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Halloween Haul

 

So here’s my dilemma: I finished The Three Musketeers about a week ago and was planning to end the year with John LeCarre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold followed by Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby. But something just didn’t sit right. Was I intimidated? Was I worn down? The thrill of the hunt, which was there, was there no longer. What happened?

 

I felt like a World Series power hitter who, after coming so close to victory but falling short, decided rest and recuperation were in order. Retooling, recalibration. My reading had been in such high gear over the past, well, year, I suppose, that perhaps I just craved a break. To return to baseball analogy, it seemed a couple of days at the batting cages would be the best medicine.

 

During my two-day vacation at the end of October I decided to drive to my local used bookstore and see what might leap off the shelves at me. It had to be science fiction, I decided. Where I got my start oh so many decades ago as a sprightly bright-eyed lad. I’d only read seven sci fi novels in the past two years.(*) A return was needed.

 

So last Thursday I dropped in to my store around lunchtime and left 45 minutes later with four SF paperbacks, all for the price of a chimichanga at a high-end taco store. My only criteria – they must appear interesting and must be quick reads.

 

Here they are:

 

The Other Side of Time (1965) by Keith Laumer, 172 pages.

I last read Laumer 20 years ago when visions of being a science fiction author danced before my eyes. This is the most “fantastical” of my quartet of books. The back cover describes hulking, cannibalistic ape men called “Hagroon,” an educated monkey named “Dzok,” a place called “Xonijeel,” and an alternate universe ruled by Napoleon the Fifth. It gave me Lin Carter vibes. It was also the shortest of my picks; looking to read it over three or four days.

 

The Jupiter Plague (1965) by Harry Harrison, 274 pages.

Never got into Harrison, but did read his “Planet of Death” novellas. This seems like a 70s-ish bad fashion low-budget SF flick, something that Rock Hudson might have starred in, about a space probe that crashes back to earth at an airport, unleashing a deadly virus. It’s been long enough since the Wu Flu that I can read books about deadly viruses and take them at face value.

 

In the Ocean of Night (1972) by Gregory Benford, 321 pages.

The most mysterious paperback of the haul. The back cover is very generic, almost to the point where I can’t tell if this is hard SF or fantasy or a melding of the two. But Benford is a legitimate physicist, and I haven’t read anything by him since If the Stars are Gods back in 2002 when I lived in Maryland with the Mrs. as newlyweds, so that novel, barely remembered, has fond memories for me nevertheless.

 

The Reality Dysfunction (1996) by Peter F. Hamilton, 1,225 pages (!)

Okay, I went off the deep end with this. Almost as long as The Three Musketeers was combined with how long Nicholas Nickleby will be, in terms of page length. But – I liked the heft of the book (it felt good in my hands) and, this is a first – I like the font. It’s easy on the eyes. I haven’t felt this way about a font since I was a much more discriminating science fiction reader in my late tweens. Looks like it could be a great example of Universe-building.

 

Anyway, since each novel cost me an average of $3.25, if I get 20 or 50 pages in and it’s just not doing it for me, I can set it down and move on to the next.

 

Looking to start The Other Side of Time at the end of the week.

Happy reading!!

 

(*) = Going backwards, Leviathans of Jupiter by Bova, A Matter for Men by Gerrold, The Sirens of Titan and Slaughterhouse Five by Vonnegut, Revelation Space by Reynolds, Starship Troopers by Heinlein, and Nexus by Naam.

 

Happy Halloween!

 

Phrases I Hate II

 

“You guys’s”

 

Pronounced, yoo guy ziz.

 

Example: A cop at a traffic stop, addressing several people in car: “All right, I’m going to need to see all you guys’s driver licenses.”

 

Forgive a little pedantry to explain myself. I’ll be succinct. It boils down to a slight confusion in the English language on how to pronounce the possessive of a plural noun.

 

Take, for instance, the plural noun cats. There are a dozen cats at the animal shelter, and it’s time to, I don’t know, wash their blankets. The “cats’ blankets” is pronounced as “the cats blankets.” The apostrophe is when it’s written, but it’s pronounced no different as if it was a singular cat with multiple blankets.

 

You don’t say, the cats’s blankets, “the cats-iz blankets.” That just sounds stupid. That’s just the way it is.

 

The confusion comes, I believe, with proper nouns – names – that end with an “s”. For example, “Thomas.” If Thomas has a couple muffins, you would write Thomas’s muffins and pronounce it as “Thomas-iz muffins.”

 

Guys’s, pronounced guy-ziz, just sounds stupid.

 

To be honest, I don’t hear it a fraction as often as I hear “Does that make sense?” – but I hear it enough for it to register in the old ear/brain/mind. I watch about two dozen YouTube videos a day (hey, it makes the spreadsheets reconcile to the billing faster), and I probably catch a “guys’s” every other day.

 

Now, this may just be a momentary anomaly. Or it could be one of hundreds of examples of the English language being dumbed down. Maybe it’s a typical eddy in the stream of linguistic evolution. Not sure. Though I am no scholar of the English language, I do recognize that slang contributed to the growth of the mother tongue. Think of how “dude” and “hippie” came into existence, grew to acceptance, then faded after overuse. More recently, think of all the goofy words the Internet has given us: blog, phishing, Google, Goop, dox, and such. And maybe it’s now hip to be dumb – or at least hide one’s intelligence. I read somewhere that we are entering the post-literate age, and I fear that may be true.

 

Or maybe I’m just beginning to outlive my time. My youngest daughter at 17 speaks a lingo with her friends completely alien to me. I dunno.

 

What do you guys’s’s’s think?

 

Phrases I Hate

 

A long, long time ago I did a series of posts here at the Recovering Hopper entitled “Words I Hate.”

 

These were (and still are) linguistical objects that, for some reason I’d try to explain, somehow would hurl out a harpoon into the thick adipose tissue of my eardrum. And once snagged, would wiggle back and forth, hooking deeper and deeper with accelerating and accumulating levels of annoyance. So much so that I’d lose focus of the original thought the writer or speaker was trying to impart. An earworm, albeit of the nastiest, parasitical kind.

 

Well, since I’ve been watching a lot of videos on the YouTube and listen to all sorts of Zoom and Teams calls second hand, my attention has been called to a number of Phrases I Hate.

 

Here’s the first, and probably the most prolific one I’ve noticed:

 

After a number of explanatory sentences, the speaker utters an apologetic, “Does this make sense?” often in a faux self-deprecating manner, as a kind of Final Boss grammatical period at the paragraph’s conclusion.

 

Does this make sense?

 

Ugh, forgive me, but that’s an illustration of the heinous phrase in action.

 

Anyway, I utterly hate this lazy phrase. I encourage you to surgically incise it from your verbal lexicon immediately and with brutal efficiency.

 

Boiled down to its logical skeleton, the phrase Does this make sense? can literally mean one of two things:

 

1) I am such a poor communicator that I need to periodically confirm, several times in a conversation, whether I am getting my point across to you, no matter how simple it may be.

 

or

 

2) You are a retard and can’t be trusted to understand possibly very simple ideas.

 

Both explanations assume a lowest-common-denominator, dumbed-down approach to communicating. If 1, why be so hard on yourself? If you truly are a poor communicator, for God’s sake man take some lessons or hone your skills with a speaking coach. Or if 2, then please stop communicating until you learn to treat the person you are in dialogue with respect.

 

So I beg of any users of this dopy phrase: Do better. Please, for the sake of Hopper’s poor thick adipose tissued ear drums.

 

Grrrr.

 

(This message brought to you after a well-meaning podcaster – I assume, since I give the speaker the benefit of the doubt – just used the phrase twice in the span of three minutes giving his for-the-everyman interpretation of a speech given by a Catholic bishop.)

 

The Worst Feeling in the World

 

Is when you excitedly crack open a book newly purchased …

 

… and discover that the prior owner has graffiti’d it all up with either a highlighter, a heavy-handed black pen, or both. It’s even worse if the highlit chunks are pink.

 

I’ve been an avid reader all my life, and I’ve probably bought somewhere in the neighborhood of four hundred books over the past 25 years. The vast majority have been used books, since I only buy new for the best and the keepers. When I consider a used book I do give it a thorough examination, checking the spine, the brittleness or lack thereof of the pages, the smell (can’t have a moldy book, mind you), dog-earedness and, most importantly, if it’s been marked up.

 

Three times I’ve failed this most important of tests.

 

The first was a thick but flexible introductory book on the Revolutionary War. I found it at a library book sale and scooped it up for a few bucks. It felt good in my hands. This was in the first phase of my military history interest, sometime around 2012 or 2013. I anticipated learning about the main players, the battles, the tactics and the strategies that enabled the United States to secure its independence from Great Britain. It sat on a shelf for a little while as I finished up my current reads and then I cracked it open … to that pink highlighter! Some high school or college kid marked up the early chapters which somehow didn’t reveal itself to me in my initial scan. I was crushed. I simply could not read it. I think I donated it to Goodwill.

 

The second was purchased at a thrift store on Hilton Head where my mother-in-law volunteered. This place has an enormous selection of books of all sizes, shapes, genres and age levels – several aisles’ worth. The family always scored there when we’d visit. I found a thick paperback biography of Albert Einstein, which instantly leapt off the shelf and into my hands. Excited, I paid the few dollars and, opening it to page one on the ride home, discovered some dude both yellow highlighted and black pen underlined most of the opening chapters (about 70 pages) covering Einstein’s youth and his scientific thought. I was crushed and again could not read it. However, it sits to this day in my closet atop my dresser. Not sure why, but I haven’t given up on it. Though I probably won’t read it.

 

The last was a book I ordered online. Don’t remember the title, but it was a one-volume history of the Catholic Church that was fairly well received. I ordered it from a local used book store (most likely right here in Dallas) and only because the condition was marked as GOOD on the website. Well, I supposed “good” is now a loosely subjective term. When it arrived in the mail I hurriedly opened it, only to observe that some prior reader had underlined sentences and whole paragraphs throughout the entire book in pencil. An irrational thought popped into my head: I could just erase it! Sure, it wouldn’t leave any indentations and wouldn’t take any longer than six or seven hours – but I’d still have a potentially awesome read ahead of me – then I slapped myself hard and yelled “STOP IT!” The book is a lost cause, man, put it down. And slowly I did.

 

So on that last book I was sorta deceived, and don’t count it against me.

 

It’s not the money – I think I’m out maybe $20 thanks to these three charlatans. It’s the smothering blanket of disappointment that envelops you, tamping down joy and hope and the promise of adventure and discovery.

 Sample page from my Einstein paperback biography, taken in my closet where the book resides for some reason. How can one deface a work of art such as this?

So … don’t mark up a book, unless you intend to keep it forever.

 

This public service message provided by Hopper, Lifelong Reader.

 

Fishing

 

Okay, here’s something a little unexpected and unusual.

 

I’ve never been an outdoorsman. Had I lived in medieval times I’d probably have been a cleric enclosed in a monastery or a hermit in a Carthusian cell. Or I’d be an apprentice to a merchant, stocking shelves by day and reading scrolls by candlelight at night in my tiny attic room. What I would not have been would be: farmer or a hunter. I have no natural affinity for the Great Outdoors, for Mother Nature, roaming the great plains or the tundra or lush forests or sailing the deep seas. I am not an outdoorsman. Don’t have the genes.

 

Like home repair and auto mechanics, that gene has passed me by. In fact, whatever genetic propensity I might have had for that particular love skipped me and was passed on to my younger brother, who has it in spades. I mean, he’s currently an automotive technician, and as a teen was an amateur taxidermist and considered a career as a forest ranger.

 

It was not for lack of trying – on my father’s part. Yes, I did have a shotgun license, thanks to my dad. But I enjoyed the clay pigeons about as much as I hated tromping through the bushes hunting rabbits, pheasants, and grouse. And fishing – forget that! I would much rather read the Merriam-Webster dictionary than cast a line off a bridge waiting for a bite. (That is not an exaggeration – I once purchased a 25-pound M-W at a book fair and I was enraptured.) True story: I read chapters 4 through 8 of The Fellowship of the Ring in a rowboat in the middle of the lake while my father and brother fished for sunnies.

 

All right, now we come to the unexpected and unusual part: I’ve been binge watching fish and wildlife law enforcement videos. 

Now … hear me out.

 

It’s more law enforcement than fish and wildlife. Basically, Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) officers pull aside boaters and bust them for all sorts of violations. From poaching to catching over the limit to not carrying registrations and licenses or having the requisite number and type of safety jackets, fire extinguishers and even horns. Mix in the occasional boating while intoxicated or smoking by a fuel pump at a dock, and you have a recipe for some quite interesting videos.

 

Most of the perps are contrite and, well, a little embarrassed and taken aback at the seriousness of which the FWC regards these infractions. After all, who thinks taking an extra four or five fish helps deplete the coastal population? But some go crazy, some get irate, and once in a while one gets arrested.

 

Yes, it’s a current fad because I’m bored with everything else on YouTube and am sick of the death and destruction filtered into my head from the news media. But my accounting job requires the analysis of spreadsheet after spreadsheet, and most of us at work listen to some form of music or videos on headphones to make the clock hands move quicker. This week for me it’s FWC enforcement videos. Next week, who knows?

 

But, rest assured, you won’t find me perusing fishing rods and reels at the sporting goods store. The closest I’ll come to a fish is my next reading of Moby Dick or Jaws.

 

Note: As a non-outdoorsman and non-fisherman, I am not responsible for the accuracy of any outdoors- or fishing-relating content in this post. Thanks!

 

Columbus Day

 

All kidding aside, I’ve had a biography of Christopher Columbus stored along with two or three dozen other books of miscellaneous genres in a plastic bin in my garage, and one day, I vow, I will get to it. It’s old school – and I mean purely old school –written quite the while back, the 1930s I want to say, meaning it should be fairly free of the post-modern contagion that rots so much of the historical nonfiction put out today. I bought it at a library book sale a decade ago, and I can feel it in my hands right now: strong and sturdy like your grandparents’ living room tv set, five or six hundred pages of hefty thickness, shielded by a hardcover that could stop a .38. One day I’ll get to it. When I need a break from all the religion, science, military history, classic lit, and pulpy sci fi that seems to be my daily bread.

 

One day.

 

Maybe Columbus Day 2026.

Hopper Yet Again a Year Older

 

Weird birthday this year. It fell in the middle of the week, during a stressful time for the Mrs. – she had CEOs from Europe touring her stores and would be overnighting in Houston on my birthday. No problem; I’m a big boy. Little One was stuck in school 45 minutes away; student teaching during the day and taking a class or two every night. Patch, however, has a birthday that falls the day before mine. So the agreement the family decided on was that we’d all celebrate Patch’s birthday the Sunday before and mine the Saturday after.  

 

Patch, as always, made out like a bandit. The Mrs. took care of all the makeup, beauty, and clothing gifts, with some help from Little One. I bought her a “Five Nights At Freddy’s” stuffed animal, an LED-strobe light thingie for their upstairs apartment, and a gift card to B&N. We had ramen at a highly-rated restaurant in downtown Dallas, and cake afterwards at home.

 

Me, all I wanted was a home-cooked meal. And the wife, as usual, outdid herself: homemade lasagna (half-veggie for Little One, half-meat for the rest of us) and – brownies for dessert! This we did last Saturday. I mowed the lawn and took Little One on errands on me while Patch worked at the boutique. I chilled in the afternoon watching a bad movie from my youth (1978’s The Medusa Touch, starring a drunk or hung-over Richard Burton) while the ladies went to the town pool. Then, lasagna, and after we ate I sat down in my chair in the living room to open up gifts. And what did they get me?

Well, for starters, I got this card from Patch:

 

Loved it. I know deep down she wants to read Tolkien but will never admit it. I’ll have to work on that.

 

She also gifted me two records: Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in Bm (“Pathetique”) and a dual record of “Death and Transfiguration” by Richard Strauss on one side with Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll” on the other. Both records are older than me by four and seven years respectively. I plan on listening to both later today. My collection is now up to 56 albums.

 

Little One, my impoverished college student, bought me a large Yankee candle for my desk, pumpkin flavor. But she spent the early afternoon with me, which is more priceless than any gift I could receive. She also bought me a card showing a smiling slice of pizza wishing me a Happy Birthday, with a heartfelt message inside.

 

The Mrs. bought me a desperately-needed pair of khakis and a book written by Charlie Kirk, Time for a Turning Point. I told her honestly that I may need a bit of distance before I crack the book. I was a huge Charlie Kirk fan for several years. He was one of the twenty or so YouTube channels I watched almost daily, and I agreed with about 98 percent of his message. If rumor was correct and he was contemplating converting to the Catholic faith, then that would up it to 100%. I’m thinking of starting the book early in the new year. To round off my gifts, she bought us tickets to see the Dallas Stars play in early October.

 

And that’s that. Another year round the sun, another year older. Sands through the hourglass, waiting for nobody. I’m in a good place in most of the categories I should be in a good place, save for two major areas I’m struggling with. Other than that, we now look forward to Little One’s birthday next week, the wife’s three weeks after that, then Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s. Time marches on …

 

Iryna Zarutska

 

Truth

 

Charlie Kirk

 

Re-Reads Redux

 

Over the past two or three years, I find myself more and more revisiting books I encountered in my teens and twenties. Some by choice, others by chance. It’s not unlike reconnecting with an old friend after two or three decades of living separate lives. I’ve done this twice in my life, via Facebook friends from the past, and one time was very nostalgic and fulfilling, while the other was kinda cringy and uncomfortable.

 

Anyway, I enjoy the tension of whether or not I’ll experience the same feelings I had upon the first read through a work. Or, if the book was something assigned to me in school and I didn’t get The Message back then, perhaps I would upon a re-read? Either way, whether a fantastic re-read or a certified dud, I find myself an enthusiastic re-reader.

 

Off the top of my head, I’ve re-read at least 24 books since 2023. Most have been rewarding; few have failed the re-read test. If I had to categorize them, it’d be something like this:

 

Great

 

My Tom Clancy re-adventure: Without Remorse, Patriot Games, The Hunt for Red October, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears, Debt of Honor, Executive Orders

 

Watership Down (Richard Adams)

 

Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

 

Half of my Dean R. Koontz re-reads: The Bad Place, Dragon Tears

 

Conquerors from the Darkness (Robert Silverberg) – childhood nostalgia!

 

The Grayspace Beast (Gordon Eklund) – childhood nostalgia!

 

Okay … Just Okay

 

The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells) – had some great parts, though

 

The Once and Future King (T.H. White) – also had some great parts

 

Floating Dragon (Peter Straub)

 

The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway) – still didn’t “get it”

 

The other half of my Dean R. Koontz re-reads: Cold Fire, Midnight

 

Disappointing

 

Altered States (Paddy Chayefsky)

 

The Wolfen (Whitley Strieber)

 

Jaws (Peter Benchley)

 

Imajica (Clive Barker)

 

I mention all this because a few months back I decided that Stephen King’s It would be 2025’s Halloween read. Since the book is about 1,150 pages long, I figured it would be best to start early, September 1st. Problem is, I’m now just shy of 200 pages in. Yep, still a page-turner. I’ll probably get it done – and review it – in about three weeks or so. Which gives me another pleasant dilemma: Do I give another Stephen King a go, or move on to the next book waiting patiently in the On Deck circle. If I do another King, should it be one I haven’t read since high school (I’m thinking The Shining) or one I’ve never read (Under the Dome, since I had a lot of fun watching the corny series with my girls when they were little)? Or pick up The Three Musketeers, staring balefully down upon me as a write these words?

 

Well, let’s just wait for the spirit to move me. Come October 1st, I might be in the thick of a book I’m currently unaware of at the moment. We’ll see.

 

Happy Fall Reading!

Feeling Guilty ...

 

 

Over the lack of posting this summer.

 

Truth is, my attention lay elsewhere, by choice and necessity. I’ve also been pursuing a lot of non-blogworthy topics and trains of thought. Couple that with a lack of inspiration, drive, and energy, and that should explain the dearth of posts.

 

It’s not that I’ve had no inspiration, drive, or energy this summer. But it’s been expended on … real life. A lot of busyness. A lot. Much familial growing. And we’re already back in school.

 

The wife and I met Little One’s new boyfriend over dinner and drinks in July. My daughter’s happy, he seems great, and we approve. She finished her day care job mid-August and jumped immediately into student teaching, helping with fourth- and fifth-graders in an impoverished city school. For commuting she bought my car (actually, paid off the remaining loan with her funds from the day care job) and I had a great experience at Carmax buying a new used car, which I’ve been driving three weeks now.

 

Patch has started her first retail job, working in a boutique a couple miles away, necessitating drop offs and pick ups at odd hours. She started her senior year in high school two weeks ago already. We had Back to School Night and met her teachers, and are happy with all. I particularly bonded with her new English teacher, who’s reading Watership Down for the first time. When meeting her statistics teacher, I opened with, “Tell me, what percentage of parents show up for Back to School Night?” Patch also got her driver’s permit, and we’re looking to head out to a parking lot this Monday for her first parent-taught lesson.

 

We drove out to Hill Country near Austin for a long lazy weekend, hanging with my wife’s sister and her extended family. They have a sprawling ranch with a pool, barn, and guesthouse, and are fresh from a year working in Barcelona. Many stories and much laughter. I actually got a little sunburnt swimming. Oh, and I saw my first scorpion – hanging out in the middle of the guest house where we were staying, where I was walking around in bare feet! I hurriedly covered it with a drinking glass. Per my brother-in-law, they can’t kill you, but a sting feels like a hot lava injection and is excruciatingly painful for about ten minutes. He promptly squashed the critter. And he warned us not to go behind the guesthouse, as he heard rattlesnakes back there.

 

Last weekend we moved Little One into her first off-campus apartment. She rooms with two other girls – one of whom has a very famous parent I cannot talk about. The other girl’s parents were there, and the father and I spent three hours assembling IKEA bunk beds. The apartment is across the street from her college and has (I’m told) a very Melrose-place vibe. There’s a central pool and courtyard where all the college kids relax and party. There’s also a stray cat that’s made the courtyard its kingdom and prowls up and down, begging at doors.

 

Man, senior year for both girls is going to fly by. Next May we’ll have two graduations, and that follows right on the heels of our 25th wedding anniversary. Don’t ask to borrow any money off me in 2026 – I’ll be tapped out for a long while.

 

My reading has improved. I devoured a fascinating if somewhat dumbed-down-for-the-masses book called Math in 100 Numbers that’s got me inspired again. Those who know me know that every September when school starts, when that crispness floats in the air, I get an urge to read science and math. I also powered through a pretty good Ben Bova sci fi soap opera (Leviathans of Jupiter) and re-read the sci fi horror Altered States, a book I remember reading at the town pool 15 years ago with my toddlers in the kiddie pool. I am excited because September 1 I am going to start re-reading Stephen King’s It, one of my favorites of his, and one which I last read as a teen in 1987.

 

Healthwise, I did re-gain some weight this summer, but I resumed lifting weights and walking. I’d like to be under 200 by my birthday next month. But lifting gives me confidence and an overall sense of well-being, and I’m reconciled to have to do it for the rest of my life. Nothing nearly Schwarzeneggaresque. Just heavy enough that I won’t have a heart attack and my muscles will firm up and my belly shrink. And I still enjoy listening to my history podcasts while walking.

 

Other random summer 2025 events: played Mr. Mom for a couple days while my wife was on a short business trip to Houston; had a wonderful confession experience with a wonderful priest one Saturday; bought five more classical records for the collection; one daughter with a scary inexplicable hive breakout one night; another daughter hosting her bff at our house for a movie night / sleepover; and perhaps the biggest adrenaline rush – helicopters overhead and police cars zipping around the neighborhood one night searching for a possibly dangerous fugitive.

 

Toss in some other non-blogworthy stuff, and it’s quite a busy five weeks. This weekend, however, should be restful, relaxing, and chill. We’re expected to have blah weather. Overcast, spots of rain, temps not too hot but kinda muggy. The wife wants to get some pool time in with Little One, but we’re not sure if that’ll happen. I want to wrap up my current read, watch some movies with and without Patch, keep lifting weights and get a few walks in. I need desperately to mow the lawn but need 24 hours of rain-free weather to accomplish that. Then, September, the Hopper birthday month.

 

Until then, here’s Charlie:

And here’s a review I posted in 2010 about Altered States. It’s a quick read worth a look.

 

Some Thoughts on Ozzy Osbourne

 

1948 - 2025

 

While I was never a real fan of Ozzy per se, I was a huge fan of Black Sabbath, the band that first brought him success in the late 60s and through the 70s. As a teen in the 80s who had absolutely no interest “80s music,” I rebelled by diving full force into such 70s rock bands as Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, The Who, and Sabbath. I never saw Ozzy live, but I did own most of his CDs with Black Sabbath. I also owned his groundbreaking first solo venture, Blizzard of Oz and his 1991 smash CD, No More Tears.

 

I kinda remember the first time I heard him, sometime around age 13: “Iron Man,” on one of the new classic rock radio stations. I have to say I was floored. Never before in my short musical life had I heard something like “Iron Man.” What a unique tune – deceptively simple, or, rather, a simple riff surrounded by more musically complex “choruses,” solo, and ending. It stuck in my mind for a few years. I also heard the lesser impressive but somehow more popular “Paranoid” on the dial.

 

The winter of my senior year one of my friends lent me his cassette tape of Black Sabbath’s greatest hits. Yes, there is such a thing – and I devoured it. I listened to it nonstop for weeks if not months. My family took a car trip out to Wisconsin and I, with a new driver’s license, took a late night shift behind the wheel and popped the cassette in and listened to the entire thing while the family slumbered in minivan.

 

Somehow I obtained a Black Sabbath songbook. How obsessed I was with that book! In the pre-Internet age, where nobody told you anything unless you paid for a tutor or read it in a magazine (Guitar magazine), the songbook unnecessarily complicated all these Sabbath songs I loved from their first four albums. First, it was in piano notation (not guitar tab). Second, I later leaned Iommi detuned his guitar 1.5 steps (low E string down to C# and all other strings tuned standard to that). Third, the piano notation was in C#, making all the riffs more difficult to play than if it was transcribed in E with a note to detune to C#. So I could not physically play all the songs, whereas now I can, albeit tuned 1.5 steps higher than the record.

 

Back to Ozzy.

 

Ozzy’s persona in the 70s was of a drug-addled unpredictable madman. Eventually his bandmates, fed up with all his excessive drug intake and personality swings, fired him in 1979. He assumed a “Prince of Darkness” persona which may have been shocking back then in the early 80s to Tipper Gore and her crew (I wasn’t too shocked as a teen listening to his solo stuff). But that persona quickly became cartoonish and sometimes buffoonish (to me, at least) only salvaged temporarily by his magnum opus, No More Tears.

 

In the summer and fall of 1991, when my band was playing out and partying and doing the recording studio and writing songs, No More Tears came out and was played a lot. A lot. It blew me away, particularly the eponymous tune. I bought the CD, put it into regular rotation, and became a proselytizer for 90s Ozzy. About a decade later I purchased the only other Ozzy CD I ever owned – his equally phenomenal debut, Blizzard of Oz.

 

Ozzy’s main superhero talent was finding superb guitarists to play with. Iommi is fantastic and was a pretty big influence on my guitar playing as a teen. But Ozzy also brought to the forefront Randy Rhodes, Jake E. Lee, and Zakk Wylde. Rhodes is a genius, perhaps the only guitarist to seriously challenge Eddie Van Halen in the early 80s. But I didn’t care for that style of playing. I much more enjoyed Zakk Wylde. If you are into it, go to YouTube and check out some of his solo videos – particularly those of him playing Sabbath songs in a parking lot and those of him doing a guitar solo live on tour. Phenomenal.

 

The wife was into Ozzy’s reality show in the early 00s. I watched a few. It was fascinating, if a little sad. When we learned of his death yesterday, we were – as many were – amazed that he made it to the ripe old age of 76. I texted her reminiscing that we both though he was teetering on the edge of death watching him on cable twenty years ago.

 

I also found it fitting – as just about everyone else in the know – that he died three weeks after the “final” Black Sabbath reunion show, where he performed the entire concert seated upon a black throne. The “Back to the Beginning” show was a benefit concert that took place in Birmingham, England – where Ozzy and the other members of Black Sabbath grew up. Something like $190 million was raised for charity, and part of the take went to Cure Parkinson’s, a disease which Ozzy was suffering from since at least early 2019, and which may have contributed to his death.

 

Well done and good show, old chap.

 

RIP.

 

Summer Moving Along

 

Haven’t had the energy or the will to post anything of interest. Not that it hasn’t been an interesting summer so far. But what is currently occupying my mind and my time are private thoughts, deep thoughts, self-directed thoughts which might not interest you.

 

The most I will say, however, is that I have been expending a great deal of effort trying to figure out how to proceed to a new career. For twenty-three years I have been handling people’s money, in the form of payroll or tax prep. To be honest, similar to the three years I spent in IT at the start of the century, I am kinda sick of listening to people complain. I’m trying to find a niche that hits the ikigai sweet spot: something I’ll enjoy, something fairly in demand, and something that pays. I don’t need nor want to be a multimillionaire, but my salary over the past few years hasn’t risen with the costs of just about everything else, and that scares me a bit. Haven’t had any breakthroughs yet, but I’m still working on it.

 

The girls are spreading their wings, testing the air above and around the nest. Little One is getting valuable experience running a classroom of twenty-three children ages five to nine full-time. Patch is doing lots of odd jobs and is getting ready for the drivers exam to get her permit. They and the Mrs. are currently in Pennsylvania with my folks while they investigate a couple of northeast colleges for Patch and visit old friends. I’m stuck here in Texas, working and babysitting the dog. The $1,000+ we’ll save that would’ve gone to a round-trip ticket for me and a dogsitter is going to the cost of their rental car.

 

This week my routine has been fairly, well, routine. Wake up, let the dog out, feed him, go to work, do my spreadsheets and chat to my small circle of workmates for eight hours, go home, walk the dog, feed him, then feed myself and watch a movie. This week I watched Knocked Up, The Meg, Dream Scenario, and The Mummy. Then I try to read a bit, play fetch with good old Charlie, then go to bed. Rinse and repeat. Much like my bachelor days in the 90s, but with no beer, no cigarettes, no band and no night school.

 

Oh, wait! I have been playing my electric guitar. I usually practice for about an hour every weekend; been doing so since February – by the end of the year I should be up to speed. I’ve been focusing a lot on Led Zeppelin; got down the solos to Whole Lotta Love, Stairway, Misty Mountain Hop, Living Loving Maid – simple stuff, but fun stuff. Might try to learn Gilmore’s solo to Another Brick in the Wall. And I also got down the little solo and heavy bridge break in Beck’s Bolero. Sometimes I play along with an album, such as AC/DC’s Powerage or The Cult’s Sonic Temple. I find it a great distraction from the stresses of life, and now that guitar playing has no stress associated with it (auditioning band members, hauling everything to shows, balancing egos and having to keep pace with bandmates, etc.) I’m having a blast.

 

One area I’m not having a blast with is my literary life. I finished a cheesy beach paperback the first week of the month – I think I’ll save that for a review – but after that, I’m striking out one after the other. I tried my hand at a new fantasy novel (got 45 pages in), a philosophical history of German idealism (got 30 pages in), and indecision over whether to crack open an unread physics book on deck or an unread World War II book on deck. Even Little One attempted to help me out by lending me her copies of The Merchant of Venice, History of the Peloponnesian War, a book on Catholic teaching, and another on the 300-year history of the Medici family of Renaissance Florence. I thumbed through the first few pages of the Medici book last night, and will try to break into that later tonight.

 

I’m scheduled to pick the girls up from DFW late Sunday night, so I have another two days to myself. I think I’ll do some long walks both days and relax with a book at the park one afternoon (it’s supposed to be a high of 95 this weekend). And I also plan on driving over to the used book store to pick up my 50th record. I’m hoping to score a Wagner, but since they’re all good, I’m not picky.

 

Enjoy the weekend!

 

June Recap

 

 

In light of the dearth of postings, you may surmise June has been quite the busy month. And you’d be surmising correctly. A lot’s been going on down here at Chez Hopper south-of-the-border (well, south of the Mason-Dixon line, if said line stretched to the midpoint of the United States). Some blog-worthy stuff, some stuff that’s too personal for the semi-anonymity being thrown around here, and some stuff I don’t even want to commit to the electronic page.

 

One thing’s for sure: we’ve been on the go somewhat constantly. Little One, elementary school teacher-in-training, has been working full time at a pre-school / summer camp, going crazy each day with different themes (movie day, wacky water fun day, bake bread day, etc.) managing a class of around 25 five- to nine-year-olds. To get to her job, though, she needs my car, which leaves me with no wheels. So I have to be dropped off and picked up from my place of business three days a week, and to this soul who loves regularity, that’s often stressfully unpredictable. I normally clock out at 4, and being picked up at as early as 3:15 or as late as 6:30 is not an uncommon occurrence.

 

Patch had a week of Yearbook Camp, but that only meant we dropped her off at the high school and picked her up in the early evening. They bussed all the high school yearbook students (we have something like eleven high schools in our own monster-sized town) to one of the local community colleges where they all learned the creative and marketing aspects of yearbooking, brainstorming, playing games and winning prizes, and socializing.

 

The Mrs. has been fairly solitary, only leaving on one short business trip down to Austin for three days. But she’s been busy and stressed as ever. Me, I’ve taken to working on the exterior of my home. Each weekend I’m mowing, cutting shrubbery, mulching, keeping the encroaching weeds at bay with Roundup, filling cracks in the ground and bunny holes with dirt, etc. I have a huge gardening hat (given to me by Patch on my last birthday) which keeps the anvil of the sun off my face and neck, but the mosquitos have been feasting on me, which can be quite unpleasant. Everything down in Texas is bigger, even the mosquito bites.

 

Speaking of gifts given to me, I had a great Father’s Day two weeks ago. The ladies treated me to a juicy steak, with sides of asparagus and home-made macaroni and cheese. Little One bought me a book Constantine and the Conversion of Europe (which I read the following week) and Patch got me L’Enfance du Christ, a double-album oratorio by the composer Hector Berlioz (my record collection is now up to 49). And to top it all off, we four watched Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster, something I’ve been into off-and-on since following it closely in real-time Father’s Day weekend in 2023.

 

More importantly, my daily background radiation of existential dread has been shouting and gesticulating and doing angry cartwheels louder and louder, until I could no longer shut it out. While Little One and the Mrs. and, to a lesser extent, Patch, are all thriving down here, I have yet to hit my stride. The job is meaningless to me, a dead-end that merely pays the mortgage and some groceries. I have not connected with anything or anyone (not that I’m a connector by nature), but the girls are becoming adults and making strides to move out and start their own lives, and I’m a little frightened by the aspect of not having them around on an everyday basis, as they’ve been for the last 15, 20 years. Even the dog is getting older, having just surpassed the Mrs. in the dog/human year ratio and rapidly catching up to, and soon to pass, me.

 

So I decided to devote some time to finding meaning. Sounds suspiciously hippy, and I’m naturally suspicious of anything hippy. But as a first step I got some books and promised myself to do the exercises in ’em, which ultimately revealed nothing new to me. Though, to be fair, I haven’t finished everything I got. I suffer from a lot of psychological hangups, some innate and some from environmental causes, and even if I were to move past them, there’s always the financial vise of debt and obligation, as well as familial and social expectations, and all these and more conspire to keep me locked in unfulfilling routine. Not sure how to break out, but I have been giving it my strongest effort since moving down here to Texas four years ago. 

 

What does the immediate future hold?

 

Well, I took today off from work to take care of a few things, and I have a three-day remote week ahead. Then another three-day weekend as we celebrate the Fourth. The wife and girls are flying up to Pennsylvania for 10 days two weeks into July, as part of a vacation / college scouting trip for my youngest. The Mrs. will be doing a lot of driving, the farthest being a trip to a college in Buffalo that Patch is interested in. They’ve never seen Niagara Falls, so at least something positive will come of that if the school fails to check all the boxes. Me, I’m staying home with Charlie. The $750 round-trip airline ticket for me plus the $600 dogsitting charge will offset the cost of a rental car. I’ll be working and walking the dog, but at least I can watch a few science fiction flicks and feast on some Hawaiian pizza while dueling with that cartwheeling existential angst.

 

That’s the tip of the iceberg here. June, on the whole you were okay. Had better months, but had worse too. Now get outta here, and let’s get on with summer.

 

June is Devoted to the Sacred Heart of Christ

 

The Litany of the Sacred Heart

Lord, have mercy on us.

Christ, have mercy on us.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Christ, hear us.

Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of Heaven,

Have mercy on us.

God the Son, Redeemer of the world,

Have mercy on us.

God the Holy Spirit,

Have mercy on us.

Holy Trinity, one God,

Have mercy on us.

 

Heart of Jesus, Son of the Eternal Father,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Formed by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mother,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Substantially united to the Word of God,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Of Infinite Majesty,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Holy Temple of God,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Tabernacle of the Most High,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, House of God and Gate of Heaven,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Burning Furnace of charity,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Vessel of Justice and love,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Full of goodness and love,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Abyss of all virtues,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Most worthy of all praises,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, King and center of all hearts,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, In Whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, In Whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Divinity,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, in Whom the Father is well pleased,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Of Whose fullness we have all received,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Desire of the everlasting hills,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Patient and abounding in mercy,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Rich unto all who call upon Thee,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Fountain of life and holiness,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Atonement for our sins,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Filled with reproaches,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Bruised for our offenses,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Made obedient unto death,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Pierced with a lance,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Source of all consolation,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Our Life and Resurrection,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Our Peace and Reconciliation,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Victim for our sins,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Salvation of those who hope in Thee,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Hope of those who die in Thee,

Have mercy on us.

Heart of Jesus, Delight of all the Saints,

Have mercy on us.

 

Lamb of God Who takest away the sins of the world,

Spare us, O Lord.

Lamb of God Who takest away the sins of the world,

Graciously hear us, O Lord.

Lamb of God Who takest away the sins of the world,

Have mercy on us.

Jesus, meek and humble of heart,

Make our hearts like unto Thine.

 

Let us pray.

 

Almighty and eternal God, look upon the Heart of Thine most-beloved Son, and upon the praises and satisfaction He offers Thee in the name of sinners; and appeased by worthy homage, pardon those who implore Thy mercy, in Thy Great Goodness in the name of the same Jesus Christ Thy Son, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, world without end. Amen.