One year ago today: September 24, 2013, some stats.
Five years ago today: September 24, 2009, a generic day.
Ten years ago today: September 24, 2004, who's Tiffany?
MORNING
What, no bakery picture for a month? Okay, here, enjoy. This is the pleasant arrangement that greets me most early mornings. Health food, coffee, my newspaper. It’s a family tradition, or would be if I had a family. Actually, I sort of do, being that I have a circle of friends I’ve known for over 25 years and we still chum regular. But all of them live so far away. That’s partially why I skipped the memoir writer’s meet-up and tonight am going just up the roadway to check out the scriptwriter’s association. (It was even more boring and had many of the same people.)
One moderately successful play and crazy Al never worked another day of his life. Well, I mean when I met him He wrote some bitpart of “Alice’s Restaurant” so said his resume. He was hack writing more of the same, hoping to get lucky a second time. Al was nowhere by the time I left to go back north to my day job. I think he still owes me twenty bucks.
It’s the library computers for me.
I’ve put out the tender for an aluminum wheel chock, something that clamps on the cPod wheels to prevent them from turning while parked. And some locking bins on the exterior. There is no spot on the motorcycle or the sidecar that anything can be stored both waterproof and easy to get at. Pick one only. To now, I have to keep tools and things locked inside, which means opening the entire camper to get a pair of pliers or a guitar.
I’ve coined a new term for the library computers. “Neutered.” That’s any computer that has features to lock out pirating or copyright violations. The library units won’t let me open my favorite lyrics sites. The notice says somebody complained that the lyrics often contain the guitar charts as well. To me, that’s over-complaining. They did not create the guitar chords or own them in any way. I don’t blame the artists, but the “music rights” people for this issue. Them greedy pricks would sue you for whistling the tune in your car if they could.
NOON
Here’s a picture of a novel doorbell. You might have to blow it up, but there is a pick on the door that rakes across the strings as it swings open. Let me guess, it is tuned to an open G.
Nor have I done any planetary sights due to lack of perceptible planets. But I’ve read my homework probably 40 times each and the material is practically memorized. Where does one go from here?
I’m back to averaging 66 miles per week on the red scooter, leading me to believe that mileage is a kind of benchmark on how much chasing around the system here is designed to require. Surely somebody has written a thesis on that by now. I stopped at Panera for coffee and chatted up a pretty lady. She was doing fine until she started talking about religion. She smoked, which I don’t mind, but that also represents a constant temptation for me.
The following is filler from y'day, but I feel compelled to not delete it when rating are high. So, here it is again:
All efforts at calibrating the DrawBot have failed. There is something inherently wrong in the directions and Nova is tomorrow I am now able to calculate navigational co-ordinates within Navy limits 100% of the time, I will now do my usual—work on it until I can do it in my sleep. That’s my real hobby, some could say. That’s only sun sights I'm doing. I’m still working on the Moon.
Below is the official Radio Shack DIT drawbot photo. The instructions for this project need to be completely re-written by a competent teacher and author who explains what to do when things go wrong. Radio Shack and Makerbot fail miserably on that count. Except for the mechanical parts, this is not really a simple, one-person, weekend project.
EVENING
Good move, I went to the scriptwriter's club. Over at the library, it was evident within moments that the very requirements of structured composition had attracted a sharper crowd. There is free software, so march through it yourself, but output is highly structured compared to the free verse of memoirs. Thus, you get fewer people loitering—and this is also a class, so you learn techniques. Tonight’s lesson was foreshadowing and how it all has to happen in Chapter 1. But it is just not fast-moving enough to keep me engaged.
They also do live script readings and I was the porter at the airport in “Casablanca”. One chap in the room proposed a project. During the 1970s and 1980s, he filmed (8mm, now on DVD) a lot of the clubs in Ft. Lauderdale during spring break and would like to produce a documentary. This led to a few questions about content, and I’ve not seen the footage, but here is what has emerged so far.
The scenes are not the general beach beer-busts that were was popular at the time, but the then-new phenomena of wet T-shirt contests. The [scriptwriters], 98% men, were now listening. This was the day when nudity was semi-illegal and the Ft. Lauderdale cops would arrest the bartender. It turns out the clubs, with names like “Candy Store” were all mob-owned, so same as today, so they knew when the raids would be staged.
But it is college women that will sell. He’s got, he says, hours of material on the prettiest gals in the kiddie pools. And remember, America peaked for college women in the 1970s. Every one tall, slim, no tattoos, perky knockers and those form-fitting hippie clothes. There was no career-wrecking Facebook back then, no fatties and an actual air of innocence, real college gals and not hired help. There were, on campus at least, “two girls for every boy”.
I’d been to a few of these t-shirt contests back then, and they were not bad. They were teens having fun, not the degenerate "titty bar" spectacle of today. Where instead of real college babes, which you don’t even see in public any more, you get the kinky-haired, hard-looking, boob-job, single-mother, stripper-pole crowd. I’ve asked a few women why they do that and the reply is always if they didn’t they would not “get noticed”.
But campus in the 70s! My best year ever for “scoring” was second year university. I won’t say, but I did over ten times better than Hugh Hefner that year—according to what he says. And I'll bet mine were better in every way.
The changes came about in the 80s. I noticed because I had returned to get a college degree in computers. It was already different. The campus was no longer all-white and there were middle-aged feminist cadres reporting which students slept with their instructors. I know what you are thinking, but same like today, they make it their business. Alas, by 1984, the party atmosphere was changing and the student body was no longer dominated by 18-year-olds.
A documentary, you say?
ADDENDUM
The phrase “two girls for every boy” is not as far-fetched as it sounds. During this post-war era, there was great social pressure in America that one’s kid went to college, except for my parents, of course. To drop out was humiliating and every one in town knew about the hick farmer’s son who went on to become a successful veterinarian or agronomist. Advice to continue on to university was a ladled out daily in every high school.
Depending on which “Area 3” subjects you signed up for, you could find yourself the only male in a class of 32 single, innocent (you know what I mean), virgin farmer’s daughters. And now you seriously know where I learned to type 125 wpm. When I had to.
Author's note: I was still dating women I met in that class until I was 31, when I met my wife.
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