One year ago today: November 2, 2014, now that’s supplies . . .
Five years ago today: November 2, 2010, ah, born in 1948.
Six years ago today: November 2, 2009, rename that movie.
Nine years ago today: November 2, 2006, something about computers.
MORNING
JZ has decided maybe we should take a trip after all. Where to? Anyway, I maintain he should get a camper shell for the truck. Um, if he wants, I could always build one. I’ve even drawn up the plans, down to where I would store it here because he needs his truck for work. Nothing fancy, just one of those fiberglass shells. We already have an agreement that whoever scores first pays for his own room, but you don’t need to know that so I won’t say anything. I could just talk him into towing my camper, y'know. Where to?
Impossible to say. His house is closer to the west gulf coast than mine is to anyplace in the more exciting and less explored Florida interior. My buddy lacks a knack for driving down little-used country roads and spotting the best mom & pop diners. The best arrangement is him driving and me navigating. And both of us watching for pretty women, which begins to happen once to get out of the south.
Some think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not. On average, you see one or two really pretty ladies in Florida a month, and that’s a wide average. You can go six months between sightings. And yes, we know the reasons why. Pump a few million immigrants into a society that treasures young, slim, blonde white women above all else (except for the pool of liars) and soon you won’t see even the half-ugly ones.
Oh, it’s great for the women—particularly when you have a welfare office that separates them from any consequences. The first thing anybody notices about the USA and Canada is that all the people on social welfare have one and only one thing in common. I’m not going to say it, but I’m talking about those persons for whom going to work would NOT kill them. I will never forget in 1986 that room I saw full of age-thirty-ish men lifting weights, all collecting welfare for “mental disabilities”. The well-paid director of the facility said she was doing a fine job, just look how healthy they were.
It was a year ago that I put the first gif link into this blog. I’ve explained my hesitation to link to anything beyond my control yet something “for amusement only” was in order. I don’t know where these gifs reside, but I’ll presume it is some paid site and the mortality rate of such operations this year has been off the charts. I cannot produce these gifs in-house when the world is so full of Millennials with nothing better to do, so they could go poof any day.
As for the “mysterious” gash in Wyoming, in Florida they are called sinkholes, and are usually rounder. Not more round, but rounder.
Newest real estate scam tactic: printing the price in white lettering against the left border of the picture so the most significant digit gets blotted out by the margin. So when you waste time looking further, that’s not $68,000, that’s $168,000.
NOON
Blog rules means top story of mid-day is the cancellation of my scheduled procedure due to a wrong number keyed into my health insurer’s computer. My plan is now to drive there personally with records of what I’ve been over a change I did not request. Strange news, the huge and tallest palm tree in town, the one across from my place, but on city property, has mysteriously died. About 4 feet taller (by celestial navigation calculation) than any other, it suddenly turned brown-leaf a few days ago and croaked.
Would you live in or near Orlando? Deland is around there. The odd property that meets my criteria is creeping back onto the market. Tread carefully, always, because the sellers are forbidden to say what kind of neighborhood it is, an utterly ridiculous law that forces needless expense on the buyer. I, for instance, am not going to live in any neighborhood that, for whatever reasons, does not share my core values, and that is that.
The place in question is the old temptation of something I can afford cash right now, eliminating the awful speculation that haunts “gap” people like myself. That’s where you come from a family that did not assist you but made enough money to disqualify yourself from any other help. This property is on a lake, in a zero crime area, ten minutes from the city limits, on a good road, 3 bedrooms with the land. It has been abandoned for a year. It would guarantee me a nice place to live or die. It needs work, but precisely the kind of work JZ and I are prepared and equipped to undertake.
But without a trip out there, nobody is allowed to say what is really wrong with the place or why it has been vacant so long. The point is, if the right one of these places came along, at this point, after two years of looking, I would indeed be tempted to get it over with. Just buy the place, and if it is not ideal, I would at least own it while I was looking. That is a “yuge” motivation for me.
I propose the word “yuge” be formally incorporated into the Internet dictionary. You know, since Trump is proposing a ban on PACs (he angle is correct that the committees are themselves burning up most of the money they collect), he could add one more item to that list to assure he’d be the most popular president of the century. Outlaw telemarketing. No, no just some of it, with exceptions for religion and politics (same thing). But take down the industry. A hundred million Americans will thank him right there.
Some people will lose their jobs? Bullshit. They would be forced to go get one. Huh? Listen, if you can’t get a job in America, there is indeed something wrong with you. What? Well, Sparky, that’s because you are getting fussy about what kind of job. Maybe if you’d grown a spine and blocked out the illegals, there would be plenty of work around.
AFTERNOON
Peeking into the Craigslist music room, I see it is still completely polluted by losers, commericials, and church groups. Yep, it is always Christian rock, never Christian blues, country, or folk. What’s with the glut of bass players again? Didn’t that happen last fall as well? A sudden blast of out of work bassists whose ads all read the same (veteran, pro, mature, seasoned, versatile, top gear) blah blah.
Odd, because I’ve only heard one or two like that in the 16 years I’ve been in town, and those totally lacked stage personality. Like the three people in my last band. What? Four? Son-of-a-gun, you are right. It was four people. I mean, how could anyone make a mistake like that?
On the return leg from the library, on the red scooter, take a guess. Another flat tire. It’s a sign of the times, factories run by millennials cannot produce quality. Just Wal*mart grade plastic tires, in the case of the front tire, 2200 miles I think. This is the world they are bringing down on themselves because they have not learned the lessons of always carrying at least one brand of top quality. It takes longer to sell at a higher price, but just maybe your factory will still be in business five years from now.
Trivia, of course I didn’t forget you. The ocean floor is not “dead” and that includes in the geological sense. The age of the exposed areas away from the silt and muck of the continental shores has been measured. And guess where the one isolated spot of oldest ocean bottom is? It is twice as old (200 million years) as the average other oldest areas. I wonder why this is? That seabed is a relatively tiny stretch in the northeastern Mediterranean, off the south coast of Turkey.
EVENING
Deciding to leave the scooter overnight in the shop to get first dibs, I walked home from Dixie. And I was doing a fair clip with only mild hip pain. I stopped at the Senor for coffee and toast, pondering my option to buy that dumpy trailer in Orlando. Before I knew it, I’d been there two hours, oblivious to the world. It is water damaged and unmaintained, but I could probably low-ball them. And still, ten months from now, have money levels back to normal, the upshot being I could do it all without any help.
Changing the topic back to trivia, here is an interesting fact about latent heat. Latent heat is the amount of additional heat that must be applied to a substance to make it change state. Take the familiar example of water. If you measure the heat required to change water (not ice) at freezing to boiling, you’ll find once it is boiling, you need six times as much heat to make it all change into steam. That is, to change state from liquid to gas. That heat is also released on cooling. Anyway, six times. That’s why steam scalds.
ADDENDUM
Alrighty, new age types and anyone else that got here by mistake, here’s something for you to explain. The question you have to ask is whether I am making this up or am I telling the absolute truth? I predicate this with confirmation that I am not a believer in the supernatural and I do believe that some people will concoct outrageous explanations for things they lack the IQ to comprehend logically. On Sunday evening (yesterday) I was home alone. My closet contains exactly the same number of hangars as I have shirts and slacks. There are no tools or any other reason for anyone to go in there. In any case, it is down the hall, the last door to my bedroom.
I had taken a fresh shirt out earlier and nothing was awry or skewwhiff. Stressing that I was home alone without interruption the entire time period is important here. Around 1:30AM I heard a bump on the back wall, nothing unusual because my shade tree is right against the fence. I got up and looked out the window to make sure it was not some overzealous trick-or-treaters. Nothing. And when I say nothing, I mean nothing.
After wash, I simply hang my shirts to dry wrinkle-free. This morning when I went to take out another shirt. Inside the closet, all my shirts had been neatly buttoned up to the top, still on the hangers. All was in order where I left things except for that. I took quick inventory of the whole premises and missing were a pot lid and my favorite kitchen knife. I double-checked if they could have fallen behind anything, but no. I remember where I last put them (on the dish rack) and they were not there.
Under no circumstances did someone steal these things. So those of you who are believers—am I faking, or is this an accurate rendering of a phenomenon? If you conclude it is paranormal, I say that this would not be the first in my life, and yeah, I’d like to hear your explanation. It would take around twenty minutes standing four feet from my head to button up that many shirts and I’m a light sleeper. When it comes to any unaccustomed sounds, even mice chewing will waken me.
Last Laugh
(Brazilian road rage.)
Return Home
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