It's way to early for you to be here. Go back and read y'days evening report on band rehearsal, or go get another cup of tea, or porridge, or something healthy. Today has not happened yet.
MORNING
Who likes guessing games? Good, the tell me what I’ve got here. Hints: it is metal, very thin and flexible, and costs about $ 1.50. A free beer for anyone who comes up with the right answer. No peeking at the URL for clues. If you got it right, of course, you will have to play for a round trip to Florida to collect, but like a Sony service contract, that will cost you more than it is worth. But if you show, I won’t make you wait as long as Sony. The gizmo? The answer is buried later in today’s post.
It appears I need to make friends with a lady who owns a junk yard. The nearest junk place on Pembroke is a rip-off. I wanted some scrap iron to practice welding, they wanted $15, they once tried to charge me $4 for a six-inch piece of ¼” copper tube. Agt. M has warned me about that place, but he buys big parts like bicycle frames. Now I know they are not worth the trip. Copper pipe is only a dollar a foot brand new at Home Depot.
I was up early enough to read some accounts of a forgotten part of the North African War, the part that happened after the Brits and Yanks went on about getting their headlines. There was a sizeable contingent of South African troops following on. As I was about to turn the page, I noticed some statistics that didn’t jive. Prominent was the size of the force, almost every adult male of fighting age, there must have been nothing but boys and old men left in Cape Town. Then no mention of American military aid to South Africa. They were supplying their own logistics.
Then it hit me. The leader at the time was Smuts, and it is fantasy to think he had forgotten the Boer War. You rarely heard of South African attacks or exploits in the media, as was common with other empire troops. What were all these people doing there, from Libya to Lebanon? Not fighting a war, that much we know. I see a pattern that extends well ahead into the situation of South Africa today, a major arms exporter and one of the most self-sufficient nations on the planet. Hmmm.
Looking again at buying Euros, I see there are only other places that buy them, not sell them. Don’t say the currency exchanges, since they are a rip-off. I’ve never used one but calculate their rates to be as high as 15%. The pundits say banks often have Euros, I should check if mine does. I’ve never bothered to ask them, you know.
NOON
Good news bad news. Our robot club has acquired an older, but brand new, oscilloscope from a generous party in West Palm. The bad news is there are no cables and these will run us $45 for the set. But compared to $475 for a used brand name, we’ll take a chance. This will involve a trip to pick it up, but that happens to go right through Boynton Beach, where I’d like to talk to the people at the mobile home office. I don’t know how to work a ‘scope, but after celestial navigation, how hard can it be?
Brrr, the climate is still off kilter, so I used the day to peek at financials the world over. I can only do this with second hand information as my Lear jet is in the shop this week. I found nothing new. Spain is still run by crooks, the US has no effective political system, the Chinese are buying all the gold, and Germany is getting sick and tired of propping up Europe. The US is completely bankrupt, there is no hope they can pay back 5% of the money borrowed. I’ll have everyone know I passed my college economics courses with the highest marks in the class.
But I don’t like economics. It is a study of theories that don’t work. One laughable chapter was the “money multiplier” effect. How a dollar spent generates further dollar value. One thing I learned is most bogus theories are based on an ever expanding base of borrowed dollars. They don’t distinguish the borrowing of money to build a factory and consumer credit. I don't consider buying a house to live in as contributing all that much to the system. Plus, the only new businesses in Florida these days are massage parlors, tattoo booths, and those strange franchises who require your credit score before they can save you money.
All this at a time when smart people are moving away from purchasing on the Internet. I know I will cross the street to avoid products advertised on-line. As distinct from on-line catalogs and such. I mean I don't buy products with pop-up ads. The worst ads are the new Florida college plugs that suggest going to a college "near home" is a bargain. How so? If college costs the same anywhere, I'd like to be as far from home as possible. I grew up during the sexual revolution, and it really was a revolution, not the lame-ass version of everything today.
AThe women were naturally sexy, they didn't need kinked hair, tattoos, and blue-green makeup. And even in college, you met the odd babe virgin-by choice. I'm saying I'd go to a college as far from prying eyes as possible. Which tells you a lot about my extracurricular activities. Then again, back then, you had the right kind of women to work with.
NIGHT
Where does one find scrap iron when you need it? Nowhere around here. So here is the fast report of this wonderful Florida evening. The detective novel I’m reading is about the unsolved Moxley case, the one that proves with money, you can get away with murder. I kept an eye out for a birthday present for Alaine, coming up soon, but that is one difficult lady to shop for. Next, I went for a walk, wound up strolling down the aisles at the supermarket. Not shopping, but looking at prices. The soon-to-be-retired bunch are, unless they are some kind of rich, in deep trouble.
By the same token, my food budget has doubled since 2011, but I’ve also significantly shifted toward organics and other higher-priced items. I switched to margarine in 1976, when gas was 60¢ a gallon. An Apple computer was $1,299 and Jimmy Buffet released a song called “Margaritaville”. Average income was $12,000 to 15,000 per year depending on who you ask, but you could buy things with that money.
You like this, do you? Okay, in 1976 the world recorded the first ebola epidemic, in Africa, naturally. Both Howard Hughes and Mao died. And I cannot find anything on-line but I believe butter was around 50¢ a pound. My then girlfriend and I quit eating it because the authorities, who still had a shred of credibility back then, said butter clogged your arteries or something. And we got used to the taste of margarine.
I remember the year because prior to then, a university degree was a guarantee of success. Instead, my entire class became the first to seriously experience a phenomenon now known to every graduate. Employers wanted experience. Without it, you worked for minimum wage like everybody else. Sure, there were a few lucky ones with connections, but the highest paying job I could get that summer was at a lumber mill in Montana. It paid $5.15 per hour. Once every two weeks, and they held back a week’s pay.
And as for butter, I will likely buy it from the store. I know how to make it but the books don’t tell you it is a messy process. You have to get rid of the buttermilk liquid and it gets into everything whether you use a wooden spoon or an electric blender. Making butter is not easy. And so you’ll know if you try to make some, it isn’t yellow either. See photo.
The book I'm reading is called "Murder In Greenwich". I'm getting a good laugh at the portrayal of the rich, how they are just as susceptible to peer pressure as the rest of us. I think it comes from living in enclaves. The last thing I'd want is to be like the people I was raised around. It is also a study in Darwinism, how the tendency in offspring is toward the average. The metal plate is an erasing shield. In drawing prints and plans, it is intended to allow the user to draw complex lines, then carefully erase the unwanted sections. Yes, I asked myself the same questions--like why some people need help using an eraser. Then I remembered the people I was raised around.
ADDENDUM
It is a pity they took away the feature to post videos on this blog, or I’d include a demo of what I meant by last night’s referral to “dueling basses”. I know we are not the first to do it, but that is not what I said. I am aware of the spastic ZumZumZum bass riff-off of 1985, the many “improvisations”, and the guitar-bass duels you can’t count. I am not referring to anything of the kind.
If you view those arrangements you will see various departures from bass playing. The first is that they are not playing bass, but playing guitar riffs on the upper frets, usually with prolific use of distortion pedals. This “Pastorious” mode impresses guitar-fixated bassists, but not real bass players. Remember the definition of a great bass player is one who can play 16th and 32nd notes – but doesn’t.
Next departure is these bass lines are soloing. They [the bass lines in those videos] are not playing bass lines that could be used as accompaniment to most vocals. And anyone dancing would quickly lose the beat and stand there. And if you see some guy holding the electric bass like a sitar, that is not even in the same ball park.
What I am referring to is the fact that both Trent and I were playing ordinary bass lines that you could hear on a popular country song. I was playing a type of walking bass while Trent was playing a bass melody, all on the lower frets and lower strings. Part of the effect was how even the lowest notes would occasionally meet in unison and yet “harmonize”. This was due to the slight tonal differences between our two bass sounds, more like harmonizing overtones than tones.
Is this concept worth pursuing? I don’t know. Certainly the notes and patterns have been played before. It would make a dandy accompaniment if I can figure out a way to avoid it ever sounding like a bass and the lower notes on a guitar. Or, in a take-off idea, a bass solo that uses double-stops that are impossible for one musician to play alone, but that is getting away from pure bass.
“That’s funny.”
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