daily prompt

Relax. Everything’s Fine

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

It is said that Albert Einstein once asked, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, what are we to think of an empty desk?” While not famous for his quips—although E=mc2 is the soul of wit in its brevity—this neatly captures the perspective of a person who kept his desk almost confrontationally cluttered.

The human mind is an organizer, the greatest one we happen to know, the one that all of our tools and machines are built in an attempt to replicate its principles and imagined actions. Nature itself does not organize. Every organizing structure we come up with is an imposition on nature and is thus radically random, at least as far as nature is concerned: No method of organizing is more “correct” than any other.
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In a Christmas Mood …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

If you find yourself in London this Christmas Eve—and why would you not be there that night?—you ought to spend the evening in the company of Nick Shankland and Kitty LaRoar in the cabaret at Scarfes Bar (from 8:00 p.m. till midnight). Whoever or whatever the jazz muse is, he/she/it has decided to hang out with these two musicians and their friends the last few years.

And they released a Christmas E.P. this year, Christmas Dream, a collection of holiday standards that they treat like the ideas are new to them and the sentiments freshly felt. They make music that is beautiful, elegant, and always in the mood for love.

I have been a fan of Kitty LaRoar and Nick Shankland’s music for a couple years now, and each recording brings new pleasure with repeated listens. Her voice and his piano accompanied me through this challenging 2016 and helped make it less so. Last year they released an E.P. for Valentine’s Day (titled Valentine’s Eve, with saxophonist Ed Jones) … if they dedicated themselves to recording music about every holiday on Earth, I would be happy to take that global tour with them.
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The Spam Folder Follies

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

They love my information in the spam comments folder. Apparently, the only thing my web site needs is some help with one of the following: loading in Internet Explorer or compatibility with Safari or help with ways of viewing it on a phone browser, but otherwise, my posts have “great information” and my writing is “useful,” according to Spam commenters.

Oh! and no one can ever find this web site. “Disgrace on the sseek engines for nott positioning this submit upper,” one recent comment (December 8) declared. At least, I think this has something to do with that. The writer seems to be offering help with search engine optimization (SEO), which no one actually understands but many claim to.

Anyone who has read Madeleine L’Engle’s novel A Wrinkle in Time may appreciate the above comment’s inadvertent resemblance to the character Mrs. Which’s statements: “I ffindd itt verry ttirinngg, andd wee hhave mmuch ttoo ddoo.”
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