This is my date for the day. Me and my electric bass. At the bakery this morning. True, it shows the lack of success I’ve had finding a decent woman, as opposed to just any woman, and that is more a problem of supply than demand. The problem is not finding somebody to go to bed with with, but somebody to wake up with. Before I get any guff, I’ll bet my date is nicer and better looking than yours. If I lose, then I’ll listen. Otherwise, all advice is worth what you get paid for it.The sweltering rainy season is early this year. I stopped to visit Alfredo at the shoe shop, business is incredibly slow. I wanted to ask Boris for some pointers on international banking but he only knows about how to withdraw money, not how to set the system up so that was futile. My inquiry was based on recently finding out that US banks don’t use the international exchange rates for changing currency. They tack on a 5% fee by paying you less than the going rate. I suppose I’d to the same.
The US has been very successful at bullying small countries with anonymous banking systems, the usual excuse being anti-terrorism. The Caribbean is being targeted and they are very vulnerable to any bad publicity that would hurt tourism. Not a lot of people know these small island banks were part of what enabled the Enron fiasco. One US senator actually says tax havens are “waging economic warfare” against the US. Yes, and he is waging war on privacy. Every time you give the authorities power to snoop, it is only a matter of time until they use it against their own citizenry.
I’m finishing a book on M15 and M16, the British counter intelligence agency. I’m amazed they ever got as much done as they did. The relevance is they were given power to investigate and promptly used it against trade unions and other potential political rivals by the government in power. The thing about their spies is that they look and act so much like spies. Have you ever really seen a man in a charcoal grey suit really reading a newspaper in the hotel lobby?
The book “Fifty” is still on my nightstand. I’m reading a second time, giving it the “deep read”. When Kennedy was shot I didn’t understand why Cuba was suspected by the CIA and hardly anyone else. It turns out that there were, at the time of the assassination, something like 34 agents in the Miami area doing nothing but cooking up schemes to kill or overthrow Castro. Since the general public didn’t know that, they never drew the same conclusions. I still consider the US “intelligence” community to be an embarrassment to America, and no, I don’t believe they are doing a good job of protecting us. Too many close calls.
I got a call from Bill, a guitarist from Craigslist. Is this one different? In a sense, as he’s got a working band consisting of himself and a drummer. Plus, he plays country and tex-mex. Throw in a little old Buddy Holly which I don’t normally do because of the terrible bass parts. We easily know a full 30 tunes between us so he’s setting up a rehearsal tomorrow. Maybe. He plays an electric semi-acoustic and I gather from his description that close enough is good enough. Hey, at this point I’ll do anything to get out there.
There was a band around the area recently that was doing a Johnny Cash tribute. I believe it may the same Bill as he mentioned they had a backer. I could go for paid practice. Keep an eye on this one because they are already up and running. They regularly play in Coconut Grove, which is in the same neighborhood as Quizno’s, Alaine, and JP. I got his song list and played through it all in the first pass.
Then I watched that Morgan Freeman movie “Along Came A Spider”. Cops and robbers schlock but he did say it right. In this life everybody is born with a gift. And if you weren’t you better get off your ass and create one. The humid heat is becoming unbearable again. If you don’t like 99/99, that’s 99 degrees and 99% humidity, stay away from south Florida in the hot season. Man, she’s a cooker.
Still looking at stenography, I’ve found a site that says a degree is not necessary, that is, no state requires one for court reporting, although certain memberships can be mandatory. The same source says allow 15 – 40 weeks to learn theory and that there are dozens of competing theories, all of which have produced successful results depending on each student’s best learning method. You’ll find more at SimplySteno.com .
The recommended path is to learn on a mechanical unit. The most often stated drawbacks are fatigue and stress. I wonder what the implications of this blog would be if I could enter 255 wpm. Regular typing speed is meaningless at that point. When I see the sample ribbons, maybe that old clunker from the Thrift was working after all. Dang!
