Day of the Dead

Today is Halloween in the U.S. and “Dia de los Muertos” or “Day of the Dead” in Mexico and here is something appropriate I found on plastic.com:

‘In the U.S. each year, funeral and cemetery industries bury 1,636,000 tons of reinforced concrete, over 100,000 tons of steel, 2,700 tons of copper and bronze, 30 million board feet of hardwoods, and 837,060 gallons of embalming fluid. And conventional funerals don’t come cheap: the average price of a U.S. funeral, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, is $5,180.

‘The funeral and cemetery industries insist that they are eco-friendly and that their practices are regulated for health and environmental safety. But Pre-Posthumous Vice President Woodsen doesn’t agree: ‘Cemeteries turn beautiful places into a monoculture of gravestones, really, a landfill of embalmed chemicals and cement…Then backhoes, lawnmowers and tree pruners put diesel emissions into the air and pesticides and fertilizers into the water – for what?”

Viagra Side-Effects

Here is a little tidbit I caught on Wired News this morning. Who would have imagined these viagra side-effects!!

“Studies suggest that ever-quickening global Viagra sales have contributed to a softer market for traditional Chinese impotence remedies that require body parts from endangered animals.”

More rhinos are alive today because people use viagra….amazing…What is the saying? A butterfly in China flaps his wings and there is a storm in the Caribbean….or something like that….

New Negra Guitar

I received my DeVoe Flamenco Negra guitar on Thursday. It’s a beauty. The wood is gorgeous, the craftsmanship is impeccable and the rosette (the ring around the soundhole) perfect…I have since tried three different saddles (low, medium and high) each with normal tension and hard tension D’Addario composite strings…I don’t like changing strings, but I wanted to try every possible combination…I was worried about the Rosewood making the guitar sound a lot darker than the traditional Cypress and harder to play…today I felt that I began to understand the guitar…the combination that works for me is a medium saddle and normal tension strings….It’s too early for a definitive verdict because I have not yet recorded the guitar, but I love playing it and I love the sound of it…

I also realized that I have been playing guitar for 32 years!!! Damn, that’s a long time…

The Santa Fe Sessions

Higher Octave will market and distribute the SSRI release “The Santa Sessions” by Ottmar Liebert + Luna Negra in February of 2003….pst….pst…it’s a secret…..for a little taste of the new album you can go to http://www.lunanegra.com/thesantafesessions/credits

– where you can also download a bonus track which will not be on the CD….a brand-new recording of “2 The Night”. The overall sound of the record is organic, with wonderful upright acoustic bass by Jon Gagan, lots of percussion and many guitars…….I listen to this one more often than to any other album I have made….

Unsafe at any speed

The author of “High and Mighty” explains why SUVs are not just gas-guzzling pollution machines, they’re dangerous to drive.

Amen.