There goes another one

Well, well... Bin surfing around a fair bit lately. Let me pimp David Nightingale's Chromasia once again - be prepared to have your mind boggled by his work. Photography doesn't get much better than this in my humble opinion. Whit else? Oh yeah, my man Billy Goodman is already busy-beeing away at his next album, mere months after completing "Blues from the Gospel". That, BTW, is one of the coolest, chilled-outest blues/gospel albums ever to bless my ears. No, I'm not a blues hack, but this is pared-down, freeze-dried, mesquite-smoked, 17-year vintage single malt delicious stuff; best served in your favourite rocking chair out on the porch after a long, gruelling day, dram in hand, cowboy boots cooling off in the evening light. Speaking of Bill and his music, though, we've been plotting and scheming fiendishly up in his secret hideaway in the hills, and what we came up with is... we may be going out busking! Way-hey! Can't wait - I haven't done street music for years now (it was kind of a "no-no" with my job as a management trainer - after all, what would my clients have thought if they saw the dude with the suit hustling for their money after hours) and can't wait to get back. Thing is, when you're a pianist, busking ain't so easy, so I'll probably end up banging a drum and singing backup. I do love street music, though - getting people to stop and pay you attention is a unique, visceral sort of thrill to me. Plus, the money I make would go towards funding a truck to go down to Hungary, delivering secondhand clothes to an organisation that works with gypsies in Hungary and Romania. My good friends Trudy and Russ work there and I've been wanting to go see 'em and deliver the stuff for over a year now. Okay, what else? Oh, some more light entertainment from the land of the Free, of course. Our subject today will be "political correctness", children, so open up your books on page three... I luuurve the way 'Melicans seem obsessed with euphemisms of all sorts. Not only do you call a toilet a "restroom" (but laugh at English middle class women when they need to "powder their nose"), you also have funny names for stuff like soap ("facial bar" - what is THAT all about?) and these machines, which are usually found in public lavatories... Whaddayamean, "convenience center"? Reminds me of an IT company I know, whose German subsidiary used to have a department named "Professional Services", until some less tactful member of the Brit/Aussie/US fraction must have pointed out that, to us, that does sound a little too massage parlour and not so development lab, really...