"Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it"
- Mark Twain

"A business opens because someone perceives demand for a product upon which a profit can be made. A business does NOT open because someone wants to make stuff. That’s called a hobby."
- Artie Gold

"The Ninth Rule of the ethics of means and ends is that any effective means is automatically judged by the opposition as being unethical."
- Saul Alinsky

"Someday the slaves will rush to put on their chains."
- Jean Jaques Rousseau

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."
- Mohandas Ghandi

"Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Noise was really not born before the 19th century, with the advent of machinery"
- Luigi Russolo

"Everything that can be labeled can be hated."
- Internet Rule #18

"All advice is autobiographical."
- Austin Kleon

Feel the Power

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I've got fat fingers. This means there are two professions I probably shouldn't follow - proctologist, and guitarist.

Have you ever noticed how you don't get many short stocky guitar players? Brian May, Axl Rose, Mike Oldfield and to some extent Jimi Hendrix - they're all quite tall, thin types, with long thin fingers to match.

I, however, have a guitar - a small guitar that could have been deliberately designed to make it almost impossible for me to arrange my fingertips on the fretboard in a way that shortens the strings correctly while not getting in the way of their vibrations. In other words, impossible for me to play.

Ah, but I'm not looking to play complicated melodies, and most of the time I'm just looking to play chords. And barre chords - or bar chords - where you strap your finger against the fretboard to shorten all the strings by the same amount...are easy.

So why don't I retune my guitar so playing barre chords will produce triads - the basic three note chords that even a musical ignoramus like me knows about.

It's even easier because I tend to think in minor keys, and default to A-Minor because
(1) It suits my limited vocal range and
(2) It's all white notes. Yes I know guitars don't have white and black notes, but I grew up with samplers, which means I grew up with keyboards.

So, if I tune the lowest pitched string to A, and the one above to C, and the third to E...and the next three to the same but an octave higher...I should be able to play my three chord masterworks without ever having to contort my fingers.

Um. Provided the three chords don't include C. Or G. Because thanks to the never-quite-perfect mathematics of music, my C-chord would have a flattened E as the middle note, which would clash rather horribly with any D or E notes that any other instruments are playing. The G-chord would have a flattened B, which is almost as bad.

Humph. So...what I should actually do is miss out the middle note completely - retune so adjacent strings play fifth-interval dyads. Known to rockers as...Power Chords.

Power chords. If you want a big, clean sound but aren't very good at playing the guitar, power chords are your friend. So all I need now is to work out which strings are capable of how much retuning, and within that which retuning will give my chords the power.

Standard tuning	Low E	A	D	G	B	High E
Semitone Detune	0	+2	-2	+4	0	0
New Tuning	Low E	Low B	Mid E	Mid B	Mid B	High E

Six strings with five notes between them, a low string with standard tuning for playing basslines on, and a crisp series of barre chords that still sound clear even when you crack up the distortion.

And that, my friends, is my solution to how people with fat fingers can rock out.

I'm still a bit hopeless at strumming though.

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"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
- John Kenneth Galbraith

"The most prudent and effective method of dealing with the world around us is to assume that it is a complete fiction - conversely the one small node of reality left to us is inside our own heads."
- JG Ballard

"Don’t overestimate your reader’s knowledge and don’t underestimate their intelligence."
- Tim Radford

"Some of us have to come out twice — once as gay, and then again as gay geeks."
- Shawn Baker

"When the prevention of evil becomes more important than the preservation of freedom, authoritarianism grows."
- Roger Ebert

"I think that many confuse ‘applicability’ with ‘allegory’."
- JRR Tolkein

"Tradition, like numbers, never seem to work in a minority’s favor."
- Shawn Baker

Idée Fixe

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I've been trying to persuade my doctor that I'm not depressed. This is the condensed version:

Doctor: How have you been feeling lately, in yourself?

Kapitano: I'm tired all the time, which is to be expected in diabetes, but generally okay.

Doctor: Hmmm. That's also a symptom of depression. Are you sure you're not depressed.

Kapitano: I haven't had depression for fifteen years. So I know what it feels like, I can recognise it, and I don't have it now.

Doctor: I think it's something we should bear in mind as a possibility.

Kapitano: When you're depressed, you've got no energy - you're unhappy but you can't get the willpower to do anything about it. When something bad happens, you can't fight back and you're more likely to dissolve into a puddle of non-resistance than get angry. I've been getting extremely irritated at a lot of things lately, so I'm not depressed.

Doctor: Getting angry can be a symptom too. Not all depressed people are wusses you know. If you're irritable, you could have depression.

What could I possibly have to be depressed about? Apart from welfare state bureaucracy.

Advisor:: You need help in designing your CV. I admit there's no jobs around at the moment, but the reason you can't find work has to be you have a badly designed CV.

Kapitano: I'm a graphic designer, and here's my CV.

Advisor:: Ah well you see, you've listed your qualifications at the top. You should have listed them on the back. Employers don't want to know about qualifications - they want to know what kind of person you are.

Kapitano: I'm the kind of person with a low tolerance for bullshit.

Advisor:: Then you need to change your personality to make employers like you. Anyway, I'm putting you on a one-day course so you can design your CV.

Kapitano: I've already had a job offer, and I've accepted. Starting in January.

Advisor:: You still need a nice CV. And you should do voluntary work - it looks good on your CV.

Kapitano: I already looked at voluntary work, remember? The Red Cross said they had no use for an English teacher with IT skills.

Advisor:: Then you need to approach them again. I'm putting you on a one-day course for people who want to do voluntary work. You could be a carer - would you like that?

Kapitano: I've already applied for the carer jobs.

Advisor:: Really? Why?

Kapitano: I want to do something worthwhile.

Advisor:: Um. You need to apply for a wider range of jobs.

Kapitano: I've applied for all the jobs in the region than I can do. That's almost everything except the 75% which are in sales.

Advisor:: Why not sales?

Kapitano: Do you think I could sell you shit you don't need and I hate? Do I strike you as a smooth-talking salesman?

Advisor:: I'm putting you on a course - a special course with a company who'll find you a job. It'll give you a warm glow of satisfaction to be in work. Isn't that worth it?

Kapitano: I'll let you know what I start the job in January.

It would appear that intelligence and authority cannot co-exist in the same mind.

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"Party for your right to fight."
- Public Enemy

"I don’t want to get married because I need the state to tell me that my love is real. I want to get married because I want my partner to be my next of kin."
- Dan Savage