And he was known to the FBI, too! Isn't it amazing how the FBI knows about all these criminals who are about to commit this or that atrocity but they never do anything about it like maybe tell people who could do something about it?
But don't worry about the "insurrectionists" who entered the Capitol building without permission and who were completely unarmed and who didn't kill anyone at all, because THE FBI IS ON THE JOB and it's arresting them, you betcha! Gotta get the really dangerous criminals off those streets! Why, they might speak to a congresscritter without prior authorization!
Media types started to wind up the "ZOMG WHITE SUPREMECISTS" bandwagon and then it comes out that the guy was born in Syria and has ties to ISIS and-and-and, so suddenly "we should not talk about the killer's name" and a whole bunch of other utter horseshit.
Anyway, you can expect this story to be memory holed with all haste since the shooter is an islamic terrorist and not a white supremecist.
Even so the democrats have already started their blood dancing, of course.
* * *
So, reminded that I'd never listened to it, I dug up Freudiana on YutzoTub, and had a listen to it.
I'm actually on the last few tracks right now, and all I can really say is "disappointing."
Here's the thing: After Gaudi came out, Eric Woolfson started writing more songs. He and Alan Parsons had a difference of opinion over what he came up with. The group split and Woolfson produced Freudiana under his own name. Parsons, meanwhile, did little to nothing for a few years, until he scraped together the old gang minus Woolfson and came out with Try Anything Once.
Freudiana would have been the 11th APP album if they hadn't split...but to be honest I think I know why they split over this. It's just not very good.
Which is to say, the first few tracks are outstanding, full of the classic APP sound, and they just work. But the problem is, when you start to get down into the inner tracks and over to the B side? Uh.
The first three tracks, to be specific--"The Nirvana Principle", "Freudiana", and "I Am a Mirror"--were wonderful, and I thought, "If this keeps up, this is going to rule."
Well, it didn't keep up.
"Little Hans" is not a bad track but it was the first sign something was going awry. "Dora" is pretty fair...but then we get to "Funny You Should Say That" and the whole thing goes right off the rails, until it gets to "The Ring", which is good; but after that it's largely "meh". The instrumental version of the eponymous track is reasonable, but not great.
"Sects Therapy" is, without a doubt, the absolute worst song Woolfson ever wrote. "Funny You Should Say That" is number two, taking "Inside Looking Out" (from Gaudi) all the way to number three.
Here's the thing: APP had a sound which was unique, and no one could match the combination of Woolfson's writing and Parsons' engineering. But I think Parsons also acted as a brake to some of Woolfson's impulses; and when Woolfson was free to do as he pleased, this was the result, and it was not good.
If you look at some of the songs that came out of APP in the latter few albums--"You Don't Believe", "One Good Reason", "Let's Talk About Me"--they almost make it sound as if Woolfson was chafing in his partnership with Parsons. Success seems to breed contempt, anyway, because whenever you have a creative group that makes it big, they can't seem to stay together. "Creative differences", you know?
Anyway, Parsons himself managed to do all right afterwards. Try Anything Once was not all that great, but On Air and Time Machine were fantastic. A Valid Path was quite good. The Secret--well, I only listened to it once, I blush to admit. So, probably nothing special, though I ought to listen to it again.
Anyway, with Freudiana out of the way, the only album remaining that I haven't heard is The Sicilian Defence, which was something they bodged together to get out of their original contract with Arista Records, so they could negotiate a better one, and apparently that was recorded in 1979 but not released until 2005.
* * *
Oil prices are dropping again. Interesting. But how low can they go under the Biden junta?
* * *
So, Cigna is racist.
In chat logs reviewed by the Examiner, a hiring manager rejected a candidate with strong credentials who had performed well in an interview--because the hiring manager mistakenly thought the candidate was XXXXX. An employee corrected the manager, noting that the candidate was indeed a minority, and then the manager said she was excited to hire him, despite learning almost nothing else about his background.It doesn't matter what the race of the candidate is; that's incredibly racist.
* * *
There are some liberals left. I say "leftists" because they are not liberal, in any sense of the word; but this post over at Had Enough Therapy? lists some actual liberals. Pretty sure Camille Paglia belongs on that list, too.
* * *
Well, the CPAP saga--
The diag kit is a thing you wear on your wrist. A sensor goes over one of your fingers and another one gets stuck to your chest, just below the top of your sternum. Then you run a smartphone app and go to bed.
So I uploaded the results Monday morning, and got an email today wanting me to make an appointment to get my results. I did so, talked to the sales guy, and gave him my debit card number.
$729. Well, it's less than my computer cost, and I need this to live. And I should be able to make it count towards my insurance deductible. I'm getting exactly what my wife got, because I already know that it works fine, and doesn't cost $1,800 (they wanted to sell me a BiPAP, which is more complex and expensive).
The report was pretty alarming, actually, which (I'm sure) is why it was written that way. The sales guy went through it step by step, refused to skip to the end, and detailed each point about how much I needed sleep therapy. The report sayd "severe sleep apnea", which is not a surprise considering what my wife told me.
Anyway, I told him I wanted to get what I was already using, because it obviously worked fine, and he didn't kick.
Looking over the report, though--if that's typical for the kind of sleep I was getting before I started using the CPAP, well, no wonder I was always so damned tired! No REM sleep at all, no deep sleep, just intermittent light sleep because I couldn't breathe if I did anything else.
No wonder I kept falling asleep on conference calls.
Anyway, it's being shipped to a UPS store instead of to the bunker, so there will be none of the foolishness we had with the computers back in October. Should be here by next week, and then my wife can have her CPAP and I'll have mine and neither of us will snore and keep the other awake. Heh.
* * *
Anyway, when I left work this evening, I was not in the mood just to come home and sit at the PC. I hit the store for a few sundries, then came home and changed clothes...and I FINALLY SANDED THE WALLS IN THE MASTER BEDROOM.
When the hell did I mask? I think it was before Thanksgiving. No--I painted the ceiling before Thanksgiving, not sure when I spackled the walls. WTF, if you're talking "last year" it's already been FAR too long....
* * *
The Alan Parsons Project album that wasn't:
It might as well be. The band Keats was composed of musicians who worked on APP albums, and Parsons did the engineering. Just about the only person missing was Woolfson.
Also? The Ladyhawke OST was pretty much a Parsons album, too. Andrew Powell wrote the music (he did all the orchestral arrangements for APP) and Parsons did the engineering, and various musicians from APP showed up, too.
Anyway, a whole slew of talented people and some of the greatest progressive rock ever made, that's APP, and a lot of really good music was made.