Jump a little Lighter

Rosalita jump a little lighter
Señorita come sit by my fire

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my inner alarm clock this morning, the song that was stuck in my head when I awoke. And still is, as a matter of fact. It's probably appropriate that it's by a fellow New Jerseyan, Bruce Springsteen. (I get to be a former New Jerseyan as well as New Yorker. Sorry; that's just the way it is when you move around a lot as a kid.) The song always reminds me of a girl I used to go out with, because her parents -- like Rosalita's parents -- didn't really like me and didn't want me to have anything to do with their daughter. And I was, truth be told, in a rock-and-roll band.

But that's where the similarity ends. In Rosalita, the character ends up whisking Rosalita off to bliss, thanks to a "big advance" from the record company. I didn't fare so well, and neither did my relationship, so the best I can do is live vicariously through the fictional character invented by a guy from south Jersey. And talk about it here, in the vacuum of cyberspace.

Which begs the question: In cyberspace, can anyone hear you scream?

I wonder if the advent of the blog has enabled us to become the modern-day electronic counterpart of that seedy guy in New York City, wandering the streets talking to himself and occasionally directing a random rant at a passer-by. Were people like that just ahead of their time? Life is strange, I'll give it that, so anything is possible. It just might be that the only difference between talking to yourself and talking to someone else is that the replies are more predictable when you talk to yourself.

And with that in mind, I'll announce the completion of the first redesign of the header graphics for this blog. I'm pretty happy with it right now, except maybe for those remaining elements from the design this was based on. (Snapshot, by Dave Shea.) Art -- even bad art, which I'm sure my header graphic represents -- just ain't easy. But the satisfaction is in the doing, as I'm sure it is with at least one or two other things in life. So, having said that, I'll continue on, like that guy in New York, blathering at the walls and at people I can't even see (who, in all likelihood, aren't here) until it's time to go.