The Fair is dying in degrees. We didn’t even bother driving over there until after a huge breakfast (JP is an excellent cook, so it was spinach omelets with pork steaks, I guess you’d call them. We usually watch movies on his big screen, but the one we had talked about is not in the rental outlets yet. “300”, which is the tale of the Battle of Thermopylae in what, 26 AD, I don’t remember. Or was that Marathon? To me, ancient Greek battles are as confusing as ancient Greek battles.Thus we decided on the Fair. The exhibit hall seemed to contain more ribbons and awards than there were kids to give them to. I insisted on the walk through the art gallery, where there is often surprising talent, although we’ve long since spotted the patterns to what is good. Maybe the kids all have the same art teacher?
Anything new? No, I can’t say there was. The crowd was not there. You know what happens to Fairs when they lose their clientele. The high prices were there, a small diet soda was $3.00. Even though JP has learned my lessons about having fun for less, we still spent $50 between us. I had a corn dog. Imagine the cost of a stroll down that Midway with the wife and three kids. There was one booth called “Water Wars” in which kids launch small water balloons at each other.
The two twelve-year-old girls were plastering the nine-year-old girls. I stopped the younger ones momentarily and showed them how to heave backward on the launchers with their whole weight rather than try to pull, that is, to use gravity instead of muscle. Wham! They plastered the competition, to the roar of the crowd, who had seen the one-sided battle turned around. See, I told you that Physics degree would come in handy.
There were many, if not too many, vendors with booths set up in the exhibit area. One was the recently mentioned foam rubber “memory mattress”. You can see JP flaked out on one. I was right, it costs $2,000. It was on sale for $1,500. With permission, we hefted up one end to determine it is really no heavier than an ordinary mattress of the same size.
We saw an excellent skating show, although that could be because we stayed inside the tent where it was cooled by the artificial ice. It was a little warm, exacerbated by that strange Florida reluctance to provide any shade or places to sit. It was quite difficult to find a cup of coffee. One show, called “Visions” was so stale we walked out. It was some touring ballet or modern dance group doing some weird interpretation stuff. Dancing flowers and a singing fairy on twenty-foot stilts.
We missed the circus by a few minutes. It is the same outfit as the last two years, so we didn’t worry about it. Instead, we piled in his truck and picked up some shrimp and liverwurst, and headed over to his place. Another bad plan, because despite his cable hookup, there was not one interesting show on the television. So I used his dial-up modem to surf the Internet.
Yes, I found out something new. Samuel Morse, the telegraph guy, cleverly decided to assign the shortest codes to the most frequently used letters [of the alphabet]. This was not easy to do in the pre-codebreaking and computer days. So he went to the newspaper office where the typesetters worked, and looked into the cases where they kept the letters. He correctly figured that supply and demand applied here, and thus the letter E has the shortest Morse code, and so forth. Look at the length of Q and Z.
Next in line, is the reason why we call “big” letters (capitals) and “small” letters by the different terms of “upper case” and “lower case”. Although Morse code does not have these “cases”, the name is derived from the arrangement of the typesetters bins, or cases. As you have surmised, the capital letters were in the upper cases.
Last, you may recall how the inner circle has been toying with the idea of blacklisting local “musicians” who are way off track with their priorities. It turns out quite a few of our people have had their time wasted by the same dozen or so peckerheads who answer every ad, seemingly regardless of what is asked for. These goofs seem to have pulled virtually the identical stunt on every person they have “auditioned” with.
This is well-documented here, including the “Mustang Sally” jerk, another guy who tries to guess chord changes by watching you, and the jackasses who don’t learn anything on your song list. Don’t underestimate that last item, not every one by any means is computer literate and can fire off a list quick and dirty. Alas, trying to sound out the bad apples is tough because the chronics are pretty slick bastards. You have to meet up with them, which costs time and money.
There was one particularly ignorant poster who was screaming “Nazi” and other paranoid terms about the [proposed] list. I was asked to take a look, and within moments I spotted that is was none other than the G. The lion is known by his claw. That man cannot spell, has one simple sentence structure in both his speech and writing, and of course, is against any type of organization because he fancies himself able to dodge anything in a random system.
I sent him a note hinting he should back off, he is way out of his league trying to appear logical to us. He flew into yet another of his bizarre rages. So I sent another note that I disputed his claim to have a college degree, pointing out that he really has no sense of rhythm, and has inordinate difficulties learning new material. He reciprocates that I should learn some “Hendrix, Eagles, Clapton” and basically other material where he can grandstand on stage instead of giving the other musicians a chance to work. The G is not getting the hint that he is not wanted on the musician’s list.
The G makes less money playing music than any other working musician I know. He is also extremely sensitive to the fact that his IQ is around ten points lower than mine, and that no amount of musical talent will ever close that gap. So I posted a listing that will really get his goat – it revealed how he is on the shit list for pretending to form a band, when in reality (and this was first pointed out here nearly five years ago) he is selling guitar lessons. He also has a nasty trick of inviting musicians to play, but when you show up at the appointed time, you find he is already doing a solo.
It turns out he has been faking people with this for years, for he uses you to pretend to the club owner that he has a following. It fools no-one. That is precisely the type of time-wasting that has nothing to do with music, and which we are considering documenting.
Meanwhile, a newcomer called “sportsgoof” has been responding to my own ad for a vocalist/guitarist. He says he barely strums although he is willing to try it again. He understands when I mean an amateur band, I don’t mean lousy music. I will follow that up this week.
