This caught my attention. It is a lineup of trailers at the Coca-Cola bottling plant nearby. There are row after row of these semi-trailers and I tried to get a better angle on this shot to show you all 50 units. Strange how this one plant has a bigger economy than some countries. All told, the lot must hold close to 600 trailers. That is a guess, for the lot is never full.
Wallace and I are practicing for any hurricanes. I tend to go for traditional methods, Wallace still trusts battery power. Candles versus flashlights. We’ll double check all the shutters and wing nuts. Beyond that, this is easily the most solid building in the neighborhood. We would not stay here during a big storm, but we can be confident the place will be here when we return.We were back at Nicky’s for the breakfast special early today, between rainstorms that is. I remind everyone again that the hot season here is also the rainy season, so plan on rain every day. The plan to help Eric clean up the leaves was forestalled as everything was soaked by showers all night and morning. Wallace and I played crib at the restaurant and met a few people who know the game. Not many, though. Ahem, we won a game each, both by less than ten points.
Then we took after the musical instrument cable problems from the gig last Friday. Two were plain ordinary cheap solder joints, using the same unimproved technology used when I was twelve. They use a coaxial cable with stranded wire that has to be soldered in the most inconvenient possible manner. But the last one, that was a challenge. Everything checked out, but the cable would cut out when plugged into a socket, yet begin working momentarily when unplugged.
It was something I’ve never encountered before and I regret I don’t have the technology to photograph it for you. That tiny insulating washer near the tip had rotted. When pushed in, the tip contacted the ring. When removed the tiphook pulled the ring back out and I got momentary signal. Just when you think you’ve seen it all! The insulating washer was successfully replaced by the plastic ring off a butane refill adapter. Tight fit, but it seems to work. I just saved myself $50, as that was the fancy PA cable. The one I paid extra for so it would be heavy duty.
Again, it is great to have somebody around to have intellectual discussions. Wallace and I were talking about the right to a fair trial. He believes “fair” should be tempered in a situation where there are irrefutable witnesses, a smoking gun and an admission of guilt. I believe they deserve the same trial no matter what, but that “fair” should mean the state has to provide the same dollar value for the defense as they do for the prosecution. The OJ trial proved the state has millions of dollars to establish guilt, but only provides a third-rate attorney for the defense. You cannot ever get a fair trial under such circumstances.
Wallace feels the taxpayer would be hurt if the state provided a defense, but I believe it would result in an overall savings and anyway, the state is already supposed to provide. The state would back off on speculative prosecution. I would provide prescribed damages for anyone falsely accused. You get off on anything, even a traffic ticket, the state has to pay up. For the time in court, for your time driving to court, for the time spent at the roadside while the cop was writing the ticket, everything, and you could seek further damages for defamation. Pay up. The savings comes from the decreased number of nuisance charges. (Careful, nuisance charges are not charges that are a nuisance, but a petty charge that the authorities use to haul you in for questioning.)
We do agree that the system needs revamping. I don’t care for people who support the system because “it’s all we got” or such garbage logic. For example, Wallace pointed out that if you witnessed a crime and the perpetrator offered you a million dollars to say only good things about him, you are committing a crime. But a lawyer can accept a million dollars from the same party to do exactly the same thing.
JP did not make it out here by 1:00 P.M. My phone did ring once so if it was him, he can call back. My phone is not working right. Still, he isn’t here and he said he has the map I drew him a month ago. I’m reading an excellent book called “Jackboot”, about German soldiers through history. Today’s trivia is the biggest cannon in Europe in the 1700’s. It was called “Asia”. The German king had it melted down because it was too expensive to fire. Each 1,000 pound shot required 56 pounds of gunpowder to throw the cannonball a lousy 550 yards. Economic disarmament?
Wallace went to the beach for a swim. Myself, like a lot of people who live near the beach, rarely go there. I can only take so much sand, sun and water. Any postcard you see of sexy young women cavorting by the Florida seashore was heavily dependent on hired help. Anything over 18 that is even remotely good looking is already spoken for in this town. Anyone wanting to make millions need only start a television channel here that shows pictures of young sexy women because there aren’t any to be seen in public.
Now later, we went over and repaired the hole in Eric’s back wall. I think. I had never worked with Wallace before and wanted to see his style. We won’t be forming any contracting companies soon. We have two opposite approaches to the work. Wallace’s idea of expertise is to do everything according to specification. My idea of expertise is to use brainpower when you don’t have all the exact tools and materials.
Thus, where I had planned on a twenty minute patch the hole job, it became a three hour major operation stringing out power tools, cutting blocks, hammers, knives, 2x4s, finishing nails, two sizes of putty knives, sandpaper, cutting open tubes of spackle from the wrong end and involving no less than fourteen trips back and forth between the two houses through Eric’s kitchen. Apparently this comprises merely the first stage or phase of the repair. It is done as far as I am concerned.
Eric has four huge boxes of DVDs. All the classic movies, as he says it. We shall have to see what he’s got there. Afterward, Wallace and I had soup out in the yard and among other things, talked about blogs. I state that after I researched other blogs and decided on this format, I did not follow up. That is, I did not continue reading other people’s blogs every day. I have definite reasons for this, and here are some of them.
First of all, blogs written by amateurs don’t stick to a single theme. They vary too wildly in topic intensity to be reliable sources or entertaining reading. You’ve seen these type, where in one paragraph their cat is having kittens and in the next one they are claiming to have secret proof that the Americans are terror bombing Iraqi wedding parties but it’s all been hushed up by the New York Judeo-media cartel. Plus, the amateurs rarely have a posting schedule and can go weeks without a word. Blogs must have regular posts, even if it is “nothing to report”. If I want to read things by minds that are all over the place, I prefer the washroom walls at my old college.
Second, the professional blogs are too obviously written by paid help and tend to add that “journalism school” flavor to everything. Blogs written by accredited authors, columnists and reporters all lack the right balance. They were trained to an older standard. Book and newspaper writers just don’t make good bloggers and that is that. Their approach is unsuitable, like the silent screen stars who failed when their voices proved all wrong for the talkies, they are an outdated breed and times have changed.
Last, for now, the majority of blogs I read during my six-month investigation (around 50 top-rated and 20 random selections) seemed to rehash the news, making their opinions third-hand at best. A blog should be a blog, not a cheap alternative to TV. (I claim to have read more blogs and done more research than my critics.) Most blogs state the conclusions where this blog [generally] gives you the details and lets you draw your own. If you want news, buy a newspaper. Blogs should, like this one, convey mainly information. As Lincoln would have said, “For people who enjoy this sort of blog, this is the sort of blog they would enjoy.”
I think, if I wrote this blog the way the professionals write, you would get twenty or thirty pages a day of pure tripe. I doubt if this blog will ever contain more than 1% of what I could go into. I’ll have you know that outside of this blog, I am a very prolific writer. At the same time, in close to a million published words here, I have never had to stray from my original stated purpose – to follow the lives of real people. I never had a writing lesson in my life, but I know enough that when I want to talk about a different subject, I’ll write a different blog. Journalism schools teach English Lit, not common sense.
