One year ago today: November 6, 2014, stealth radio.
Five years ago today: November 6, 2010, frozen orange juice.
Six years ago today: November 6, 2009, they screamed
Nine years ago today: November 6, 2006, mostly shop talk.
MORNING
We might be on to something. It seems we’ve stumbled across a property that has to be sold. Stay tuned, it may be what I’ve been waiting for. A property that has to be sold for gambling debt. Small town gossip can be a valuable ally if you know just how to work with it. All I’ll say is times have changed and when you are a buyer, keep your true identity 110% secret until AFTER the price is finalized, that is, do not allow the seller the option to run a credit check on you. That’s playing dirty and they know it.
JZ sees the merit of buying anything we can afford as soon as we can possibly afford it. My position is proceed with caution, get a bigger bang for your buck, because we now know we have bigger down payment than almost anybody else that would be looking for “just a place”. There is a codicil on that which I should explain.
I am not against mobile homes, I just don’t care for trailer courts. JZ does not make the distinction. I’ll accept a mobile home on its own private acre, no neighbors, no bylaws. JZ says as long as you own the land, anything is fair game. JZ says anything will serve for now, I'm saying no trailer courts. On principle alone.
Here’s a Shure 606 I picked up at the Goodwill for $7.00. Checked it out this morning and it is brand new. Which works out to about 10¢ on the dollar. Shures are not the top of the line gear, but they are the microphone that gives me the best sound that to me sounds real. When I first began performing publicly (age 13), the mircrophone that ruled the market was the Shure 585. Even though I didn’t sing at that time, I often spoke over a microphone. So of course I like the microphone that I know.
My newsfeed shows Trump telling a heckler, “You, be quiet”, and he has learned to ask questioners if they are the press. I told ya, it would get to the stage where he simply rejects the evident troublemakers in favor of real people with real questions. But I can’t wait until some stupe asks him an obvious baiting question and Trump tells him it is none of his business.
Last, 2015 must go into history as the Year of the Flat Tire. I was put out of commission twice, with one repair costed out at $655 and the other at $160. Hence, you can ask all you want why there was no summer trip this year, other than the unfruitful Amtrak to Winter Haven. With a window seat. That first flat was the ONLY time I’ve ever had a flat on a motorcycle in my life, that was June 20, 2015. Today, the 66 mile round trip to JZ’s place was the test run. The batbike purrs like a kitten. There are others on the road, but people don’t stop and take their pictures, or at least not as much. My unit is the king of sidecars.
It is also getting further from original as it is a working unit and is continually field-modified. And JZ thinks the ammo boxes are a brilliant addition. The cat’s pajamas.
NOON
Back at the cPod camper, all the major panels have been cut and fitted, though not fixed. Since I’ve never built a drawer period, much less one that is almost 15 cubic feet, I’m tacking each piece in separately and eyeballing everything. The ½” sidewalls lets the thing move around more on me and I may resort to exterior buttress support. Experience is coming into play, I’m beginning to see that I should trim the travel configuration down to 20” or 17” from 24”. This involves only six easy cuts.
Confidence also helps, it no longer requires four hours to work up to making each cut. Here’s another photo. It a panel with chalklines marking out a roof or floor panel. It’s really building two boxes just making sure they will nest every place where it is important. The radio was on and I see the press is largely still sticking to the theme that the biggest problems in America are overseas commitments and marijuana reform. Yep, I might be buying a place in the country not a moment too soon.
We stopped for a root beer in Naples and wound up chatting with the staff for a half hour yesterday. It’s a strange world, they were all from the area but did not know where the library was or where the nearest beach is with free parking. (JZ adamantly refuses to pay for parking or allow me to pay.) Something in the character of Naples has changed since I first went there. Except for dropouts plying service jobs, there seems to be nobody under 30 in the town.
I worked until dark at an easy pace, taking stock of all the little “mistakes” that happen along the progress of a first-time design. Lowering the walls (from what you see in the picture) will lighten the entire structure and really lighten the side walls. And thinner pieces have more lateral strength when they are smaller. Ever tried to crack a really small peanut? Same principle.
Speaking of food, I got back into the house with a craving for: SPAM. Good old Hormel SPAM. Not a sandwich, just a couple thin slices with pepper and baby-poop mustard. What a craving, I finally drove the scooter up to the Piggly Wiggly and the only tin they had was bacon flavored. That didn’t stop me. What? Do I like bacon? Sure, but no more so than any other type of flavorful meat. I’m not crazy about it like some people.
NIGHT
How I love it, another Friday home with a good book. This time, it is on cabinet making, which I thought might help me with my cPod design. So far it is mostly the one aspect of the work I need the least—fancy joinery and blind corners. Here is as close as we got to the pier in Naples, that’s the pier we found with the GPS, but we were miles further away and walked there. Somehow JZ remembers the parking was free, but I remember paying for it. That was the first leg of our trip to Ft. Myers Beach, so it was what, two years ago?
I said great generation, not great guitarists, duly noted. I should be going out to hear this chick who has been advertising, but maybe tomorrow. We’ve traded a few e-mails and her conception of the role of the bass is as bad as the rest of Florida.
Twice she has made quips like how bass is a “percussion” instrument and that it is an optional sound in a band. You get a lot of that attitude in musicians who focus on themselves and their own music rather than what the crowd wants. It is not uncommon to meet people in the industry for twenty years who don’t know or appreciate top-notch bass playing. They are the ones Guitar Center can sell an electric stand-up bass with seven or eight strings. It’s no use doing a good job around most of these types. You’ll just get the audience fired up (listening to the bass) and they’ll kill the mood with “Simple Man”.
She even wrote one note saying in a very Space-Hippie-ish moment of lunacy that the bass was a “support” instrument. Okay. Now explain why 99% of the top hits of every major chart have an electric bass, while only 87.9% have an electric lead guitar. She again mentioned the Kala bass, as if it is something special. Folks, it only looks like a ukulele. It is not an acoustic and is a totally electric instrument. Jeez, gimme a break on that, will you.
ADDENDUM
Yeppers, another Indian summer, which are not the pleasant experience in Florida like the same in Montana. This amounts to a heat wave, and here is a busy picture showing the indoor temperature this morning as 93F. The memory says it maxed at 93.4, that’s inside the house.
Can you see the trick statement? It seems insignificant, but it isn’t when I point out the real problem. It’s the radio. Did you even question my statement that the button is missing? Nope, because it is so “logical”. It was enough to read it to satisfy the mind, and yet “missing” is a negative. As if the button is gone and should be there. Yet, the button is not missing at all. It has been removed, years ago, and taped inside the radio cabinet. The idea is to stop people from adjusting the tone setting away from full bass.
The point is, cluttered backgrounds are just not a good idea. Ask any man who ever sent his wife a picture with a bikini in the background. He may have been at the beach with his church group, but if you wonder what the wife is automatically going to think, see today’s last laugh.
I had a western movie playing, kind of an “optional” “support” movie, a “percussion” movie, you might say. It keeps things going in the background. Called “A Sierra Nevada Gunfight”, it wanders all over the place portraying mainly the least glamorous parts of the old west. Gronk farmers, stupid kids, unfriendly natives, rockslides, and no bright colors. Kind of what I imagine it would be like growing up in Saskatchewan.
Last Laugh
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