MORNING
More rain, and me with a full tank of sidecar gas. I’ve got complete rain gear and I’ve boomed through storms before. But all rain gear, including the vaunted Goretex, is muggy and that clips the enjoyment factor. So here I am, coffee-less but utilizing my new-found confidence in cutting odd angles with the scroll saw. This is a bracket for my disk sander (the belt sander I seek to purchase does not have a disk on the side, as do most brands). I have no space left for a big sander.
Agt. M took the monster bike apart, so I had to deliver the welding supplies by sidecar. Another first in this town. Others are not like me. Before I take things apart, like say, for instance my sole mode of transportation, I make sure I have everything necessary to put it back together, the functional word being “before”. It turns out the problem was another mistake, but one I am guilty of myself at times. One of the rear forks was slightly longer than the other.
The robot club is now years old and we’ve never got close to building such a thing, but that assessment would not take into account the incredible things we have built. But as such, it is a successful and working club
I’ve further discovered that the last generation since the advent of digital cameras with LCD screens has lost the ability to take photos using an ordinary viewfinder. Without special training, they cannot center a photo, a skill I took for granted. Expecting to see the photo displayed to do the work for them, they even hold the camera funny.
Look at this photo. It was the best of seven taken because I could see the guy was not doing it right. They will snap the picture aiming off to one side and immediately pull the camera forward to see the results, which they cannot. They can’t get used to it being invisible until later downloaded. Where they would normally just snap another photo, they forget older cameras only take twenty or so pix. And this particular model is erase all or none.
Still, these cheap-as-dirt cameras are doing a better job than the Nikons and Vivitars and Sonys and Panasonics. I think cameras are going the way of printers and drum machines. Instead of perfecting the lot, which they’ve had plenty of time to accomplish, they are diverging into pre-agreed market shares and refusing to produce a good all-round product.
And as usual, three to five years from now, some joker of a journalist will pick up on this article and get credit for spotting the story.
NOON
“I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor. Believe me honey, rich is better.” --Sophie Tucker. Note: in previous writing, I’ve attributed this quote to others. I never knew who she was, that’s why.
I’ll tell you who the real conspiracy theorists and job-protectionists are: the military. They constantly need new bombs and planes because the enemy is out to get them. That paranoia is, to me, symbolized by the new F-35 joint fighter, a needlessly expensive jump-jet. All you hear is how the new “commie” jets and “Euro” jets can beat our old jets. I got news for the chiefs of staff: we don’t believe you. Nobody, anywhere has the logistics or total military size to attack us. Let’s be happy with that.
The military is investing millions to convince the small-minded that the "consent" issue is the next big deal. The brass keeps telling the robot it can't write poetry, and the robot keeps telling the brass, "Neither can you." (Actually, the movie robot asked "Can you?", but they had a budget scriptwriter.) But I do see the danger of a robot programmed by Microsoft. Each new version would do nothing but swap around the most sensitive command buttons.
For anyone new here, the F-35 has a downward facing fan connected to the jet engine, which has a nozzle that can swivel downward. There are two small wind-ducts for side control. Unlike the Harrier, the F-35 is completely computer controlled. That is, when an 18-cent bullet from a Mosin-Nagant knock-off hits the CPU, there is absolutely no way the pilot can land the plane--he's not even flying it. Better add in a $2 million ejection seat!
Remember, this F-35 is built by the same school of “engineers” that built the CD-ROM disk tray that will not eject. This, to me, exemplifies the tard-thinking of Generation X. I mean, if you were going to design one defect out of the CD system, that would be it. You’d build a CD where the tray could not possibly jam. Yet that’s precisely what they did not build. The cadre of ’91, the last of the Mohawk haircuts.
And that’s who is designing the next wave of products—that rootless, characterless, class without a lick of common sense. Like banks, they can’t make money using their non-existent brainpower, so they set about creating a system where anything they do wrong costs you. And then fancy themselves clever. I suspect it has always been so. Their heroes are the slickest scam artists, their food is made in the lab, and their movie stars forgot how to shave last week.
I got some flak over my estate tax calculation example. I won’t go over it here, but folks, that tax is only on the super-wealthy to prevent a landed gentry. Like back in Olde England, where the rich have not worked a lick since 1215. In America, you get the first $5.5 million free, so most of us haven’t a thing to worry about. Like most over-optimistic Americans, the fact is if I ever miraculously inherit any value, I’m afraid they’ll lower the limit the day before. You’ll find this to be the real objection to inheritance laws by most poor people. They think they’ll lose if they ever get a turn.
I guess I should have explained my example is what would happen if the limit was zero instead of $5+ million.
Er, um, welcome newest member of the English language.
AFTERNOON
Ah, here is a photo that I was able to pull out of the Flagler museum. This is the ceiling of the music room, made possible by the chandelier in the lower left corner. You may have to really look to see the cherubs and such. It is enhanced but the yellowish tinge is accurate. Most of the electric lights were in wall sconces that had this buttery hue, probably to make it look more like candlelight one would suppose. This is the only photo I was able to process.
I can even remember individual song sets and lists. I learned in my teens all women give you hell, but that you’ll put up with some more than others. I was too young to know that all the good women in my life would have music in common with and the others never worked out. I can’t tolerate a woman lying to me when she can’t even sing or dance. But when is the last time I met a gal who could do that that was single?
My news feed was on in the background and got a real heads-up to learn that certain government departments are concerned that returning soldiers have learned the arts of non-conventional warfare. I never thought about that. Yet, it makes sense that they are learning exactly the skills needed to defeat their own side and unlike WWII, they are not returning heroes who adore the administration. Anyway, the narrator stated that they’ve learned to make IDEs and to “defeat current law enforcement strategies”, whatever that means. Unless it means the militarization of the police, we all have seen that.
Other DIY things I saw new today: a bird feeder made from old license plates. A silent air compressor from an old refrigerator condenser. A machete made from a used lawn mower blade. And also a variety of recipes for making frozen cubes of oil and basil, or oil and bacon chips, and such in an old ice-cube tray. They take two days to freeze, but are then stored in a plastic bag until needed for soup or omelets.
And how about this one. The GPS locator that is placed in cars to make sure you make the payments? Again, it is a case of when you complacently let a little of your privacy and freedom go, the bastards won’t stop there. Now there are reports that even once the car is paid for, people get hounded by “extended warranty” offers by companies who know exactly where the car is parked. Worse, there are tales of people who failed to decline the offers getting all kinds of strange billings on their statements.
Note, if you disable the locator on a car that is not paid for, the fine print in the contract says they can repossess it without further ado even if your payments are up to date.
NIGHT
How long before the GPS is compulsory? Five years maybe? It’s for your safety, you understand. It’s patriotic--and protects your kids. (So you don't have to?) You don’t have anything to hide, do you? Then you better not object, or that automatically makes you a paranoid conspiracy theorist. Never mind that the DMV employees are regularly arrested for selling private information, they are looking into that. For forty years now. Besides, you shouldn’t be parking at the strip club on the way home. And your wife already knows the volunteer fireman’s meeting is a poker game. Because we told her.
At least you don’t have to worry that DC will make a law forcing you to wear a GPS locator. Heck no, for that, we have RFID chips. All we have to do is make those aluminum wallets illegal.
Gossip. So there I am this morning having my coffee and in walks this lady, maybe 40-ish, in fantastic condition. Tall, blonde, with an absolutely perfect body. And she sits down at my table to wait for her order. I instantly spot that she is used to being stared at, so I don’t even look up from my crossword puzzle. Well, she never! She’s not a whole lot, but a little, like what’s this, a man with self-control? No, but a man who knows better than to fall into anything.
After she left, of course, I had to ask. Oh, and as she went out the door, she paused to look back to see if I’d get a final ogle. I looked up to see what was the matter—straight into her eyes. What, I ask the staff, the hell was that all about? Now you got movie stars coming in here? No, no, they said. She’s a plastic surgeon. Wink, wag pointer finger.
Last, here’s something not in our fictionalized history books. A film of the Nuremburg trials, you know, when the US-led witch hunt went wild after WWII putting German citizens on trial for “war crimes”. (It seems a majority of Americans were against these show trials, but they are not the Americans who controlled the press.) It is the trial of the air force guy, Hermann Goering that changed my mind. You should see it, because we are told he was a fat heroin addict. Not so. Compared to him, the rest of the courtroom, including the ass-clown Allied “judges” are nothing but a bunch of quivering wimps. It is barefaced shameful how they had been instructed to find him guilty. But in terms of commanding presence, it is foolish to think of Goering as anything but a powerful leader.
And that is the opposite of what they taught me.
[Author's note: it has only recently come to light that the Americans killed and raped hundreds of thousands of German civilians after the German surrender. SS prisoners who surrenedered were often summarily shot. It should be pointed out that hatred of Germans was fostered by newspapers back in the USA and many of the officers who told ordinary American soldiers they could brutalize the German population were themselves Jews who had fled Germany in the 1930s and were seeking revenge. American soldiers who protested the arbitrary shootings were charged with treason.
By 1945, Americans had been indoctrinated for years that Germany had started the war and deserved everything they got. In fact, the Poles were more guilty, but that has been censored. In early 1939, the population of the German-speaking area of Memel voted to re-join Germany, as was permitted in the Treaty of Versailles. But when Memel tried to exercise the right to vote, the Polish army mobilized along their border in March, six months before Germany mobilized.
Fact: by 1939, mobilization was tantamount to a declaration of war. The Polish army was larger than the German army at that time. And during that six months before Germany could react, the Poles massacred 53,000 ethnic Germans and confiscated their farms. The Poles had been encouraged by England and France, who had formed a military alliance with the Poles to encircle German. (That alliance was also a breach of the Treaty of Versaille.) The Poles were told to carry on and not to worry about Germany. This is not propaganda, you can look it up.
Eisenhower was well known for hating "anything German". He reclassified German POWs as "disarmed former enemies" so they would not be covered by the Geneva Convention. As a result, more German POWs starved to death in American prison camps than were killed by the American actions in the war in the west. Even more brutal was the Soviet occupation in the east, where once again the majority of the officers who encouraged the rapes and pillage were Jews. There is a pattern here that I just can't quite put my finger on.]
Last Laugh
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