h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Mine have a ways to go yet, being 73 and 71 now. They were rather frowned on by some of their siblings, for not making a big enough family. There are only 6 kids in my tribe, myself being the 2nd-last one.

It's okay, the human reproduction machine is rolling along, getting us to 6 and a half billion now, and still speeding up.

The upside to that is that it's getting easier and easier to hide in the crowds when you don't want people to find you.

And with such numbers, even if you're picked out of a line up, you can just use the excuse that "I just got one of them faces, ya know? "

Weird as it is, I have actually been mistaken for someone else, ... in every part of this country that I have lived and worked in. I really DO have just one of them faces.

And I have one of them names. People remember my name easily, but I can't return the favor all that often.

My name tends to stand out in a phone phone, being the only one in this town.

My missus gets so frustrated with me about names ... She might introduce me to someone, and unless their name is really unusual, I will have forgotten it in under 10 minutes. Even with new co-workers, it may take me a week or two to get a handle on their names. As you might imagine, every time the military moved us, or even when the annual transfer season came around, I'd be lost for a time.

I can relate to that.
I have sung in a community chorus of about 100 people for 25 years. I still don't know the names of a lot of the people in it.

Something that surprises the hell out of me, to this very day, is that I appear to be sorta ageless. Yeah, my hair is long because I am ex-military a decade now, and some of the facial creases are more pronounced. And yet ...

I work in a military facility, and occassionally tours of "important" people come through. And invariably, someone in the packet will recognize me from 5, 10, 20 or even 30 years ago. Just by my stance ... maybe a compliment, maybe a curse, I'm not yet sure.

Could it be a complimentary curse?

With the sort of folks that I work with, one never knows.

As Fats Waller used to say, one never knows, do one?

You do realize that sent off to the Google-machine, eh? He was a bit before my time.

I think it would be well worthwhile to get some recordings of his
music. He was an important figure in the development of "stride piano" (i.e. a musical form in which both left and right hands have interesting parts of the melody), which led from ragtime to jazz. Plus, he was incredibly witty, with songs like "Your feet's too big," of "The joint is jumpin'." I heard an old-time recording that he made with another jazz great, in which the two of them were bantering. The other guy was reeling off a list of Fats's shortcomings, to which Fats would make smart retorts. "You're too slow," and Fats replied, "Stop talkin' about my velocity."

Sorry to say, mate, but I've just never much appreciated Jazz.

I like the original jazz, up to about 1950. The people who performed it are pretty much all dead by now. I have a complete set of recordings of Scott Joplin's piano music (he wrote in genres besides ragtime). Fats Waller left behind some player-piano roles, which some bright person hooked up to a theater organ, with fairly nice results . It sounds a bit like a roller skating rink, but I don't mind.

The 1940s was ths swing era, when jazz and swing were very mainstream. I know too many of the songs from that era, which is weird because I wasn't even born yet for most of it (I came along in 1948, but maybe in heard a lot of the songs in utero ).

My preferred music is the rock and pop of the late 50s and much of the 60s and early 70s. Stuff that simply was fun, made a person feel good. Nothing at all deep about me, eh?

I like that music too. I also love show tunes, movie music, and classical music. Plus, I've written a lot of music in several different styles. I sing my own songs at outreach concerts for the benefit of shutins or elderly people. Also a lot of piano music...

Have you any on-line sites to see samples of your own creativity? Or some snippets that you'd dare to e-mail? I have an address on my PS, cleverly disguised as an envelope.

I haven't ever scanned anything into computer-readable form.

I was thinking more of a snippet or two of audio recordings. I can read music as well as I can deal with hieroglyphs.

I congratulate you on your skill with hieroglyphs.