January 21, 2015

MORNING
           Back to my regular format, as y’day’s soldier’s letter resulted in the second lowest readership since 2007. So much for my foray into quoting other authors too much. Reading the morning paper on a beautiful morning, I see tucked away on page 3A is the notice that the government health insurance is sending your personal data to private companies that “specialize in advertising and analyzing Internet data”. If you are pregnant, Google Adsense knows about it before your husband. The feds claim the information is untraceable but once the government hands them any single item of cross-referencable material, you are sunk.

           I think that explains the profusion of “tax attorney” ads all over the radio these days. You know, the ones that want to help you settle. It’s a sign of the times, how the tax department can now take anything they can find. Because, while they always could go after your assets, they never did so on such a scale until after (did you get that, you non-paranoids, that’s “after) you dumb-bunnies with nothing to hide made it so easy for them.

           In my day, it was well-known in accounting circles that the IRS would only prosecute when there was an 8:1 ratio of recoverable assets. If you owed $10,000, they left you alone unless they could rapidly discover $80,000 in assets. It was self-policing in two ways: audits cost money and the investigation very often tipped off the victim. (Until convicted, he is a victim, not a criminal. Read the tax law.)
           As it used to be, people got suspicious when a stranger began asking around the neighborhood about your your son’s paper route money and your daughter’s babysitting income. Then along came the post-hippie generation with their anti-conspiracy theories who not only told the government anything, they told on others as well. Now, an audit is as simple as a Google search. There are people who surf the Internet looking for people to sue.
           I’m no revolutionary, but I’ve always advocated it a patriotic duty to keep as much information as one legallycan off government files. Patriotic because the Constitution forbids search and seizure—thus anyone who makes it easier for the authorities to disobey the Constitution is not a patriot. It amounts to supporting a corrupt and un-representative regime. The keeping of records is a patent declaration the intention to abrogate the Constitution. But the uneducated cannot grasp that.

           For that matter, non-computerized records had another advantage. The bad guys had to show up and ask the clerk for documents. Very often the clerk was somebody's cousin Sally. But now, there is a very stupid but popular "disassociation" with computer files. It may be your private data, but the file belongs to somebody else who is under no obligation to protect it. Hence, the illegal search is now also anonymous. Hey, it wasn't me that let it get like that.
           And how about Shariac Law? It seems some countries are allowing enclaves of Islamic residents to set up their own laws and behave like independent states. They should contact Detroit, who can offer truly incredible foresights concerning the outcome of ghettoized minorities.

           Author’s note: the rapidity of the Google searches on your personal information is not as difficult or slow [for them, Google, to accomplish] as many people imagine. That is, they think Google needs time to examine your hard drive. Wrong. All computer files tag any file changes with a new date. Thus, the bad guys need not access the whole file. Instead, they scan only for evidence of a date change and that is where they follow up.

NOON
           Trivia. It costs $140,000 per pound to send anything to Mars with our current technology. It is not true the federal government prevents a border fence with Mexico. The federal jurisdiction is only on the actual frontier. There is no federal law that says states bordering Mexico cannot build their own fences back from the border, say fifty feet into their own territory.

           The photo is not pizza. It’s a revealing shot that confirms my complete lack of skilled training. Most people would not use a gear pattern to print circle radii. But those were the first variety of round shapes that I cut. So complicated to generate or not, they have become my preferred method for making wooden fly wheels. The scroll saw has resulted in the greatest acceleration of home projects in my life. Some of you probably got that.

           The book [I’m reading]. I’m at the point where Beth finds Fanny and the baby in the coffin. I understand the intentions but I still can’t see that she is getting anything more or less than she bargained for. Like most women, they will not accept that unless they are themselves an exciting person, there is no chance of marrying and keeping an exciting man. Such men are staggeringly too rare and they know it.
           This Beth broad is just not getting it. Actually, neither does the parade of jackasses who won’t give her up and move on. I’d have dumped her long ago; she’s rather heavily warped in the bean. Like the Florida women I’ve dated. A better title for the book so far would be “Upon Discovering That Being Pretty, Rich, and Young Is Just Not Enough For Some Women”
           If you have the half hour, here is an utterly engrossing video of some guys building a traditional log cabin in Finland. I can’t understand a word, but these dudes know what they are doing.
           Here’s a report that a Yale freshman “survived a four-story fall from a dormitory window”. All I’m going to say is that is too bad and I’m very, very, very sorry to hear that.
           Then, there is New Jersey, a woman tried to burn her newborn alive. The woman’s first name is “Hyphernkemberley” and that’s all I need to know. Ut-tut. I said that’s all.

AFTERNOON
           Here’s more evidence about never owning enough clamps. I could not help but remember my boy scout “shoe shine box” as I put together this radio cabinet. That’s the box on top and the 5V power supply below, which was dated “2014”. Remember the shoe shine box [of my cub scout days]? The one I built with a broken chisel? The other guys showed up with varnished boxes with little drawers with custom cut-outs for their polishes and fancy carrying handles.

           I suppose the blatant question would be why I did not, like the other scouts, just get my father to build the box for me? Anyone who asks such a stupid question either just got here or has not been paying attention. When I want my head slapped fifty times an hour, I’ll go ask a real Nazi, not some alcoholic who only thinks he’s tough enough to be one. Yeah, yeah, we all know about the crowd who thinks if they had been there they’d have done better than me. The land is full of big talkers.

           So I’m looking for a good old movie I’ve never seen and I run across Citizen Kane. That should be easy to find. Nope, it’s as sewed up now as the day the copyright office opened. It strikes me odd who would pay top dollar to watch a corny movie made in 1941. While it is available on the private sites, the other question remains who would be chuckleheaded enough become a member of a club that is stealing movies. Judging by the number of offers, there must be enough of the lean-witted to make a go of it.
           In other news, I made one final attempt to get the Boss tracks to clean up enough to use on the Tascam recorder, but nope. Then, I managed to hit the erase button, so that kind of made up my mind to completely redo the music from scratch on the new machine. I’m also writing another original. It’s called “We Sing Along To Every Song”. I cannot possibly be the only musician who has noticed the lack of comedy hits on the country charts. Where are this generation’s Don Gibsons and Boxcar Willies?
           Anyway, the song is about how the quality of women after a certain age falls off so badly that the only way a man can get one is to severely lower his standards—even if he doesn’t have any. So I’m going to Jimbos II for a few and write some verses. And maybe sketch out some cases for my solar panel gear. These items, like the charge controller, are designed only for indoor use. But the first thing I learned building the cPod camper was how to make wood waterproof. (Because the cPod is watertight, having the electronics in a second such casing is redundant, but deliberate.)

EVENING
           Here’s your top secret picture. These look like early war B-17s. See the old style tail fins and lack of chin turret? Even the formation looks authentic. But it’s that number behind the center airplane. Is it “435”? And what is it doing there? One would say it’s skywriting, but the pilot would have to be dyslexic. Two of the numbers are mirror images. I’m stumped. These days it would read “Coca Cola”.

           I had to leave the place alone a bit to let the glue dry. Having only ten bucks on me, I swaggered into Jimbos II. The place was full of regulars. That’s one of the payoffs of being a little on the intelligent side. You can go to a pub and have a good time for practically nothing. You see, you don’t depend on the place to keep you entertained. Instead, I designed a sort of redneck alarm system. Using gears, pawls, and scrap lumber of the precise kind you’d find in my shed ‘round back.

           I also composed half the song, but as it progressed it was more of a commentary on the whole social media brand of dating. I actually try to rhyme “orange”, “golf”, and “penquin”. This was unsuccessful, of course, as with most Internet dating. Now, having a budget (and sticking to it), I got up to leave, whence a rather young lady offered to buy me free drinks if I would stay. Ahem. I really like her, but I have an aversion to women I meet in bars. I said no thanks, but hinted if she were to ask again or someplace else, I would probably be inclined to accept.
           She’s single, with an eight-year-old daughter, a friends-without-benefits roomie, and three jobs. And “purdy as a prairie flower”. And looks nothing like the photo below. That’s today’s gossip quota as well.


Last Laugh
Thar she blows!

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