Peter is coming home!

 

This is wonderful news
for all his Wellington
friends!

Will he choose to live in Wainuiomata or Moera?

I'll be honest - probably not.

At any rate, it will be great to have him here!

What? You don't know Peter?

Here's a little background...

Peter grew up in the Wellington suburb of Mornington (or there abouts).  He was one of the first Kiwi boys to sport a mohawk.

After finishing primary school, he was sent to St. Patrick's College (town) where he was more heavily indoctrinated into the Roman Catholic faith and made it into 3P. 

That was in 1966.

After that he went to Victoria University, where he tried to find a girlfriend. A friend named Tony tried to help him out. He told Peter that young women preferred young guys who were pissed.

Peter stayed single for a very long time.

Then Peter got into the wine industry.

His friend Richard (of RBB) was able to teach him all about women and he eventually met his lifelong partner, Lynn. He has thanked Richard (of RBB) many times for his help.

Then Peter got into blogging. He had moved way up north, where he was falling into streams at the golf course and upsetting other tennis players.

His blog went by the name of The Curmudgeon. He wrote some very good posts, but then he got into house maintenance, gardening, moving his trailer and outside chairs being blown over.

He also bought some very silly boots.

He also started about 400 other blogs.

The list goes on, and on, and on.

The good news is, and maybe it was caused by medical intervention, that now he plans to move back to his hometown - Wellington.

Welcome home, Peter.

Is God real?

 Let's ask a Catholic child, a Muslem child and a Sri Lankan child.

They all answer, "Yes, God is real."

Problem - they all follow what their parents have taught them.

There are lots of gods!

A very large number of people have followed every god, and this is only eight examples.

Yes Rob, and I'm sure they all have bible type books.

Your god of choice obviously depends a lot on where you were born. 

Work it out for yourself.

It's raining cats and dogs in Wainui.

 I know because I just got hit by a bone.

Ha, ha!

I thought I'd do a quick post because there is nothing much happening around the blogs - Peter hasn't posted for ages and Robert is putting up old posts. Peter is talking about an orange tree and Robert is going on about the ten commandments. Nothing changes.

I spent most of Saturday with my best friend, Harrison Robert Prowse. He is doing quite a lot of singing and is demonstrating very good pitching. 

I bought two tickets to the Rodger Fox Big Band concert next Friday. Rodger died a little while back and I missed his funeral because I had Covid. So, this will be like my farewell to him. The ticket people don't make life simple. I paid for the tickets online, but you evidently have to do something complicated with your phone to get in - you can't just print off the tickets or screen print them. Why can't they just give me a fucking tickets, like in the old days? It'll be weird if they don't let us in.

I'm going to do some violin practice before my very expensive trip to the dentist. I'm practising using a Lydian mode to play over a minor 7th. chord. The idea is to get away from root notes and find more interesting note choices. The relevant Lydian mode is a minor third up from the Am7 root note. I'll practise that today, as I said before. Sorry to repeat myself.

Here's a picture you may like...

Well, I'll leave it there for today. The dentist is at midday. Yay!

Hey, it's still pissing down here!

What we can learn from the tale of Adam and Eve.

 

Okay, before we get started, why Adam and Eve had belly buttons, only God knows.

The story goes that God created Adam first. 

God said to him, "Okay, I'm going to make you a female companion, but it'll cost you a part of your body."

Adam replied, "Sounds good. What would it cost me to get a real babe? You know, a very beautiful and smart woman who certainly would follow your instructions."

God replied, "That would cost you an arm and a leg."

Adam thought for a little while and then he replied, "Okay, what can I get for a rib?"

This is where things started to come undone for Adam. Tent Horn says, "That bloody apple! That bloody talking snake! That is the price Adam paid for only offering a rib."

Forward to the present day.

I recently wrote a post titled 'PLEASE, NO COMMENTS ON THIS POST'. 

Now you have to understand that I have plenty of posts that people can comment on but, like God and his apple tree, I asked people not to comment on this one.

Hey, TC, that's not a towel on my head.
Look more closely, you blind old man.

Two notorious bloggers have left comments (now deleted). They are Peter (aka The Curmudgeon, The Wine Guy, The Religious Curmudgeon and many other names) and Robert (aka Rob, Trans Roberto, Roberto Testore and Roberto Testero). It is disturbing when you learn that they were both raised as Catholics and both know the story of Adam and Eve well.

Still, they both 'bit the apple'. 

If I had a Garden of Eden, I would banish them both from it. I really know how God must have felt.

It seems that history does repeat itself.

I am mostly ashamed of Robert because he preaches all that Catholic stuff - read his blog, just click on 'Tent Horn' on our LINKS list.

At least we know that Peter is a person you cannot trust - remember the communion hosts incident?

I rest my case.
Maybe this post needs to be added to The Holy Bible?

Moving on.

It's wet in Wainui. This might be the reason why I only got two comments (one written by myself) on my last post. It doesn't take much effort to leave a comment. Even if it is raining. Hey, you don't get wet sitting at your computer, unless you piss yourself. I wonder if The Curmudgeon pissed himself yesterday and if that's why he didn't couldn't leave a comment on my post?

"Hey, apologies, I did
have a little accident
yesterday, while sitting 
at my computer. I'm
still trying to dry the
seat."

Oh, well, at least that explains it.

Moving on...

There was no interest shown about my 12 things to practise (on the violin, or another instrument) to help your jazz playing, so I won't say anything more about them. 

Moving on, yet again...

Give us a sign. This picture demonstrates how easy it would be for God to give us a sign that he actually exists (and wrote those silly 10 commandments). Look again at the picture. Do you understand this sign? Of course you do. Not a lot of thought had to be put into the picture's creation by me. The round plant thing was hanging on a window and Shelley was standing on the other side with a phone camera. That simple. Why can't God think up something simple like that?

Moving right along...

I wonder if this post will get any comments? I can usually rely on Phillip Edward Nis, The The The Guy and Bin Hire (three old friends) to come to my aid. 

Here are a few random pictures to fill out this post. Not much point putting a lot of thought into the post for one possible comment.

Ciao.

Keep Sunday holey.

 

Moving right along...

I had a five year old, who has just started learning the violin, pop around the other day. He saw the two double basses in our living room and was amazed by their size - he thought they were very big violins. I played a little bit of arco double bass for him. He looked at my bow and said, "You've got a violin stick!"
I can't stop calling it that now.
The power of a five year old.

Well, there wasn't any interest shown for my violin scale advice on my last post.

I was thinking of sharing my 12 essential things to practise if you want to play jazz (on violin), but I think I'd be wasting my time. I can see why Robert wouldn't be interested because he did question the need to play in tune in a comment on my last post.

I've included my reply.

 As for Peter, his only known music performance experience has evidently been on the bagpipes. I just hope he didn't practise early in the morning, or late at night. Maybe he did and that's why the people on his local 'Neighbourly' site don't seem to like him much.

 

Sorry about the American
spelling of 'neighbours'.

I did 1 1/2 hours of practice on my violin this morning. I did an hour on The Orange Blossom Special (a solo violin version) and thirty minutes on Project Violin 100. I guess it's time for some double bass practice now. I'll do some work with my fingers AND the violin stick.

Don't forget to keep Sunday holey.

Ciao tutti.

Don't be late on October the 8th.

 Okay, I have nothing else to talk about this morning, so I'll show you this.

I drew it up for my students. It's really a simple thing, a version of which can be found on any string instrument. I don't really know how many violinists are aware of it, but it's not rocket science.

"Sometimes people say “well, this isn’t that hard. It’s not rocket science!” As it turns out, although rocket science is complex, it’s still 100% understandable. Rocket science was used notably first in the space race in 1969, between America and the USSR. In this situation, the perfect calculations were required not only to get people off the surface of the Earth, but to actually make it to the moon.

Before this, in 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to actually make it to space. Despite these early missions taking place so many years ago, the basic physics required to actually get people up there has remained pretty much the same. Technology, of course, has changed, and today’s rocket science does have more components generally than it did nearly 60 years ago.

Today’s rocket science can be broken up into a couple main components:

• The fuel and it's applications.
• The physics to get the rocket off the ground."

I hope that helps. Okay, back to the violin.

Some keys are considered hard (Db major, F# Major and others) but, if you know the above four scale shapes, they all become easy. The same principle applies to minor and dominant 7th. scales. Okay, some minor scales require a few altered notes, but they still fit into the system. Augmented and diminished scales will be different, but that's okay. 

The most used scales in western music are major, minor and dominant 7th. I suggest that you start by using major, dominant 7th. (starts on the fifth note of the major scale) and the Dorian minor (starts on the second note of the major scale). Once you are comfortable with these, you'll have the system sorted.

You'll be able to play all over the violin.

Have fun boys but don't play out of tune.

Robert chuckles.

Peter bites his lip.