One year ago today: May 19, 2014, mainly electronics.
Five years ago today: May 19, 2010, Tesla, my eye.
Six years ago today: May 19, 2009, the shoemaker.
MORNING
What is with these creepy cell phone companies. You pay them all the money you promised and they still want more. Because the nearest payment depot is now a twelve-mile round trip (only an idiot pays bills on-line, you’ll see), this is the best picture of Chimay beer I’ve got until I load up the phone again. Virgin Mobile, the worst carrier since U-haul. Ha, ha, you thought I was going to say Typhoid Mary, or the shuttle Challenger.
If you have not been doing so, bother to check out the links above if you have time. I rechecked a recent link to re-discover that again, 2015, Texas remains the only state in the union that could stand on its own if the union breaks up. The only state that could even feed itself. Such conditions to not arise by pure luck.
Also, return tomorrow for an update on the Canuck medical system, the one that so many lackwits think is “free”. The system is supported by confiscatory taxation, with the doctors paid by the number of patients they see, not the number cured. So you can see a doctor today, but you’ll die waiting for any required treatment over waiting lines that are measured in years, not hours.
What’s this, I got a one-word email from my ex. It says, “Apply.” I guess she does not know that I quit that band in August last year. She is still in “entertainment”, a term broad enough to include things like calling bingo, so I assume she meant the Margaritaville resort. I don’t need to be told twice.
If I had stayed with that band, I’d be just as disgruntled and no richer. Maybe I don’t like playing in groups whose only hope of getting out of the legion circuit is the random opening of a new casino. Ah, what am I even concerned for? Without me, they’ll never make even the casino circuit. That band has talent, not personality. Without both, the majority wind up in the dustbin of history. Not me, I have a blog. Can't destroy that, it isn't possible with Google as the host server.
NOON
“I’ve lived long enough to know that there is no such thing as half-stupid.” --Me, I said that.
How about that Egyptian “creative law enforcement”. They executed six men for a crime that happened months after three of the men were already in prison. That’s amazing performance on behalf of the state police. Of course, that’s the kind of thing that would never happen in America, where the people are free from oppression. And the Millennials are the greatest generation ever, chock full of watchdogs who prevent even the slightest abuse of Internet information, the force-to-be-reckoned-with generation that they are.
This massive layoff has not made the news in the USA. The only thing I’ve heard is a quip that other states in Canada are advising people to have a job lined up before they move there. You can presume that means so they don’t go on welfare. Once on welfare in Canada, you stay there for life. It’s not much better here. I listened to NPR while three Millennials bitched about the lack of jobs. They added that all their illegal worker buddies, classmates who overstayed their student visas, and anchor baby friends all felt much the same way. Okay.
The picture? That’s so nobody can come along and say this blog never posts any pictures of boobies. Then, there is that yahoo who complained about how hard it was to get his phone message speller to type "Natzi". Yes folks, it's time to cull the herd.
NIGHT
I’m fasting for my checkup, so I’m home to avoid temptation. And I read about this NASA plan to grab an asteroid boulder and nudge it into orbit around the moon. Didn’t I read something about the supreme form of life on Earth 165 million years ago and chunks of rock showing up in the sky where they didn’t belong? Ah, but dinosaurs only had brains the size of golf balls and therefore could not build perfectly safe space shuttles. Anyway, the specimen that NASA wants is only thirteen feet across so there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to worry about. What could possibly go wrong?
I have not seen the rings of Saturn since I was 13, and nobody in the jerkwater small town I lived in believed I saw them with my 10x50 binoculars. Impossible, they said.* I used to stand in the middle of the empty baseball park on a snowbank and watch the stars. I have no record of what I saw, back then there was not even a guidebook available. And you did not ask for help if you knew what was good for you.
This Friday, Saturn is at its closest approach in years, the last chance for me. It will rise on the plane of the ecliptic in the east at sunset, moving around to set in the west at sunrise. Please, no rain this Friday. My trusty 2014 almanac shows sunset between 18:51 and 19:03, so add an hour for daylight savings. I plan to be at the beach around then on Friday.
Am I the only one who has noticed the massive downturn in new posting on the web? You may not notice any effect unless you set your browser filter to “posts within the last year”. Is it possible the unwashed have created their own saturation point? I was looking for gravy recipes and only six new posts have appeared in twelve months. That’s 2,869,725 results but just six new ones. Have the lumpen proletariat reached the upper limit of what they’ve got to say? More like they’ve stopped saying it on the web and moved over to their smart phones.
So you’ll know, all my favorite gravy mixes have gone over to using corn starch, which I do not allow on my premises. Hence, I look for recipes that avoid that vile compound. My chosen gravy for the past twenty years remains southern biscuit gravy without the crumbled pork sausage and no bacon fat (substitute butter or margarine). It takes time to like it without salt but eventually you taste the real ingredients.
*Author's note: to this day, I'm probably still considered a liar in that small town. You see, the only way to prove what I saw would be to convince one of the locals to go stand in this ball park in mid-February, and, well, you can presume nothing of the kind ever happened.
ADDENDUM
One of the topics of last evening’s meet-up was declining blog readership. I don’t own a smart phone for a variety of damn good reasons. So no, I can’t tell you what the latest breaking news is. We went over the display of this blog on a smart phone and it is not that bad. All photos are centered and reduced to a consistent size. I am quite happy that the presentation correctly formats the underlying structure of my work. Afterall, it took time and practice to make it look unique.
The fact is, readership is dwindling, a steady decline since the tail end of 2012. The reasons are likely too complex to analyze but the logical first conclusion is the growth of Facebook and Twitter. Instant gratification. Trent demonstrated the ease of linking and such, but I’m not that keen on the system itself.
I’ve used each system once, creating a fictitious account both times. (Is it true that a social security number is now required for a Twitter account?) I instantly spotted both as something only a numbskull would use. Since then, the world is rife with stories of people getting fired or worse over a senseless comment. The way I see it, it was not the comment, but the stupidity of attaching it to an Internet account that could be traced back to a person. It’s your personal platform for ruin.
Hence, I balked at creating any account that requires identification, on principle alone. Live by the web; die by the web. One firing story is enough to learn a lesson. That lesson is that you should always (like this blog) publish in the past tense—never publish spontaneously, just appear to do so. And always work alone. Nobody has ever actually seen anyone actually type the actual material that actually winds up in this blog. Nobody. Ever.
Still, since these social sites represent a phenomenon that shows little sign of abating, I am pondering Trent’s suggestion to at least publish enough material to tempt or direct people to this blog. Nor is Trent the only person who disagrees with my plan to change the title of the blog--do most readers like the title? Maybe I can compromise by using a different title on Facebook and Twitter. What I need is to determine how much ID is required to use those systems.
You see, if I was going to sue somebody, or just make their life difficult, the first thing I would do is try to locate something they put on the web. Anything will do, since few people have the wherewithal to limit that in any meaningful way. I also know if I was going after something, you go after the easy targets first. On-line, that would be the people who, twenty-five years ago, actually thought they had nothing to hide. And back then, those fools probably didn’t.
For now, no changes, but readership has dropped to 23% of pre-Twitter levels. To be fair, it is climbing again, but the spectacular gains of 2010 – 2012 are gone forever. Active promotion from this end has been futile. Let me think twice about this Twitter. If only because 99% of their users have failed to do so.
Last Laugh
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