The reason for this was that a small sheet of cotton was wrapped and glued over the wing to cover these openings. When the plane taxied on the ground and took off, they prevented small objects getting rammed into the wing and damaging or blocking the gun. When the pilot opened fire, the bullets tore through the cloth, giving this appearance.I’ve finished “Life of Pi”. Yes, it does pick up near the end and delves into some real imaginative concepts. Although published in 1981, this book was just waiting for the emergence of special effects. Except for maybe some East Indian imagery, this movie had best skip the first 100 pages of indoctrination. The good news is the movie HAS to be better than the book. Still, unless it is used as a training film, this release is headed straight for the Crackle heap.
So Monday I went to the jam at Buddy’s. There’s good odds this is the oldest average age musical event in Broward outside of the nursing home circuit. It’s so nice to see how many mothers can still fit into their daughter’s black dress. Well, sort of. Anyway, the two bar gals have decided to open a cat house with 90 year-old sleazeboxes. Then when the guys ask where are all the young ones, them two can jump up and wave. I scoffed at first thinking, “Where are they gonna find that many 90 year-old sleazeboxes?”
Then I remembered ChristianMingle.
Why did I stay home [today]? Because my eyes won’t take the bright sun and I sound like I’m contagious. I need time to rest up. Ah, so I thought, why not convert those songs I recorded to an editable format? Because I’ve got that lousy two-bit Boss BR-600, that’s why. I found a universal card reader for six bucks, but the slightest wrong move wipes out the CompactFlash memory. That’s the two songs I was about to send Elliot and Trent. I’m suspecting the card itself is a finicky design, but even if so, was it not Boss who chose that card brand in the first place?
Thinking I’d made progress, I re-recorded my tracks, which took four hours. Then as I went to export those tracks, the BR to WAV converter informs me it will alter my originals. No way, so I make the copies. Then it informs me the converter can only use copies if I go into DOS and reassign the drive path. How may people here remember the SUBST command? I thought so. And you wonder why I’m a critic.
Elliot and I talked about this and concluded there is no easy way around such recordings. These idiotic “digital 8-tracks” have become a standard in the sense that you have to spend real money if you want real equipment. By real, I mean a recorder that will input more than one track at a time. Until then, if your band has seven instruments, you have to make seven recordings to get one song. Trust me, it will be many more than seven, but that’s the minimum.
This one-by-one layering is the cause of so much indie music that we now have a term for the sound. We call it “studio-plastic”. There is something unnatural about listening to a song where each instrument has been recorded over and punched to clinical perfection. (Punching is the process of over-recording small sections of the original track to eliminate mistakes.)
What? You want to know how punch works? In easy terms? Okay. Suppose at the one minute mark of your tape, the guitar player hits the wrong chord. You put a little electronic marker a few seconds before and another marker after the mistake, these are known as your punch-in and punch-out points. They don’t affect the recorded sound in any way. Then you rewind past the first marker to a familiar point in the music. Tell the guitarist to start playing along, and as you recorder passes the punched area, it records over just that segment. In the hands of a pro, it works amazingly well. Thank you.
ADDENDUM
Let’s discuss on-line dating. I have two memberships at opposite ends of the spectrum. One is club that accepts anybody, the other is quite picky. (These accounts are anonymous.) Both organizations claim exclusive membership, but in most cases this is not true in any form. My motive is to browse, to see what’s available. I don’t just flip through the pictures. I honestly do read the profiles of any woman who sounds reasonably self-supporting, non-possessive, and weary of shallow men. That’s not too many in a given year, let me tell you.
Most of these people are looking for a shortcut, though that is forgivable in women. It gets kind of expensive moving around the countryside looking for diamonds in the rough. I don’t like most anything rough. I figure if it isn’t a bit polished up by age 24, throw it back. My findings are that these ads do not represent what is out there. Being a musician on stage will give you a better idea of the cross-sections.
On stage you realize how few truly attractive older women even exist. The reason attraction is so desperately important is because most older women don’t have a thing to bring to the table. This is truly bizarre, but they mentally justify their lack of accomplishment by complaining it as a man’s world. I’ve actually met women who consider it my personal fault they have a dead-end job or never finished college. (Between 17 and 33, I never dated a woman I didn’t meet on campus. And again age 36 to 44.)
Of the two clubs, the picky club is by far the better. Even if I bottom-fish, I get nearly 200 hits. For me, rock bottom is any degree (or college), any age, any religion, any place, any weight, any income. But I said I’m only looking. And what I see is that men and women learn different lessons from the same mistakes. The women posters today:
12%: failed to include a photo.
14%: failed to fill out a profile.
19%: live in cold climates and won’t relocate.
19%: specify only rich, tall, or materialistic men.
30%: cannot play a musical instrument.
33%: have dependent children.
41%: are whacked out on religion.
44%: demand something I’m not (as in rock-climber, vegetarian).
45%: obvious high-maintenance.
Still, there are enough candidates to keep me reading for an hour every week. This is a sad process in some ways. I see women who simply will never get a date. Not just age or looks, but a combination of signals that set off the alarms. Like the Brazilian lady psychiatrist whose ad has been running for 1,320 days. Also, this whole age difference thing contrived by women is exasperating. Who gave women the right to assign age brackets, anyway?
The lower-class clubs have something the uppers don’t: chat lines. And it is massive idle chatter that makes no sense. It encourages iffy contacts and attracts women who are only there for the talk. That’s like men who only read playboy for the articles. They are good company for each other, which is a nice thing to say.
Another oddity of the higher-class clubs is the tendency for members to state what they do not want. I call it the “incompatibilities” list. For me, that would include women with children who call themselves single. Anyway, I prefer a membership that will outright reject those not up to standard well in advance. Holding oneself out as a prospective mate carries obligations in itself, the least of which is self-support these days. I have a name for avoiding losers, too: “elimination by experience”. It is not enough to say if it quacks like a duck, for one might not shun a duck.
