe, indicating that perhaps that album originated as rejected Project material.
I dunno, Eric. I may wait for this one to show up used. Maybe I’m being too harshly skeptical, but it’s starting to sound a little too much like Eric Woolfson Can’t Sell An Album Unless He Reminds Everyone Of The Alan Parsons Project Connection. 😆 Coming up next: Eric Woolfson Whistles Alan Parsons Project Instrumental Hits In The Shower, complete with free bonus DVD!
P.S. if anyone’s that fascinated by it, here’s the obligatory link to buy the thing. 😆… Read more
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Kelly Groucutt, bassist and backing vocalist for ELO from 1975-1983, died unexpectedly on Thursday at the age of 63. You can say the words “Electric Light Orchestra” and get 50 geeks like me going off about the genius of Jeff Lynne as songwriter and producer, but not nearly enough people ever raved about the sheer showmanship of Kelly Groucutt. Put simply, Kelly could work a room, or a stadium – the size of the crowd was irrelevant, he could entertain them: it’s just what he was there to do. After the breakup of Lynne’s ELO, Kelly soldiered on with his own group, OrKestra (the K emphasized to point out that he and fellow ELO alumnus, violinist Mik Kaminski, were in the band), which was later absorbed into another ELO reunion band, ELO Part II, in 1992. Now with several former members of the original band at its heyday, Part II gamely played to any crowd that showed up, gaining a slightly humorous reputation as being a classy British band that would show up for any ribfest or state fair that would foot the bill.
than anything – I caught wind of Part II playing Fort Smith. The tickets were only ten bucks. The crowd was sleepy – they really seemed to be there for the booze, not for the band, so I was a bit of an oddity, sitting off by myself, taking in the music, and as always not touching a drop of anything, which I’m sure made me a valued customer at that venue.
It seems like it’s all hitting the fan at once here at Casa Green. In case you managed to miss it somehow (surely not for lack of me blabbering about it everywhere), after months of teasing everyone along, 
Everyone keeps tagging me with this particularly silly meme, so I figured, what the heck – with my abundance of truly weird music sitting on my hard drive, not to mention Doctor Who audio stories, film & TV scores, various and sundry sound FX albums and whatnot, I’ll be able to elevate this meme to a completely surreal new dimension. Either that or every answer will be an ELO or Split Enz song. … 
Ah, the joys of parenthood. It’s a wonder sometimes that the whole human race hasn’t been wiped out by germs and viruses – when we have a situation like we have now, where the three of us are handing illnesses around like hot potatoes, I really wonder how the species got this far. Evan’s had a second round of urpiness, Jan’s feeling urpy, and I’ve never really stopped feeling urpy. The only real unexpected part is really trying to figure out who will be the next to lose their lunch. Place your bets now. For breakfast this morning, Evan’s had a chopped-up banana and some Cheerios (minus milk) as finger food, and I’ve let him pace himself on how fast he wanted to put it down. So far, so good – I’m finding that in many cases, taking a bit of a zen approach and letting him choose his own pace is the key to figuring out what’s up with him. And I have yet to see him feed himself so fast that it comes right back up. I know it’ll happen someday, and that I can’t let him graze freely forever, but for right now it’s useful. Me, I’m still down to one meal a day – I just don’t feel like my stomach can handle any more than that. (I tried to eat twice on Saturday, and paid for it rather messily.) But I’ve got this perpetually dizzy/shaky thing going on that makes me suspect I need to be eating more – I feel really disoriented. I’ve been hitting the multivitamins for the first time in ages to compensate. Maybe I should try some banana slices and O’s…
I was amused to run across 