வாட் இஸ் த தேஅல்?

What is the deal with the tagafarpashtonese? Seriously, can anyone enlighten me?

I woke up this morning thinking about Robert Johnson. Twice in my life I've had to state this fact and I will now state it again: Robert Johnson was a real person.

The facts about his life are sketchy and tragic. He lost his wife and newborn child in childbirth. He was a travelling blues musician and made some recordings. He got friendly with somebody else's girl and was poisoned at age 27 (OK, this may be apocryphal, but it seems plausible enough.)

Along the way at least two photographs were taken. One os of him and his guitar, smiling. Another is just of his face, with a Cigarette hanging out of it. They edited the cigarette out of the photo in many prints, prompting my guitar teacher to ask why they didn't put a halo over his head as well. Smoking is our society's equivalent of a venial sin. Really, we have only one sin: dying. Smoking aids in that process and is only forgiveable if you quit.

Anyway, a lot of people (the Coen brothera among them) seem to think that he sold his sould to the devil so he could "play that guitar real good." This is probably not true, although he did master the guitar in a period of about 2 years.

Robert Johnson was the undisputed King of the Delta Blues. This was a very useful description for the record company marketers who used it to sell millions of copies of his Complete Recordings to white, middle class men like me who buy things simply because we were told that they were important.