And we wonder why...

Kids become disillusioned!

The creative process & Shakey

On Neil Young's new release, Sugar Mountain, he explains that most songs take him from 90 minutes to two hours to write. But Sugar Mountain came to him all at once, in five minutes. In another live concert, Neil explained that he was at first embarassed by the lyrics of SM but eventually it came to be one of his favorite self penned songs.

Here are some of the lyrics, so you can judge for yourself:

Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons...

It's so noisy at the fair
But all your friends are there
And the candy floss you had
And your mother and your dad...

There's a girl just down the aisle
Oh, to turn and see her smile
You can hear the words she wrote
As you read the hidden note...

Now you're underneath the stairs
And you're givin' back some glares
To the people who you met
And it's your first cigarette

Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain
With the barkers and the colored balloons
You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain
Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon
You're leaving there too soon

To me, the song has a very Brian Wilson-ish quality, childlike but not childish.

Burn rate

Today's most shocking headline: Big 3 automakers admit that mistakes were made. Wow! And General Motors claims that it needs $4 billion in order to stay open for the next 20 days. Now that sounds like a great investment, does it not?

If there's one leason to be learned from the fall of Enron it is that a company's burn rate - basically the speed with which it sets fire to money in a futile effort to stay alive - increases as it approaches dissolution. Do we really want to give GM more money to burn?

A mother's love...

Mother's love is peace. Eric Fromm

Winter

In the depths of winter I finally learned there was in me an invincible summer. - Albert Camus

(Click on the photo to see a larger version.)

Miracles

Some people see nothing in life as a miracle. I elected to see everything in life as a miracle. - Albert Einstein

(Click on the photo to see a larger version.)

Honestly, this is like beating a dead horse...

As you can see from these photos, the Big 3 auto executives are not exactly having a great time in D.C. And Ford and Chrysler say, hey, we're willing to talk merger again. You betcha!

It will be fun, fun, fun 'til daddy takes the T-Bird away. Oh, wait, they already took the T-bird away.... Sigh.