Dildos on Mixed Meters

September 15 was the eleventh anniversary of Mixed Meters.  I must have started this blog for some good reason.  Right?

In my very first post I admonished myself to keep things short.  I've failed at that quest many times.   In one early post an anonymous commenter said that I "went on and on and on about it..."  ('It' was a hip hop song which quoted the Dies Irae.)   Dude was right.  "Going on and on" has become a motto around here.  Thanks, Dude.

I really appreciate everyone who reads my blather, either here or via email.  Getting comments is a pleasant bonus.

What's really amazing is not that I'm still posting.  I'm amazed that I haven't found an excuse good enough to get me to quit.

It's been remarked that Facebook has killed blogging.  True enough.  Many things which I used to post here I now post there - and they disappear completely in a few days.  If I link Mixed Meters posts to my Facebook page they might get a few extra comments on Facebook.  FB, however, doesn't increase the traffic here much.

Incomprehensibly Google tells me that Mixed Meters keeps getting hits anyway.  Google, as you know, owns Blogger and competes with Facebook.  They provide me with this fine web forum for free.  Thanks, Goog.

What's more, they've been keeping track of my hit totals since 2010.  Last month MM registered the highest monthly hit total in that entire time, double the amount from the previous August.  Why?  I have absolutely no clue.  Certainly not because of all the great articles I've been posting.

In 2008 I joined something called Google Adsense, where the Goog posts ads on my blog which they think will interest you, my dear readers.  Every time you click their ad a small sum of money is paid to an account in my name.  Over 6 or more years I had gotten over $25 in credits.  Hey, don't laugh.  It's the biggest revenue stream in Mixed Meters entire history.

The trick - and there's always a trick - is that in order to get paid in actual currency, my earnings would have to reach $100.  And that would take, give or take a long time, another 24 years or so.

Recently I learned that this is not the incredibly sweet deal I thought it was.  Google Adsense, for all its largesse, does have a few rules.  And one of those rules is 'family friendly'.

Last February (the February in 2016) an email arrived calling my attention to one particular page http://mixedmeters.com/2007_09_01_archive.html - an archive of all seven posts I made in September of 2007.  Their complaint was pretty non-specific considering the variety of subjects I addressed that month.

Google ads may not be placed on pages with adult or any kinds of non family-safe content. This includes, but is not limited to, pages with images or videos containing:

• Strategically covered nudity
• Sheer or see-through clothing
• Lewd or provocative poses
• Close-ups of breasts, buttocks, or crotches

Were they complaining about my piece of music named after my dog's genitals?  Maybe.  Maybe they didn't like this picture of a topless Hawaiian goddess:

Or this historical, usually strategically blurred, photo (from my article comparing judicial punishments for Abu Gharib prison and Nazi death camp officers):

Or this musically relevant photo of nude people doing couples yoga on a Paul Horn concert poster which I had found in Leslie's papers:

I'll never know exactly which post that month triggered the warning, only that it took 8 and a half years for me to get the news.  I opted to ignore the notice.

Then in June another warning, this time for a specific post from an even earlier date: http://mixedmeters.com/2006/12/what-you-cant-call-artificial-penis-in.html    This time their complaint was more specific:

Google ads may not be placed on adult or mature content. This includes fetish content as well as sites that promote, sell or discuss sexual aids. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• sexual fixations or practices that may be considered unconventional
• sexual aids or enhancement tools such as vibrators, dildos, lubes, sex games, inflatable toys
• penis and breast enlargement tools

So Google objected to my discussion of the legality of saying the word dildo in Texas.  I was inspired by this video clip from a film called The Dildo Diaries. Watch for a good laugh at the Texas legislature's expense.  It features Molly Ivins, a political reporter who had a knack for finding humor in narrow-minded politics.

These days, 10 years later, I have no clue whether it's still illegal to say the word "dildo" in a Texas sex shop, though, apparently,  at least parts of this particular law have been declared unconstitutional.  I do know that Molly Ivins, then the reigning champion at exposing Texas hypocrisy, has since died.  I hope someone is carrying on her work because it's a sure bet that Texas politics are still jaw-droppingly crazy.

Anyway, after the second notice I decided to make Google happy and remove the ad from Mixed Meters.  It represented my blog's only source of income.  Now it's gone.

Had I kept the ad, sometime around the year 2040 — when I'll be nearly ninety years old — if Mixed Meters still exists then — if the Internet still exists then — if I'm even capable of writing blather then — I might have earned $100 from Google as payment for my 35 or so years of blog writing.  That would have been a sweet moment of validation.   And I'm giving it up to preserve my right to write about dildos if I want to.

Hey, that's the Mixed Meters blog news for another year.  Thanks for reading.

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The subject of penises used to come up a lot on this blog to the point that I created a "penis" label.  Click here to see all my blog posts marked "penis".  Google Adsense would have been shocked by that.

Read more Crankshaft.
Buy stuff that says No One Cares About Your Stupid Blog.
Buy the complete Dildo Diaries.
On my original dildo post you can still watch the Dildo Song video and the links to OhMyBod and The Phallic Logo awards remain active.

In which Mixed Meters Turns Ten

September 16, 2005, was the day I started Mixed Meters.   Ten years have gone by and I'm still writing this blog.  No, this will not be a navel-gazing, soul-searching post in which I ask myself 'Why the hell am I still doing it?'.  Suffice it to say I the hell am still doing it and I doubt I'll stop soon.  Best not to wonder why and just go with the inertia.

Sixteenth of September, it turns out, is the name of a 1956 painting by René Magritte.  I'll let you figure out what the title means.  Here is the painting:

I did the first Mixed Meters' anniversary post at the five year mark.  Back then I added a picture of me on the my fifth birthday.  Here's a picture of 10-year-old me with my birthday cake.  I know it was my birthday cake because the cake says "Happy Birthday David".

These days I don't remember anything about the occasion.   There's no one around for me to ask.   I'm pretty sure this cake picture was not taken on my birthdate because I found another picture of a baseball game with the exact date of my birthday written on it.  It was my Mother's handwriting. 

I remember going to the game in Kansas City. The Internet tells me all the stats: the A's lost to the Boston Red Sox.  I remember the several hundred mile trip on the train.  The train ride has stayed in my memory for over 50 years.  I don't remember the game itself.  Not one bit of it.  Nor do I remember that this happened exactly on my tenth birthday.

Here's some trivia: I don't like baseball and I've always hated birthdays.

Anyway, ever since MM's Fifth Anniversary, I've posted something self-absorbed about Mixed Meters on or near September 16.  Here are the posts:

In which Mixed Meters Turns Five - besides seeing me at 5 years old, you can read the email I sent to my friends when Mixed Meters was a month old.  And there's an annotated graph showing the ups and downs of five years of hit counts.  Here's a quote:

Sometimes I claim that Mixed Meters has only three readers. That's supposed to be a small joke.

A Thousand and One Redheaders -  in honor of the sixth anniversary Redheaders, the random tag lines at the top of every MM page, are explained.  I add more every anniversary.  There are now almost 1400 of them.  Here's a quote:

TagLine[9] = "Mixed Meters - Similar to the intersection of two country roads."

In which Mixed Meters Survives Seven Years - a description of the silly categories I put my music into: 30 Second Spots, 10 Minute Breaks, etc.  And, in a chart, I reveal how many seconds of music I had uploaded for your listening pleasure until that point.  A lot.  Here's a quote:

Do you wonder how long 55,393 seconds is in hours and minutes? Well, go ahead, do the math.

Mixed Meters Is Eight Years Old - without a doubt, my most self-absorbed post ever.  This is where I wondered why I bother blogging.  I discuss expectations, free time, the Four Ws, Garbage Day Periodicity and bucket lists.  There's a whole slough of my pen and ink doodles for you to identify.  Here's a quote:

During my lifetime the U.S. has invented the Tea Party, fracking, Miley Cyrus, megachurches, Shock and Awe, Dick Cheney, Walmart, the NRA, the rapture, Real Housewives, Three Strikes laws, Grand Theft Auto and mass murder in schools - to name just a very few things I would gladly live without.

Nine Years of Blogging - this was MM's 700th post.  I talk about birds, particularly a hummingbird named Red Thor and a nameless crow.  There's a silly moral at the end, it's photography advice.  Here's a quote:

Leslie saw me working on this post and asked "How long have you been married to your blog?

Here's another picture - me again still age ten, about to blow out the candles.  On the left is my Aunt Kate and on the right my Uncle Ben.  We still own the coffee table on which the cake is sitting.

So, that's the past.  And I hear you ask "What about Mixed Meters' future?"  I've hatched a plan for the next four posts.

You see, I have a small backlog.  There are three long essays and one piece of music which I never finished to my own satisfaction.  I never posted them.  These have been languishing in the "I'll get to that someday" pile.  I've decided that it would be a suitable Mixed Meters Tenth Anniversary Celebration to just post them as they are.  This will get rid of them and allow me to stop beating myself up for not finishing them.  Life is too short to have a "I'll get to that someday" pile.

The upcoming posts are:

Timeless Music (written circa October 2009)- I explore the notion of calling music "timeless".  I suggest religions exist for that purpose.  I mention famous musicians like Richard Wagner and Michael Buble.  Here's a quote:

Anyone can claim that certain music is timeless because choosing which music is timeless is a personal decision. Timeless implies that anyone, in any decade, any century, any millennium, will find the music meaningful. A genuinely timeless work ought to remain so regardless of changes in culture, economics or politics. It's a tall order.

Two LA Philharmonic Festivals of California Music (written circa January 2010) -  in late 2009 the LA Phil did a festival featuring California composers.  In this post I compare that festival to their previous festival devoted to California composers, way back in 1981.  So this is like a review of concerts 28 years apart.   Here's a quote:

Serious music in California desperately needs some sense of place.  My problem with these two Philharmonic festivals has nothing to do with the content chosen for them.  The differences between them no doubt reflect the differences of the times.  The big issue, however, is the length of time separating the two.

The Ring of Klinghoffer (written circa September 2014) - last year the Metropolitan Opera performed John Adams' opera "The Death of Klinghoffer".  There was a public brouhaha about it.  I tried to write a think piece based on the facts behind the opera.  Did you realize there were actually two murders and two hijackings?  I realized that one opera was not nearly enough to cover the subject matter and I started to outline plots for four operas which I proposed calling "The Ring of Klinghoffer".  I completely floundered on this task.  This is the longest and least finished article in this series.  Here's a quote:

Whatever meaning the life and death of Leon Klinghoffer could have had (should have had) for us has been buried by a war, more terrorism, several more wars and endless political and prejudicial propaganda.  Those things are all too real and all too deplorable and all too inevitable.  This can be an awful world.  No part of this story makes anything better.  Only worse.

Finale - Summer 2014 (short version) (composed in Summer of 2014) - this is not unfinished writing.  Instead it is unfinished music.  My series The Seasons in supposed to have one piece for each season on the calendar as the years pass inexorably.  I was never happy with how the music I composed in the Summer of 2014 turned out.  Time heals all ills, right?  Or some of them.  Here's a quote:

It took me more than 40 years to get around to using these ideas.  I'm old now and I'm allowed to dig around in my past without good reason.  I must have had lots of other ideas back then as well.  These two, for some reason, were never forgotten.

It's funny what gets forgotten and what doesn't, isn't it?

Here's another picture of ten-year old me, possibly taken on another night in another place, although I'm wearing the same outfit.  I think the little girl is my cousin Judy; she would have been about two.  The television is a Motorola.  Made in America.

If you've read this far you can congratulate yourself.  You've survived another Mixed Meters Anniversary post.  Expect me to pull out all the stops for the next major MM celebration, the Mixed Meters Centenary on September 16, 2105.  See you then.

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René Magritte figured in this Mixed Meters post about rocks.
Here's a post about Ronald Reagan and my Mother.

Nine Years Of Blogging

I've named this hummingbird Red Thor.

Red Thor usually looks kind of orange in color.   Hummingbird markings seem to change according to the light.  For all I know Thor might be actually be female.  Guy or gal, Thor thinks he owns our driveway.

I see Thor most mornings.  I watch as he perches on a high exposed tree branch from which he flies short sorties to catch insects, hovering briefly in mid-air, then returns to his spot.  When another hummer tries to use one of the several feeders I've put out, Thor immediately dashes down from his branch at top speed, chirping menacingly.  Hummingbirds can move at tremendous velocity when motivated.

Although the little fellow may be all of two inches long, when he's mad you can definitely hear it in his voice.  Not until he has driven the intruder away does he stop chirping and return to catching insects.  One morning I heard angry hummingbird noises quite close to where I was standing.  It was Thor, feistily explaining that I (thousands of times his size), was intruding into his territory.  Eventually I did leave.  Thor had defended his territory once again.

Sometime this week Mixed Meters achieved the ripe old age of nine years.  The actual birth date of this blog is September 16, 2005.  Leslie saw me working on this post and asked "How long have you been married to your blog?"  I'm not really sure what she meant.  I don't spend nearly as much time with my blog as I do with her.  For good reason.

My only anniversary celebration was to update the RedHeaders list.  There are now over 1300 of the little buggers, one of which was randomly displayed at the top of this page.

According to Google this is Mixed Meters' 700th post.  Other sources indicate that they are nearly correct.

Here's a picture of a crow.

I haven't given Mister (or Ms.) Crow a name.  I can't tell one crow from another.  They all look identical and they are very stand-offish.  Crows are not friendly to humans.

Crows thrive in our neighborhood.  I often see them foraging for food in small groups, so I guess they differ from hummingbirds in that they know how to get along with certain members of their own species.  And they grow quite large.  I've watched birds whose wingspan must have been close to two feet across.  In that sense they differ from hummingbirds as well.

Crows seem to dislike sitting in sunlight.  I suppose being such a dark black color, absorbing all that light, keeps crows toasty warm.  A picture of a crow in the shade shows few details.  This particular crow obligingly sat in full sun while I took his (or her) portrait from 20 feet below.

Our local crows don't claim territory the way little Thor does.  They don't squawk or attack intruders.  They simply move away.  I've read that crows are among the more intelligent species which live successfully in proximity to humans.

Just what, you may be wondering (and rest assured that I have been wondering the same thing) do a greedy mean little hummingbird in our driveway or a big black standoffish crow on a utility wire have to do with the anniversary of  Mixed Meters, the personal blog of a barely known nearly senior citizen musician who updates it only a few dozen times per year and which most people don't know about, let alone read?

The moral of the story might be that we should be careful about which light we choose to sit in when someone takes our picture.  Otherwise the camera won't see all our feathers.

TagLine[1306] = "Thinking those things which cannot be thought."
TagLine[1310] = "Place fear-inducing headline of your choice here."
TagLine[1312] = "Topped with aged Parmesan."
TagLine[1315] = "Today is malarkey day."
TagLine[1316] = "The truth is not out there."
TagLine[1317] = "Mixed Meters - Ignore it and it will go away."
TagLine[1318] = "Mixed Meters - lacking false pathos"
TagLine[1326] = "Mixed Meters - the only place in the entire universe that is all about me."
TagLine[1327] = "Damn, have we fucked things up, or what?"
TagLine[1328] = "I*m thinking of a number between four and six."

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Haven't had enough yet?  Here are some previous MM posts about animals:
Bird Brains of Pasadena (an old one, the pictures were taken two cameras ago)
What Is It Like to Be Dead  (one of MM's most often read posts)
Graffiti Animals of California
Russian Bestiary (pictures from Leslie's trip to Russia)
Stalking the Christmas Penguin

Mixed Meters is Eight Years Old

I had a birthday.  It was a while ago.  Birthdays are hard for me.  What I mean is that I have a hard time with birthdays.  By that I mean - I have a hard time with my own birthday in particular.  This was true when I was a child and it's also true now as an adult.

Over the years I have learned to cope with the problem of my birthdays by trying not to expect much from them.  In fact I expect nearly nothing,  And that's what I get.  I'm fine with nothing.  It's the Expectations themselves which are the problem.

I have a blog.  Blogs apparently have birthdays too.  My blog, this very blog called Mixed Meters, just turned eight years old.  In Internet years (which are something like dog years - an anthropomorphic fiction derived from the notion that online lifetimes are somehow more comprehensible if we equate them to actual human lifetimes), Mixed Meters seems to have reached its early sixties.  That's not surprising because so have I.

If you're one of Mixed Meters' Three Readers you will have noticed that my blog, like me, has been slowing down recently.  There's not as much going on now as when the blog was younger.  Posts are less frequent.  Subject matter repeats.  Topics don't arouse my indignation or excitement like they used to.  This is a natural result of aging, of course, both internet aging and human aging.

I also believe that the slowdown is a result of isolation.  Mixed Meters just doesn't get that much attention.  Frankly, I would not have started blogging eight years ago if someone had told me just how little attention I would actually get.  Back in 2005 I expected to create some sort of community, even if only a small one, around Mixed Meters.  Like with birthdays, the real problem turned out to be my own Expectations.

With few exceptions, MM posts barely reach triple-digit hit counts.  If someone looks at a MM page for a fraction of a second, then goes away never to return, that counts as one Hit.  Google helpfully counts my Hits.  If someone else looks at a MM page, reads it beginning to end, listens to the music, and even spends time thinking about the content - that also counts as one Hit.  Hits far outnumber Thoughtful Readings.  Google does not care how many Thoughtful Readings I get.

Comments are also rare.  Google does keep track of those.  Over eight years, Mixed Meters has averaged 6 comments for every 5 posts.  That includes my own comments.  Honestly, more feedback would be nice.  Sometimes "comment free blogging" makes me feel like I'm just pissing in the wind.

Theoretically, blogging less means I have more free time.  This leads to the question "What do I do with my extra time?"  Well, you would ask that question if you were reading this post, which you have probably stopped doing already.  The answer is that my extra time goes into my life.  Overall, I do have a good life which I am thankful for.  I'm an extremely lucky person, bitchy blog posts not withstanding.

My life revolves around  the Four Ws.  These are Working, Walking and Writing.  Also my Wife.  The Four Ws are those things I have identified as being essential daily activities.  Described without W's, the four are earning some money, getting some exercise, doing something creative and being a good husband.

Each of the Ws leaves me plenty of room for improvement.  There are days when doing all four is quite difficult.  I formulated the Four Ws philosophy after reading a greeting card I saw in a gift shop. It said "The most important things in life are the ones you do every day."  Imagine what life would be like if every greeting card you receive, like the ones from doctors or insurance agents who never forget my birthday, were as life changing as that one I saw (and didn't purchase) in that gift shop.

My other activities include eating, sleeping, picking up the mail, cleaning up cat and dog shit, drinking coffee, reading and, of course, Facebook.   More important than any of those, I think, is taking out the garbage once a week.  I have even enshrined the act of taking out the garbage into my music.  I call this musical structure "Garbage Day Periodicity".

"Garbage Day Periodicity" can be heard in my on-going once-a-day composition project called The Seasons.  Garbage is an easy problem to solve.  If you have garbage you simply put it in the dumpster, put the dumpster at the curb and, eventually, someone takes the garbage away.  Problem solved.  If only I could do the same thing with my Expectations.

I spend much time thinking about music I would like to write.  I would like to spend more of my time actually writing that music and less time thinking about it.  I post all my new pieces on Mixed Meters. Alas, people don't listen much.   That makes sense because, like blogging, writing music is something else which I do in isolation.  With computers I can make performance-free music.  Also audience free.

The important thing is that I enjoy the process of creating music immensely.  I try to tailor the process to intensify the aspects I like and avoid those I dislike.  Luckily this has worked out pretty well for me.  I'm extremely fortunate that I can spend as much of my life writing music as I do.

I've been thinking about bucket lists.  Until recently I thought that I didn't have a bucket list - you know, a personal list of as yet unfulfilled experiences.   Then I realized that I do have such a list.  The difference is that it's filled with unfulfilled composition projects.  Lately I've crossed a few items off the list with The Seasons.  There are many more to go.  Someday I will actually write that parody of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, only, instead of a five-year old prodigy performing it, mine will be played by a ninety-five year old prodigy.

I'm also still posting my pictures.  I don't go looking for pictures, they find me.  My pictures are found objects in the truest sense.  If I notice something visually interesting on my walks or elsewhere, be it tree or trash, I whip the point'n'shoot out of my pocket and snap a couple photos.  I take enough that a few usually turn out well.  I post some to my other blog, Mixed Messages.  You can see the latest ones here, in the righthand column.

I suppose I will still find the occasional blog topic which gets my excitement and/or indignation up, you know, over politics or society or whatever.   Some topics force me to drop everything and write an essay of doubtful value and indefinite logic.  Naturally these postings produce Expectations that others will read and get excited and/or indignant as well.  After eight years, that idea has been completely disproven.

And, speaking of politics and society, my disappointment knows no bounds when I think about my youthful Expectations for the country I live in.  During my lifetime the U.S. has invented the Tea Party, fracking, Miley Cyrus, megachurches, Shock and Awe, Dick Cheney, Walmart, the NRA, the rapture, Real Housewives, Three Strikes laws, Grand Theft Auto and mass murder in schools - to name just a very few things I would gladly live without.   Society is SO fucked, people, and it saddens me to admit that my generation, the Baby Boomers, gets much of the credit.  I would like to apologize to the world for all these American things - and more.  Sadly, I have no Expectations that my apologies will help.

One thing I don't seem to do with my time any more is doodle.  I found the doodles gracing this post in a stack of music and other papers I had put away for later use and forgotten about completely.  Click on them for enlargements.  I suspect they date from the early 2000's before I started Mixed Meters.  You probably see things in them the same way you see things in Rohrshach ink blots.  The numbers will allow you to make comments about specific doodles, telling the world which one looks like a pregnant shark riding an upside down motorcycle.

Like these doodles, things out of my past are easy to turn into blog posts.  Mixed Meters could easily become a compendium of work I did years ago.  Realistically, you should expect more and more of this.  I have boxes and boxes filled with projects either only I remember or I have already forgotten.  If I don't post them here no one will ever know about them.  Then again, if I do post them here nearly no one will ever know about them.  Gradually my blog will become my autobiography - disorganized, incomplete and totally non-chronological.  Already, after just eight years, I discover my own posts that I've completely forgotten about.  My memory isn't what it used to be.

And so, the question "Why to blog?" remains without a satisfying answer.  Honestly, I could completely stop blogging and the world and my life and everything in between would not change one bit.  I could post completely random gibberish or I could give the real irrefutable answer to the meaning of life, and the reactions would be pretty much identical.  Hey, maybe the real answer to the meaning of life is random gibberish.  How wonderful that would be!  Probably I will continue blogging because I'm not ready to stop.  Until I am ready to stop I will simply continue.  Meanwhile you should expect more of my random gibberish and pessimistic drivel here.  I hope you enjoy it.

In which Mixed Meters survives seven years

On September 16, 2005 I posted to Mixed Meters for the first time - 69 words including the title.  I said I would be keeping my posts short.  That worked for about a year.  It wasn't long before I started sharing my short music pieces.  I called those Thirty Second Spots.

My written posts got longer and longer over the years and so did my music.  The name Thirty Second Spots seemed fine up to around 2 minutes.  Then I invented the name Three Minute Climaxes (pieces from 2 up to 8 minutes) and finally Ten Minute Breaks (so far the longest one is 12 minutes.)

These categories are fluid and largely pointless so of course I still adhere to them only when I feel like it.

Online storage space was a problem at first.  Most early pieces disappeared.  Eventually I found more room.  I started uploading historical live performances which document my pre-blog activities (roughly 1975 through 1995).  Within the last year or so I've started posting my recordings with the Peter Schmid Quartet and my very long day-to-day calendar pieces, The Seasons.  (Expect a new one next week.)

AND NOW ... there's a new feature to make finding and playing all those recordings much easier.

Near the top of the right hand column of Mixed Meters you'll see a box marked Listen To Music.  There are six options, each of which will open a page of links.  Each link has a [listen] button (a new window will open and the piece will play automatically) and a [read] button (a new window with the relevant MM post will open).  The Video option takes you directly to a YouTube playlist.

I'm hoping that you, my three dear readers, will find this addition helpful for exploring my music.  I'll be posting more music in the future and will update the links pages as I do.

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About Timings

At first, all the Thirty Second Spots were less than a minute long.  I would list the length in seconds along with the copyright notice.  When a piece broke the 1-minute barrier I thought it would be cute to list the total number of seconds rather than use minutes and seconds.  After all, "64 seconds" is no more confusing than "1 minute, 4 seconds".

But I didn't know when to quit.  I've listed the lengths of nearly all pieces as a total number of seconds - no minutes, no hours.  For example I recently uploaded the recording of Vexations. You might think that it's over 6 hours long - but I say it is really 23,085 seconds!

Here is a breakdown as of today of all my musical categories with total timings.

Category	Number of Pieces	Total Time in seconds
30 Second Spots	34	1,887
3 Minute Climaxes	15	3,900
10 Minute Breaks	4	2,537
Videos	21	3,576
The Seasons etc.	9	11,307
Peter Schmid	5	1,973
Historical Performances	14	8,175
Vexations	1	23,085

That's a grand total of 55,393 seconds.  (Because there are a few pieces listed in two categories, the total is not an exact sum of column three.)

Do you wonder how long 55,393 seconds is in hours and minutes?  Well, go ahead, do the math.

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Another post from the first day: In Which David Rewrites The Pledge of Allegiance.  (114 words)

30 Second Tags: 30 Second Spots. . . David Ocker's music. . . Mixed Meters is seven

A Thousand and One RedHeaders

Today Mixed Meters begins its seventh year.   Itchy.  Here's a short post from that first day, September 16, 2005 (also a Friday), entitled In Which David Rewrites the Pledge of Allegiance.  I was terse then.

You might have noticed that the layout of Mixed Meters has changed. The original version had gotten far too complex.  This is much simpler.   I will continue to tinker with the new look as time permits - until I'm bored.

Mixed Meters is proud to announce another, more important milestone: the number of possible RedHeaders has surpassed one thousand.

You ask "What are Redheaders?" They are the red random irrelevant phrases in the yellow box at the top of each Mixed Meters page, just under "Life Is Too Short To Listen To Ugly Music".  A different one is chosen each time the page is loaded.

The script which picks the random phrase each time was purloined from here.  Thanks to whoever wrote that.

Here are the first ten RedHeaders:

TagLine[0] = "Mixed Meters - now with 25% fewer Olympic Promos"
TagLine[1] = "Mixed Meters - produced in a facility that also processes peanuts."
TagLine[2] = "Mixed Meters - now with three rows of stadium seating."
TagLine[3] = "Mixed Meters - now a Party Of One."
TagLine[4] = "Mixed Meters - watching the world grasp for straws."
TagLine[5] = "Mixed Meters - you could get money back every time you visit."
TagLine[6] = "Mixed Meters - still trying to meet recruiting goals"
TagLine[7] = "We admit it - the weather girl*s sweaters are too tight."
TagLine[8] = "Only a few small animals were harmed producing this blog."
TagLine[9] = "Mixed Meters - Similar to the intersection of two country roads."

I've always liked the one about two country roads - not that I know what it means.  Many of them make no sense.  Some are downright embarrassing.  Some refer to news items extremely far out of date.  Many refer to television commercials.  There are in-jokes for musicians.  And pseudo-clever word play.

TagLine[214] = "Mixed Meters - not recommended if your life is like the Springer Show."
TagLine[215] = "Mixed Meters - Breaking the Endless Cycle of Boom and Chuck."
TagLine[216] = "Mixed Meters - Now With Calming Oatmeal."
TagLine[217] = "Mixed Meters - The Felt Hand of Dog."
TagLine[218] = "Mixed Meters urges you to be a pliant consumer."
TagLine[219] = "Mixed Meters - a Whack-a-Mole from Hell."

There's a joke:

TagLine[277] = "Two Muffins are baking.  One says SURE IS HOT IN HERE.  The other replies HOLY SHIT! A TALKING MUFFIN!"

There are quotes from famous musicians:

TagLine[447] = "Never Leave A Wet One On Your Neighbor's Doorknob (Joe Newman)"
TagLine[449] = "It*s Much Better Than The Prefabricated Concrete Coal Bunker (Bonzo Dog Band)"

TagLine[731] = "Damn, Damn, Damn, Damn, Damn (Alan Jay Lerner)"

And a short science fiction story:

TagLine[629] = "He had awakened screaming, clutching the transport controls in terror, for so many days in a row that hearing birds chirping and seeing sunlight streaming through the studio window caused him to wonder whether he had somehow transformed into a piano sonata by Beethoven or Brahms."

It just goes on and on.

TagLine[1000] = "Life is too short to read Mixed Meters"

Here's a picture of a dragon fly which I snapped this morning in our backyard. (It should enlarge if you click it.)

TagLine[102] = "Mixed Meters - because no one gives a fuck what I think."

ADDENDUM:  Apparently Google's robots are starting to catalog the redheaders along with the actual Mixed Meters' posts.  Here's a result from someone who searched for the terms "mixed meters in music"

The Lifespan of Classical Music | Mixed Meters
mixedmeters.com/2011/06/lifespan-of-classical-music.htmlJun 12, 2011 – Mixed Meters.
LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO LISTEN TO UGLY MUSIC.
Strange Blog Behavior May Be Caused By Elevated Hormone Levels ...

TagLine[471] = "Strange Blog Behavior May Be Caused By Elevated Hormone Levels"

RedHeader Tags: Mixed Meters. . . Red Headers. . . David Ocker

In which Mixed Meters Turns Five

On September 16, 2005 - exactly five years ago today -  I posted the first three articles to this blog Mixed Meters.  Yes, three in one day.   Here's the entire first post "In Which David Fails to Find An Interesting First Comment":

Every new adventure begins with the words "Why am I doing this?" It would be so much easier not to bother trying new things.

If you, future person reading these words, discover that this blog hasn't changed in months . . . years . . . then you'll know I couldn't find a good answer for the question.

My philosophy will be . . . keep it short.

In the following two weeks I published 14 more articles:

• In which David Reveals What He Listens to While Listening to NPR
• In which David Rewrites the Pledge of Allegiance
• In which David Plugs Ham Hocks and Cornbread
• In which David Introduces a New Character
• In which David First Refers to His Hair
• In which David Eats Cheese Before Bed
• In which a Docker Award goes to Oolon Colluphid
• In which David Hears Things
• In which David Envies the Leisure Classes
• In which David Collects Random Thoughts
• In which David Doesn't Often Go To the Movies, But...
• In which David Links to Writers He Respects
• In which David Has A Clarinet Flashback
• In which David Rants About His Wireless Router

Read all of them, in reverse order, by clicking here.

Today, in 2010, after more than 500 posts which are always way longer and much less frequent than those early ones, I realize the utter foolishness of me ever trying to keep things short.  And the question "Why am I doing this?" has as yet to find an answer.

And ... I'm still blogging.  Go figure.

Here's a picture of me on my actual fifth birthday - in 1956:

After a period of practice blogging I formally announced Mixed Meters in an email on Nov. 1, 2005:

To Friends, Relatives, Colleagues, Clients, People With Whom I've Exchanged At Least One Email Within Five Years, People Who Send Me Repeated E-mail Promotions and Others:

DAVID OCKER HAS BLOGGED.  It's called MIXED METERS.  I know you're all thrilled.  Please check it out.

I've been posting to it for about a month.  It's mostly about the music I enjoy, but there are also remarks about politics, movies and the pop culture to which I'm subjected.  Plus silly rants and pictures. Lots of links.

You can listen to selected 30 Second Spots.  These are half-minute low-fidelity Midi pieces which I've been writing.  Click on "Read about 30 Second Spots" for an explanation.

I've even created the Docker Awards - presented only to fictitious characters so far. They're kind of like Grammys or Oscars, only more pointless.

I try to keep everything short.  Expect a new post two or three times a week - at least until I get bored.  That will happen sooner if no one is reading.  So you know what to do.  (And please tell your friends.) Thanks.

I like it when people read what I post, but let's face facts - Mixed Meters has not set the Internet on fire.  I do seem to have a few really engaged readers.  I am very grateful to you for returning repeatedly.  My range of subject matter can't make Mixed Meters easy to understand, so I assume that on some level you're kindred spirits.

Sometimes I claim that Mixed Meters has only three readers.  That's supposed to be a small joke.  On the Internet the important metric isn't readers, it's hits.  Here's the five-year history of MM's daily hit counts:

Pretty erratic, huh?  Some of the features do have explanations.  Letter A, for example, represents the initial email announcement above.  Letter B is my first post about Frank Zappa, an article entitled Varese, Zappa, Slonimsky.

Letter C marks a post called In Which David Is Confused By The Second Coming.  I wrote about a hip hop artist, Juelz Santana, who had used the Dies Irae in a track which became part of a Nike television commercial.  I was interested in Dies Irae while other people were interested in Juelz.  Fortunately that wore off.

The single busiest day was November 16, 2008 (D) when Mixed Meters was hit up 415 times.   A few days later I posted about Hitler, Wagner and Ring Festival LA for the first time.  You can plainly see that the hit count has declined steadily ever since.  The increase in green on the graph suggests that some people have begun exploring Mixed Meters once they get here, not just landing on one page and then surfing off again.

Also notice the mysterious trough at letter E.  I don't know what it represents.  Maybe it was some sort of glitch at Google.  A large portion of MM hits originate from Google.

All in all, I think Mixed Meters has been good for me.  I'm happy when I'm working on it.  I think I'll keep doing it.  Its real purpose, I suppose, is to reflect my interests.  It's just that I have no real clue about what will interest me next.

Please feel free to explore what's already here while I figure out what's to come.  Here are some starting points ...

• Mixed Meters is my only online visibility - except for this, this, this or this.
• It serves as an ongoing unofficial autobiography.  For example, read this, this, this, this or these.
• I occasionally post my doodles, make references to penises, rail against silly religion or show pictures of half eaten avocados.
• Once I helped a friend, Mister Composerhead, who thought he also wanted his own blog. He was wrong.
• I write about classical music, about the death of classical music, about music critics and about my own favorite music.
• I post pictures of my local community, Pasadena, CA, I write about the books I read, about my spouse and about our cats and our dog, Chowderhead.
• For a holiday which I don't celebrate, I sure do write about Christmas a lot.
• I even have a Best Of category - although truthfully, I have no sense of whether my writing turns out well or badly.

... plus much, much more.  You could try searching the so-called archives.  Let me know what you find.

Things that happened on September 16, 2005, according to the L.A. Times
Things that happened on September 16, including 2005, according to Wikipedia.


Mixed Meters Tags: Mixed Meters. . . David Ocker. . . blogs