Cheap Musical Instruments

As regular readers of this blog are aware, your faithful correspondent is an advocate of cheap musical instruments. He believes that good and enjoyable music can be made with a cheap First Act guitar and a pair of bongos as well as it can be made with a Fender Strat and a Ludwig drum set.
Be it known that this author has a $40 uke, a $70 guitar, a $7 pennywhistle and a $20 harmonica, none of which he plays well, or even competently. But he enjoys playing those instruments.
He also owns a thing called a StrumstickTM. The instrument is also known, and will be known heretofore as a stick dulcimer because the StrumstickTM is a trademarked name and the "inventor" of said "stick" is not loath to complain about other builders of stick dulcimers calling their products being called "S-sticks."
This writer has owned a "S-stick" for some years and has enjoyed fooling about with it, although he has never taken it very seriously. The tuning is usually G-D-G, which allows for a good range of songs, and the thing is usually played in a diatonic mode. It has only three strings and some people think that it is easier to play than a proper dulcimer, though yours would dispute this since the diatonic spacing of the frets make the thing easier to play on the lap than as a half guitar.
But it is a fun thing to fool around with. It actually sounds more like a banjo than it does a guitar or dulcimer. And the cost of the thing, the last time checked, is not awfully high especially if one buys one of the many stick dulcimers besides the "S-stick." In fact, the quality of the construction of the "S-stick" is lacking and feels really cheap. The neck is very narrow making it difficult to finger chords and the neck feels almost as if it were teak. Teak is a great wood, but it's not very smooth. Considering the fretting demands of a stick dulcimer one would expect that the neck be not only smooth, but slick. One can fret faster with a proper dulcimer than a "S-stick."
So if you want to have a cheap stringed instrument that is fairly easy to play you might consider the stick dulcimer, or in a bind, the "S-stick."
Here's a YouTube thing of an explanation of the "S-stick" not "S-stick" controversy:
This is NOT a Strum Stick! - YouTube

When Actresses Go Bad

Sometimes one, while watching a motion picture, will see an actress that one sees some promise as a proper actress in. And often one is disappointed in that said actress decides that she would rather be a "Star" instead of an actress.
This is a short post about the two Kates - Kate Winslet and Kate Beckinsale. One decided to become an actress and the other decided to become a "Star."
Both women entered the motion picture industry at about the same time. Beckinsale perhaps a bit earlier. The first time this writer became aware of Beckinsale was when she co-starred in a movie version of Much Ado About Nothing. Your faithful correspondent first saw Winslet in Beautiful Creatures. And he hoped that both women would go on to become skilled and real actresses.
Beckinsale went on to star in Cold Comfort Farm, Emma and The Last Days of Disco. All three films, while not art films, were movies that demanded acting skills. Winslet went on to star in Titanic and was in danger of becoming a "star", but she seems to have come to her senses and has deigned to go into movies that were examples of acting and writing instead of special effects. Meanwhile Beckinsale has gone into a series of vampire/werewolf themed action pictures and the result has been that, while she's been pulling down a bit of coin, has not shown that she has any acting chops anymore. She'll occasionally co-star in a bit quieter movie, but she's the co-star and is not asked to do much than support another actor. A walking stick could do that.
It's a sad thing to see a woman of such talent as Kate Beckinsale fall to the "action star" bit. In a few years she'll be too old to be an action star and she'll have a hard time finding a job as a middle-age actress. She'll always be thought of by the casting directors as the lanky Limey carrying a sword.

Men In Hats

After a bit of an absence it is time for another Men in Hats feature.
Having in the past covered the majority of types of hats worn in the United States and Europe it has become time to travel farther afield. For this edition we travel south of the border to Mexico to take a look at the sombrero, or as it is more properly know in Latin America and Spain, the sombrero mexicano.
Properly speaking, sombrero in Spanish means "hat." "Hat" meaning a head covering with a proper brim going around the crown of the hat and not a cap with just a bill in the front (or back or side if one is into the hip-hop nonsense).
The sombrero descends from the Spanish "grandee" hat -- a felt hat with a straight flat crown and a fairly large flat brim. One sees picadors in bullfights wearing such hats. The native Mexicans changed the hat to something with a much larger curled brim and a sugar-loaf type crown.
There are various styles of the hat ranging from the woven straw or reed hat, usually worn in the southern parts of Mexico, to the heavy felt and straw spangled charro version worn by Mexican vaqueros and frontera singers to the chaparral, in which the back of the brim is almost folded up flat against the crown somewhat like a bi-corn.
The most practical variation is the straw/reed type. It is fairly light, gives plenty of shade and the tall crown allows the heat of the head to escape.
Nowadays the hats are worn by country people and vaqueros and singers. At one time the Mexican Federal police wore them as part of their uniforms. And of course, Mexican revolutionaries wore them.
Who should wear a sombrero? A Mexican rural person, a Mexican cowboy, a Mexican country singer, and anyone on the beach on a hot day.

Progress Doesn't Always Mean PROGRESS

We here at Bloody Nib Manor try to maintain a positive view of life in the United States, but to tell the truth, while walking down the street or going to the local emporium, we find it difficult not to believe that manners and behaviour are undergoing a de-evolution.
Be it known that this writer is no prude. And that this writer is no snob. Your faithful correspondent is a working man who works in the manufacturing industry in order to put bread on the Nib table.
But this writer is often taken aback by the, to put it mildly, the lack of self respect with which some people dress themselves while in public. In other words, they dress like idiot children or just plain slobs. A trip to the local Wal-Mart did nothing but re-enforce this thought. Men and women, all chronologically adults, walking about wearing tee-shirts, singlets, short (often very short) pants and thong sandals as if they were at the beach scaring the fish in the ocean.
Is there no sense of propriety? In fact, one the way home this writer saw a young woman wearing short cut-off jeans with lace tights.
We live, despite the current economic downturn, live in a much more materially rich world than people did during the Great Depression , and yet, if one watches old films of the Dust Bowl, bread lines and strikes, one can see that the people then dressed more properly than they do now. The men wore proper shirts and pants and hats, and the women wore dresses that did not make them look like refugees from some sort of adult-child summer camp.
Why is this? Is it because we have become more "free" or because we have just become a bunch of lazy slobs?
It's a sad thing to see.

The New Year

We here at the Manor are not given to making New Years resolutions, but this writer has decided to make a resolution to be a little more upbeat and humorous this coming year. Let's face it. This year is an election year and promises for this reason alone to be nothing but depressing. Plus one has the Iranian acting like Iranians, the Chinese acting like Chinese and the Norks acting like the crazy uncle deciding that the attic would look better if it were on the ground floor.
So to start things right your faithful correspondent offers these stories about animals in war and animal heroes:
File:LostBattalionMonument.JPG - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Animals In War Memorial - The Animals In War Memorial - Park Lane, London

Churchill's mission to rescue the war horses and how he made officials bring tens of thousands home | Mail Online

Dickin Medal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It makes one wonder if animals are not better than us.