An overcast and rainy day pushing the humidity up over 90%. Here is a photo of blue flowers growing on Wallace’s vine he trained to grow on the old clothesline. The morning glories are coming back, I think. Ah, springtime in the Everglades. I’m packed and ready to head out tomorrow morning. We may make it a two day trip since it looks like we won’t get out of town until way past noon. She’s got two guys from the car wash ready to load the truck.
All this brings back memories of my last cross-country trip. That was to San Diego six years ago now. I no longer believe anyone who tells me they are an experienced long-distance shift driver after that. Frank told me he was, so I took the first shift from Miami to Port Charles. Then he takes over and immediately cranks the radio up full blast. Er, Frank, it is my turn to sleep, what is with the music? Oh, he says, “I use it to keep me awake.”You know, I was unable to sleep a single wink after he told me that, like I don’t know radio stations fade off the air. That was a 43 hour trip. Everybody is idiosyncratic to a degree, but I prefer people where it is temperamental rather than behavioral. You can work around temperament. Teresa and I are the latter type. Teresa thinks decaf coffee is worse for you than regular. Somebody told her it was treated with bleach. Myself, I did thorough research on the subject before switching to decaf on December 5, 1992. Each thinks the other is misinformed but neither of us puts the other at risk over it.
[Author's note 2014: that last statement is unclear. It is a referral to changing things that affect others without informing them first. I'm saying I don't mind hearing nonsense as long as the only thing the other person does is talk.]
The last minute schedule means we may not make it all the way in one day. I’m going to take only 26 pictures on the trip. This avoids having to take a laptop along to download pictures, a necessity since camera manufacturers are too retarded to build the software drivers into the camera itself, or to include a slide-out USB port. All other photos will have to be on Teresa’s excellent camera which involves finding a memory card reader in Cape Fear, North Carolina.
I’ve got Cakewalk working again and Arnel is going to reverse burn me a copy of the 4,000 program DVD. I seem to have misplaced the original along with the manual right after I made his copy. Of all the things Cakewalk does, one of the most difficult is adding lyrics to Karaoke. I wonder who is responsible for that gem?
The round trip may take up to four days. Pudding-Tat is well taken care of. I declined the airplane trip and will do the Greyhound bus, which plunks me in Ft. Lauderdale near midnight. Come to think of it, I don’t even know where the terminal is. They closed the local bus station just a few years ago. You watch, it will be miles from the Metrorail. That should add to the adventure. I didn’t even check to see if it was Easter weekend until y’day.
[Author's note 2014: the bus terminal is actually quite near the local transit station. My comment was probably meant a jab at the typical Florida way of doing things.]
Time for the “Sopranos” update. The production is showing its age in weaker scripts. Lots of dreams and flashbacks but at least none of them use existing sets or characters in their old roles. They’ve got Tony getting slapped out by Buddhist monks. It is still a great series that must have aired on a popular weeknight, since I never saw a single episode until Mike lent me the disks.
The mystery of the banging noise in the living room has been solved. I’d hear a crash and take a look in case the cat knocked something over. This has been going on for a week. Nothing. Around noon, I hear birds going at it in the trees and slid open the patio door. I have had to start closing the door due to the early heat wave. It must be instinct because that cat is well-fed. The moment she felt the breeze, she leaped full blast at the birds without thinking and hit the screen door head on. Bang!
With that, I’ll be signing off for a few days. No more low-brow until late in the week. This will be the longest stretch in roughly six years that I have not written or played music every day. For today’s trivia, I’ll talk about low-brow, as the term can be misunderstood. High-brow and low-brow are nearly synonymous with high education and low education.
I say nearly synonymous because a person of high education is not necessarily high-brow unless that education has been previously exploited for financial gain, including the gain of impressing ancestors with inheritable belongings. Why do you suppose they have degrees in Liberal Arts? My writing here is low-brow primarily in that it is not intended to require schooling to be informative and hopefully entertaining. James Joyce could not have said it better. And certainly not any clearer.
Perhaps an example will illustrate the difference, keeping in mind that said difference is not my point, which comes later. A Picasso painting hangs on the wall. Low-brows know that people are not cubes and triangles with two eyes on one side of their head. High-brows have “learned” that Picasso was influenced by primitive African art and consider it most innovative that he tore off pieces of whatever he was sitting on and glued it to his work. (Low-brows can be glad he didn’t paint while using the crapper.)
My point is that high-brow goes beyond art appreciation. High-brow cannot be separated from the means to have the education (and leisure time) to purchase both the painting and wall to hang it on. My blog is low-brow and does not require an air/hotel package to Spain to say you’ve seen it. Wherever you may be reading this, I solidly assure you that zero percent of it has ever been written sitting on the john. No computer in there.
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