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Yesteryear

Sunday, February 2, 2014

February 2, 2014

           This is the interior of the abandoned house (tax repo) in Lake Worth. JZ and I may take a ride up there to look, but we were finally able to grind out of the agent that it was a “mixed” neighborhood. I understand the purpose of laws that prevent people asking outright what the ethnic makeup of the place is, but damn it, they are going to find out anyway. It turns out the structure in the back yard is in pretty bad shape. But that could be something JZ and I can handle, if it is structurally sound. As long as the three bedroom main house is in good shape, and they say it is, we could do something with it. If not, I found another prospect in Ft. Meyers and we may just keep on driving.
           You’ll never guess what I just found out. Which is too bad, because I’m not going to say, but I like to include little teasers like that. Hint, it has something to do with being really, really smart. Instead, how about I tell the non-gamblers like myself sports pools work? I never understood those things until I watched a guy win one tonight. Another thing I never understood was sports with more than one point per goal. Bowling, golf, basketball, and football, for instance. How could anyone ever predict the outcome score of a football game? By listening closely, I’ve concluded it is a matter of statistics, not any sportsmanship or even a grasp of how the game is played. Pardon my stupidity.
           It works because of the properties of integers and the LSD, or least significant digit. Every pair of sports scores must necessarily end in a digit from 0 to 9. Now we are talking my language. They make up a grid square of 100 slots and since there are no fractional sports scores, one pair of digits has to win. It’s so simple an idiot could get it. No need to grasp the mechanics. So does that make me an idiot? Tell you what. Ask both me and some sports fan to define an integer. If you have trouble deciding who is the idiot, that would be a good starting point. The amount, in dollars, I’ve lost in sports pools in my life? Zero. That’s another good point.
           Mostly a day off because I worked Friday, which would otherwise be my day off. That means I got my reading time in and today, I was reading politics. I normally consider politics to be the lowest form of human endeavor. Having been born in a democracy lets me get away that attitude. But I was reading a manifesto on the direction of American elections. Back in the last century I declared that the US would take my lifetime before it became as bad as Canada for holding a vote auction every four years. I was wrong. It is moving that direction very rapidly.
           How so? In Canada, they make everyone dependent on the government to some degree. Even if it is only a baby bonus check in the mail, they get them on some kind of welfare. Once they get hooked on a handout, you can bet they will never vote against the system at large. In fact, they won’t even vote for change, much less progress. Thus, in a nation that allows infinite political parties, the big two (Liberal and Conservative) have been in power for a hundred years, yet they are virtually identical. It’s simple arithmetic, a government already in power is the only entity with enough tax money to buy the next election.
           But what the average Canuck does not realize is how such money comes at a huge cost. Namely, personal freedom. The government methodically controls food, housing, and income and thus has jurisdiction over every important aspect of their lives not just from cradle to grave, but as they say in Sweden, from erection to resurrection. I thought it would not happen here for another 50 years, but I was somewhat optimistic.
           The beginning of such manipulation in America was the food stamp handout. That one move, in a wink, made democratic voters out of millions. And to vote, they must be registered. We already have an America where every house, car, bank account, religion, and school is registered at some government office. Now we have Canadian style democracy, where nobody is going to vote for anybody who wants to lower taxes. Because everybody is either on welfare or has a civil servant in the family. The makings of an epic fail.
           Next, would the axxhole who programmed youTube to start playing when the window re-opens, please stand up and take a bow? You have no brains, but that should not stop you from taking credit as the representative of everything that is so wrong with your generation. In fact, take a second bow so we will know exactly what you look like should the need arise.
Then I found a series of on-line videos called World War II Year by Year. Find your own link. Even for propaganda, it sucks, but on top of that, it was British propaganda. This always lends a little comedy to any situation, what with those Cockney accents and the attitudes that go with them. Talk about your self-serving apologists getting together to glorify the typical Brit foul-up at Caen. Caen, you say? Yes, a nothing town of zippo strategic importance held by the chewed up remains of an under-supplied panzer corps whose main military tactic was waiting for the English to screw up on their own.
           It is the same location where the famous panzer ace, Wittman, shot up an entire British armored brigade and then went home for supper, having seen more action that afternoon than Field Marshal Montgomery did in his lifetime. The comedy is how the video attempts to maximize the military role of Monty. It is cleverly done, but would not fool any real historian. Monty did not plan to hold up the Germans while “waiting for the Americans to wheel around”. He was a glory-hunting political soldier who repeated got his damn arse kicked by the German boy-soldiers. He never “took” Caen, instead he called in bomber command to flatten the place and then drove over the rubble. Pure genius, London style.
           The video goes so far as to suggest that Wittman’s tank may possibly have been destroyed by a shell a cannon in Montgomery’s army, and that Rommel may possibly have been killed by an airplane flying through Montgomery’s atmosphere, you get the idea. It even states that Monty’s fiasco of Market Garden “succeeded in destroying the remaining panzer strength” that could have been used against the Americans. Or something like that.
           A discouraging practice with Jag, in that we rapidly get each song up to the level we had it long before, but any progress beyond that slows to nothing. Have we reached a musical plateau, or is it the extra hours of study for his college? No, this band will not hurt his marks, it is having to work a part-time job during college that does that. It’s not like I forget, in fact the problem is that I remember college as if it was y’day. I still have good and bad study days in the subjects I study now and any type of fixed hour job that doesn’t let you study when you are “in the mood” is a big negative.
           Yes, my college marks were very high. But part of that I attribute to working at the phone company full-time. It was the type of job that didn’t drain your guts and energy every day. In the end, I paid for it with stress. But I was still able to get off work and drive to campus, have a cup of tea, and pre-read each lecture’s material. It was like being a rich kid, but in my case that rare one whose parents made him pay his own tuition. University was different, I was living off student loans and had to constantly worry about the future, and my marks showed it. I’ve been on both sides of that street and I’m thinking that he does not have the physical time to put into this, no matter how easy the material.
           Therefore I established next rehearsal to take place at the club. Twelve songs, mapped out in advance, ninety minutes of stage work. Ready or not.