Trampling Modernity Underfoot

Happy birthday! Happy birthday, my friends! Happy birthday to me!

Well, actually, my birthday is not until next month, but that does not stop me from having a happy birthday today, now does it? There has come into my possession as of yesterday a wonderful new device, coming in the name of Birthday Present, subspecies Early. It is a musical machine, which plays all manner of musical recording that a human being in probability might possess. These are, in order of importance and enjoyability: LP's, CD's, Radio Signals, Mp3's, and Tapes. Indeed, this is a very exciting business, most of all the business pertaining to the LP, the greatest recording medium known to human history.

Like many parents of people aged in such a way as myself, mine possess albums in LP form in profusion. In the late summertime, my household acquired its own, brand new record player, the old ones having broken in the last couple of decades. Thus I gained great entertainment and edification from making use of these LP's on the record player, as such facilitated my discovery of and subsequent devotion to Jethro Tull in particular. I can now also listen to such favorites as Wish You Were Here and The Dark Side of the Moon and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in their True Forms. The experience is, I think, much like understanding the books of the New Testament or the Homeric Epics in Immortal (or "dead") Ancient Greek, which is not at all similar to the Modern Greek which is now spoken upon the earth.

Why, then, is it so wonderful that I have a record player of my very own? Well, my has come with me to Oxnard, where I can walk for three minutes to arrive at the music library, where contained therein are somewhere in the area of five thousand LP's, all cataloged on the interwebs. Yesterday I checked out three LP's, including Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition performed in their original piano format (rather than the usual Ravel orchestration), Satie's Socrate, and at the height of obscurity, Satie's Messe des Pauvres. Now, here are some strange facts:

The music library possesses Trout Mask Replica, as well as three other Captain Beefheart albums, which exceeds the number of Led Zeppelin albums that they possess, as well as the number of Pink Floyd albums and Jethro Tull albums. Frank Zappa, however, trumps them all, equating approximately to The Beatles in album quantity. By no means can I explain it.

In conclusion, I would like to speak on footprints. I awoke this morning at precisely 7:05 AM, and I ventured outdoors at about 7:45 AM to find snow on the ground. In snow, the human foot, in these conditions usually covered by a shoe, leaves a distinct print in the shape of that shoe or (heaven forbid!) foot. I have been observing these footprints, and it has come to my attention that most prints consist of strange shapes and designs, many of them unpleasant. This is to be contrasted with my footprint, which consists of a smooth heel and a smooth rest-of-the-shoe. It goes without saying whose footprints are more aesthetic, but I shall say anyway that mine are, for they do not clutter the ground with commerce.

Watch well your steps, my friends, that we all might grow stronger and wiser for your having taken them.