OK, seriously, so you don't need good lyrics to make a good song. The author listened to an interview with David Byrne of The Talking Heads, Mr. Byrne talked about the song Burning Down the House. The tune is not that great, but what a sound! In this case, the rhythm should probably broken out as a subcategory of (2) sound, as it makes this song. David Byrne says that the lyrics were basically arbitrary words to fit the rhythm, and that originally the chorus had "foam rubber USA!" in place of "burning down the house!" It cracked me up to hear this.
I wish I could tell the reader how to find this interview, but all I know is that is was back in the timeframe in which MTV didn't suck, so that brings us to the late 80's or earlier.

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Too busy a day to post, but gotta put up some music.


Posted On: Friday - December 9th 2016 8:16PM MST
In Topics:   Music

I really want to put up at least 3 post a day for now and not have days of "dead air", but for today, just this:

As kids in our family we were always about 5 - 10 years behind on the pop and rock music, so my brother and I really got into The Beach Boys about 12 years after their prime. The songs most people have heard are the surfing and car songs, of course, and they are all great sounds.

The creative genius of the band, Brian Wilson (there were the 3 Wilson brothers and Mike Love and Al Jardine) decided to go in a different direction with the band, as a lot of bands are wont to do. A lot of times this doesn't turn out well ([cough] Doobie Brothers getting Michael McDonald, [cough], [cough]. However, when "Pet Sounds" was made in mid-1966, it was compared to the most creative pop albums ever made, for instance, the Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper".

This song is from that album, but, funny thing is, this particular track was NOT written by any of the Beach Boys. It is an old standard.

While traveling for my job some of the time, though I like the work, sometimes I think of this.

Mike Love by himself: "This is the worst trip I've ever been on."


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Cover of Lyle Lovett's "Family Reserve"


Posted On: Thursday - December 8th 2016 6:05PM MST
In Topics:   Music

I don't usually click on youtube cover versions, but this one is very good - a couple of young ladies harmonize very well on "Family Reserve". It's kind of a song about rednecks, whom I have no problem with - good tune and just moving lyrics, originally by Lyle Lovett and his LARGE BAND.

Chances a reader has heard this are, say, 1:1,000,000, so I hope it stays up for a while.


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Another fine Ann Coulter article


Posted On: Thursday - December 8th 2016 5:54PM MST
In Topics:   Elections '16 - '26  Immigration Stupidity  Trump  Pundits

This lady may have indirectly had a good bit to do with Donald Trump getting elected president. Word on the street is that he read her book Adios America around just before he announced that he was running for office back in summer of '15. Yes, I was on the street when I heard some word about it. Anyhoo, I didn't used to have respect for Miss Coulter back - say 10 years or so - when she came off as another neocon, "Go GOP!" standard Republican booster. (I haven't listened to Rush Limbaugh that much, I'll admit, but he seemed to me to be the same and has also come around.)

Ann has been dead-on on all her articles about immigration over the last 5 years. Her book read as though it was crib-notes from 10 years of articles and blogposts on VDare.com.

This is her latest column, which is basically advice for Mr. Trump. The advice, in a nutshell, is to stay tough, remember the reason we elected him, don't listen to any spew out of Paul Ryan or Nikki Haley (just common sense there), and don't try to make friends with any of the Gov't (aka Lamestream) media. If they treat you nice, Mr. Trump, it's because you are LETTING US DOWN, so quit that.


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Trump's choice for EPA secretary


Posted On: Thursday - December 8th 2016 8:16AM MST
In Topics:   Treehuggers  Global Climate Stupidity  Trump

This is good news!

I was starting to lose trust in this guy's (Trump's) knowledge of the big picture and his judgement from his Nicky Haley pick and a few others.

However, Trump has wisely ignored the advice of climate sage and Farmer's Almanac salesman Al Gore (aka ManBearPig) in picking Scott Pruitt from Oklahoma as incoming EPA secretary. Climate Depot says:

"Climate sanity has been restored to the U.S. EPA. No longer do we have to hear otherwise intelligent people in charge in DC blather on about how EPA regulations are necessary to control the Earth’s temperature or storminess. See: Huh?! Obama advisor John Podesta claims EPA CO2 regs (which don’t impact global CO2 levels) are needed to combat extreme weather: ‘The risk on the downside you’re seeing every day in the weather."

Yeah, Podesta, we're seeing this s__t every day. It's been cloudy for a week, with lows higher than average by 4 degrees. Then it became sunny for a coupla days with lows below average during the clear nights. We had some precip. a few days back. It got windy for 3 days in a row back last spring. I mean WTF is going on? Can't the whole country have weather like San Diego all year long again like when I was a kid before the gas-guzzling monstrous Edsel came along?^* Scary, scary stuff, people!

Anthony Watt's WattsUpWithThat site has more.

If you, the reader, have read the "What is Peek Stupidity?" (basically, "about this site") page, you will get a small inkling of sarcasm about the whole "Global Climate Disruption^TM thing. I am offended by the whole thing as an engineer and will write more about why in more posts to come.

BTW, can one trademark "Global Climate Disruption"? Any lawyers out there? No, good. It's mine then, as I did think of this first.


* Mind you, as I recollect, we lived in San Diego and didn't much get past Orange County, so possibly that biases my thinking. Nah. (Course at the point that we lived there I was too young to even know where we lived, so I may be wrong.)


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Apology for no post about Pearl Harbor


Posted On: Thursday - December 8th 2016 7:50AM MST
In Topics:   History  Movies

I feel remiss about not posting anything, especially as the sneak attack was a round 75 years ago yesterday (round as in "round number")

Yeah, there are probably thousands of books and dozens of movies, but probably only a few people still alive to tell their own stories. It's not the goal of this blog to repeat stuff that can be found all over the web.

I happened to have watched a movie called "Little Boy" just last night that is related to the war with Japan. It is not a war movie at all, it turns out, but a tear-jerker type. I still liked this one that is about a boy's great love for his father. It's really about what faith means though. The movie is set in a small coastal California town (but actually made in Mexico) during World War II. Even though it's a new movie, usually meaning ultra-PC and unwatchable to me, this one is fair and believable.

Oh, the name "Little Boy" is not about the atomic bomb - there could be confusion between this movie's name and "Fat Man and Little Boy" about the Manhattan project to build the atomic bomb. The B-29 (Superfortress) Enola Gay dropped the "Little Boy" Uranium-235 bomb, and a few days later another B-29, Bock's Car dropped the "Fat Man" plutonium-core bomb. That was the whole arsenal at that point. Luckily, it was enough to put an end to that war.

This blog was set up to put up movie and book reviews linked to on the left side, but I'm not sure whether that'll happen.


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The Decemberists


Posted On: Wednesday - December 7th 2016 9:06PM MST
In Topics:   Music

As mentioned last evening, this is the 2nd of two good songs from about late 2011. I liked this song so much not only just due to the good tune but due also to the great guitar riff. Who does it remind you of?

Yeah, Peter Buck's (REM) guitar. He helped the band with this one - that's why.


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How to deal with salesmen


Posted On: Wednesday - December 7th 2016 6:23PM MST
In Topics:   TV, aka Gov't Media  Salesmen  Curmudgeonry  Media Stupidity

A guy came up to the porch to sell me service from the competitor to the cable service we have now, which is just sending internet signals. The first thing I told the guy was that if he can sell us internet only, no bundles, we can make a deal - at least for next year.

He first bad-mouthed the phone service and I agreed (it's not a real land-line, so we'd still be dependent on the signal through the same cable.). He started asking about TV, at which point it was obvious to me that he didn't have an internet only deal. "Where do you get movies from? What channels do you get now?", etc. I told him we hadn't even used the (digital) antenna that I put way up on the roof in 2 years at least.

The guy was really concerned about our watching something, anything, on TV, so I went on a rant, not yelling mind you, as rant might imply. I told him that my Dad was right that the TV producers, Hollywood, and those people were pushing their agenda in subtle ways even back in the 1970's, and it's not subtle at all anymore and it's a whole bunch of lies, and I don't want to pay my own money to get lies delivered to my house, and so on for about 2 full minutes.

It's the first time I've seen a salesman walk off the porch on his own initiative, as he was muttering "hey, uh, I've got to get to some other houses and .... ok, uh, bye." Ha, ha, ha! If I'd known that's all it would take I'd have never had these window salesmen in my living room for an hour and a half back in the 90's (story for another post.)

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More on the destruction of California


Posted On: Wednesday - December 7th 2016 4:45PM MST
In Topics:   Immigration Stupidity  California  Treehuggers  Environmental Stupidity

About a month ago the Drudge Report led me to this article about a 29,000 acre (that’s about 45 square miles!) forest fire in the beautiful Sequoia National Forest in California [ Sanctuary city illegal immigrant sparks $61M fire in national forest , By Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times , October 25, 2016]. IT’s the kind of thing Brenda Walker of VDare writes about so much (California and human factors), so I wanted to point this one out.

The hue and cry from the tree-huggers has been deafening, I guess. I’m not sure, as I sure haven’t heard it—if an environmentalist protests in the forest, does it make a sound? What if the forest in question is mostly charred hundreds of years old Douglas Fir and Spruce, burned by a five-times deported (but, he’s baaaaack!!!) illegal alien Mexican who “don’t care about no steenking trees”? What if said unheard environmentalist works for an organization that is paid handsomely not to make a sound?

I do know why the Sierra Club big-wigs won’t mention the terrible effects of illegal immigrants on the huge, beautiful, preserved wildlands of America. I learned this from VDARE.com long ago. It’s because donor David Gelbaum gave them $100 million on the condition that “if they ever came out anti-immigration” they would never get another dollar from him. [The Man Behind the Land, by Kenneth R. Weiss, October 27, 2004] As to the rank and file dues-paying members, why do they never speak up and try to change the direction of the Sierra Club and speak some truth—as opposed to just letting their environment slowly go to ruin after 100 years of arguably the best environmental stewardship any country has accomplished? Let me throw this opinion out there: the chicks are there just for the warm and fuzzy feelings they get, and the guys are in the organization for the chicks. Maybe most of them have never even been hiking in the high Sierras, as there is no 4G cell service! They’d better go soon, as whatever’s not burned down may be owned by the Chinese soon and made into chopsticks.

Full Disclosure: I do like the beautiful wilderness and have been known to hug some trees myself, but I assure you there was no penetration.


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California immigration disaster


Posted On: Wednesday - December 7th 2016 4:04PM MST
In Topics:   Immigration Stupidity  The Dead  California

I've wanted to write a long post about the human and environmental tragedy that is called California for a long time. I'll have some more tomorrow, but what got me thinking about it again was this comment from this article on Amren.com:

Who Me? Xanthippe2 • 11 hours ago

"Why is California so interested in keeping the millions of non-citizens living there? I realize they vote D when they bother to vote at all, but other than that they are nothing but a drain on public funds and services. The removal of some of them would be a relief to the rest of the population who would have more room and more resources available. Not to mention, safer."

This guy gives part of the answer to his question right away, about the Dem. votes. The immigration is indeed a net big drain, and in more ways than just financial. The last sentence is true also. Yes, this is all true and nothing is being done. The second part of the answer to why the state is being demographically (and this will mean, eventually environmentally) destroyed is that the 50-75% of actual (not illegal alien) good decent Californian's are of no concern to the state/feral government elites, the ag-business elites, the software-tech elites.

The big wigs of today, as opposed to those of a century ago, do not give a whit (I cleaned it up, Edit.) about their countrymen or, in this case, fellow Californians. They are "Men of the World". If they fuck up what was once the freest people, the most beautiful state, and the best lifestyle the world has ever seen, the'll just go globaltrotting to somewhere else better (so they think) and try again to fuck it up. It's what they do, and there've been people like this around for centuries but they never had a more beautiful place to destroy before.

Chuck Berry wrote it, but you can't do it better than Bob, Jerry, Phil, and whatever keyboardist had not OD'd yet by 1976.

By the way, for extra credit, what two states did our traveller cross on the way from the Tidewater, Virginia to the Promised Land that are not mentioned in the song?


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The Head and the Heart (band)


Posted On: Tuesday - December 6th 2016 9:00PM MST
In Topics:   Music

In my very first post of this blog I bad-mouthed modern music pretty heavily. About 5 years back I heard 2 particular songs on the radio that did not suck (at all, in fact), and would listen to them quite a bit on youtube.

This 1st of those is this one, called Lost in my Mind by a Seattle band called by the cumbersome name of "The Head and the Heart" This is a live recording (incl. video) of them playing in the KEXP studios, which is right over by the music museum, and the space needle.



I'll put the other song up tomorrow evening.


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Time magazine urges Hillary voters to not pay taxes


Posted On: Tuesday - December 6th 2016 11:52AM MST
In Topics:   Elections '16 - '26

Zerohedge.com refers to "Time" magazine (dang, there's a blast from the past - are they really still in business? What for?)

The question is: Are we gonna miss the $7,421 and eighty-seven cents that we get from these 65 million deadbeats?

No, really as a NET amount it turns out the sum is closer to $1,507,481,497,885.22, but that's just a quick calculation on my Lotus 123 spreadsheet. Wait, damn these Windows 2.1 non-compatible programs - it forgot the negative sign. I meant -$1,507,481,497,885.22 That's a chunk of change there, so the Feral Government comes out way, way ahead in this scenario.

Therefore, to keep our nice balanced budget, I expect a tax cut in the near future. In fact, I may buy an F350 today, on credit, in anticipation of said tax cut.


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Not as much PC back in '93


Posted On: Tuesday - December 6th 2016 9:38AM MST
In Topics:   TV, aka Gov't Media  Political Correctness

On a lighter note than the last post (by a long shot! Ed.), we have this 5 minute montage of a Seinfeld episode, "Cigar Store Indian". The youtube guy did a good job putting enough of the show in his video to where one can get the gist of this story.

(Oh, hell, you have to click on this video to open it up in a new window/tab. The "owner" says so. Well worth it.)


That's funny, no matter who ya are!

Oh, I mean, unless you're this guy:

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More about Waco, TX


Posted On: Tuesday - December 6th 2016 9:16AM MST
In Topics:   TV, aka Gov't Media  US Police State

This is more background regarding this post for readers young enough to not know much about the US governement's massacre of 76 people on their own property in Waco, Texas on April 19th of 1993 (or those unaware of current events at the time).

This site is one I picked out of the blue just now, but the Waco - the Rules of Endgagement video is the best documentary on it I have seen.

Well, unlike many Americans at this point in time, this writer was old enough, and aware enough, to keep up with what was going on in the country in 1993. This blog is not about whole histories of events in America, as there is plenty of material out there and not enough time in the day. However, I would like to point it out wrt Janet Reno but also put down just one thought here that is from 1993.

At that point, it was just a couple of years before I realized just about everything in politics/governments in this country was going in only one - the wrong - direction. This writer could be considered a libertarian/constitutionalist in 1993.

The siege of the Branch Davidian property, (oh, "compound", it's always a "compound" if it's the "bad" guys, the ones that don't like the police state) started a few months earlier than April 19th of that year. I was watching the national TV news, as was still my habit until the mid-90's. The reporter at the scene in Texas was concluding his report and handing off back to the big cheese - I don't know if it was Dan Rather or one of the other 2 big cheeses, let's just say that.

The reporter concluded his story with "They are Survivalists, Dan!" That was said in a way to make you sure that being a survivalist is a BAD thing. Even back then, as a younger man, I realized the BS that comes out of these people's pie-holes. "Hey," I thought, "what in hell's wrong with being a survivalist? It's not a reason to pin people in their house for 2 months, try to starve them out, and then eventually come in with the tear gas, tanks, and rifle fire. I mean, unless we're living in a police state. Oh, wait, that means ......"

I don't have a super long term memory for details like that, but this memory stands out like it had been said yesterday: "They are Survivalists, Dan!"


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Hoyt Axton - Della and the Dealer


Posted On: Monday - December 5th 2016 7:47PM MST
In Topics:   Music

From 1979, when they still wrote some good country songs:

"The cat was cool, and he never said a mumblin' word."



I had no idea until today that this guy wrote "Joy to the World", performed most famously by Three Dog Night.


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"Beaver overthinking dam" (from The Onion archives)


Posted On: Monday - December 5th 2016 3:34PM MST
In Topics:   Humor

It's an oldy, and it's not political, just really funny:

Beaver Overthinking Dam


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Ohio State students and one prof. show maximum PC


Posted On: Monday - December 5th 2016 3:20PM MST
In Topics:   Student and other Snowflakes  University  Political Correctness

I am very glad I went to college a long time ago. In this day and age, if I were 18-22 still, I don't know if I'd had the guts to talk truth to the all the politically correct professors spouting all their indoctrination points.

This zerohedge.com article mentions a video of short interviews with students, and one faculty member, about the Somalian attempted murderer. These people have in very ingrained in them that certain truths are forbidden. They aren't stupid, but the are cowardly. You've probably seen other videos in which an interviewer puts the kids on the spot, and they get a very weird look in their faces when they have this dissonance in the brain - "I know this but can't say it." It's kind of eerie, as I never would see that "screwed-with" look in anyone's face back in my day.

I should modify this to add that when the writer was in college it was in order to study a technical field, and I'm pretty sure even today one would not run into too much BS from professors of Science and Engineering. Even if they were to get way off their subjects, something about these studies weeds out the PC morons, so I can't imagine the profs talking like the one guy in the video.

It would be a real hoot to show up now though, like a Rodney Dangerfield, to attend some humanities classes and give the profs and other students some extreme feedback. I have no problem with standing up for the truth even with all of the rest of the class against me. In fact, I would have fun with that; knowing that I wouldn't care what my grade turned out like would help in this regard.

Here is the video itself (I linked to zerohedge for the comments section, which has got to be good, but is mangled to the extreme in any older browser):

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