One year ago today: October 29, 2014, taking advantage.
Two years ago today: October 29, 2013, Paris, TX.
Three years ago today: October 29, 2012, food as entertainment.
Four years ago today: October 29, 2011, the Fall Festival
Five years ago today: October 29, 2010, a potential investment.
Six years ago today: October 29, 2009, Rhodesia to California.
Seven years ago today: October 29, 2008, the stealth apartment.
Eight years ago today: October 29, 2007, gender, weight, & nationality.
Nine years ago today: October 29, 2006, they’ll tow your boat.
MORNING
While researching gas cans for my sidecar, I finally saw what I believe is the real thing. This is a wartime still from a German newsreel around the time of the battle of Moscow. Incidentally, new records being declassified are indicating that that many not have been such a big and important battle or turning point as the Stalin-era propagandists have put about. Anyway, look at the front of the sidecar. There are clearly two twenty-gallon gasoline tanks hanging on either side of the unit. I am looking to put one five-gallon can one side.
It started when I began to avoid open string work. I don’t hit an open string unless I plan on it. Finger bass players are taught to muffle unused strings with both hands, but real bass players use a pick and don’t bother with such finery. Why, if you people learned how to play the right way, you would not have to learn all those techniques to cancel out your own errors, right?
Without giving away the shop, I will say that I’ve “undone” my training and now play each note in a scale, or in the key of a song, for a more dynamic sound. I tend to slightly bend thirds and “back-fret” sixths. I can watch a video of myself and spot the method instantly. Nope, I will not give a demo, but when you hear me play a scale, it has an unusual melodic quality to it. It no longer sounds like just a scale. End of bass lesson.
Oh, look at my ratings soar as soon as I mention silver. I know nothing, but how about my predictions for the metal? First, there is no silver to be bought unless you know somebody. The people who own physical silver are not selling at any price. The banks are keeping silver prices down to where they like them, but that cannot be done with physical silver. They do it because there are something like 200 times as many silver certificates than real silver. The banks are manipulating the silver certficates, not the silver. Same with gold. If I had any gold, the last thing I would do is sell it at this time.
Hence, I see a bubbling situation that has not quite yet boiled over. The western powers have had their militaries manipulated into crushing any country that does not have a central bank. I think that due to high-speed electronic trading, we are all going to hear that one day soon, silver will suddenly be trading at $100 or $200 per ounce. Just like that. But only desperate people will sell any. For the crap I had to put up with, I want $1,000 per ounce, cash on the barrelhead, NQA. Don’t like, go buy it someplace else.
If you extrapolate, that would put gold at $10,000 an ounce, which right now sounds ridiculous. But as that Keiser dude puts it, at those rates owning one ounce [of gold] could save your life. The merry-go-round has to stop sometime. And things are more like they are now than they have ever been before. Maybe I’ll go get some silver today just to see if it can still be done. Later, nope. None left except the “smelters”. And once you do business with them, it is difficult to stop doing business with them.
It’s turning out there is an almost certain way to knock yourself out of the Presidential race. Try turning on Trump, especially with the angle that “experienced” politicians can do a better job than an upstart. Yeah, so how does that explain the mess that is out there which Trump proposes to clean up? Just experienced politicians doing their job again? Listen, bozos, Trump has your number. And he’s getting better at exposing your sordid backgrounds.
What? Well, sure Trump has a background, he’s a businessman. The rest of you are fair game. You spent years manipulating the rules so nobody could attack you with real issues, and now along comes an outsider who waxes your ass with the podium floor.
NOON
Hmmm, good results from my trial “Ten Year” links in the Yesteryear segment. It is a mite surprising because I don’t usually write anything like the historical locations that do the “today in history” type publishing. Could it be people are sometimes just interested in the passage of time, the idea of how long ago it was that some Joe Schmoe like me wrote something, or did something? But I can tell you right now, those links are very labor intensive, regularly taking longer to set up than to write and post the blog.
Dear Plano. Thanks for building a water-resistant O-ring sealed box with the inside dimensions exactly too small to accept any standard size sheet of paper, a business size envelope, or a road map without having to bend over one edge.
It is called a “gear box” but who’d ever think anybody might want to carry papers and such in a waterproof container? See, I lost you already. You can’t put anything important in the box without bending it, but other than that, it is a gear box. Let me guess, Plano is part of the “greatest generation”. I can tell you people who the real gear boxes are.
The next thing I know, I’m stuck waiting on a phone call. My medical insurance keyed in a wrong number somewhere and you don’t mess with your medical. So I waited (turned out most of the day) and meanwhile figured out on the bass how to fake the lead break to Merle’s “Momma Tried”. Have you ever heard any one chicken-picking the bass? Ha, what a hoot! One cannot play “real” lead breaks, but nor would one want to. You can’t bend the bigger strings as much and you also cannot play the “air” or dead spaces which would cause a missed bass “beat” note.
In other words, the bass is actually more complicated to play a lead break on because you still have to play a bass note where there would be a gap in the rhythm. So, full circle. Lots of lead players say they are playing bass by riffing of, now I can play a real lead break. Ray-B said it would come to that, but whoever thought he meant chicken-picken. It’s neat, you don’t even need the guitar player, which is “yuge” plus in itself.
And it was fun, as my news feed showed some twerp named Kasich trying to attack Trump. Well, you know what happens when you start with that nonsense. Classic Trump, pointed out he got lucky, he was part of the Lehman fiasco, and that he only got nasty when his polls tanked. I didn’t catch it all, but Trump finished with something like, “You can have him.” Priceless.
AFTERNOON
I’ve got the ammo box bags all properly mounted, only to discover I could use much smaller (shorter) bolts, so I’ll replace those. I repainted any exposed edges though I’m not going to knock my self out like the first model. And I’ve devised a type of sliding rail that makes the metal bedframe out of the best available material, another metal bedframe. A third of my body weight is only somewhat over 100 pounds these days, so I’m betting that two 12-inch slats of angle iron will hold my weight over another span of 41 inches.
This is looking from the back of the cPod trailer toward the front, along the left sidewall. The exterior wall is rigid, the interior wall slides out like a drawer, extending the sleeping floor by 29”, giving a six foot long sleeping comparment. I devised the glides from three pieces of angle iron, the black lines in the drawing. The two bolted to the exterior wall create a glide path. The third piece of iron pulls out with the interior wall.
If this proves fragile, there is plenty of room to place a second set of rails. If one is sufficient, I may bring this new cPod in at a third the weight of the original. The only thing I’m iff about is the mattress, which has to fold in half somehow when the “drawer” is shut for travel. This system still leaves a 38” wide space side-to-side. If I have to grease the rails, they are between two slabs of plywood. Wish me luck, I’m designing this as I go along. Because it took too much to try to make plans, I had to see what didn’t fit, so I started building.
EVENING
Coffee, then a stop at the club. Nothing there except loose women, so I retired home to bake some spuds with sausage and cheese. Believe me, it there was sweet-all else to do, I would pursue it. But wasting money on maybe-ifs is a young-man’s game. There was one floozie in there tonight who played anything she could on the jukebox and danced with anybody who came along. Great party animal, yeah, until an hour later when her biker boyfriend waltzes in.
JZ called and he is in no mood to travel or even go for a brew. Good, he is learning the advantages of staying put, right at home. His plan is to drive out here on the weekend, at which point I will endeavor to talk him into a trip to at least Arcadia, maybe further. It’s the old formula, he provides the vehicle and I provide the gas. That’s an interesting question on accounting exams. The truck is a fixed expense, the gas is variable. Nothing blurs that distinction like actually driving around.
It’s chilly again, which makes me wish I was born in August instead of November. It’s bad enough gaining a year but when it is gloomy and the daylight is short, hell, I quit partying years ago. It is also a frozen and useless part of the year up north, nothing to look forward to but the depths of winter. I don’t care for winter. I might consider that otherwise if I had a cozy house. And I’m working on that, believe me.
ADDENDUM
Let’s talk music, especially bass music. I’ve got a couple irons in the fire, the false starts far outnumber the worthwhile contacts. One of them is an “acoustic” band, one of those things that can mean many different things, but usually indicate the talker is musically uneducated. They worst ones can be the type who formerly played in I guess what you’d call “non-acoustic” bands and now think getting rid of amps is a step toward musical purity. There’s a touch of that in the feedback I’m getting this time. The bass in this picture is small, around the size of a ukulele. Read on.
I watched her videos. Um, a PA system is not acoustic, ma’am. A studio recording is not acoustic either. Playing an acoustic through a Dean Markley isn’t the real deal either. But several times she has reminded me that “the band is acoustic”. There is no band, it appears to be her and a reggae drummer hung up on a beat. But hey. I think she might be hinting at me playing an upright, in which case she can buy it for me and haul it around.
Two other warning signals is she will not provide any contact except Facebook. And she claims to not have a song list because she “plays so many different styles”. These are normally “yuge” alarm signals, but she plays many of the same clubs I used to. Funny, isn’t it, because this would make it the second time in a row I’ve run into people I’ve never seen and they’ve never seen me. But we worked the same circuit.
She also wrote that she plays a Kala bass. Ah, I finally find out the name of the instrument I first saw at the Hollywood Golf Club a couple years ago. It is patterned on a baritone ukulele, although these puppies cost a pretty penny. A solid body is $1300+. Anyway, toots, that is totally an electric instrument that would have no worthwhile acoustic sound.
But, I’ll leave the topic for now, as once you get your standard musician on about non-standard bass instruments, they go berserk on you. Twelve-string monstrosities and fretless junk, all psycho-guitar fried-brain lunacy. I mean, it really takes a guitar mind-set to start cooking up a lot of the crap that’s floating around out there about bass playing. 99% of them plainly do not have the aptitude to grasp what real bass playing is all about. And the guy who invented “finger bass” must still be laughing his ass off. I mean, look how many losers bought into it.
I may test play one even though I consider it just another guitar-brained gimmick. A small scale bass with fret spacings that resemble a guitar. It brings water to the guitar-tard’s eyes. That’s all we need to grow another bumper crop of guitarists who think they can play bass. I’ve never met one who could. Oh, they can riff off, but they cannot play a tune. Twenty years ago I had a small bass with a great sound, it was meant to teach children who could not handle a full sized bass.
But I gave it away and I even forget who I gave it to. It was $259 back then, so close to a thousand today. I took that bass with me to Hawaii, Thailand, Mexico, and the Philippines. It easily fit in the overhead.
Last Laugh
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