Buying Compact Discs

I like to buy music cds.

Online, or downtown on SW 13th, or in St. Johns at the Vinyl Resting Place.

The Best Band You Never Heard Of, a Frank Zappa album that I had read good reviews of, is one that I found recently. At $21.00, it was a big disappointment. Maybe it was a badly engineered copy? I like the Zappa music, mostly; Trance-Fusion, Shut Up and Play Your Guitar, Hot Rats; those are great albums. The Best Band, though, was so bad that I am afraid to listen to any Zappa albums right now.

-Update: 20 November; I listened to Guitar; totally awesome!

Etta James, The Right Time. Charlie Parker, In a Soulful Mood. I bought those today in St. Johns, and they are both awesome (if you like that sort of thing. and I do).

To Hell With Room 101

I saw a reference today to Room 101, which is of course the terrible place Winston Smith is taken to for the crime of being a protagonist in a dystopian novel. In Room 101, one is confronted with one's worst fear, and not in a good way that allows you to benefit from the experience and overcome your phobias, no, but in a bad way that forces you to betray someone close to you (if you didn't have someone close to you, someone would be provided, I suppose). This is clearly a waste of the fictional taxpayer's money. People aren't that tough, mostly. We find plenty of opportunities to be hurt, and to hurt others, without some special room, and some special technique, being devised to hurt us. In short, to hell with Room 101. And to hell with 1984. George Orwell wrote far better works than that, it's a damn shame that he is best known for that wretched horror story.

Thousands Rally in Capital to Protest Big Government

I wrote to Jeff Zeleny, whose byline appears above the article at the New York Times online.

"A sea of protesters", really? A large sea? Or a small sea?

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001773.html

Yes, I realize that "sea of" is a figure of speech, with no particular amount being indicated. "Tens of thousands" is a similar figure of speech, connoting a number somewhere between 20,000 and 100,000. Recent anti-war protests have been much larger; 200,000, for instance, in one small city.

A more appropriate metaphor for a turnout of 20,000 would have been "lake", or perhaps "large puddle".

And who are Theo Emery and Ashley Southall?

Thank you

Marvin Hampton