I finished reading “Vermilion”, and I can’t endorse it. I did notice 100% of the readers who praise it were women. I grew weary of every character having a secret that we had to wait until the next dinner party to hear, and only after learning what they were wearing and eating. I see that Whitney writes, takes a week off, then tries to pick up where she left off, but instead creates a disjointed plot, like a bored housewife would manufacture. Whitney was born in China and became a librarian. It shows.
Trent was over y’day afternoon for guitar study. He’s significantly more advanced [than I] in the pentatonic/blues scales. We moved rapidly beyond the basics of hammer-ons, etc, but where slides are easy, there is no information on, for instance, where to use them most effectively. So many guidebooks fail on this count. No, they don’t sound equally right just anywhere.What’s new is the incorporation of the thirds, or mediants. They make a real difference that stands out if they are omitted. When I heard Trent picking without the mediants, I heard near-country sounds, which we spent some time on. The practice material uses a 12-bar progression that’s too much. We’ve elected to do an Iron Butterfly, to make long tracks in a single chord (A maj) to develop and better define the riffs before transposing anything to the IV or V patterns.
I tried Trent’s telecaster and it is remarkably easy to play. He’s got an extra guitar he can lend me and Ray-B offers to supply any books needed on this type of guitar playing. I’m still half-convinced the correct route is to keep playing riffs and gradually learn to avoid what doesn’t sound right. That is, to musically carve an elephant.
America’s main export for the past two decades has been high-paying jobs. Most of our securities are mortgage-backed. The flocks of middle-class sheep should be terrified of a real housing collapse. Worse, bonds are what pays the civil service payroll. One default could find thousands of government employees on the streets who are ill-equipped for any other kind of survival. I still say hold back on all big-ticket purchases until the effect of the baby boom retirement bites deep and hard. Things have not yet dropped past the point of no return, and that has to happen more sooner than later.
Can you believe it? The papers are screaming to buy a house now, they say, the recession is over and if you don’t act fast, you’ll lose the bargains. Lose them to whom? Fast food employees? The thousands that Yahoo! just canned? All those “first-time buyers” who have $150k in cash? I say the market is unstable and being shored up by currency manipulation. There’s no proof any gold is left in Ft. Knox and the Chinese quit lending us money years ago. Something has to give, and what is there left but vastly over-priced real estate?
Speaking of fudged facts, look at your hand-made sports car from the BMW plant in Munich. Several states, like Maine, have been caught stopping their vote counts whenever Ron Paul pulls ahead. Here is a gold bar that turned up in England, drilled and plugged with rods of tungsten. Tungsten is about $20 per ounce, but can’t be found by x-ray and magnetic detectors. The scary part is that to do what you see here, a criminal operation would have to produce these by the thousands. It’s easier and cheaper for the government to salt the dollars in your wallet with inflation, particularly when they know all the proles will ever do is complain.
There is also an agency in Shanghai, China, where for $15,000 they can arrange for pregnant women to have their babies delivered while visiting the USA. Anchor babies. Apparently, Canada has outlawed this practice. Do you pay cash for most purchases? I do. Here is the FBI Bulletin on that, you terrorist. (To be fair, the FBI meant coffee shops, since apparently bad guys like Starbucks.)
It’s one of those days where the weather report is over-accurate. The chance of rain set at 40% means it’s raining randomly for 24 minutes of every hour. Forget the outdoors and my badly needed morning callout. Serious rain, with limited visibility. It keeps things cooler and more comfortable. That’s why I can sit here in my ginch with a mug of spicy tomato soup. So, how is the new diet progressing?
That’s always a fun question for me, as my diet already exceeds the confines of most plans. Cutting out the carbs gave me trouble the first three weeks. That the period of being famished that most dieters never beat? Well, I got it even though my intake changed instead of diminished. Your mind tells you there is no starvation, but you wake up and fall asleep hungry all the time. After a month, still no visible results.
PS: You’ll have to look hard to find it, but here is the "privacy policy" when you contact Broward Court by e-Mail.
“Under Florida law, e-mail addresses are public records. If you do not want your e-mail address released in response to a public-records request, do not send electronic mail to this entity. Instead, contact this office by phone or in writing.”
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