MORNING
After reviewing the stats, I should consider moving to Hawaii, not Mexico. I’ll be I’d have no trouble finding a guitar player there. This photo may be hard to see, but you can look it up at the Cato Institute. (Plus, you can click on this blog's pictures to enlarge them.) That’s who publishes the welfare to hourly wage comparison charts that shows welfare in Hawaii pays the equivalent of a $60,000 per year job elsewhere. Mind you, there is a cost of living over there you might not believe. There are reasons they lead the world in consumption of SPAM.
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Some trivia. Did you know the RCMP uniform and such are copyrighted? If you see any Mounties in the movies or cartoons, the uniforms have been altered to be inaccurate. I did not know that Canadian communities are required to pay a fee for RCMP services. Note, according to their license, so could anybody anywhere else in the world. Thus, the RCMP are police hired guns. Don’t worry, there have been no takers.
The Oregon squawk about not supplying ID cards to illegals is not the social issue the feds would have us believe. The objection is that those with ID cards can vote and those who buy votes don’t want any restrictions on the practice. Yes, giving people food stamps and cell phones is buying votes.
The consequence of such "vote auctions" is a permanent class of welfare citizens, like in Canada where they represent a fixed 11% of the population. Any Canuck politician who wants in must kowtow first to the French vote, then to the welfare vote. The covert tyranny of these two minorities dominates every election and ensures only those already in power have the money to stay in power. Yes, the US is getting like that, but nowhere near as blatantly.
Don’t look at me, I say people on welfare and civil servants should not be allowed to vote on grounds of conflict of interest. Here’s a statistic. No country that has given women the vote has experienced any fundamental change in political direction. Hence, it would seem the way women vote must, without exception, cancel itself out. But, say some, as long as it shuts them up.
With a lifetime of living within my means now behind me, I am amused by how budgets bear the stamp of their maker. Again, I don’t have any more money than most people; I just know how to not waste it. I missed my holiday last month and had to laugh at myself today. There it sits, around $1,600 in holiday money, unspent. All my bills paid ahead to December 29, all equipment in working order or under good repair. And yet, here I sit in my trailer court because there was no alternate plan when that holiday fell through.
I know I could use new shirts and shoes, a new shed, a scroll saw, a microscope, and a fancy camcorder, but they were not on this month’s budget. That’s how these things work. I may zip down to Miami to the book show, featuring Dave Barry, which doesn’t cost much. That’s how little there is to do on an academic plane in South Florida, and so few people to hang out with. For openers, I have never lived so long in one place that is as far from a university campus as the last eleven years. So now I have the money and no place to go. Am I stupid or what?
Well, maybe, but then, a truly stupid person would not have the money, right? Here's more trivia. In my life, I've been called a lot of things. It doesn't bother me, because I have the strength of my mistakes backing me up, who was it that said that? Those who learn by their mistakes are the only people who know the true cost of things. Anyway, the trivia. In my entire born days, only three women have ever called me stupid, as in ignorant, uneducated, and unread, unable to think logically--and who really meant it. One was from Florida.
What's this. Within ten minutes I get ten e-mails wanting to know who she is. Sorry, no names, because you already know. Yes, she called me stupid quite a number of times, saying I "played on the computer". But I will say this about her. She never makes the same mistake twice. It's usually ten or fifteen times before she even slows down.
NOON
Wow, call this a lost day. I had the gumption to go to the beach and take some sextant readings but we had complete overcast. The big motorcycle is required to bring plywood home so that didn’t happen. The clutch cable is no longer produced and is $30 custom build. And it got chilly overnight, which surprised me since I don’t follow the weather report. So I’m cooped up in the house with lingering flue symptoms. Hey, blog rules say I have to report the most or least significant anything of the day. And so far, I’ve hardly moved.
However, I can tell you that the way Hawaii crept into this morning’s material because a GMO labeling law was hammered back by corrupt politicians. I say that based on the conclusion that only a very corrupt (and nasty) person would take a stand against warning labels. They obviously have a fundamental vested interest against informing you of what is in the food you eat. This implies you are not smart enough to decide for yourself. Here’s a Venn diagram of Monsanto’s infiltration of the US government. I cannot find a date on this, but I believe it to be recent. Again, you may have to blow this up to read the print--another reminder that this blog is primarily prose.
Undoubtedly there is no way a concerned consumer can make headway against this lineup. Some 64 countries have GMO label laws, of which I believe 26 have banned the GMOs completely. I’m concerned because food allergies were unheard of when I was young—and what has changed? Further, the seeds are apparently sterile and must be repurchased each year, an agricultural model that is not compatible with small farms. In the past 20 years, some quarter-million farmers in India have committed suicide over debt from buying GMO seeds and related pesticides.
The same source points out how the Philippines are being groomed as a “springboard” for altered plant products, including Golden Rice. These are not the same as selective-breeding [hybrids] which has been around for centuries, these are new organisms [mutations] that the human body may not recognize. For clarification, I am not against the GMO products themselves, I am against them being introduced into the food system without warning labels. Big difference. I no longer knowledgeably consume any products that contain US-grown corn, soybeans, or canola oil. Canola oil, in raw form is poisonous. I know there are other such foods, but I don't eat those, either.
Author's note: in the majority of cases of naturally poisonous foods, the poison is neutralized or removed by processing it to edible form or by normal cooking. However, canola oil, which is normally so stinky [think rancid fish] you would never eat it, is pressure heated to 300°F to break up the poison. Of course, this kind of temperature destroys all natural nutrients as well.
Trivia. There are 38,000 varieties of mushrooms, of which 1,900 are poisonous. And did you know your brain is mostly cholesterol?
NIGHT
I got some exercise, see, because I walked up to the donut shop. And to exercise my brain, I took along some celestial navigation exercises. As usual, except for the nose-in-laptop bunch, I was the only one reading anything. Most of the clientele’s IQ isn’t that much different than their ages. Since there was obviously nobody to meet or talk to, I got into calculations concerning extrapolation tables. There is a quantum of elegance to the way they work, but I don’t think I can agree with authors that say it is common sense.
Now, months later, I still find parts I’ve been doing wrong, though not nearly as wrong as before. Learning arbitrary procedures is more difficult for intelligent people than dumb people, so I’m told. When you do enough of each calculation, it more or less begins to meld with the larger picture. That picture remains incomprehensibly complex even now, when I’m analyzing the basic triangles that make the process work. I can diagram most situations in advance, which means in advance of going back to the book time and again to make sure I’m on the right path. I still have to do that.
Last, I learned (for me) a new musical technique. While adapting the bass line for Tritt’s “Here’s A Quarter”, I notice the studio bass player was missing certain notes. It is these missing notes, I’ll have you know, that are my biggest inspiration. Because I started on piano—and pity most musicians who did not. Said notes were hard to play, so he simply left them out. But I found a way to imply them. The notes actually played are, in music theory, probably wrong, because they are passing tones that should not fall on the main beat. Grade four theory.
I quickly learned to imply them on all chords in the song, even the ones where they could be fretted. This is neat, it gives it the feel of trying to dance to a beat while one is a little too drunk to keep up. It's a bit tricky as the notes clash unless played precisely between guitar chords, but that's hardly going to affect me. Again, I am adapting this music for duo performance, so the bass is expected to carry a segment of the rhythm. And you gotta hear this one. For the sake of my critics, I did not say I invented the technique, only that I’ve never heard it before, so it is original to me.
See this picture? That’s a guy called Freddy Cannon, who by rights should have been one of the artists I first noticed before I was a teen. He’s the guy who’s lyrics said “Come baby, let me take you where the action is”. However, unless you are a student of the era, most of what he played was not impressive. What was is his business acumen. He kept rights to all his terrible music so to this day, lives off the royalties that still trickle in. Basically, he did what I would have done, given the opportunity.
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