I guess one very basic point from Sunday morning's post is: don't push your political views at the workplace? That's just childish, and it invites strife where cooperation is required. I would say the same about religion, following a very common rule of etiquette that suggests avoiding both of these topics at the dinner table.

And I did once have a co-worker who drove a Hummer. Luckily I never had to work with him directly--I don't think I could've kept a straight face. So... if you want to be respected and taken seriously, don't drive your Hummer (Escalade, Yukon, Navigator, Land Rover, Excursion...) to work either.

There's much more to say. Stay tuned.

Music and Endorphins

I just finished reading a book “This is Your Brain On Music” (http://tinyurl.com/3fndff) which advanced that as well as other facts and theories. I absolutely believe music causes your brain to produce endorphins, and I had never put those words to it until reading this book! I should find that section and copy it out.

I made a “smart playlist” in my itunes where I just went through all the songs (26000+ now) marking the ones I like to sing along with. This created a playlist of some 3200 all-time fave songs. We listened to it on the trip to Death Valley and back—only got through about 350!—but maybe partly from the power of suggestion from reading that, it was incredible how GOOD I felt, with song after song producing waves of euphoria, just the simple happiness of hearing familiar notes (after all, what makes us like a piece of music other than familiarity? When you like “new” music, it’s usually not far from your “old” music, right? You take little steps, not huge leaps, into new genres and styles. And some people never leave the 12” circle of songs they grooved to in High School, and Kansas “Dust in the Wind” just keeps giving ‘em shivers till they keel over at 50.) MANY songs literally bring tears to my eyes—actually, I think I have overactive tear ducts, but still. It’s just a HUGE wave of STRONG emotion, the proverbial ton of bricks. And often, kinda interestingly, it was the odd segue, where one song stops and an entirely OTHER, unexpectedly-different-but-still-smack-you-in-the-face familiar, song starts. I got that again and again, that happy surprise.

I’m still listening to that playlist almost two months later, at the computer now and again—here’s 803 – 809:

Grateful Dead “Tennessee Jed” (hey, it’s MY list),
Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams,”
the Supremes “Come See About Me,”
Lambert Hendricks and Ross “Twisted,”
the Kinks “Dandy,”
Fats Domino “Ain’t That A Shame,”
Talking Heads “Paper” …

and that isn’t even a particularly good stretch, as stretches go in this list, but still, that jolt of recognition when Fats fades out and those first jangly chords of “Paper” kick in! It’s fuckin’ amazing! I guess I’ve always gotten this from music I like, but having it laid out like this is like eating dessert first and dessert only, on and on, without ever getting sick.

I tried to make this smart playlist sorta random, by sorting by track number. Thus all the songs that are the first tracks on their CDs play first (an interesting side effect--the secondary sort is by album title, so a box set or, say, Led Zeppelin [whose first four albums were of course alphabetically similar], or the Who [many of whose albums start with the word "Who"], and note the "American" jag! may get a string of songs in a row).

For fans of lists, here are the first 100 songs (includes track numbers).

My Doorbell White Stripes
No Class Motorhead
Love Is a Stranger Eurythmics
Come Together Beatles 1
After The Fox Hollies 1 of 24
Tell Me Why Neil Young 1 of 11
Black Cow Steely Dan 1 of 7
I Wish That I Could Be You Muffs 1 of 13
Let Me! Paul Revere & the Raiders 1 of 15
I Get Around Beach Boys 1 of 12
Do You Believe In Magic Lovin' Spoonful 1 of 14
Radiates That Charm Downbeats 1
I Don't Like You Muffs 1 of 24
Box Of Rain Grateful Dead 1 of 10
American Idiot Green Day 1 of 13
American Pie Don McLean 1 of 12
American Woman Guess Who 1
Sherry Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons 1 of 26
St. Stephen Grateful Dead 1 of 12
Dig My Grave They Might Be Giants 1 of 38
Welcome To The Jungle Guns N' Roses 1 of 12
Aqualung Jethro Tull 1 of 17
Hold Your Head Up Argent 1 of 8
Victoria Kinks 1 of 22
Superstition Stevie Wonder 1 of 17
Sir Duke Stevie Wonder 1 of 16
More Than This Roxy Music 1 of 10
It's Gonna Be Alright Gerry & the Pacemakers 1 of 10
To Know Him Is To Love Him Teddy Bears 1 of 23
You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' Righteous Brothers 1 of 18
Who Knows Jimi Hendrix 1 of 6
Shoot Out The Lights X 1 of 16
No Reply Beatles 1 of 14
Our Lips Are Sealed Go-Gos 1 of 11
Time Passages Al Stewart 1
Rag Mop Ames Brothers 1 of 16
Come And Get It Badfinger 1
Angry Eyes Loggins & Messina 1 of 10
California Dreamin' Mamas & Papas 1 of 11
Never In My Life Mountain 1 of 12
You Send Me Sam Cooke 1 of 13
Cocktails For Two Spike Jones 1 of 12
Little Willy Sweet 1 of 16
House Of The Rising Sun Animals 1 of 15
I Fought The Law Bobby Fuller Four 1 of 14
The Rain, The Park, And Other Things Cowsills 1 of 14
China Grove Doobie Brothers 1 of 11
Be My Baby Ronettes 1 of 18
Love Is A Battlefield Pat Benatar 1 of 15
Train 4 Non Blondes 1
Dancing With Myself Billy Idol 1 of 16
Enter Sandman Metallica 1 of 12
Respectable Street XTC 1 of 14
Brown Eyed Girl Van Morrison 1 of 13
Blue Sky Mine Midnight Oil 1 of 10
Somewhere (From West Side Story) Tom Waits 1 of 10
Bo Diddley Bo Diddley 1 of 24
More Than A Feeling Boston 1
Any Road George Harrison 1
Home Iggy Pop 1 of 14
Day of the Eagle Robin Trower 1 of 13
Bridge Over Troubled Water Simon & Garfunkel 1 of 11
Hung Upside Down Buffalo Springfield 1 of 20
Baby Now That I've Found You Foundations 1 of 10
Timothy Buoys 1
By The Way Red Hot Chili Peppers 1 of 16
Around The World Red Hot Chili Peppers 1 of 15
Do It Again Steely Dan 1 of 16
Give It To the Soft Boys Soft Boys 1 of 17
No Time Guess Who 1 of 11
Just What I Needed Cars 1 of 13
Space Oddity David Bowie 1 of 18
25 O'Clock Dukes Of Stratosphear 1 of 16
Sin's A Good Man's Brother Grand Funk Railroad 1 of 12
Ol' 55 Tom Waits 1 of 12
I Hear You Knockin' Dave Edmunds 1 of 18
Come On Down To My Boat Every Mother's Son 1 of 14
Making Time Creation 1 of 20
Bodhisattva Steely Dan 1 of 8
School Supertramp 1 of 8
Suite: Judy Blue Eyes Crosby, Stills, & Nash 1 of 10
Freedom Jimi Hendrix 1 of 10
Speak To Me/Breathe Pink Floyd 1 of 9
You're Pretty Good Looking (For A Girl) White Stripes 1 of 13
My Big Mouth Posies 1 of 10
Dear Eloise Hollies 1 of 15
Dedicated To The One I Love Shirelles 1 of 15
Carry On Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young 1 of 10
Hurricane Bob Dylan 1 of 9
The Pied Piper Crispian St. Peters 1 of 15
Everyone's Gone To The Moon (Mono) Jonathan King 1 of 14
Manic Monday Bangles 1 of 12
Down To The Waterline Dire Straits 1 of 9
Elephant Talk King Crimson 1 of 8
Where Have All the Good Times Gone? Van Halen 1 of 12
Dixie Chicken Little Feat 1 of 10
So It Goes Nick Lowe 1 of 19
Ever Fallen In Love? Buzzcocks 1 of 19
The Modern World Jam 1 of 19
Daniel Elton John 1 of 14

It leans pretty heavily to the 60s, and having arranged and listened to my iPod by year, I've come to believe that the mid- to late-60s really were an incredibly fruitful time in the short history of pop music. (AND ALL THAT STUFF WAS ON AM RADIO, and I got a transistor radio for christmas when I was like 10--yeah, 1967.)

Anyone out there? Want more of the list? mlevel at gmail dot com.

s

I have a co-worker who has been kind of an enigma. He is very busy and often inaccessible, so the few personal exchanges I have had with him have been in the nature of interruptions of work. I know he was in the military in Desert Storm I and his work was "blowing things up." He is very knowledgeable about our company's product, which runs on the Web and often requires significant customization. He knew of the song "Turning Japanese" but didn't know the artist, which might or might not indicate a certain depth of musical knowledge. I know he was in the market for, and eventually bought, a Les Paul guitar.

I know he is a Christian because of the many subtle and not-so-subtle signals... One was that for a while his IM avatar was a cartoon Jesus with electric guitar, underlined "Jesus Rocks." I've seen him give a CD that had the earmarks of "religious pop" to another person I know to be "fundamentally" religious...

I know his brother died recently, and he has not cut his hair since then.

This, really, is pretty much the sum total of what I know about him.

Except last week, his IM avatar changed to show, on the left, a picture of McCain with the word "Capitalism" under it, and on the right, Obama, captioned "Socialism."

A bit of an aside here: I have had this problem ever since George W. Bush became president of the United States. If I learn that someone voted for Bush in 2000--worse, in 2004--I can no longer respect that person's intelligence, and usually can no longer even LIKE them. The one exception is a millionaire, whom I know actually stands to benefit from the Bush presidency. Before Bush, politics was not unlike sports to me, where some people stood with one team and others stood with another. It just wasn't that defining, to say you liked the Redskins vs. the Giants. They were all pretty much the same, other than a thin veneer of this or that bent. Sure, people got passionate about a candidate, rarely, but it mostly seemed to be pretty much hair-splitting. I could respect a person who voted republican, because there were legitimate reasons a person might do so, and while it wasn't MY way, it was within the realm of human possibility to want things to be the way republicans seem to want them. Now though, with the incontestible facts of the crimes of the Bush residency, and the daily evidence of the rank, cavaliere, smirking elitism-plus-stupidity of Bush himself, how could ANYone but a drooling moron back this guy and his minions (again with the exception of the only people he seems to notice--the top 2% extremely well-off)? It's like a $50k a year guy with a family of three buying a Hummer--I have to question their intelligence and, indeed, their SANITY. Besides being stupid, they're part of the problem.

And this co-worker has now planted a flag in that camp. I always suspected it of him, the military and christian clues pointing that way, but to have it come out in this way ... it makes me frustrated and sad, and I run all the rationalizing through my head and can't come to a logical conclusion for it. What kind of blinders make him not see hwo stupid and crazy that is?

The statement itself, painting the contest as Capitalism vs. Socialism, is so grossly and wrongly oversimplified as to be laughable. Capitalism is far less than what Bush and McCain stand for, and Socialism is far more than what Obama stands for. The funny thing is that I can see that in their mind, the person who creates and flashes this cartoon probably thinks that they're stating McCain's position exactly and maybe fudging Obama a little, to make their point. Both terms are extremely broad, and Bush/McCain *might* fit into the definition of Capitalism--if you ENTIRELY EXCLUDE Mom and Pop and the overwhelming majority of private citizens. Obama *might* fit into the definition of socialism--"property and the distribution of wealth are subject to control by the public [Wikipedia, sorry!]" if we understand that he would attempt to apply that control simply to level the playing field; that is, not continue to give the rich (and worse, the corporations) any breaks that the general public is not getting.

Bush/McCain (and I think it is entirely reasonable to use the "/" virgule here to mean "and," connecting the two at the hip) have demonstrated and will continue to demonstrate the kind of "Capitalism" wherein the Haliburtons (and how is a no-bid contract construed as Capitalism by any definition?) thrive and the lower and middle classes are left to languish. We've seen it in action for seven years now; it hasn't worked. These "people" (for they aren't really people, are they--they are "boards"), even more so than the legendarily inhuman 19th and 20th century robber barons, are intent on ruthlessly wringing every dollar they can out of the government and the populace with no regard for humanity and the future, and indeed I don't see how anyone can extrapolate a near future including anything but a smoking crater where the United States used to be, if they logically follow this trend--we're already halfway there!

I've been saying this for several years now: If you are unsure how to vote in the presidential election this year, it's really quite simple:

1. Add the value of your bank balance and personal assets today.

2. If it is less than 100 million US dollars, vote for Obama.

And THAT's just the economic side.