Muleskinner Blues

Safety Advice

I bought some batteries today at Sainsburys. They came with an RFID (radio frequency identity) sticker on the back, I assume the store believes that shoplifters will be trying to steal batteries, and this sticker will set off the store's door alarm... However, the sticker says:
"SECURITY PROTECTED Please remove before putting in microwave" Now I'd never thought of putting batteries in my microwave before. Maybe it recharges them or gives them superpower? I read all the small-print. Oh... Actually I didn't, because that sticker was put over the safety information, and peeling the sticker off peels the small-print off too. And I'm not too good at reading Greek or Portuguese or Dutch, so, I'll assume you're supposed to stick them in the microwave in the packaging.. I'll put the four I'd taken out back in, and give them about four minutes.


Of course, if there's an almighty bang, and my kitchen is wrecked, and I am injured, there's a pretty good chance I can sue Sainsburys for millions, because a) that sticker implies I'm supposed to put them in the microwave. b) the sticker implies that just removing the sticker is all that's needed as preparation for putting a pack of eight batteries in the microwave, and c), the sticker obliterates and destroys whatever english language safety and usage warnings may or may not be present beneath it.

As a further point, the business of retailers glueing stickers over safety information and usage instructions is common, pharmacists do it as well, and of course, they use unpeelable adhesives too.

Wish me luck.

down in the basement

Another Music Video.

I really like this, the Carolina Chocolate Drops. I'm all for live music, and for people who sing, play, write.
People who have absorbed traditions, learned from the older guys, then taken what they've learned and made it their own. The Carolina Chocolate Drops come over as having done that, they're proud to be interpreting history, keeping a tradition alive. They talk of their music as embracing black history and experience, but say that the music grew out of other cultures and histories too, they're about pride, about self-knowledge, but not about separatism, not about racism, not about us and them, they are clever articulate, great!

Hit 'em Up Style was a big hit for Blu Cantrell, of whom I'd never heard... About five years ago.
The lyrics were by Dallas Austin Ha, ladies, it was written BY A MAN!

Rant: I'm really tired of all those "superstars" out there who go on stage and mime to their studio recording, which has been cleaned up and adjusted by the musical equivalent of photoshop.
And when it gets to the star's choreographer, personal trainer, hairdresser... We're missing the point these days, it's more about the on stage spectacle, the lights, the lasers the fireworks, the rotating stage, dry ice....
Stadium shows? Blargh... When I was a lad, etc.....
When I was a lad, the Rolling Stones played in the University dining hall.
So did David Bowie.
I prefer, if i go to see live music, which I do less and less these days, a band in a pub or bar, with at most a couple of hundred in the audience. I really can't see the point in being in a sea of people, so far away from the stage that you can't see the band direct, you have to look at a big video screen. Well, if I'm going to watch a video screen, I might as well save the ticket price and watch it at home. I like the repartee that develops with a small venue, between musicians and audience, when you find the acts queuing at the bar with the punters.

Anyway, all that was a digression. I really like this, what say you guys?

Carolina Chocolate Drops, check 'em out on their website and go listen more. http://www.carolinachocolatedrops.com/

Treated Balls

A Fence is an Imaginary Barrier

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After Rain , by P.K. Page

I'd never read any poems by P.K. Page, never heard of this Canadian poet, writer, and painter, until Red Dirt Mule posted one, I'll be sure to read more, this one is simply beautiful, layered with imagery.

The snails have made a garden of green lace:
broderie anglaise from the cabbages,
chantilly from the choux-fleurs, tiny veils-
I see already that I lift the blind
upon a woman's wardrobe of the mind.

Such female whimsy floats about me like
a kind of tulle, a flimsy mesh,
while feet in gumboots pace the rectangles-
garden abstracted, geometry awash-
an unknown theorem argued in green ink,
dropped in the bath.
Euclid in glorious chlorophyll, half drunk.

I none too sober slipping in the mud
where rigged with guys of rain
the clothes-reel gauche
as the rangy skeleton of some
gaunt delicate spidery mute
is pitched as if
listening;
while hung from one thin rib
a silver web-
its infant, skeletal, diminutive,
now sagged with sequins, pulled ellipsoid,
glistening.

I suffer shame in all these images.
The garden is primeval, Giovanni
in soggy denim squelches by my hub,
over his ruin
shakes a doleful head.
But he so beautiful and diademed,
his long Italian hands so wrung with rain
I find his ache exists beyond my rim
and almost weep to see a broken man
made subject to my whim.

O choir him, birds, and let him come to rest
within this beauty as one rests in love,
till pears upon the bough
encrusted with
small snails as pale as pearls
hang golden in
a heart that know tears are a part of love.

And choir me too to keep my heart a size
larger than seeing, unseduced by each
bright glimpse of beauty striking like a bell,
so that the whole may toll,
its meaning shine
clear of the myriad images that still-
do what I will-encumber its pure line.