One year ago today: November 1, 2015, working on the camper.
Five years ago today: November 1, 2011, reads like a DNS script.
Nine years ago today: November 1, 2007, interesting Ron Paul comparison.
Random years ago today: November 1, 2006, "a long entry today"
MORNING
One of the parade pictures, I think this was part of a high school band. Glancing through the 87 pictures taken, these are the prettiest girls. Nice, indeed, but not the incredible babes of my high school years. You can look, but don’t be a perv, this picture was taken to demonstrate the lack of marching skills. In my day, you had to march in a parade and display some sort of skill, like twirl a baton. Today you just kind of walk along the road behind a float or something, they probably get a trophy for just showing up.
That got my day off to a grumpy start. $4.53. I skipped the free refill, one per customer. Getting a late start didn’t help either. I read the local paper and the Tampa publications with five puzzles. There is a restored machinery show upcoming and that I want to see. Beyond that, both papers are that dry style from the politically correct 90s. Boring and full of statistics proving everything is okay. And dutifully wrecking people’s entire lives by splashing their arrest all over the front page whether or not they are ever proven guilty. Why they “must be up to something” or the police wouldn’t even be interested in them, a holdover attitude from 1950s television, methinks.
These paper are full of inaccuracies. Like the old fairy tale of the police chief claiming reported crime is down. But what do you expect? The police don’t exactly keep tabs on unreported crime. It’s easy to discourage people from reporting crimes. Ask any rape victim. And beware travelers, Florida remains very much an “arrest the victim” state. You are likely to be detained and questioned before they even go out looking for the bad guys. One thing for sure, they will not let you leave without a complete and thorough background check on you—and these days, that check can go worldwide. To the police, getting your file updated and chasing the guy who robbed you are two separate departments.
[Author’s note: be also informed that Florida (and about 13 other states) will arrest witnesses as well. If you are subpoenaed, even years later, and cannot show, an arrest warrant is issued. Recently a young lady who witnessed a local crime (vandalism) in 2010 and moved to Vero Beach just spent nine days in the slammer. Her crime? As a clerk at Pets-R-Us, she could not afford to take the time off or pay for a trip to Tampa.
Unlike jurors, witnesses do not get any reimbursement and can be fired for non-attendance because it is not “jury duty”. It gets worse. Witnesses have no Miranda rights and are not even entitled to a phone call or a lawyer. The police do not need to show just cause for this type of arrest, meaning you could be held indefinitely. There are cases of people spending months in jail because they feared retribution for testifying.
Just another reason not to talk to the police about a crime, any crime. Meanwhile, reported crime continues to plummet. In that sense, the police are doing a great job.]
Trivia. What is America’s biggest business? It takes in more money than Apple, IBM, Google, MicroSoft, and eBay combined. It is also the biggest global business. Pornography. It takes in, by some estimates, $3,900 per second worldwide. I don’t know how they tally that up, being that most of these outfits don’t exactly file 1040s.
I began unpacking boxes of books, I don’t know why I lug these around. Six boxes full. When I do a count of the total cartons on this move, it is interesting to note that more than half were hobby materials or tools. I like to travel light but this time around age forces me to balance that with having some hobby besides chasing skirt. What? Well of course, I meant their age, not mine.
And for the third time I verify that this place drained every reserve I had in the world. The figure of $112 is accurate, that is all that I had left anywhere. That’s one slim margin. If anything had gone wrong, even a flat tire, the consequences would have been dire. I kind of knew at the time it was getting near to a “buy or eat” decision, but instinct impelled me forward. As the hidden expenses (nearly $2,000) began to dwindle, there was a sense of things beginning to turn in my favor.
Then again, I fully recognize this was calculated risk-taking and was nothing compared to the agony of signing a mortgage.
Meanwhile in Norway . . .
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NOON
Here’s a dull picture, but not as dull as a European politician. Read on, but first admire this view through the bedroom window. It’s the wagon with the four flat tires. Howard has a major air compressor and next time he’s got a chance, we’ll try to blast these tires back onto the rims. My robot gear doesn’t have the oomph to get the job done. The photo shows a number of items if you care to look more closely. The circle of dead grass directly behind the wagon was where I left a trash bin for a week while working in the jungle. And that’s the trailer back there where Howard hauls his band equipment.
I was just surfing, doing some random checks on what is out there. Mostly the same old except the election. It has degenerated into a last minute name-calling contest. It’s okay when one side does it, but when the other does the same it makes him “unfit” for presidency. I’ll let you decide who’s what on that. I don’t understand the specifics, but on early voting, far more people have voted for one side than the other. This smells of something, but I don’t know what.
Yet another president has made yet another term-end promise to send us to Mars. But that margin retreats further every time. Now it is to land there “in the 2030s” when we should have been living there by 1985. Billions get poured into that worthless International Space Station, the lame replacement for that even lamer shuttle. Mr. Trump, put a stop to that ridiculous spectacle, launching useless people into space from nationalities that have contributed nothing to the space race or in some cases, the human race. Let globalization die on the vine. America first.
I’m serious about that. I lived through an era when every astronaut that went into space was a highly trained mission specialist. They returned with discoveries that materially affected the course of history. Now, I could not name you the three “astronauts” that just returned from what, 180 days on the station? Heroes my eye. Just a goddamned waste of good money. What did they do there? Grow beans upside down and hold compatibility contests?
[Author’s note: I giggle at the European Union after Brexit. They are in frantic damage control. Once Farage stepped back a few paces, a few of the weaker personalities now have a chance to make idiotic speeches and show us their Moe haircuts. Those dull-brains that Farage could embarrass in a wink are now back in their comfort zones, now that there is nobody to point out how they’ve never had a “proper job”.
Again, I admit to knowing nothing of politics, but the business and economics is intriguing. More Europeans are drowning in red tape than illegals in the Mediterranean. And don’t go spongy on me. This blog was one of the first sources to point out those “refugees” are all Nike-wearing draft-age males with credit cards.]
NIGHT
Good news bad news. The audition went super well, as far as auditions go. The guitarist and I had innumerable parallel experiences and he was able to play every tune on my list, although not to spec. This is a common occurrence with bands, the other guys know every one of my songs, which is hardly coincidence. But their list contains all manner of strange and oddball tunes by people I’ve never heard of. You listen to them play the song and you know damn well it was on some album, but it was never a hit.
The guy could play what was needed and with flare. And he was mildly amazed by what he was hearing, particularly after I pointed out that contrary to what most guitarists think, I do not “follow” and often don’t even play the same thing he’s playing. He’s actually great at what he does, though I’ll have to hunt up most of what’s on his list. (I regularly comb and sift through the top hits of every year and every chart to find suitable material and still don’t know where these guitar players find their shit, but they all do.)
At this time I intend to follow on with this individual simply to get into the music loop of this area. This is rarely as good an idea as it seems because any band setting involves so much work, it amounts to wasted effort if you don’t play out regularly. He is shy on theory and plays what he feels, which around me can be a sort of mistake because I will steal your thunder. (Yes, in case you are wondering, all my anti-guitar-showoff tricks work on this guy.)
The bad news is he does not want to get into a band. He wants to just jam and see what comes along. That’s a waste of good music, playing only to other musicians or some small group. We had a great sound right off the bat. He was not as enthused as usual. The reason came out later when he described a bassist he jammed with from New York. I quickly asked if that bassist was a piano player. Yes, he was. So there’s your answer. He’s met a real bass player in the past.
We went through most of my song list. But I wanted to hear what he played. The only tune I recognized was “Pencil-thin Moustache” by Jimmy Buffet. I was able to follow all else that he played, but none of it rings a bell. He played a couple old rock songs and got a taste of what I could do on the bass, for example, “Locomotive Breath”. He was astounded, but there is no clear and ready market for duos playing early English hair bands.
When I say astounded, I don’t mean he was in awe, more that he was taken aback by how I never play what the guitar player is playing. Several times he got thrown by trying to follow my scale tones, always a bad habit. Guitarists infected with the “bass is easy” disease often make that mistake. But once he figured out you really have to know the song, the sound was—and I’m not known for handing out musical compliments—borderline fantastic for a duo. I spared no effort to ensure we were never playing anything in unison.
This, folks, is what can happen when a guitarist actually listens to me. You quickly forget there are only two people playing. I said so long ago the best musical instrument is the human imagination, and all I do is give that a little assist. Sadly, a lot of his chosen music was not readily adaptable to this treatment, so by the end of three hours, I still have little inkling of his list. But the sound was great, not just good. My spider sense says to pursue this even without the expectation of paying gigs right away. The odds are always bad but that's show biz.
ADDENDUM
I have another mystery picture for you. What is this? The logo is covered with duct tape so you can’t guess by that. Here is the basic unit in closed, open, and assembled conditions. If you’ve seen one before, you’ll know right away, but I’ve never seen one. It might be, for all I know, a very common item on television. I was just going to give you the left photo, but these are blurry Vivitar photos, so you get three different poses.
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