I keep prodding my son to finish his four year degree, and almost had him interested with English as a major. He's such a slug, if it smells like effort, he won't go near it. Loves stories and story telling, any format. So I was luring him on with stories about mythology, and Beowulf, more Shakespeare. Told him they were reading Ender's Game in the high schools now. The Great Gatsby how could you NOT like that book? etc.

English majors more properly should be thought of as literature majors. When I studied drama, I found the most enjoyment in reading the historical accounts, or plays by Moliere and such. I love historical movies, even if they aren't strictly accurate (ever see *Time Bandits*??)

Mind you I'd be a lot happier if my son studied engineering but that's too much work. He faked his way through geometry I think, even though he's good at keeping numbers straight and coaxing information out of computers and weird data bases. So I hope he keeps English in mind for a degree, since it won't be much effort. Our minds all work different ways... sometimes that's hard to accept, isn't it?

See what I mean about animal horns? They are popping up everywhere. Pretty amazing. BTW this is Michael Jackson arising from the dead via hologram, not a bad stage event. I remember when he was a little brat singing with his brothers on Ed Sullivan... they were on there a lot. Held together by drugs at the end apparently.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....X3AVw7TWgE

Julie seems a very nice dear woman... I look forward to meeting her. Hope the Yoshi's thing works out.

hehe........... horns..........

I was just reading on another board, Julie said she really practiced this show after the cruise... she's married to another keyboardist so thankfully no domestic squabbles Alberto apparently programmed the keyboards. I'd love to see how they work too. One photo I spotted just caught Alan's keyboard right, and he had a digital display up with the music (I couldn't see THAT well, I assume it was standard notation music) so I wonder if Julie doesn't have the same set up more or less. You know how it is, sometimes you memorize music so well you don't need the sheetmusic, then other stuff you're a little shaky on and you want it right there to look at. And it just occurred to me, do you realize you no longer have to pull one hand off the keyboard to turn the page????

Julie was hired for her versatility, a good strong performing voice that holds up under touring, she can play sax, and pulls a few chords out of a guitar for rhythm backup at times. And she looks good on stage! And while Alan does the heavy stuff on keyboards during the big shows, Julie does her part too. It's fascinating to start looking at how it's put together after seeing a few shows.

Well, it IS about the presentation often. Julie is good at it.

I'm sorry, I do not think Patrick was worth a hill of beans as a musician................ he did those stupid runs up and down the scale................ BFD. What little I listened to of his compositions on his site, were pretty blanc mange. I could probably compose THAT well, and that's not saying much. He was all about technology, and yes came along at a time that the Moodies needed to move into the new electronic age. I WILL give him credit for that. Patrick and Graeme worked together a lot on the tech end.

Paul was/is an incredible composer in his own right. I liked Bias's style, and the little of his compositions I heard were good too. He was so nice, how could you not like him? Patrick was creepy. Paul had a cute butt... much cuter than any on stage now. That counts for something!

I honestly can't sort Julie's musical style out, but she sings well and is a good backing artist, and seems a cool person. So I like her. She may stay.

Mike was best of all of course. Incredible composer, I'm sorry they all split up.

Oooo you never saw Paul from the back. Somehow I wound up behind Paul a few times, and oh my, he did a very nice jiggle back there, and is built correctly.

Sorry.............. honestly I don't go after dudes for outward appearances... it's just nice to watch. it's what's inside that counts.

I need to knock out the last two papers of my course this weekend. They're almost done. You comments on "Paper Doll" went into it... too funny!!! I put in "Tell Me What the Fox says" for my final analysis. Too cute and funny.

Oddly while on the subject of magical animals.... I'm reading the most interesting book. Richard Bach (he of Jonathon Livingston Seagull fame/infamy) wrote it and I'm just finding it. Curious indeed.

ie=UTF8&qid=1400899642&sr=1-1&keywords=curious+richard+bach

you betcha.............. grossology at its finest. However, we still discourage such comments in classroom settings

I collect things so fast, then run across them later when cleaning out a folder. I found this in the project folder just now. Pretty interesting in light of Lady Gaga being as money making as she is.... and some of the other foul languaged super stars of today. Source is at the bottom:

Much of the neurolinguistic programming (NLP) children and teenagers receive comes through the lyrics they hear in music and its repetition. NLP is one of the easiest and most widespread methods of persuasion, especially for those not conscious to its effect on the mind. Familiar things require less effort to process and that feeling of ease unconsciously signals a truth, also called cognitive fluency. Fluency allows effortless thinking. When thinking about something that is easy to process, we tend to reason quickly and effortlessly. This isn’t necessarily a good or a bad thing, but one standard effect of automatic thinking is that we tend to go for the default option. What some of the new generation of lyrics do is hit that part of the brain that operates below the level of conscious awareness which is quick, effortless and automatic. So if we are going to create simple lyrics in music, they must empowering not disempowering, because they have a significant effect on the generations that will inherit the world.

PreventDisease.com

I didn't finish this thread up properly. I wrote up a powerful lot of analysis about various songs, but will not post here as they get pretty "wordy" ......... and regular folks don't like all that academic babble. Ah the things we do for a grade. Anyway I got the 30 clock hours finally and it's all over except for writing the check and popping the application in the mail for my cert renewal.

The conclusion I reached is that Lady Gaga and the "soft porn" pop music is being pushed by dirty old men in the industry. And the young people are really listening to folks like Mike Dawes etc. the people who can work Youtube to their advantage. Think of the young fans who will come to Mike now, since their parents and grandparents went to see him with Justin's tour.

The young people have a cute trend going with *critters* if you look at the cover of Mike's album, there are critters all over it, even a fox (or is that a raccoon??) I love their artistic style, it's whimsical, delightful, surreal. Several popular songs are like "Tell me What the Fox Says" ........ the European trend of wearing horns in public is there. leslee and I passed a bunch of kids on BART who were wearing animal outfits and going to a party!!!! They dress like this and wear it all the time out........... it's a bit pagan. Horns on head! Wearing tails like that is what Native Americans used to do, and indeed where Daniel Boone got HIS raccoon cap with the tail hanging down. Delightful stuff!!!!

Ah to be young again. Anyway it was a super good exercise, and I came up with a great way to do collages by doing one for "Bohemian Rhapsody" and also learned a lot about Freddie Mercury I missed ............. fascinating stuff.

We have a bear scare here now! Someone saw one very close to my home. I live in between two huge forested belts .......... one is a park, the other just undeveloped land. I heard very strange movements early this morning. No bird feeders here.... maybe said bear will eat my rats!!!! Gosh now I'm afraid to even put out a hummingbird feeder. Dang and I so like to go walking at night too. NOW I have to be worried about big ornery and black out there waiting to get me. Used to be a couple of deer who were scary too, they are quite big up close. Bumped into them ALL the time on my walks.

some birds are QUITE aggressive! Thanks for sharing on the barf. Dogs just BARF I don't know why. It's their nature. Wolves barf to feed their babies. I just emailed you. You're right, I have trouble giving hints on connecting dots.

Never fear.......... I was literally just reading this article before I read your post. Bird explained. Plainly Professor Challenger has been here.

http://www.foxnews.com/science.....=obnetwork

Very funny................. I never saw the *Bridges of Madison County* either. Have no idea what it's about.

I do recall that the Pushmi Pullyu only talked with one head, and ate with the other. It was considered good manners amongst his kind. And no they couldn't dance.

The Marx Brothers spelled it "Humor Risk".......... that's a fact.