Back in Bexar:
The ball park at the Ghost Tracks – Tourist Welcome (flat rate must still apply).
Pre-show Playlist:
Although it was targeted for one band, I suppose, this is a pre-Kramer-show playlist suggestion.
There’s one song, I’d like to find the original and that quest has turned up another song, of equal value, by same original artist, Michael Murphey, back before he was Michael Martin Murphey, just to make sure the distinction is clear. Echoes from a misspent childhood, reverberating through the canyonlands of my mind.
Border Intro – REK Marfa Live
A Border Tragedy – REK Marfa Live
West Texas Highway – Lyle Lovett (Step Inside This House, all-time top album)
San Antonio Rose – Pine Valley Cosmonauts
Big Balls in Cow Town – Bob Wills
Crack Up In Las Cruces – Michael Murphey
Texas Trilogy – Daybreak – Steven Fromholtz
(cf, Lyle Lovett’s Step Inside This House)
Texas Trilogy – Trainride – Steven Fromholtz
Texas Trilogy – Bosque County Romance -Steven Fromholtz
Wallisville Road – Lyle Lovett
Stay All Night, Stay A Little Longer – Bob Wills
Is Anybody Going to San Antone – Charley Pride
It Came From San Antonio – Bruce Robison
When You Leave Amarillo – Bob Wills
Gringo Honeymoon – REK (Live #2, all-time top album)
Panhandle Intro – REK Marfa Live
Panhandle Rag – REK Marfa Live
Tell me this is humor:
I’m sure, that can’t be factual, can it?
Antony & Cleopatra:
“To business that we love we rise betime
And go to it with delight”
(Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra, [IV.iv.20]
University of Texas:
Don’t it make you proud? Besides, that’s not really news. I’ve preached this for years.
Back-to-Back in Austin again.
Moral High Ground:
That’s me, looking to take a stance on the moral high ground.
There is a debate, raging online, and apparently, in some of the meat spaces as well, between two luminaries, and right now, one of them is shining a lot less brightly. As I understand it, he’s been jackass.
I like WordPress. I moved from a similar, but closed, blog engine a few years back. After rigorous testing, I started running out multiple sites on it, like astrofish.net and kramerwetzel.com, and the forever ubiquitous side-project, BexarCountyLine.com.
I played with a huge number of themes, one of the appealing points of WordPress as a motor, but a problem with it, too, each of the free themes incorporated a footer link that gave the designer a link and a credit. I don’t like advertising for something – or someone – if I don’t want to. With themes, the footer, the links, are built in.
I can tweak some code and erase the back links. While ethically gray, it’s not a moral issue at all: morally, that’s wrong. Erasing the “credit” link in a free theme shouldn’t be done. Pay back, well, we all heard the expression.
As I toyed with a number of ways around that issue – then I stumbled onto Thesis. Ad for it is in my sidebar or in a footer on a site I run. Ad that’s there by my choosing. Hence the point.
I switched to Thesis, a paid, premium theme for the simple reason I could control all the outbound links – with the more expensive option – the deal is, I don’t have to have any advertising for the dealer, the designer, or even WordPress.
There’s some extra plumbing under the hood of the Thesis Theme, too, bits and pieces that make it easier for me to work with, and some parts that allegedly make it easier for data in a posting to be found. (Search Engine Games.)
My point comes from being a writer, my way of seeing the world. My first contract for online publication taught me well about my value. While I frequently hear the expression, “Content is king,” there’s always the copy and paste crowd. Despite my own, perfectly onerous and outlandish (Terms of Service, Fine Print, Copyright &c.), the only real copy protection I have is my own style. This isn’t a challenge, but I don’t worry about someone ripping me off, as how many redneck, Elizabethan theatre, country-conjunto-techno listening, astrology writers are there?
Here’s what I’ve found with Thesis: complete, and I mean as complete – as little or as much as needed – control over the appearance and backend tweaks (SEO), and better yet, with the developer’s package, no obligation to run ads for someone else. Perfect.
That, but what’s been more gratifying, is the owners get access to a help board, one of those communities wherein the tech assistance is worth much more than the asking price.
The debate devolves to the point of definitions, and what’s derivative and whats not. As the Thesis author himself pointed out, if it goes to lawyers, that’s two years before a ruling.
As a writer, I like being paid for what I do.
Sad to see an ersatz community rent asunder by bickering over words, with every armchair lawyer opining. Bowing to inter-web currents, as the ebb and electronic flow goes, I’ve dropped advertising for the theme, for the time being. Most of it. I can add the advertising back in when the dust settles.
It’s still the best solution I’ve found, though.