It's the last business day of the month for me. Tomorrow I go in for surgery. 'Twas the worst month in my business history, and was only a few cents above September 2001, which I'm told was pretty quiet for obvious reasons (9/11). There's no rhyme or reason in my downturn - but it seems like a fitting end to Mountain View Music. Today is also officially the last day of business - though it'll take me a few months to get everybody that I trade with switched over. Today is just weird. Half Sonica, half Mountain View. End of an era. Tomorrow I'll be out of commission. And the day after, and probably the day after that.

Yeah, I still keep a furtive glance at world events. But at the same time, I remind myself that it is an election year. All news from all sources must be considered tainted by hidden agenda. If not tainted at the source, it has been discolored and twisted somewhere along the transmission path. In electronics we measure it in terms of distortion and background noise. If you've got a lot of background noise, the original signal is often lost. Distortion speaks for itself.

I've often thought about this. 'Bulbous' means 'bulb-like'. So what is 'voluptous' like? What's a 'volup'? Then yesterday I was looking at one of my guitar amplifiers. And it says VOL UP. Mystery solved. Voluptous is like more volume. Works for me...