March 26, 2014

Let’s see who likes this feature, blogs of yesteryear:
One year ago today: March 26, 2013
Five years ago today: March 26, 2009

           Aw come on, you don’t really want to see a picture of a warped dry-erase board. You can’t be serious. I’ll change the subject on you. See this photo? This is a representation of the string of good luck I’ve had for nearly 36 hours now, and I promised to tell you. First, Prof. Howard missed the meeting Tuesday because he thought it was Wednesday. So by the time he called, he wanted to go for a beer. So we sat down at Artie’s and darn that chair was uncomfortable. The cracked upholstery kept scraping my beltline. As I got up to leave, I looked at the offending item and it was a $20 bill. Did I give it back? In a bar? Are you nuts?

           Seriously, we were there an hour, plenty of time for anybody who missed it to speak up. So I headed to Office Bunker for a whiteboard. What luck, I found one slightly warped with a $45 price tag. I’m equipped to repair such things, so I talked the guy down to $26. With the money I saved, I dipped over to Goodwill and found a perfect condition chrome desk lamp. Got that for $8. Wait, there’s more. Refer to the picture.
           So this AM I’m finished at the clinic and that’s near Harbor Freight. I zip in there to pick up batteries. As I get up to the counter, the guy ahead of me asks if I’d like a battery coupon. Sure. Surprise, it said two packs of free batteries with any other purchase. That saves me $8 because any other purchase is the 57-cent coil of wire you see me holding [later at the bakery]. There, is that enough serendipity for one day?
           No, not quite. Guess who left me a text saying we are finally back in communication. Marion. I should have married that one. If you are thinking I’m on a winning streak, I’ll end it later by going out and buying a lottery ticket. Nothing makes stocks, silver, and luck go bad as me investing in them. But until then, allow me to revel in my good luck. I mean, that is a really nice desk lamp.
           I solidly lost that bet about the women I’ve been emailing. I’ve concluded it to be a squandering of $60 to renew my Brainiac on-line mating site. Even if those women actually possess the educations they claim, they are surely not the fast crowd I ran with in my co-ed days. There were crowds on campus that had a definitely quitter social agenda than most, but I never had much to do with them then.            These women, same as my brothers, obvious went through the sexual revolution without choosing sides. If you get my drift. The truly thinking woman over 40 would acknowledge the importance of being proactive about relationships. It is hypocritical to crouch behind adolescent notions about being considered “loose” as an excuse to do nothing. Toward the end of my12-month membership, it got so I was afraid to ask these women any ordinary questions like how they felt today. I never met Ann Landers in her day, and after this club, I hope I never do, either.
           Struggling with Win 7 again gets my goat. There seems no easy way to get a folder to remember how it was last opened. A change in one makes a global change, something a programmer recognizes as the work of a complete retard. But worse, when you rename a file, sometimes it automatically alphabetizes itself and thus appears to disappear. Other times, it concatenates. One of the key elements of being stupid is to be so unpredictable that other people around you can’t do their work. Also, the files will only manually alphabetize in detail mode. I could not find how to enable/disable it anywhere else. This had me cussin’ until I figured it why they did it that way: who would MicroSoft know that would have any use for alphabetizing things?

           Here is that thing from Jimbos that we suspected was one of those game puzzles. After finding nothing on-line, I posted this photo on CL and the most promising reply was that with was a leather upholstery repair kit missing the curved needles. We’ll go with that. Other contenders were alien weapon, horse bridle bit, and “I don’t know but Bob’s Auto service claims they found one in my carburetor”.
           Following the planning meeting y’day, I’ve scrounged around to find what I could possibly sell on line. I don’t have a lot of time. The major criteria is that it be easy to produce and be so cheap it is an obvious bargain. That likely means to hell with quality. What have I come up with? Well, by and large, I video record most of my bass lines. One reason is that the existing learning material fails to teach how to play bass on stage in front of an audience. You can’t get that from sheet music.
           I tend to forget passages unless a song is played regularly. Thus, I have five minute amateur videos of around 120 very successful tunes. They clearly show every note before I actually play the riff. Even better, I can usually hear myself describing what is going on, as in “don’t use that octave” or “come in off the 5th”. In other words, these are excellent lessons for somebody who wants to get on stage in a hurry.
           The existing covers (musicians playing other people’s music) on youTube are generally difficult to learn from. It is always (no exceptions) some guy playing full speed, which means his hand covers up the notes—the way guitar teachers act. Not me. Mind you, my style clearly shows I’ve never had any lessons—but most of the bassists of my day never did either. Psst, that’s why they didn’t all sound alike. Over the next few days, I’ll be seeing what I can come up with by way of selling these videos as lessons. I believe it a strong selling point that these videos show what is actually played on stage and that is backed up by other videos showing undeniable and successful audience appeal.
           Until a later time, I remind everyone this is just talk.
           Um, I just got texted from the pub. After I left, they found more money on the floor. No word yet on how much.

ADDENDUM
           This segment repeats my chat about bass videos from above, but at a later time in the same day. I’m describing what I think might be turned into a product for sale while hoping what I already have will do the job. In real life, that happens quite rarely, so nobody get their hopes up.
           I’ve reviewed around a third of the videos of me playing bass lines and I just may be on to something. What’s different? This raw footage show how to play the music live, a considerably different focus than 100% of the other “tutorials” I can find on-line. Slight problem, in many of the videos my anti-guitar trait shows up with me saying things like “don’t guitar-riff that” or “this passage stinks of guitar player”. And I’ve developed my own vocabulary to describe bad guitar elements which are probably easy to get from context but would still benefit from explaining. The way I made this clips, it would be harder to overdub those comments than to redo from scratch. I’m used to starting from scratch.
           Nonetheless, the videos are a distinct departure from “lessons”. This alone makes them valuable to somebody. Remember, I have proof I can train most anyone to play in a band in six hours. (Remember the Hialeah Five-Oh-Five?). Let me pursue this a bit and see if I can’t standardize the videos, I mean, if I’m going to do them over again, why not go for broke? I thought of calling the series, “Bass Players Talk About This”, but found out there is a book by jet pilot with too similar a title. But I will come up with some powerful language. I cannot be the only bass player who is sick and tired of big shot guitar-types.
           And here is your photo of the warped white board, already. Happy now?