See the new bicycle brace? This contraption lifts the bottom of the carrier off the bumper so that the rear door can be opened with the rack in place. Even close up, it looks like an ordinary handle. I made it from a spare bracket in my tool box. I’ll borrow JPs pipe cutter and create a one-bike carrier. I don’t know what Bell was thinking selling that thing as a two-bike affair. It wobbles and works itself loose. Many hours on the computer later, I’ve re-discovered something I pretty well knew the first time I ever heard electronic instruments. There is no patch that really sounds like a guitar. Or, at least, these sounds are very well camouflaged because I can’t find them. The trick to upgrading Karaoke music is to select a midi sequence with the parts you want, and then to replace those parts with better (more expensive) patches.
For instance, quickly replace all vibraphone tracks with a grand piano sound before it drives you to drink. Toss any Celesta, Dulcimer or Xylophone for similar reasons. I would love to change many of those tracks to basic guitar sounds because the beat and melody are right. But where exactly does one find basic guitar sounds? I finally went through every midi guitar patch I have (over 400 samples). Nothing sounds even close to stage-grade.
I don’t know that it is the nature of the guitar itself for many other stringed instruments are impressively realistic. I level the same criticism at midi as at drum machines: the popular sounds are not there. Where is the single button that gives me “Eagles” or “Old Beatles” chops? I don’t need lead breaks, just a setting that sounds like a rhythm guitarist behind the vocals. Boom-chicka, boom-chicka, that is it. What a beautiful idea, guitar chords without putting up with a guitarist. Today I look further afield.
Something I noticed at the food mart that could be my imagination. You decide. The pet food is 59 cents a can or two for $1.19. It looks like a lot of people think the latter is the better deal. Could it be some marketer has discovered the mentally lame have great math difficulties in that price range? I watched several shoppers having a real struggle over it. Interesting. In another development, all of the nearby dollar stores have stopped stocking coffee filters.
Then I looked up a video on BLEEX, the exoskeleton that lets you carry 200 pounds like it was 5 pounds. I wasn’t expecting to hear the two-horsepower motor in the background. For some reason I thought it was electric and was wondering what kind of speed I’d get on my bicycle. Don’t quote me but I think they said the price tag is $50 million each.
My rule about including the unusual means an oddball topic. Last day I mentioned Sheldon narrating his own book. I’ve detected something else that is difficult to explain. But I’ll try. It involves my own background. I learned early to keep my mouth shut about fooling around with girls. That means I never said a word about Sandra North, or Alvina Bowser, or Debbie Bradley, or Stella Baird. It also means I never went through the bragging phase that 99% of guys suffer through. But 99% is not 100% no matter how much some want to believe it is. Not all men brag about sex and I think I know the reason.
Not bragging has its own consequences, one being that I pick it up instantly when I’m around males who never got a lot when they were young. Their bragging tones down (and becomes past tense), but not their weird fantasies about how women view sex. These men develop a nagging pre-occupation with sex every waking moment. Don’t get me wrong, I think about sex just as much as anyone, but in its place and time.
When I see a woman bend over to pick something up, that is all I see, unless she does something else erotic in my specific direction. Guys, women bend over. It is not a come on. I have a theory. By the time these guys are fifteen, everyday situations trigger the response. When most men want a fantasy, they have no choice but to imagine. On the other hand, I have a choice of imagining, doing, or plain remembering. If that revelation bothers anyone, it is clear which group they belong to.
I know exactly what I’m talking about because I have two brothers who, shall we say, are lucky they paired off young. I used to call it them the “Do you think she likes me?” gang, because they would often ask me years after I’d already gotten it on with that same gal. Another thing I learned is that most men honestly believe you think the same way; that “thinking sex but acting polite” are universal male behaviors. If that is you, tough luck, for I’ve never seen a man so afflicted ever get better. That is why there is a market for pornography, and why a lot of men don’t believe that I’ve never gone to a stripper bar or hired a hooker. Guys! Nor have I ever had to.
Back to Sheldon. He’s able to stick to the plot until the group of nuns take separate escape routes. Where I was expecting the drama of flight through the hills, illusionary Sheldon creates the opportunity for encounters with virgins. He lapses into predictable schoolboy misconceptions. One nun simply has to take a naked bath where the guard is posted, the cool mountain water rekindling her memories. Another struggles with awakening emotions “unlike anything she’d ever know in the convent”, no less. Yet another shoots herself when God fails to punish her rapists, as it were. I hope I’m wrong, but it is obvious to me how Sheldon spent his teenage years.
I have not decided whether he is doing it on purpose. But he is doing it with great experience.
