April 18, 2015

Yesteryear
One year ago today: April 18, 2014, case dismissed.
Five years ago today: April 18, 2010, more guitar players.
Six years ago today: April 18, 2009, I hate Greyhound.

MORNING
           Morning finds me absorbed in a murder mystery. Despite its absorption with the feminist-slave-ethnic thing, it is actually interesting. About two archeological students shot for digging in the wrong spot on a Florida island. But as you’ve guessed, the author is a woman. She lives in a daily world that constantly reminds her that her great-great grandmother was a slave. Mentioned every other page, without fail. But so far, the most fantastical part is how all her female friends are slack-jawed by her “best friend”, named nothing less than Joe Mantooth.

           I quote. “His torso traced the triangle of the idealized male form and at the nape of his neck hung a long black ponytail, carelessly tied.” Of course, her girlfriends could not believe that she “went home every day to this half-crazed, fully-sexed hunk of man”, but just as friends, of course. The narrative goes on to say how he is too dumb to drive a car or work an ATM, but he can make flint axes and catches her fish for supper. Ah, the ultimate female fantasy. The devoted superman lapdog who will do as a friend until something better comes along.
           If you can read past her relentless reminders that the world exists solely to be unfair to her and her kind, there is a great plot. It doesn’t grip you, but at least it isn’t just another Patterson or Grafton detective assembly line novel. The book is called “Artifacts”. These days, it is easy enough to find the rest, so I won’t bother with the citations.
           The book also touches on a few issues that disturb true believers in America. Such as land taxes whose primary purpose is to ensure nobody ever really owns their own place. But the way the book is written, the authoress may well be unaware she is even doing so. She is just looking at the dark skin on the back of her hands and fretting about that, too.

NOON

           "Contrary to popular opinion, the hustle is not a new dance step--it is an old business procedure. –Fran Lebowitz

           This is a good shot of the monster bike tire. We are examining what doesn’t work right, and among other things, the aluminum welds did not hold up so well. These were the much-touted welds done at a shop where “the welding gun costs a thousand dollars”, but this is the reason I was unconvinced. A weld is a weld, and we’ve had the metal immediately beside the weld crack on us before.

           My speculation is that the heat somehow weakens the adjacent parts. This bicycle, massive as it appears in the photo, is nearly weightless. Agt. M is pointing out that this brand of tire is not very durable. He has hopped three-foot high fences on this bicycle.
           This crazy Mary Evans writes a good book, but she cannot get over her fixation over her ancestors. Every other paragraph, on and on she goes. And it is plainly personal because many of the things she describes back in the 1700s did not pertain to that era. A plantation owner did not think in terms of leaning back thinking about "how all the hard work had been done by others". If you can read past that layer of nonsense, this lady knows how to write. The suspects don't emerge until well into the tale. And she avoids the crime comics angle of tricking the suspect into a confession. At least so far.
           Yep, I'm reading at noon. No way am I going outside. And don’t get me wrong about the book, I am after all, all reading it. I know real people who live in that shallow schizoid world where everything they don’t or can’t have is somebody else’s doing. The plot follows some formula I don’t recognize but it is better than most recent bestsellers. Which this book will never be because it is primarily some lady crying the blues.
           By 3:00 PM, I said to heck with it an went to the movies Sometimes you get lucky in that the movie advertised is not shown. Instead, I got to see a chick flick called “5 to 7”. About an affair (an English concept) between a married lady and a younger man. It was enough to keep me interested and there are no California-style furious sex scenes. I’ll review the movie later, maybe tomorrow.

EVENING
           A trailer full of 6-foot-6 plus Russians pulled behind the market to shoot a movie. To celebrate, they release a flurry of helium balloons with patterns of the American flag. One batch wafts across the road to the club, where it contacts the transformer on the pole outside. Kerboom, the whole neighborhood is plunged into darkness. Now, this doesn’t bother me. I’ve been to college and I’ve dealt with people like Wallace and Theresa. I’m okay with drinking a beer is a quiet, unlit location with no electric or A/C.

           The Russian Balloon Attack of 2015. We had to restrain a couple of patrons who had not yet been weaned off TV and jukebox music. Their game plan was to string some painter’s handles together and reset the [transformer] breaker themselves. Seriously, they could not deal with the heat and quiet and were going to climb that pole. The billiards players had to adapt to shots only toward the light. The Russian brigade, seeing all the trouble they caused, wisely hauled ass.
           At that point, I left. I can’t take half-educated Florida people in broad daylight. I was quite prepared to let them climb that pole. I had taken a few photos earlier, so I’ll see if any of these giant skinny Russians were in any. Tallest men I’ve ever seen, at least 6-6. Maybe it was the Moscow circus? And here is a picture of the transformer and the helium balloons. In case anybody thinks I make this stuff up.



Total at time of posting: $18,158,645,601,512.82
national debt

ADDENDUM
           Some of last evening was more documentaries. It’s a pity how shallow the education system has become. I watched a few “official” reports of such things as the F-111 “swing-wing” aircraft. There appears to be nobody pointing out to today’s “historians” that most of that was propaganda. Even folks like me with minor knowledge of aircraft design saw the thing was too big for a fighter and too small for a bomber. And everyone knew it was a waste of money. And it was understood we would lose the war in Vietnam because the generals kept finding uses for these strange weapons.
           So it is pretty amazing to hear the latest crop of military experts buy into the hype. Worst are the incessant reports of how the “Nazis” built stealth aircraft. I didn’t know a political party could construct such complicated airplanes. But I’ll say it again, they were not stealth, they were either tailless gliders or the wings were swept back because the engines turned out to be heavier than at first design.
           Some jerk from the back room will always pipe up and say the glider shape was still a stealth design. Nonsense, it had a wooden frame so it would have been largely undetectable to radar no matter what it looked like. My point is these new researchers seem to be buying the party line. And the military are such experts at putting on a hyper-show that some of the 1960s and 1970s newsreels seem corny. It is hard be believe anybody today takes them seriously. Except the Milleniums, who apparently will believe anything if it is posted on a smart phone. In my day, before dummies bought it, they had to post it on the television.


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