That ditzy lady was in the café when I stopped for coffee and I think she’s gone off the deep end. I’ve heard the management warn her not to bother people even though she is quite nice. The same old story, she was pretty when she was young and thought that’s all there was to it. Today she kept asking me how high silver could go because the minister at her church said six months ago it would go up. I don’t invest in silver, I speculate, so six months ago means he made a bad prediction. How high? Pick any number, lady. Call me if it goes over $300, but until then, could I get a little peace and quiet? I didn’t say that, only thunk it.
As I’m driving through downtown, three drunks around 21 were blocking traffic walking through green lights. They were shouting something and when I pulled up, it was, “First you get the money. Then you get the bitches.” So much wisdom in ones so young. The depressing part for those young men is that the idealism of youth has been diminished by media exposure, so yes, it really is harder to get a decent girl these days. In my time, there were always sexier girls on the farm than any movie actresses and I dated more than my share. But nowadays, those farms have satellite and the 13 year olds know if they are pretty enough, the millionaires will find them.
Feeling great about the music y’day, I pored over another of the interminable top one hundred lists, seeking that final eight songs I need to take my show on the road. I now label the past twenty years of country as the “Tse Tse Era”. It’s all too damn slow. I tried to listen to “Big Green Tractor” (Aldean), “That’s What I Like About Sunday” (Morgan), “How Do I Live” (Yearwood), “Brokenheartsville” (Nichols), and “One More Day” (Rio). What depressing, draggy music. I never got past the first chorus of any.
I chided this aspect of country music in my teens, that of all the emotions music would evoke, those who sought sadness were mental defectives. Have these artists never heard that people like fast, lively, cheerful music even more? Probably, but I also know that it is far easier to write a mournful ballad than anything except maybe the Blues.
To me, the show is over the instant the guy takes off his hat, sits down, and tunes his guitar to an open D. Get the No-doze, here comes the funeral march. To get underway, I see that I am going to have to include at least some music that I normally wouldn’t touch. Sad that with the thousands of tunes out there, I can’t find 32 fast ones in my vocal range. And I’m already stretching it because I sing Nancy Sinatra, Trish Yearwood, Faith Hill, and Mary Chapin Carpenter.
The search engine formulas have been “updated” again. I warned the world in 1981 when the IBM format computers came out that the worst thing that could happen is let the half-educated do anything they want with a computer. The pundits said the free-for-all would make computers dynamic. They made it a near-total mess. Almost all information that can be found on-line is as shallow as the no-minds that wrote it. I know whenever my listings aren’t at the top, somebody’s been monkeying around with the algorithms. I say to Google and Yahoo!: no matter how hard you play favorites, you will never defeat consistency.
Unless the new book [I'm reading called] “Fire” starts getting real, I can already say avoid it. On the other hand, if the Ivanhoe in you finds startling coincidences to be awe-inspiring, go for it. I personally do not consider a person who has read even all the classics to be well-read. For that, one must also read the hard subjects, particularly math and physics. It’s amazing how many authors even try to fake it.
Over the weekend I’ve sketched a model electric motor that could be home-built. I was watching a demo of a piston engine on-line and noticed the valves did not operate instantly. That is, they were not digital, there was a transition stage, however tiny, as the camshaft rotated. I thought could a piston valve be operated by transistors? Before proceeding, I looked up “solenoid engines” on the net to find dozens of similar designs. But that proves two points. One, I had never seen these others before independently designing my version, or put another way, I got no help at all. Two, as with most electronics, it is easy to find what you want after you do it yourself, and that should not be. Here is a video of an elaborate solenoid engine.
Here’s a video of white names I found on jimmyr.
juice newton; axis sally;andrea johnson st augustine; bottle caps candy box; braille bible; fake two dollars bills; goldwing withsidecar; palm triangular; percocet nose damage;
