August 20, 2014

Yesteryear
One year ago today: August 20, 2013, Nikon gets a D-.
Five years ago today: August 20, 2009, no real focus.
Ten years ago today: August 20, 2004.

           Food. And today that food is buckwheat. I grew up on a lot of this and it is made same as rice, in a pot. Boil it, cover, simmer for 15 minutes. But like grits, to me it is not a sweet cereal, but a meal side. I like buckwheat and gravy. I glanced on-line for recipes and what a crock of hoo-hoo that is. All I can tell you is no, you don’t have to “brown” the “groats” and “stir constantly”. And if you add much more than chicken broth and a few spices, you are no longer eating buckwheat.

           Buckwheat trivia? Sure. The Chinese make buckwheat noodles. This is difficult, as buckwheat has no gluten. But why not, they make noodles out of anything they possibly can. And pillow stuffing. That’s right, the buckwheat stays cooler than synthetics, which tend to reflect heat. These pillows are not for the allergy-prone. Anyway, this is what a bowl of buckwheat should look like, with a daub of butter.

           I biked up to Dairy Queen last evening for a coffee. Starbucks is too bitter for my evenings and there is something depressing about their atmosphere. Have you noticed that? Even if you take a book along and don’t pay attention, there is an uneasiness in too many other customers and a distracting quality about the place in general. But DQ tends to attract a working class clientele. (True, I am working class but share no common values with that bunch.) There are no decent places for evening coffee left in this town. Even Denny’s rides you for a food order. Sad.
           Why do I feel that way? Because I associate coffee with a more academic crowd. My background is the university area coffee house, where the hippies hung out. Hippies were cool, other people were not. And anyone who pretends to be a hippie today is definitely not cool. My study hall was a Denny’s, to get away from the din of the house I shared, I’d spend hours with my books at the side counter. Now, they frown on it. They’ve changed the cycle of refills in that they arrive when they feel like it, so if you are reading, you often get missed until you stop and catch somebody.

           My division of navigation studies into separate tasks is already making it easier. I had to get to the stage where I could stop the confusing overlap. Confusing it was. Without any help, you don’t know where to establish the limits. Face it, this has taken two months already. In my defense, I warn don’t wag any fingers until you try it yourself. The two sections are the calculations and the rendering of those results onto a blank map. I’ve completed 84 pages of practice calculations in my naturally compact handwriting. I wonder how many pages my critics got to? Have my critics done that many in their lifetimes? Can my critics count that high?
           My study session have become a lot like math class, I don’t hesitate to read the references and glossaries any more. In those places I’m finding there is a lot more to “distance” than the traditional method of multiplying rate and time. There are concepts like “departure” and many strange-looking examples, but I can see they are all based on right angle triangles. Good. That is something I completely understand. There are more tables but as I just said, I no longer avoid reading the subsidiary explanations.

           This picture. It’s a drum. It’s a garbage can. Take your pick. I wrote a note to the band singer hinting that if she wanted to learn a single country song, I would participate. She’s never heard me play bass solo. She is onto how the band seems nearly terrified of country music, a kind of closed-minded terror. But she is also witnessing how terrible they are at learning anything new, while the two of us have no trouble adapting at all. So the message is, it is both. A drum and a garbage can.
           Then another four hours honing the music for this Saturday. Of the 36 pieces on the set list, 16 are material that feature the new singer or have been learned since she arrived last December. But, there is a disturbing trend. If the pieces are ordered chronologically, anybody can detect the distinct decline in how faithfully the band is covering the material. We’ve had plenty of time and practice so there are no excuses to be found in that direction. The overall quality is still high, but I’m saying there is a trend.

           What have we here? Another bad guy who appears to be smarter than the one's chasing him. Clever criminals are always a curiosity. Remember Jason Derek Brown? He's still on the run. I'm not in any way glorifying any crimes they may have committed, just the fact that they are able to stay ahead of the law despite the most modern efforts to keep tabs on every person, guilty or innocent. But what's amusing is the moronic lengths the cops go to dress these guys up as the usual criminal element. Like the way they point out Brown "may" be bisexual. That's like saying he "may" chew tobacco and he "may" spit it on the sidewalk.

           Now enter William Bradford Bishop, Jr. Have a 'boo as his poster as he made finally the most-wanted list. They certainly gave him an evil stare in this rendering, and just look at that arrogant stance. Um, my question is why he is just making the list now for a crime in 1976? Could it be if they don't get him soon and he dies, then he got away with it? Can't have that, now.
           Here's the problem, he has a Yale degree and a Masters in Italian. He camps in Africa and earned his pilot's license in Botswana. This is not your backstreet gang type, so let's see what kind of dirt they will try to pin on this guy. So far, they've said he "may have kept a journal" like that was a bad thing.
           Oh, here we go, it says here (past tense) that he "drank scotch (sic)" and "enjoyed eating peanuts". Now he's gone too far. Bishop, you are over the line. What a low-life! What a scumbag!

           [Author's note: Note "sic" is a Latin term that means "thus" or "so". It indicates the spelling mistake is in the original text and not my typo. Also, "sic" is a full Latin word, not an abbreviation. The term placed in parentheses as the last word in a quotation of any length is an MLA convention, so generally you have to know what the error looks like on your own. Stumped, Patsie? I'll bail you out. Like the word "Internet", the word "Scotch" is a proper noun and therefore to be capitalized.

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