Killers get love letters, Octaman gets boycotted

all that is gold does not glitter
not all that glitters is gold
praise is heaped on the wicked all the time
the righteous stand out in the cold
well it may have always been that way
but it won't always be so...

From the song "Life, Death and the Here After" by Octaman

I wrote that song a long time ago, and it seems to have a continual cycle of fulfillment in my life. Sometimes the episodes are so hard that it's difficult to fit the Octaman story into my comedic template. The only way to make it funny would be to make Octaman the most hated person on the planet. That may be the case.

One evil thing after another happens to our hero, so the audience can laugh their heads off at what must be a deserving villain.

Let's join our anti-hero as he sets out to find an audience for his independently released music CD. It's very hard just waiting for any feedback. And waiting. And waiting. The silence is deafening at times. After working for nearly four years on the latest CD, all I hear from most of my friends and family are crickets.

"ree-ee, ree-ee"

At least mom is supportive. Anyway, today I've been working on a new CD that is very exciting to me. Some of the music is already up on the myspace.com rock site for downloading. It's newly re-mastered hard rock music that was already in the can. I can't wait for others to hear it, so I decide to unveil it by playing a song for a student of mine. His reaction?

"ree-ee, ree-ee"

Not one single word. It's hard to fathom, since the music is so outrageously on the edge, it should elicit some sort of reaction, but maybe that's just as well. Some of my friends have been critical of the last CD, so maybe I don't want to know what anyone thinks. At least I know it's good.

There are some nice remarks about "Rock of Offence" coming in. Two or three! I'm not sure if it's two or three since one of them suggested I should do an instrumental album, which I take as a backhanded snipe at the vocalist. Coming from a person who's in the Truth - the same religious fellowship as I am, well, you'd think the message would be more important to them, but I suppose they prefer Andrea Boceli. I suppose I'm not everyone's cup of tea. I must deserve it, since I had just spent part of the day coaching students by picking apart their vocals...

No word back from the few radio hosts I sent the CD to yet. Not sure if they arrived. An inquiry to a reggae music site for info resulted in someone sending a "friend request" to my Octaman "myspace" reggae site. I guess that's spam, but I'm new to myspace, so I let him join. It looks better than having it say "Octaman has 1 friends". I can see this is going to be a long haul out of anonymity...

Question for the day: If you know that a certain family member is estranged from the others, should you secretly invite them all to a dinner - and then when the estranged party tries to ask for reconciliation and is rejected again, should you then throw an emotional fit and blame him because the evening didn't go as you planned?

And what if the estranged family member had already told you exactly what would happen if you all got together, but you went ahead and ignored that conversation? Do you then think it would be all right to loudly berate him? To not answer his very nice email? To not show up for the music lesson scheduled for his nephew? To do so without informing him?

Scott Peterson and the "night stalker" are murderers in prison who get love letters. I'm a musician and guitar teacher who volunteers his time to kids, but you'd think I'd just called someone a "nappy headed ho!" I'm boycotted. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to miss out on that monthly box of macaroni and cheese I'd receive in trade for the $100 in music lessons I've given each month for the last two years...

And I guess I'll have to miss out on having any family as well. That's the punchline!

"ree-ee, ree-ee"

Oc