One year ago today: July 26, 2013, filler.
Five years ago today: July 26, 2009, vanishing point perspective.
Ten years ago today: July 26, 2004, diving buddies.
MORNING
Here is the St. Jude’s iconostasis, arrived by e-mail this morning. That’s Alaine on the far left, you can’t fool me when it comes to pretty women. But she has kidnapped my best buddy and turned him into a delivery driver who never packs his own cell phone. The article proofread for this church display is being published in Sophia magazine, I’ll put up a link if I hear about the date. But, ahem, we pretty much know over here how it will read.
I got news from Miami that explains why JZ has disappeared. He’s got a job again. I don’t have the details but that makes no sense at all. There was only one thing I could do about the situation. I made a big bowl of fish fritters and took the day off. I’ve found this to be the solution to most of life’s problems. I use the powdered mix, it is identical to home-made, and I add baking powder so they puff up like this!
Then I surfed the Internet for bass news. Generally to keep up with what is going on in the world of bass playing and making damn sure I am not sucker enough to fall into it. What gives me a laugh is these skinny teen chicks struggling to play a full size bass. It looks like they are fighting an arthritis attack. Gals, the sound of a bass is totally electronic, so find an instrument that fits your body size. Here’s a classic example of the wrong way to go about it.
This gal looks like her boyfriend talked her into it with his “bass is easy” line. It is so heavy she has to play the thing sitting down. How do I know? Brains, that’s how. First, the boyfriend is a guitar whacko who can’t get into a band, or this would not happen. She has to splay her elbow out to get the right wrist angle for finger playing, which is a stupid idea to begin with. She’d last a half-hour on stage. Her thumb rests on the E-string, meaning she can’t play any notes there. I could go on, but you get the point or you shouldn’t be here.
But instead it attracts the shallow-minded. You get huge gaps of information. For instance, I know long ago that Moscow painted the city to look different and [it is known] the German bombers fell for the ruse. Factories were painted on open squares and cottages painted on the roof of real plants.
But there is no mention (in plain words) of this fantastic technique. Here is the one photo I recall, since I was like eight years old when I first saw it. This looks like two separate buildings with a street running between them. Yet it was one giant government office. This technique worked fine yet there is no particular site that gives info on this major event.
And these guys who have enough time to waste drawing chalk on sidewalks think they’re so great.
DAY
Now that Guitar Center has removed the musician’s board, I take the occasional peek at Craigslist again. Same core pack of losers who will NEVER get into a band are again dominating the site. What? Oh, well, Guitar Center now teaches lessons and the board, including the ads seeking musicians, is not compatible with that. There are around 35 – 40 guitarists out there who think only in terms of themselves fronting a rock power trio. As I said above, I was looking for bass news.
This photo is here solely to improve the balance of the blog appearance.
Did it suddenly start raining bassists? And these are the clone crowd, all with the same big old war club of a bass, the same faggy limp-wrist style, same old “thumpitty” demo songs. All seeking working situations. All dryly pumping out perfect notes measure after measure without a hint of true grit bass spirit.
Finally getting around to updating the Bingo lists, I’ve discovered I really don’t like the Android interface. It is another of those designs for ignoramuses who accept the default settings and never go beyond that. I remember when the MP3 players came out and all the “whiz kids” could not understand why they didn’t play all their favorite music. They used to come into our shop and ask us to "fix" them. Yep, that’s the real “computer generation”. No brainers. Plus the Androids all have the MicroSoft gimptard settings, where a typo sends you to never-never land. Or opens a modular window with no cancel button.
[Author's note: I submitted toned-down versions of these phrases to Newton's Telecom on July 31, 2014.]
EVENING
Sell-out bingo, and the biggest selling point is the country music. One guy won $208. And this is a pub with maybe a quarter the capacity of the big veteran halls. And those who say country music isn’t a winner in this town are not paying attention. Still, when I add up tonight, I’m looking forward to the quiet simplicity of reading about celestial navigation.
Time for a quick status report on that subject. It’s beginning to melt. The sextant measures the angle of something in the sky to the horizon. You then compare that angle, to some known spot where the sun would be on that same day and same time. But that is actually the easy part, it requires three or four easy additions and subtractions. This places your probable position somewhere along a line. Ah, but isn’t navigation supposed to tell you where you are? That’s what I thought.
Nope. You then have to go through some hoops to determine the closest known spot to where you are, and where you are is determined by guesswork. That is the part called dead reckoning. And I reckon that is about where I am in the study. This is where the going gets tough. (You could technically use any known spot, but the one closest to your position is the most accurate. I'm learning.)
ADDENDUM
Maybe I wasn’t clear enough about the book, “Blue Highways”. I did not read it because from the first chapter, it was “hippy prose”. That affected style of English majors trying to space out in the ‘60s. They used weak metaphors (eg. "her slacks with creases as straight as an accountants left margin") and your last acid trip was supposed to do the rest. Additionally, I can be stone-cold against "travel" authors who won’t say what their costs were, and that doubles for the ones who mislead on the topic.
My reasons are easy to follow. It costs money to travel. I don’t believe, then or now, the author’s claim to have made a road trip of 13,000 miles for $438. In today’s money, that is 14¢ per mile, and that is, how you say, complete bullshit. In fairness, I remind the reader that the US abounded with this type of “free spirit” book during that era. The concept of doing your own thing was rampant, but I also know it cost a lot of money to be a hippie. You needed expensive bellbottom jeans, a pad, and incense isn’t free you know.
There were books about hippy safaris and European tours and hitchhiking across America. Well, I did a little hitchhiking not by choice and it is not high adventure. More to the point, that author was a treaty Indian and I believe he received regular increments of public (welfare) money along the way. He says he mainly ate in restaurants the whole time. Is what he wrote wrong? No, but the implication that anyone can shuck off society and take off down the road is very misleading.
Now, you just can’t expect me to read many such books. If I ever get enough free money, I might change my mind about that.
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