My thoughts on "The Who"

As a boy I loved The Who, for all the reasons people loved, and love, The Who.

But then came the 90's and The Who didn't really fit with the non-prescription pharmaceuticals of the Era, so I put them on hold in terms of my listening.



Then as the 90s came to an end I started to get very much back into them. Until....


Townsendpaedeogate in 2003.


Sex with children is fine if by "children" you mean "consenting adult humans who have parents".....


But the accusations against Pete Townsend where not implying that simple tertiary relationship. So, being a great follower of tabloid-herd mentality, I decided to throw away my MP3 Who Discography and place the The Who's corpus very much along side Jordi Chandler's police statement.

BBC4 on a Friday Night

But last night, my Wonderful Wife and I stumbled upon a BBC showing of a two hour documentary about The Who. From the first moment we were gripped. Golly-gosh what a rock and roll story like no other. What a band!

There were many moments where I felt like I was watching Napoleon commanding battle or Michaelangelo painting, such is the status of their product and magnificence.

Is he or isn't he?

In the documentary they mentioned Townsendpaedogate and everyone came out to say, "of course he isn't a kiddiefiddler, no way Jose." But you can't just follow what you hear unquestioningly like you are just part of a flock. So this morning, listening to The Who, I asked myself this simple question:

Is the evidence for Townsendpaedogate significant enough to outweigh the facts that everyone thinks he is innocent, including the English legal system and the fact that he is a musical genius.

So in my head I visualized a 3 axis mind-graph, with the axes being Evidence (of paedophilia), Opinion (on evidence), Quality (of Music).


I did some samples based on past paedobrities and found a pattern, a planar continuum of separation within the bounds of the hyper-visualized mind-graph.


The line bisects the cube on the evidence/opinion plane increasing against an increase of 2.4/7.1. So it's quite steep in the opinion bias. (If you are having trouble visualising this you might want to pop into Mathematica and do it in a computer.)



I will call this bisecting plane the JK Discontinuity because Jonathan King sits very close to it in the positive side. Glitter, Jackson , et al are down in the bottom of the cube, below the JKD... but where was Peter Townsend? I visualised.....

There is no spoon.

Woooooot!!! He was in the top half of the graph!!! A few mind-centimeters from Bill Wyman, in fact!

I didn't need an explanation as to why Pete Townsend joined American Childsex sites, no sir. That question was now not needed. Neuroclustuer, locate. Neurocluster, delete.

Reboot

I am happy, The remaining Who are happy, and the kids, almost certainly, are alright.

Why I love the Ipod Touch Even More

I have written poems to my iPod Touch and even... though unpublished.. a sonnet and perhaps... in my head a number of eulogies and threnodies.

But just when everything about it couldn't get any better. It actually does.

It actually has become even better, than the best it already was.

It actually is the first time in my long and promiscuous affair with technology that something has become an order of magnitude better without any physical change its its form.

There are some great games on the touch natively. But now, thanks to some free software, you can turn your iPod Touch into.... into a ...... into a nigh on fully functioning Game Boy Advance!

OMFGAJCOAB Game Boy Advance on my Ipod Touch

It's amazing, its better than an actual Gameboy Advance because the screen is better and even the virtual controls are great... even the save game aspect is better.

And there are zillions of commercial games you can get, morally but illegally, from the Bittorent fairy. These are not old games, these are modern and in many cases great little games... and most though not all play as fast and smooth as I imagine the originals would have.




Incidentally here are some other Salted Tech Firsts for the Ipod Touch:

• Its the only object x for which we already have an x in the the house and my wife would like another identical x. We do have 2 electric toothbrushes, not sure how. The point is, the Touch, because it's not a phone, you just leave laying around. So you go in and your kids or wife are playing it. And it's cool, it's hard to damage or crash etc. How bad can it get? NONE BAD, it's ace!
• It creates a pansexual coveting response in all virgin Touchers. The first time someone has a go... coverflow or the internet or iPhyscis... there is a wow factor of distinction. A wow that is so rare now with consumer products. If you have one, people like you more, it's that simple.
• It's the gift that keeps on giving. If you give yourself one, which you should do, it will give back to you many fold. And it will give to those around you. It's an experience very much like having a slab of ice made from the water from the swimming pool from Cocoon in your house, for all to use... except it's warm to the touch.

Conclusion

A fundamental aspect of Buddhism, one of the Four Noble Truths, is that the root causes of the dissatisfaction... suffering...and lack of ultimate wholesomeness to life and existence is caused by Tanha.

Tanha is a complex, deep and composite Pali term that means something like thirst, desire, craving, greed, longing. And the idea is, and it in my book is one of the most important ideas in human history, that this Tanha is unavoidable, because at every stage, all is impermanent.

This is so easy to see in all we do. The holiday we can't wait for and then when there it's not quite as satisfying as we thought. That object we have been waiting for that soon looses the value we initially placed on it. Material things or.... everything, it's all subject to the disappointments caused by the unquenchable Tahna.

I believe that the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, is the greatest of gifts. l also believe, that if the Buddha had had an Ipod touch (Jailbroken), we probably would not have The Four Noble Truths.

Drifting into History

I saw a woman today
Walking down the street
She was drifting into history.

Her loneliness and her illness
Were entangled with her smile.
She was drifting into history.

In those approaching moments,
Warmth of life and chill of death.
She was drifting into history.

And when she passed away,
She was just behind me,
Drifting into history.