One year ago today: January 26, 2016, more on Okeechobee dark matter.
Five years ago today: January 26, 2012, the housing Ponzi game.
Nine years ago today: January 26, 2008, . . . all teaching Grade One.
Random years ago today: January 26, 2003, it means “old already”.
MORNING
Home Depot has the same 30-ton bottle jack, but it’s the same deal. Order on-line and the store cannot/will not participate. You must use your own email, tipping you off that your email is not as private as you thought. Not if department stores will accept is a way to track you down. Time to set up that proxy server, folks. But I need that jack. Today I got some of the black fiberglass mosquito mesh I talked about. What sold me is that not only is it easier to see through, for some reason it does not refract the light into little circles like brighter material. (If you just want to look at the pretty bird, this is a new photo.)
You know I want a circular driveway and the on-line calculator says it would add 15% to my home value. The quote I got today was $1,500 for concrete and smoothing only. I would have to dig my own pit, put down the gravel and mesh, and make ready. Still, that’s not bad. No parking dump trucks or farm implements but 4” of concrete with wire is plenty for cars and motorbikes. Of that price, around $750 is for the concrete itself. I talked to the guy who says the job is too small for him and I asked him why.
He said because it was impossible to get good help and hastened to add he did not mean difficult, but actually impossible. The Millennials want their $15 per hour for standing around and the rest can’t read or write, much less follow instructions. That verifies what I’ve said long ago, welfare makes people too comfortable to work, but never tell us the jobs are not out there. I’ll wager that people on welfare take home more than people at minimum wage. Meaning those welfare bums will never find a job.
Mr. Trump, if you want to slash the Federal budget, that’s where you start. No more welfare, they have to do some kind of work. To those who say that has been tried and doesn’t solve the problem, up yours. We don’t want to solve problems; we want these jerks working like the rest of us. Can’t work? That’s disability. We’re not talking about that, and anyway, that is insurance, not welfare. There, is that grouchy enough for you this morning?
I’m the grouch. Don’t ask me, I had a great sleep, a hearty breakfast, everything went okay and I got all the letters mailed. The birds are happy and the bills are paid. You tell me why I’m upset. Is the world sending me information that I’m not decoding? And another thing I don’t like is these “Genius Entertainment” brand DVDs that have those damn commercials you can’t bypass on startup. You know the ones. Feed the children. And in the process feed the CEO of the charity a million bucks a year.
Meanwhile in Mongolia . . .
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NOON
Down to 54°F again means no flower garden. Let me haul out the Almanac. Mixed clouds, sun, that’s about as nonspecific as you’ll get about Florida. The Farmer’s Almanac, which further says this year’s temperatures could be “wild”. If I see anything of that in the yard, I’ll take a pot shot at it with the air rifle. Besides, that definition doesn’t help. Motorcycle riders have broader parameters about what’s wild. The Almanac tells the best days to diet, bake, paint windows, potty train, dig holes, hunt, get married, and cut firewood.
[Author's note: this is the version of the photo sent to Marion, but instead of "hunky", the adjective phrase was "them beyotches get turned on by that light sawdust tan over a slippery glistening work-glow . . .". But this blog is PG-13 so you get the tame version. You're not on my mailing list.]
I should be finishing that screen door, but I put a chicken in the oven to roast. Not wanting to fuss with dressing, I stuffed it with an onion and now I’m just drinking up that aroma. Can’t tear myself away. I dusted it with black pepper and a garlic spice mixture, which adds to the bouquet. And I didn’t even want chicken today but too late now. Okay, I’ll meet the chore half way. I’ll string out the sander and put the 120 grit belt on it, fair enough. Alright, and I’ll stir the paint. As long as I get to stand downwind from the kitchen window. See how easy I am to get along with when you give me my own way?
The door frame is sanded. Some of my more glaring mistakes will still show through. Good, it adds to the old school charm of the place. I made enough errors to have to go over it with coarse grit and then again with fine. I don’t have any primer, but I found a can of something in the shed that says self-priming, which is good enough for me because I believe in two layers of primer. I’ve two hours to kill, so daylight or not, I’m throwing on a DVD.
Mack, the new retiree, showed up at the club last night as I was dropping off reports. We got to hanging around, his wife is visiting up in Maine or something. He’s played the Legion a lot so he knows everybody and we got to talking music. He’s missing the good times so maybe we’ll make a rhythm player out of him yet. Then we’ll work on getting him to learn some fast music. He even plays the droners on the jukebox. Get that guitar, Mack, I can see already that retirement is going to drive you around the bend.
I finished reading “Burma Road”, it just stops off as they get to the terminus in China. It’s like this blog, where nobody I meet casually ever has their character developed. I heard the road was abandoned after the war. The only surprise is on the last leg of the journey, they get blocked by a massive landslide that will take weeks to clear. They cannot stay put because of the bandits. Once again, money saves the day. They walk a jungle path around the debris to the other side to find the only other Ford in China, and it is a 1938. The guy driving it is carrying a mining company payroll. So, they simply swap the cars. A 37 for a 38 in 39, you might say. You might if you want us to groan.
AFTERNOON
There’s your primed door frame, on one side. Tell me seriously, how do you like this color? Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. No wonder they left it behind. I read the label and it is a paint to block mold and mildew in showers. Says it can even be painted over tile and formica. And who’d want to shower after that, since the paint is roughly the same color as the mold. Anyway, it bites right into the raw wood and it looks like a good tight surface seal. The final door will be painted white to match the rest of the house trim. That’s the plan, anyhow.
Yuck, I did not like the Harrison Ford movie, “Crossing Over”. Biased against the border patrol. Liberal propaganda, like how evil it is to throw out one single family with a potential suicide bomber. But ignoring what that bomber could do to fifty or a hundred American families. Watch it anyway, the movie has a sort of plot and it’s full of dynamite slim, proportionate young women. Make yourself some roast chicken sandwiches with cucumber and sweet mustard, you’ll be okay. The swearing in ceremony is a mockery of what the American people want. And please, just have an ordinary vocalist sing the national anthem. Ditch the scat version.
One point I would make clear. If Trump deports these illegals, he is not breaking up families. He is reuniting them. What part of “illegal” don’t some people understand? The movie claims these illegals are merely “struggling to achieve legal status”. Yeah, buy buying fake ID, sleeping with immigration officials, and robbing liquor stores.
One more walk out to the back yard to paint the door trim, that’s the ones I cut myself, and I’m done for the day. Four hours to do 1.5 hours of work, not bad. That’s called overhead Wallace, not wasting time telling the other guy to go get the same tool for the sixth time just to pretend you are boss. (Guys like Wallace are never the boss around me.) You know, I just thought of something. What if Wallace never had the brainpower to think far enough ahead to know what tool he would need again? Then I thought, naw, not some guy with all those chess champions in his family.
“Your Negligee Has Turned To Flannel Nightgowns .”
NIGHT
Time for a repeat tale from the trailer court. My country song lyric feature (due to be replaced soon for lack of material) was inspired by a guy named Barney Buckle. Yep, that’s a real name. When I was in college, I worked summers as a shipper receiver at a construction yard. He was the painter. Oops, I correct myself, he was a Master painter “because that takes 25 years and that’s long than to be a doctor, you know”. Psst, I’ve got a dollar for every time he said that. At that age I hated country music. And Barney would sing on the job. First, here’s the most famous pic of my hero.
To most listeners, music has variety of styles. Rock, blues, classical, ska, etc. All of these can be faked by a musician of reasonable competence. The departure from ordinary with me is that I also recognize additional varieties of music as “dance” or “amateur”. That’s correct, I see the amateur sound as just another type that can be categorized, analyzed, studied, and copied. Don’t presume this is easy, why, imagine the last time you tried to play a game with a child. It is harder to drop to that level than to meet someone at your own. Same with music.
Country music fits the bill, it is easy to work with, and it is easy to sell to clubs and audiences. Not so with guitar players, I keep meeting one lame specimen after another. The concept of “playing in a band” are so hopelessly outdated they are adversarial. Arguing that your way doesn’t work although they’ve never tried it. Would you confirm that, Glen? Part of taking guitar lessons entails being indoctrinated that the lead player is always right even when he isn’t either one. In the sense of playing a song they don’t like for the sake of the band or the audience, I have yet to meet a guitar player who is a true musician.
I still played rock after 2006. But I’ll give you the statistic that says it all. Between 2006 and 2015, I played in various rock groups for a total of 11 gigs. That includes the five-piece band together with the times I jammed with the Hippie, Eddie, and Arnel at obscure pubs. During that same period, I played something like 244 country gigs. And don’t even compare the earnings. In the rock bands, for all that effort and expensive equipment, the most I earned in one night was $45. With country, the average was more than that. In fact, the least I ever made at a tips-only country gig was $9—but that compares well with what the Hippie pays.
Last Laugh
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