One year ago today: May 4, 2015, cops blocking cars . . . hmmm.
Five years ago today: May 4, 2011, early club antenna.
Nine years ago today: May 4, 2007, a 144 year supply.
Random years ago today: May 4, 2010, 0.00321 cents per click.
MORNING
I was reading the wrong book. See this evening’s entry for full explanation. Meanwhile, here is today’s developments:
Nope, I’m not buying it. Cruz is lying again. He avoided saying he withdrew from the race, instead he is “suspending” his campaign. He might as well, when 38 million people people who rarely or never voted before get behind a real candidate. Cruz continues to hijack every interview into an anti-Trump speech, continually harping on the concept that Trump is the true insider. Wrong, by now Trump knows if he does anything except what’s promised, he’ll go down in history quite the wrong way. There is no motive for Trump to cheat and I have to see a motive before I believe anything political.
Cruz calls Trump a “pathological” liar one day after I use that term in my blog. This is an outrage. I will say one thing about Cruz, he is not a pathological lair. When Cruz lies, it is very deliberate and rehearsed. Old Ted knows exactly what he is doing. And besides, his father shot Kennedy. That’s so sad, because he should have shot Ted’s barber.
Trent’s position is that they say “suspended” so they can continue fundraising to pay off campaign debt. I never thought of that, but that shows you how much I formerly knew of politics. But Trent also maintains Cruz is toast.
Trent and I were handed these as free samples of microwave port rinds and it sounds like a great idea. Except the product inside is of inconsistent quality. At any given microwave setting, some rinds will be uncrisp while others are rock-like. I wound up throwing out a third of the contents. Yet what a great idea is they can make the product uniform. As for flavor, the usual—great but obviously sprayed on.
If you follow the 2007 link above, there is your confirmation that when the self-illustrious Hippie was in charge, I made a lousy $186 over the years playing in his band. I also saw how much he made, and this is the reason I do not believe he supports himself totally as a musician. You can’t fool a cost accountant. It was just nine years ago today I bought the Yamaha speakers and the Gigrac PA. This paid for itself around 30 times over, most of it from bingo. Trust me, gambling was a most lucrative move--for me, the operator--and I would do it all over again if there was an opportunity.
Indoors due to rain, I listened to commentary on Trump’s political situation, and my word, that man has become an expert at answering the media’s baiting questions. He’s learned to parry their innuendos and see through their trick questions. It was not that long ago they were setting Trump up to elicit answers they could clip. Good job, Don, especially when they quote obscure polls that they’re betting you never heard of.
Confederate money – now worth more than Federal money.
NOON
This is the new four channel wireless mic system. Only two mics are shown here. It is cheap and that may be its best feature. Soon, the microphones will be modified to prevent them from rolling off a bar table. If I have any say in the matter, this is part of the setup of the first “new” type of band this town has seen in twenty years. I just need to find a small circuit of clubs as sick and tired of the same old guitar scrapings that I am. You give a guitar asshole an inch in this town and he’ll play “Burn The Witch” at a Tiki bar.
You know the drill, they audition using Jimmy Buffet and John Denver, then get on stage and play rap metal. You know, who you are. The sad part, is there are practically no alternatives in this town. The closest thing to my act is Johnny D, who like the rest, has a set list carved in stone during the early 90s.
These people are just now beginning to reluctantly discover Green Day and STP. I’m too old to be a judge of contemporary music, but I do not like that computer-generated pseudo-rap at all. I never liked rap hip-hop thirty years ago mainly because it was the first brand of music I recognized as mass produced. I’ve never been a fan of whisper-singing either. Another annoyance for me is lyrics that sacrifice a story-line for clauses that rhyme. A lot of pre-50s jazz did that and I just despise the sound, really.
In my own defense, I do tend to listen to music based on whether it can be presented live on stage with bass and acoustic. That rules out synthesized tribal beats and most distortion tracks. You know, on the rare occasions I drop into a bar or club playing that type of music, I notice the absence of under-30s. I’ve said before I suspect this older crowd is listening to the same music as their children. And I fully understand the attraction of such music to certain categories of people. I have never been capable of listening to a rap song in its entirety.
My target audience remains the same as so many decades ago. The Friday night after-work crowd that wants to hear familiar versions of tunes they can personally relate to. That means 35 is around the youngest group I could hope to interest. But I’m not playing in downtown South Beach, either. Or a warehouse out in Sawgrass.
AFTERNOON
Major meeting with JZ, but mostly at the Senor Café. Then over to the foreign cinema to watch “Papa”, the fancified Hemmingway tale. You know, that he was a gunrunner and was set up by the FBI. The acting lacked brilliance but was smooth and adequate. The major public image issues were covered but also some unsurprising marital spats. I made the mistake of watching “Old Man and The Sea” in grade school and never liked Hemmingway after that. Call him a genius if you want, I don’t call him that. Although I’ve read his Spanish war novels, they at least contained some action.
The movie has been rated “sadly inaccurate”.
Why the big meeting? Simple, inflation. It’s never a good idea to wait around and hope it won’t hit your individual basket of goods. The government has been doctoring the CPI for so long it you don’t know. In my day, they simply reset it every few years citing some nonsense about people buying different product categories. Now, they outright just lie under such auspices as “seasonal adjustment”. I’ve always declared that for the products real people buy, and we are talking bread, gas, stamps, tools, etc. that the inflation rate has always been at least 10% annually.
Did I not mention I ordered a large orange juice last day and it came to $7.00. A dollar a pound for radishes. With the government printing up their $86 billion per month to pay their bills. I’m not getting rich fast enough and I foresee the need to supplement my income is a real possibility should I live more than another ten years. JZ is set for the next 30 years, I am not. As a musician, I’ll never starve, but I would like to do a wee better than that. Now may be my last opportunity to set something up.
Hence, despite the bad economic climate, a house in the interior remains the priority. While I don’t want to plant a garden, I would at least like to have the land and opportunity as an option. I wonder if there is any truth to the report that Russia intends to arrest any Rothschild bankers it can get its hands on. Same to this George Soros, of whom I know nothing.
Ed Teller: a.k.a “Dr. Strangelove”. Per Wiki the award is “for his lifelong efforts to change the meaning of peace as we know it”. A Hungarian refugee, Ed was the father of the hydrogen bomb, which makes Ilona Deutsch into the nice little old Jewish grandmother of the hydrogen bomb. Aw, int that nice?
NIGHT
The latest book, “Acceptable Risk”, gets mostly back on track around page 280, just over half-way. We are over the dweeby parts, where the author worked in the trendy themes of sexual harassment, serial rape, cuddling, and various instances of our heroine accepting apologies from people who told her the truth. This sidetracking dilutes the story, but at least we know the killer has a tattoo. This could be a snap, if you have any idea how easy it is for a woman to get such men to show off.
Examine the nearby photo. Sure enough, the book had two jackets stuck together. The outer dust jacket said “Acceptable Risk” while I was actually reading “Fatal Cure”, shown here revealing the inner liner. You bet I am capable of this kind of error, it could depend on how many books one reads. This blog lacks an index to pinpoint the original but I can level an indistinct criticism at this author’s style. How was I fooled?
You see, I had read the jacket before commencing the read. It mentioned a psychedelic contaminant found in a basement. The basement is so prominent in both books that I read past them without spotting it could not be the same basement. Does that make sense? One basement had the body, the other had the fungus. Come on Robyn Cook, let’s have a little more variation in these plots. The mystery should be the plot, not a factory production error.
Would I recommend this book? Not really, unless you enjoy reading about female brain-farts. The book ends with Angela smiling that she is pregnant. All’s well, one supposes, when the wife gets her way, and that defines the entire perspective of that book.
Last Laugh
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