Yet another callout, making this the second successful month this year. But of course, I can’t celebrate even a little because some people don’t appreciate it when they have things easy. This morning, I completely redid an XP computer that had the 2010 virus, whatever it is calling itself these days. For a tip, I have another $80 bottle of wine that I lack the “class” to appreciate. You can call them connoisseurs, I call them winos. (And the worst winos are the ones who think they are superior because they took some lame wine-tasting course at the school board.)During the install process, my client and I watched Hungarian television via Internet. He has a subscription to several Euro stations. It is appalling how superior their programming and standards are compared to North America. Even backwaters like Rumania have better productions. And better-looking women on staff, oh yeah. I’m sure there are some real Oprahs in Transylvania, but they don’t let them on television, dammit Dracula scares the kids enough as it is.
I am informed the president is in Russia, doing really important stuff. As he emerged from a room ahead of the Russian leader and walked past a line of people, the idea was to shake hands. Every one of the bystanders either refused or balked at shaking Obama’s hand, moving right past him to greet the Russian. Things are obviously not as DC is portraying them. I’m curious if American TV will cover the incident as well as the Hungarians.
Arnel is finally back in town. The gang was up there playing guitars in the back yard where he set up a canopy. Jim wants to do the video thing where you record the Karaoke singers and sell them a DVD of their performance. It seems like a lot of work for little return and worse, probably needs a trained operator. If I’m that near a stage, I intend to be on it. Arnel is only working Saturdays for a while, and we work much the same hours.
That means we don’t jam at all until he gets back to some other schedule. Right now, with bingo gaining strength every week, I can’t even think of music on Saturdays which, for some reason, have never been a great money-maker for me. But I finally have enough cash for the drum box. Despite all the tradeoffs it is still my most basic requirement for a duo setting. I know better than to work with local guitarists without a contingency plan. That, plus it only costs me $2.45 to put on a good four-hour bingo show.
Jim is playing five nights a week with music. The ever-weird Hollywood Castle pub is paying live musicians. It sounds okay until you learn the place turns into a transvestite club after dark. If I’m going to patronize a room full of confused people, I prefer it to be women. Jim is further planning to do Karaoke in Spanish. He has some 8,000 tunes ready to go.
His song list still reads a bit like an ad for guitar school. I know that bass is not a solo instrument, so I cannot compete with a guitar soloist—for accompaniment. But you can bet your last dollar when I find the right person, no solo act will be able to compete with my show either. The reason I hesitate to team up with Jim has nothing to do with musicianship. I am, for good reason, chary of bands with more than one strong personality.
I’ve noticed a flurry of TV shows about underage Internet sex. Strange, that North American willingness to outlaw what other people do when the protestor isn’t invited. I’m against any one-sided presentations of facts, and one quickly notices the theme is always the same: middle-aged women expressing “concern” that all younger women are victims whenever they have sex. A few are; most aren’t. It is not lost to anyone that the most unattractive thing about older women is their attitude toward sex. (And there is always the truism that women cannot be expected to like anything that displaces demand for themselves.)
It is vogue to label all men who like younger women as pedophiles, when in reality the truth is that men desire certain qualities which the majority of older women do not possess. Yet the fact that some women’s attitude makes them attractive for life shows that all women could probably do so, if they so decided. But to fanatically make criminals out of ordinary people says more about the accusers who, notice, seem to be the most sexually frustrated members of society: self-righteous lawmen and jaded divorcees. If they can’t have it, why should they let anybody else?
The Internet has created the fiction of the fourth evil. Before, we had drugs, terrorism and organized crime. Now, the momentum is to add men who like younger women to the list, hence the “Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse”. But to lump the natural needs of half the human race as on a level with hardened, deadly criminals is going too far. History proves hatred always backfires on those who go to extremes.
And another thing we can do without are those endless articles in Popular Mechanics about Jay Leno and his damn car collection. Dear Editor, we are sick and tired of him already. Stick to stories of mechanics who improve or invent cars, not spoiled brats who collect them. It is bad enough how that magazine reports on the return of the blimp every other year. As far as enduring value, that car collection won’t last a year once Leno croaks.
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