A spoken song, really.  A background of music with spoken words.  The music was performed on a shamisen, I think, or possibly a koto.  One of those things I managed to memorize long ago but failed to remember the person who wrote or performed it.  I haven't been able to google anything about it.

---

Well, there was Gemini Jim and Scorpio Sal,
And they were living by the Golden Gate.
Freezing their nose
And wearing leather clothes
And dealing every way but straight.
They had a Leo dog and a Capricorn cat,
And everything was going fine.
Until, into their life,
On a moonless night,
Come the man
Who got no sign.

He roared right in
Like some evil wind
And he rolled himself a righteous smoke.
And as the thunder crashed,
And the lightning flashed
He took a toke
And spoke...
He said he was born in an astrological warp,
When the stars refused to shine.
On the cusp of nowhere and nevermore:
He's the man that got no sign.

So he told a story of an endless search
To find his missing part.
But Scorpio Sal, she just smiled at him, and
Tried to do his chart.
But Pisces Ben, who was Jim's best friend,
Said, "Man...you must be blind.
You better grab your knife,
And take the life
Of that man
What got no sign."

And so, it happened...
And his blood ran...
Soaked the ground...

The arrest was made by Sheriff Slade,
An Aquarius through and through.
But the jailer was a Sagittarius
And he beat Jim black and blue,
And as they dragged him up the courthouse stairs,
They said, "Jim, how do you plead?"
Jim said, "Man, the moon's in Virgo, so
Blame no fault on me!"

Well, the jury all was Libras,
So you know they were more than fair,
But his lawyer was Aries,
And an Aries just don't care.
And the judge, he was a Cancer,
And a Cancer's got no friends.
But the hangman
Was a Taurus,
And that's where
The circle
Ends...

For Cowboy Blob's weekly contest.

The machine has been acting a little wonky lately.  It feels like something is sucking up resources.  But I can't find any unknown processes running, I run spyware and virus scans weekly, and this morning finally resorted to a scandisk.  Several problems were found and fixed, but the sluggishness is still there.  I tried a system restore, which I was very loath to do because I was about 85% certain it would only screw things up worse.  Surprise, surprise, I was right.  It took a while, but it's back to working fairly well now, except for some minor sluggishness, most noticeable in occasionally having choppy sound when playing sound files (both mp3 and Windows wav files).

It takes a while to start up stuff, too.  My most commonly used programs are Thunderbird, Firefox, Excel and Winamp.  Winamp seems to start okay but it's taking way too long just to open a very simple spreadsheet.  The Mozilla applications are taking a lot longer to open than they did just four or five days ago.  The system says a defrag isn't necessary, and I did one about a month ago anyway.

I use Spybot, Adaware and Avast Anti-Virus.  I also run ZoneAlarm.

Another problem that cropped up in the last couple of days is that when I click on a hyperlink in Thunderbird, it no longer opens a Firefox window.  I have to do a manual right-click copy and paste to view a web page.

Something is going on, I just can't figure out what.

UPDATE:  I can't rip CDs anymore, either.  Well, I can, but the result isn't anything I'd ever want to listen to.

Norman Rockwell is another very famous pipe smoker who I won't be able to say anything new about.  So here's some stuff you probably already know.

He became art editor of Boy's Life magazine when he was only 19.  He painted several covers for the magazine and went on to illustrate numerous Boy Scout calendars throughout his life.

During World War I he tried to enlist, but was turned down for being underweight (6 feet tall, 140 pounds).  He went home and gorged himself, then went back the next day and made the cut.  However, he was assigned as a military artist and did not see combat during his tour.

He successfully submitted his first illustration to Saturday Evening Post in 1916.  He is perhaps most famous for his numerous cover illustrations for this magazine.  Other magazines for which he painted covers are Literary Digest, The Country Gentleman, Leslie's Weekly, Judge, Peoples Popular Monthly and Life.

His paintings are famous both for realism and for their portrayal of American life.  Many of his works are set in rural and small town settings.  Later in life, he turned his attention to the civil rights struggle.

The above graphic is Rockwell's "Triple Self Portrait."  Pipe smoking was featured in many of his works such as:



And my favorite: