The Mawg Blog

Snow in Dubai

It snowed in Dubai this past weekend.  No, not the fake snow that the obscenely rich oil emirate routinely manufactures for its decadent desert ski resorts, but real, honest-to-goodness snow.

For only the second time in recorded history, according to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, The United Arab Emirates has experienced a “natural” snowfall.  I wish we could just sit back and enjoy the rich, ironic humor contained in this weather update, but, as luck would have it, we happen to share an atmosphere with these lovely oil producers.

Climate change is real and it is here.   Not only is it real, but a newly released study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America says that climate change is basically irreversible.

As study author Susan Solomon of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and one of the world’s foremost climate scientists, explains, “People have imagined that if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide that the climate would go back to normal in 100 years or 200 years. What we’re showing here is that’s not right. It’s essentially an irreversible change that will last for more than a thousand years.” Continue Reading…

You don’t have to flush every time you pee, or how I spent my day.

My day started at 8 yesterday morning with the arrival of my partner, B Wishes, to work on our seemingly never-ending video project.  We keyframed mattes, color corrected and moved clips around in Final Cut Pro until the scene, a dream sequence, was ready to export into Digital Performer for audio sweetening.

We recorded the parts we needed; whistling, synths, strings, wind chimes and a guitar.  Since our main studio montors are down due to a heinous Christmas Eve mishap (see my first blog entry), we decided not to mix, and switched instead to evaluating and editing some tracks for The Toyes’ upcoming CD.

We were rocking.  It was one of those rewarding days when we could feel the wind on our faces from the momentum of the great progress we were making.  In our line of work, some days you feel like you’re standing still or sliding backwards, but this day was glorious for its sense of forward motion. Continue Reading…

Papa’s Got a Brand New Blog

Hello, Blogosphere.

Mawg of the Toye people here, writing my first blog.  Though my point of view on many topics is represented in my songs, I’ve been toying with the idea of putting some of my thoughts out there in this medium to be considered or ignored, as luck and, to a lesser extent, their merit will have it.

That said, the main reason this blog exists is because my wonderful son Zach took it upon himself to make it happen.  It is a beautiful gift, and the thoughtful love and effort that Zach put into it are inspirations to jump in and try to write something interesting!

I plan to write about lots of things in these pages, but this first entry is all about gratitude. Continue Reading…