One year ago today: May 4, 2016, it’s deliberate and rehearsed.
Five years ago today: May 4, 2012, describing the 4046.
Nine years ago today: May 4, 2008, won’t the cat suffocate?
Random years ago today: May 4, 2004, infantile little pukes.
This is the back of the Hoover Dam before it was filled with water. This represents the amount of progress I’ve made with guitar players since I got to Florida. They do not have what it takes to get anywhere. For the first few years, you actually blame yourself. Then you realize that the study of the guitar is so widespread that people who have no business calling themselves musicians are saturating the market. These people have zero cooperation or conflict resolution skills to bring to the table. And those plans involve wasting your time. In due course you realize handing an otherwise dullard a guitar makes him think he’s joined the elite.
We know Antarctic didn’t really move from the Indian Ocean. But we know the north pole moves, and therefore so does the south pole. From the first time I read the theory in my twenties, I subscribe to the story that the ice age glaciers did not advance and retreat. Rather, the glacier stays put while the Earth moves around underneath the ice. There is also evidence that South America kind of spun into place clockwise to where it is today. Since I read this book before, I know where this is going--that a combination of all these smaller events are what moved the ice to Antarctica instead of Antarctica to the ice.
This lantern is taller and thinner than the one I copied and that now makes sense since everyone assumed the lantern we had matched the sizes of modern candles. Aha, bet you never thought of that either. It’s unwise to presume people will only burn official [and expensive] authentic candles. Time for a trip to Wal*mart with ye olde tape measure.
It’s indiscernible but the “back” piece of glass on most of these lanterns is a mirror. Not removable, as Agt. R reports about the last thing you see anybody doing at these re-enactments is shaving. Duh, okay. Note the very plain heat diffuser, I’ve devoted some thought trying to come up with something cheap and novel. This [pictured] lantern also has a lot more door hardware than I find economical. Agt. R has suggested instead of a lamp, a small strip of leather could be used to wedge the door shut.
However, I’m leaning more toward the variation that has four solid sides and a moveable tray that sets on the bottom plate. A dowel extends upward through a hole in the lid. You swing the diffuser out of the way and pull up on the dowel until the candle pokes upward through the vent hole, and you can light it and set it back down. Very pragmatic. This must be a bitch to clean if any candle wax spills, but very few consumers would think that far ahead. My prototype also copied the method of forming a stand by drilling the dowel holes to a preset depth so the pins would project through the base. I’ll not bother with that complication by now making feet out of scrap pieces.
Organ pipes.
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My pal from the west coast e-mailed to say he had just spent a week in Canada. At first I thought he was pulling my leg, but he sent me the receipts. It really does cost $14 for breakfast at Wendy’s. That’s $8.99 for the food, $3.29 for the coffee, and 14% sales tax. When he first arrived, he thought it was a good deal because he exchanged US dollars. Then he saw the prices. Well gang, it won’t be long before the rest of the world follows suit. If the dollar isn’t worth anything here, it will be worth even less over there.
Everything [on the shed] is held by screws, that’s the permanent sign of the robot influence. I have a one pound spar pack each of most common nail sizes and years later the boxes are still not opened. I’ve lost the knack of using nails. Such work is still tiring on the shoulders and back, at the first sign of rain, I hopped the red scooter to the library. I watched a series of woodworking videos and listened to Nigel Farage tell the Eurocrats where to stick their $54 billion they want to “allow” England to leave the market.
Careful how the European Union words things. England never joined the Union, they joined the common market. The Continentals too easily forget that they’ve always had a favorable balance of trade with England. Plus there is nothing they have that the Brits can’t get cheaper from some place else. Strange the Union would get so pushy under those circumstances. Ah, I don’t follow the politics, but with the pending upset/revolution in Germany and now Hungary’s getting fed up, this European Parliament is headed for the junk heap. With the exception of the evil midget, Merkel, the world notes that the entire organization has failed to produce a single leader of any substance.
“My ex-wife’s normal sleeping position was around.”
Hoping to better understand why my yard won’t grow nice things, I bought a booklet on natural plant propagation. Normally considered right up there with antennae theory for dry reading, this one is a gem. It delves into why various plantations and reforestation projects failed and had me practically rolling on the floor. Plant the tree in Africa and the local animals come by and kill it by eating all the leaves. Try it in New Guinea and the natives get ugly unless you let them cut it down for firewood. And the prairie farmer with his tractor and plow doesn’t give a squat about your conservation strips down the middle of his subsidized field.
ADDENDUM
First thing this morning, I canned the New York guitar player. It was easy, I asked him point blank how many hours he had spent since last week learning my material. Like most guitar players, he can’t learn anything new. I’ve even met a few who said it can’t be done. These guys don’t understand the world can’t wait another thirty years for them to perfect their second set of twelve songs. This New York guy was also a quitter who spooked easy. He could not learn anything on his own (he had four weeks to prove otherwise) but drops a song the instant you want to discuss how it goes.
This yahoo figured he’d get around the rule that we agree in advance on which version of the song to play by conveniently not having the song. That’s the same guy who wasn’t “into MP3s” and was touchy about playing music on his computer (he would not connect speakers so we could hear the bass), and acted insulted when I wanted to bring my own . He didn’t want to hear what he was doing wrong. And it seemed his every tune had some passage that was not in the original hit. I don’t forbid such changes, but only after I hear them play it the right way first. I learned to insist on that when I was 15, and it has never failed to expose a useless guitar hacks who wanta to make changes because he can’t play it right. And if you let him do it even once, you are asking for trouble.
You are better off having him not play anything in that passage. It is also common knowledge that I don’t allow guitarists to change the structure of songs to “their own version”. This is not some uncompromising behavior on my part, not at all. I simply want them to prove they can play it the correct way before I listen to suggestions for “improvement”. No guitar player yet has passed that test. Buddy, if you want to play your version of everything, go start your own band and quit trying to change mine. I know exactly what a guitarist is supposed to do and changing songs isn’t part of the deal. It is bizarre how they never tolerate it in others, only themselves.
Further, as time progressed, he was revealing more of his attitude that I should first learn all his songs because “bass is easy”. This guy was more crafty in that he never actually said it. But I made it a point whenever he angled in that direction there of grabbing my own guitar, which I conveniently brought along after the first time to show him “guitar is easy”. No guitar player, after hearing me play, has ever offered to challenge me on what is easy. Very few guitar players can match me on bass and this bozo prudently never tried.
He didn’t answer the question on how many hours, meaning it was zero, so instead sent me a semi-snarky e-mail. I sent a video of Jag learning a song in 30 seconds that Mr. New York could not learn in a month. What? Let me tell you something, after a month, “won’t learn” and “can’t learn” are the same damn thing. Let me check my records. Yep, Jag remains the only guitar player I ever met in Florida who went from zero to gig in a few weeks. And he did it all with material that he’d never heard before. Let me count, that’s 35 guitarists I’ve met in Florida who could not learn new songs. Plus another 5 who never got past the first contact.
That’s a shameful performance, since all 35 who auditioned had to lie to get there. Every one of them could not play or learn to play simple and basic strums. For the record, not one of them was a good country strummer in the first place, so why they answered the ad is either a mystery or a con job. I reckon most of them thought once they tricked me into listening, their obvious musical superiority would overwhelm me. It’s a guitar freak thing.
[Author’s note: check back with me later. Today’s blog is out of chrono order and I’m going up to the jam tonight, either on Eagle Lake or the club on Hwy 17. I forget which guitar player said he’d be interested, but this time the guy has to do what I say until we are gigging. Thanks to Jag, I know that can be done from scratch in six practices.]
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