Aretha you are a lioness among house cats.

Just listening to some Aretha this morning and wondering where all the singers (real singers) have gone? I miss this kind of voice on the radio. Aretha could make you come out of your seat with just one note and do it while only accompanied by a sax or a piano. All she ever needed was a mic and a willing audience and the idea of her voice being auto-tuned and over produced just seems like blasphemy to me. This is however all that we hear on the radio now-a-days. It's taking the life out of some singers voices, it's taking their "soul" and its frustrating! I'm not saying ban all auto-tune but good God let us listen to some real singing for once. It might put actual singers back in demand. Here's another way to look at this. Auto-tune has made vocalists that record in the studio lazy. Back in the day you just did takes until you got it right. It was an art form. Now anyone who has protools ( I'm talking to you Lil' Wayne) thinks that they can be a vocalist! Ugh! I propose we start a movement to limit the amount of auto-tune you can use on an album. Who's with me!?

"You have nothing to fear but fear itself."...Okie Dokie Mr. President...

I have always had abnormally vivid dreams. They are these amazing technicolor wonderlands that I for the most part thoroughly enjoy. For example, I once dreamed about being at a Barbecue and woke up salivating from the aromas emanating form the smoker/grill I had been standing next to in the dream...(I am a food-aholic but thats an issue for another post)... So in saying that, just imagine what my not so great dreams are like. I wouldn't call them night terrors (I don't know, maybe they are) but sometimes, every once in a while, I experience what I believe to be true evil in my dreams. I wake up in a sweat or crying from the emotional turmoil I've just been through. So why is it then that we are able to dismiss nightmares as a dark flight of fancy or a chemical reaction from a late dinner, when they often times produce a visceral conscious reaction? Is the fear in my dreams somehow made less because it was my subconscious that saw it rather than my waking eyes? I don't think so. I think my dreams help bring whatever the particular fear is to the surface so that I can deal with it and quickly. Yes I know that dreams can't harm you but not dealing with the problem behind some of the nightmares can in fact have a negative effect on your life. Just a thought...:)