Holy Moly......This BlogGrammy Is So Heavy !

I am a bit  bemused today....last night I ordered in some lovely Chinese food (Honey Walnut Shrimp and MuShu Chicken......blessings from heaven and Bamboo Village) and, of course there were Fortune Cookies.

One was perplexing and a bit unsettling or maybe encouraging.....I don't know which   
                                                                                                              IT'S NOT THE END YET...
..LET'S STAY WITH IT.

Actually, that is the kind of thing an 85 year old likes to hear.

The other one made me chortle.  (I love that word) 

       LOVE OR MONEY........OR NEITHER?

The answer to that one is easy.......BOTH, of course, if you are offering.  
It would only be "neither" if the choice  required an answer to a question  like, "would you have sex with him for......?

But enough of this shilly-shallying..........I am totally ferblundget today.  (That, I believe, is somewhere  between fercocktah and ferdreydt).  (  If my beloved Mama were only here she could correct my spelling on those,,,,,,, I do not think spellcheck would  be up to it. )

Why, you ask, am I ferblundget?  Well, this has been a momentous week of firsts for me both in the way of experiences and honors.   You probably all know that I summoned up my courage and published a singing video blog earlier this week and that did leave me a mite weak in the knees at my seeming arrogance not to mention with a monstrous shiver of apprehension as to how it would be received.  

 
The truth is, even though I was married to a jazz musician with a band, I have never sung in public in my whole gonsa life. (of course, that does not count singing The Star Spangled Banner with the class in Assembly or Take Me Out to the  Ball Game).  I have always loved music and have sung for my own pleasure only and the  idea of singing in front of even one person would have completely nonplussed....nay.....paralyzed me when I was younger.   I really do not remember how this whole singing for my beloved followers developed and I am too lazy to go back and research how it all began.  But, it seems to me that I innocently promised it somewhere along the line and I try never to break a promise.  Then when the roadblocks developed to my accomplishing this feat technically.....well.....being the stubborn bulldog that I am, the die was surely cast. And so, I did  it.

All of which leads me to this morning, when I was still basking in the glow of your delightful, enthusiastic, (if muchly undeserved ) comments and praise,  You are all angels and I love you dearly.  Your support has meant a great deal to me.......words cannot express.......I was actually prepared for a few polite catcalls and snickers and to my amazement and delight did not detect a single one.  So THANK YOU ALL from the bottom of my heart.  (Bow, bow, curtsy,  flinging of kisses here while  I clutch your cyber bouquets to my ample bosom and skip lightly off of the stage without tripping and/or falling down )

Before you start clamoring for more, I must tell you that I will, indeed, sing to you again........perhaps more often than desirable or necessary even, but there are still a few technical bugs I want to iron out first so you will have to dine on nothing but my mostly edible words for a while.

********And now the the other HUGE event.   And I can hardly speak intelligibly about this.*******

This morning, one of my blogging Idols, the incredible, brilliant, lovable  Joe Hagy of Cranky Old Man
handed me the biggest honor of my life, a combination Oscar, Grammy, Emmy, People's Choice award when he devoted his blog to me, praised me to the heavens
(and recruited a whole bunch of new followers to my site.)  I told him and I repeat it here.......there are simply no words to describe how I feel much less to thank him properly.  However, if you happen to be so wretchedly deprived as to not know of his fantastic, perceptive,intelligent, FUNNY writings, run- do not walk to:



http://joeh-crankyoldman.blogspot.com/


Now I have to go and lie down and put cold cloths on my feverish head.  What a day this has been.......hmmmmm.......that reminds me of one of my favorite songs.......look for it in your future somewhere.....it is called "Almost Like Being In Love".









,

Ta Da!

Well, so far my timid efforts at exposing myself naked to the blogworld (vocally that is) have not brought total disaster....yet.  Several people have said "Ha, ha, ha" but I, in my naivette, have taken that to be a sign of glee or  pleasure and not derision.  And when I say "naked" I want you to know that it is not an easy thing to stand up here and sing, A Cappella yet, for an unknown, or perhaps I should say an unseen audience.  For a shy and retiring flower such as myself, learning how to accomplish this massive feat of making a fool of myself in public it takes the summoning up of courage beyond measure.......or just foolishness, I don't know which.

Anyway, dear hearts.........due to your insisting and the fact that I had to devote several weeks of my life to figuring out the "how" of this I intend to try to entertain you in one way or another whether you like it or not.
Whether you are laughing at me or with me, it's OK.  As long as you are amused.  Knowing me, as you should  by now, you surely know that I never waste anything.......well, I am not sure about the 4 years I spent in college........I cannot quantify what I got out of that besides  learning new ways to suffer.......not so with the course I just finished in VideoBlog 101......that is paying off bigtime. 

In my last blog I gave you a smattering of what I had to offer........today I resolved to try to produce a full length song so I fetched a chair out by the pool, deposited myself in it and geared up to try shooting a bit of my garden while I warbled away......as usual, Gussie appeared briefly to see what I was up to and as soon as she heard me trying to sing she couldn't escape fast enough.  However, I did catch her for a few moments...out of focus and a bit catywampus......much like my singing.  Upon playback I noticed, sadly, that I succeeded in holding the camera at a weird angle here and there and also managed to hit a few notes that seem to  belong in some other song altogether, but perfection is not within my grasp so I must  be satisfied with small gains.......perhaps I will improve with practice and, egad, I just remembered that there is still one more singing lesson in the package that I have not yet worked on, so, hell and damn, I might yet find Doris Day buried in there somewhere in the vicinity of my larynx.  I am totally ready to be surprised.

As for you out there......I hope you are ready for whatever.  Remember........it's all your fault. Sigh.  I must be out of my friggin' mind.

 

Almost But Not Quite.....

Believe it or not, on Tuesday, Feb something or other - 2013, Florence and I collapsed gasping on the top of the Matterhorn or whatever......we finally achieved the impossible and got a video posted on YouTube so I could upload it to my blog.  Furthermore, we DID just that!  How many weeks have I been struggling with this......2, 3, 23 ?,  maybe half of my adult life.  You know how it is......time does not fly when you are not having fun.

Now, don't misunderstand........now that I have solved the challenge of how to do the frigging thing, I am delirious with happiness  and a sense of achievement.  Not quite smug about it  because, as you know, I am always humble.........life has a way of keeping me that way......I just keep asking myself why in the hell Blogger does not have a provision to upload audio files and why they do not make it clear somewhere  how to go about getting video files into an uploadable state.  Oh, why do I even ask......one reason may be to provide old codgers like me with something they can do while sitting down.

To continue......NO I have not yet published it  because it is AWFUL.  It was merely a desperate test and, for some ungodly reason I chose to sing a song I have not sung in years and therefore had to reach around wildly to try to remember and find the notes.  Consequently, my sound is akin to fingernails screeching across a blackboard and I miss more notes than I hit and I will not inflict that on you.  However, I have put together several more offerings and, as soon as my caregiver gets  back from Target with some Alkaline AA batteries and a batttery recharger  I will see if I can remember how to do it all.

The battery charger is essential, incidentally, to anyone messing around with this particular camcorder......About all you get out of a set of AA's is about 5 minutes if that.  Horrifying waste to a skinflint like me.....the charbger promises me 500 recharges.....it had better produce or I may have to rant.

There is a funny addendum to this whole thing  which I will confess to you, just  in case some of you noticed IMQTPI's comment on my last blog.  Last night, with the last shreds of strength I had in me, I called my singing pal in Illinois and told her of my success and promised I would post the blog for 5 minutes so she could see and hear it before I took it down since it was so very imperfect.  She  viewed it and, as I suspected, loved it because she loves me a lot and has no judgment where I am concerned.
 Then I took it back to draft form so it was no longer viewable.  apparently, in that 5 minutes QTPI got a look at it.  Like my buddy, she was very kind.........I will not impugn her judgment.......maybe she lo es me a lot too.  Anyway, I may someday post it again, but for now I would like to put up something o a little better quality so b ear with me.

I am going to attempt to post a brief bit featuring Gussie and me, just so you will have an idea of what you are in for.  If I fail, I will just post this without the vid bit and struggle a little more to regain control of things. 

Oy.  Technology........sometimes you are NOT a good thing.

 

Well, Don't Blame Me, Dammit, You Asked For It....

WARNING:   This blog does NOT contain the promised video of Lo singing.  This is simply a sort of documentary leading up to the production of same. I apologize if you are disappointed,  That ain't nothng compared to what you will be when you finally hear me sing.


Well, good people, I simply cannot believe the amount of effort, research, expenditure of energy and unprintable cussing that has come out of my attempts to satisfy your craving for the sound of my squeaky voice singing.  Worse yet, I can't believe the number of batteries it is taking.   Who'd a thunk it? 

I have discovered that this adorable little mini-camcorder, that I unearthed from the formidable pile of electronic gadgets in the corner of the spare room, has one niggling little detriment.....it appears to use up a pair of AA batts in about 2 minutes of shooting. That problem connects to another problem I have encountered, which is that, not believing that the brand new batteries I just installed 2 minutes ago could have been used up already, I spent innumerable sessions of 10 and 15 minutes each  taking things apart and rechecking all the switches, connections  and directions (which are tinier than miniscule and I am blind as a bat)  before grudgingly accepting the improbable idea that the recently new batts had, in 2 minutes, become  old and used up.  Unfortunately the camcorder does not have capability of being plugged into real Eeelectricity,so I have been left with no choice but to send my beloved caregiver to the 99cent store to pick up 15 more packages of AA's.  I hope to hell that'll do me.  (My renditions of the songs only last about 2 minutes each so that should allow for 15 attempts..........pleasegod one should be usable.)

Then, just when I thought I had run out of cuss words and the need for them, I booted up the Windows Media Player which, on occasion, has displayed a lovely kaleidoscope of color which I had planned to photograph while holding the earphone from my headset next to the camcorder mic while playing one of my experimental song files.   It's like this, see...the speakers on my laptop are puny to say the least and can hardly be heard so I have to fall back on the sound which comes out of the plugged in headphone which ain't great but is better than nothing.  This requires that I hold the earpiece of the headphone next to the mic on the camcorder to synchronize the video and sound.   What's that?......"WTF", you say........why don't I just sing into the camcorder mic while holding the camera on the pattern?    Do you really expect me to remember the lyrics and the notes of the song and do other intricate maneuvers like pushing buttons at the same time as singing almost on key?  Don't be ridiculous.......you can tell already that this is not a project that could be labelled "Easy"........not with me doing it. (If I have learned one thing during my life it is that nothing is ever EASY despite notarized statements swearing that it is, and also everything takes at least 3 times longer than they say or than you anticipate.)

No, no, no....we are not quite done yet......Now add to the above the fact that I discovered that I had forgotten how to make the kaleidoscope of colors appear while playing a tune on Windows Media Player.  For some bizarre reason the color thing  only seems to work when I have done a search of my files and located the pertinent one and clicked "play"to listen to it without directly entering or addressing directly the Windows Media Player ..  Dun't esk....I have no idea why.  That whole struggle only took about an hour of desperate attempts and wild stabbings of "play" and "stop"  before I finally happened upon the solution accidentally.  Many, many black clouds of naughty words issued forth and floated around the room during this latter period. 

There has also arisen another monstrous impediment to successful completion of this project.  I have discovered, to my surprise and horror, that I am sick unto death of the sound of my own voice!   I am not quite sure how I will manage to cope with this latest glitch........I suspect that my unbelievable,dumb  stubbornness will somehow overcome my nausea, but I will keep a bucket nearby just in case.

Well now, having said all that, you will have to excuse me while I don something of satiny pink, perhaps with an ostrich feather boa, to get in the proper mood for all this.  And, once so magnificently garbed, I may or may not be back soon. 

Don't wait up.

(But do leave the light on.)

If I Look a Little Deeper Thru the Pile in the Spare Room, I Will Probably Find the Lost Chord

I simply cannot believe my incredible foresight, good sense and just plain damned- all dumb good luck.  

I have been going bonkers for the past few days trying to research some way to turn my warbled audio bits into some medium able to be plugged into a blog.  I have partially digested mounds of totally indigestible material from Wikipedia, Google, YouTube and  You-Name-It and have emerged bleary, exhausted and despondent over my stupidity or the lack of decent information.....I do not know which is most to blame.  Worse yet, I am stuffed full of those indigestible fragments of information I really do not want and fear I will never be able to get rid  of. Sigh.

Anyway, my oxlike stubborn streak is all that saved me from finding a bridge to jump off of.  (For those of you who do not know, Los Angeles is NOT a city of bridges.....we have no rivers, lakes, creeks or streams.....it was a damned desert before we fucked it up....,well, there is that concrete ditch euphemistically called the Los Angeles River which is simply a huge drainage channel for those few days in the so-called rainy season when we get more rain than the sewers can handle and they all overflow somehow draining into the river and then water gurgles thru it down to the ocean, but it is usually a dry, cement  eyesore and  even if there were a bridge over it, I would not be caught dead jumping off of it into the Los Angeles River.....I'd be a laughingstock and I'd probably break both legs.........oh dear.....I do believe I digress).



Well, as I was saying, I did some very hard thinking and recalled vividly that at some point in the past decade or two I had purchased a Camcorder for the purpose of photographing all of my objects and furniture for insurance purposes and, naturally, never did a damned thing about actually doing it.   It had to be somewhere in the house, because god  and everyone else knows that Lois NEVER throws anything away, except for an important document now and then, and the logical place for it to  be would be the room I used to call the Office before it became too cluttered with discarded and/or outdated electronic equipment to the point of ridiculousness (otherwise known as the Place Where Everything Goes to Die or Become Obsolete).  I have not had the courage to look for anything in that room for about 3 years, and yet, I somehow summoned up courage I did not even know I had, marched in there today, went unhesitatingly to the corner where I felt it might be buried, rummaged around through a daunting stack of dreck and found a carton containing a Mini Camcorder  including Invoice and Instruction Book, no less.  (What?......no gasps, cheers,applause, huzzahs?......well, I sure as hell cheered and even huzzahed a little.)

I am not going to draw this out interminably.  (I think I have already done that ).  I immediately recruited the trusty Florence and demanded  (read that "begged") her to read the instructions and figure out how the thing worked and teach me......if at all possible.  We had a raucous and rousing afternoon of taking cockeyed videos of each other  (and the ceiling and many times of my thumb) while making obscene comments which, we found, were faithfully picked up by the recording device inside.  The day ended with me taking a video of Gussie sitting on my computer with me singing to her as she turned her back on me and marched away.  Tsk.  She seems to hate my singing.......I can't imagine why. 

Of course, all of this will take a bit of practicing with this, yet another, damned gadget, but I have high hopes of someday being able to take a video of the hummers or even Gussie while I serenade her.  When we downloaded our tests to the computer I was amazed at how reasonably decent the pictures were and even the sound from that teensy mic came out fairly well thru the computer's teensy speakers. 

So now I have the means, if not the courage to post a video of my warbling.  Now comes the 2nd hardest part.......managing to get through an entire song without hitting a clinker, gasping for breath or bursting out laughing.  The 3rd hardest thing will be the actual attempt to upload the file to the blog, and, needless to say, the most excruciating part will be making myself hit "Publish".  I dunno about that.

Well, as you can see, one never knows what tomorrow will bring around here.  If you had told me 10 years ago what I might someday be using that camcorder for I would have been nonplussed or worse.  (What IS nonplussed.........is anyone ever "plussed"?)   Who could believe......?

Tune in tomorrow or the next dayor maybe the one after that for the next installment.
(and I gotta warn you, folks.......you are bound to be crushingly disappointed  or, who knows, uproariously amused.  

Or not.
.

Going To Pot and I Don't Mean That Kind....

Oh dear oh dear, oh dear!  Here's a Lo you may not have met before.  Truly dejected.  My vision is so bad that I can no longer draw anything.  My hearing is going downhill and I am becoming one of those wretched old ladies who keeps shouting, "Speak up, speak up  dammit, why is everyone mumbling and whispering?"  I would sell my soul AND my body for one of those old fashioned ear trumpets.....it would fit my current image perfectly.  I am just a handful of  stale crumbs of my former self. OY GEVALT, I cannot believe this is me whining like this.  Even Pollyanna  moans and groans sometimes.. 
 
 I think my soul is spoiled too. I must have left it on the kitchen counter one nite and forgotten to put it in the frig and it has turned sour, curdled, with horrid black and green mold growing all over it.  I am not sure it can  be saved. Perhaps tomorrow I will try and see if there is any hope of salvaging anything underneath the mold on the surface.......aaaaarrrrggghh.

And that lovely blue flame that  burned in its niche below my rib cage has gone out. Kaput.  I took a look today and there is nothing there but a cold grate and a few  burnt matches underneath.  I do not know what I did with the directions (if I ever had any) so I have no clue about how to light it again.  

All of this does not bode well for Lois, I am afraid. And yet I fear one does not die of these calamities......I just don't know how one keeps on living when your soul has curdled and your fire has gone out.   Perhaps it is like an oven thermocouple.......when you turn the knob the thermocouple heats up and when it is hot enough the gas valve opens and the gas comes on and the hot thingy ignites it.  Now all I need to do is figure out where the oven control is........ 

......and yet.........there may still be a spark or smouldering ember somewhere because I have been driven to sing today and, I think I may not have completely ruined my so-called voice with those damned singing lessons after all.  Actually, I went to the ENT doctor the other day and found that nothing was terribly wrong........a slight infection which antibiotics should cure, some inflammation which might go awayif I shut up for a while, and a lot of heavy mucous from my post nasal drip which might respond to Mucinex.  Omigod....I have been watching those revolting TV ads for years now and never dreamed that I would fall so low as to have to take that product in order to banish all those wretched green, lumpy creatures from my esophagus and voice box.  Sigh.  Will there be no end to my deterioration?  Guess not, but, as I said, I was inspired to pipe a few notes today and I found I kind of liked the hoarse, throaty quality which has overtaken my sweet, dulcet tones.  Perhaps I shall simply give up the Mucinex and see what happens.

I must confess, during my wretchedness I have been playing around with recording some of my warbling and am finding it most......hmmmm..... amusing....... and sometimes totally horrifying.   There is nothing quite as humbling as hitting an awful clinker and bursting out laughing in the middle of recordinga heartfelt ballad.  If I can ever learn how to transfer my recording to this blog I may just include one of those less than memorable performances for your amusement.  You have been clamoring for it....I should punish/reward you by doing it.  But how?

Which brings me to the most important poin of this soggy excuse for a blog.....assuming I recover from this curdling of the soul and such.  Which of you dear folk out there is willing to help me, guide me, instruct me.....dumkopff that I am.....in how to go about transferring an audio file to a blog?  (No, my dears, I have no intention of trying to make a video of my singing.......seeing me in my bathrobe and slippers crooning away over my coffee and bran flakes would destroy any illusions you may have about me.......perhaps later on, but not now.)

I am quite serious about asking for your help.  I know a lot of you include audios and videos in your blogs so I know it is possible.  The question is....is it within the realm of possibility for ME?

Any and all advice will be welcomed eagerly and gratefully.  My thanks will be boundless.   I may even sing for you.

Love,   What Once Was Lo 
 

So What Is Hyperthymesia?.....Don't Worry....It Is Not Catching

Hyperthymesia – A Newly Discovered Memory In Which People Remember Every Day Of Their Lives

 I just recently read a mind boggling story on aol news.
It seems there is  this guy who can remember every minute of his life from almost the beginning.     I don't remember his name (though I remember reading somewhere that Marilou Henner of
"Taxi" had the gift too...one of about 7 in the world) but it hardly matters. what boggles the mind is......how much storage space in bits, bytes and megabytes does that string of recollections take? And further, how could our brains possibly hold that much info and the multiplication tables besides?  

I have recently been pondering the fact that it seems unlikely that that several pounds of grey stuff in our skulls could possibly hold all of our memories plus how to do long division.  I don't care how sophisticated our equipment is.........there just ain't enough room  for everything in there is my contention.

I am toying with the concept that nothing much is really stored in our brain as it exists in our skull.    We must have a storage source elsewhere that we can access, add to and, possibly delete from using just keywords to find the file.   Nothing else makes any sense whatsoever....... I don't care how incredible our brain is supposed to be.....no way can that small gray mushy, squiggly mass hold enough chips, no matter how small God made them, to hold all the info we use.  We must have a personal Google.....or Wikipedia......or perhaps a huge communal Google.  Yes, yes.  Seems I have read about such a thing in esoteric writings.  By gum, I am becoming convinced that it must  be so,  especially since our brains have major work to do aside from remembering stuff.  Haven't I heard that much of it is taken up with somewhat more important tasks  like regulating our various cells, organs and  bodily functions?  The way I am seeing it, there must be a small area in the brain for stuff I call very short term memory.....like when you look up a phone number and have to remember it long enough to dial it.  In my own case this area only rates a "D"  grade for quality and performance ...or is it just me who has to go back and look up the number several times or else admit defeat and write it down?  Anyway, aside from that area I see a section which I call Control panel.  It is filled with icons like your computer desktop or perhaps a thousand "apps" buttons.  When clicked upon, these take you to your files in the Cloud Computer where you can search ad infinitum for a gazillion memories or bits or chunks of information you have noted as worthy of saving. 

The guy with the incredible memory of his life must have been a very obsessive compulsive type who sort of wrote each day into his diary with all the minute detail like weather and what he ate and what his mother said to him at breakfast and he carefully filed each day away in the cloud by clicking on "save".    When he pushes the lifetime memories App and fills in a search key by date, his brain sends out to the cloud,  grabs the diary entry for that day in all its glory and downloads it into temp storage.  The rest of us are much less obsessed and only store the more special or memorable days or moments of our life in the cloud file.  And I must confess that to make my theory plausible, there must  be stuff that gets stored  by accident rather than design.

From my own experience I would say that what I've got stored in the cloud is more than enough......maybe in some cases too much.   For instance, I wish to hell I could forget the time in the 6th grade when I was feeling uncommonly devilish and found myself called upon to answer the question, "Why did the Founding Fathers choose  Thomas Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence?  
To this day I remember vividly the expression of horror, disbelief and disgust on Mrs. Huckins' face when her, up till then, favorite pupil disgraced herself and fell from grace forever.

Somehow, I simply could not control myself from answering, "Because he had the best handwriting." 

Sometimes memory sucks.