One year ago today: December 12, 2014, Guadalupe festival.
Five years ago today: December 12, 2010, counting “clickety-clacks”.
Nine years ago today: December 12, 2006, born suckers.
Random years ago today: December 12, 2003, record jackpot.
MORNING
Ass-clown of the month award again goes to Adobe Flash Player. This app is heavily laced with spyware but here is the catch. When they create an “upgrade”, it disables your earlier versions of Adobe Flash Player. In other words, it pretty much forces you to download the upgrade and all its attendant evils. The worst one of which is the dreaded Google Chrome. If you have Google Chrome on your computer, I’d advise you to get rid of it immediately. Except you can’t. The only way to get rid of Google Chrome is to re-install your operating system.
Yes, I am aware silver dropped to $13.78. You tell me where I can buy any around here, I’ll go there pronto. Silver right now is the calm before the storm. I’ve been reminded I’ve fallen behind on my gossip factor, so let’s talk about the lady guitar player and the duo that recently fell from grace. It was an easy decision, I attended her show as audience, taking in what I needed to know.
Explanation. She comps and I dislike comping. For openers it is boring but also, my customized bass lines work better with a rhythmist who at least makes some concessions to sounding like the original. Comp, and I will walk all over you on stage—not a healthy combination for a duo. Also, she is a willowy blonde (I prefer the sexist term “blonde” to just “blond” because I mean females.) And there was a potential problem with her being a blonde as well. What? You want to know? Okay, but you asked for it.
Part of her act is to trifle with the inevitable groups of men who gather around, the butt-sniffers. This, in itself, is normal for a lot of women in her category, but the repercussions are instant around a guy like me. When I tried to talk business with her, she began to trifle (with me also), meaning (or strongly hinting) she has no other mechanism for dealing with men. I simply walked away, but her later emails indicate she did not pick up on the connection. That spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e. Such women encourage the wrong kind of men, and I don’t associate with such losers even second-hand.
I’ve dropped many a gal in my life for encouraging the wrong kind of men. No, Sally, I don’t think you just met the “neatest guy ever”. You not only befriended another goof, you encouraged him, and now he's invited to my table and I have to deal with him. Yep, many a gal. In my life.
Now you might be thinking, I do the same thing on stage (only with women I wouldn’t touch), particularly the beefy middle-aged housewife types. However, not only am I very picky, these women won’t hover and try to go through her the way snarfs will with try to falsely befriend other men. Two musicians philandering on one stage is a bit much. Last, to get the real value of playing music with me, she would have to revamp her strumming style a bit. She has stated emphatically a few times that she intends to NOT put any work whatsoever into the duo she wants.
[Author's note: for the record, a pal of mine I have not seen in years (I just met the lady singer last month) called to chat. He knows her and confirms what I said here describes her to a tee. He lived with her a while and says I hit that nail right on the head, and he was glad I saw through her so quickly. I really can’t have anything more to do with her unless she gets serious. I’ve repeatedly asked for her favorites list and an equal number of times she dodges, saying she doesn’t have any favorites.
Which is nonsense, pure nonsense. She's too lazy to even make the effort to write a list. That sets the tone, if you ask me. But as I said, she apparently (I said “apparently”) has no other way of dealing with men. The smart ladies are careful not to treat me like other men, even if I walk and quack like a duck. And she is too old to change. Can a zebra change its spots?]
NOON
Acoustic – electric bass duos are not present in this part of the world. For that matter, the only common locality where this type of band is regularly discussed is in New Zealand. And that source is heavily jazz-oriented. Which I find to be tainted even in concept. All you get is some obscure folk or jazz novelty arrangements that intentionally keep the bass subservient, excepting the odd two-bar flourish. If you must know, quite frankly, the situation depicted in this photo outright disgusts me. Mr. Hero guitar player and his flunky.
And doing just that is where I shine. I very rarely play fast (16th notes or shorter) or loud. I have never been told to turn down, ever. To me, it is the guitar player who is the background or accompaniment instrument, much as they can’t deal with that. They learn very quickly that they cannot bring the show to a standstill by stopping (playing, like the Hippie). Doing that around me just makes them look dumb. On the other hand, I regularly do the same thing back at a guitarist who tries to riff off. He’ll quickly find himself in a world of empty space but for the laughter of the crowd. Think of it as a reminder of how much he needs my bass lines to get the right sound.
In fact, try it for yourself, try to find any youTube posts of acoustic guitar and electric bass. You’ll find a few abominably draggy jazz arrangements which seem designed to emphasize the bass is a background or supporting instrument. Every last one shows the bass in a subordinate role. This is totally contrary to my style, where my bass lines are easily the equal of anything the guitarist is doing, and often sports a better chop for the specific tune. I have yet to find a single posted video showing this dynamic in action and I can’t upload one myself until I find a guitar player willing to allow such a thing.
My show leaps out at the audience and pulls them into the music. Often I can impress a crowd simply by playing the original bass lines in a manner that makes them finally “hear” it and realize they’ve been missing out all along. But the concept of a guitarist as pivotal entertainer does not exist in my show. It just cannot happen unless he tries to get away with something, which invariably has the opposite effect on how he is perceived. I retain my title as “stage darling” and damn proud of it.
AFTERNOON
I took to making annual backup copies and this blog has become gigantic. Every post is backed up both locally and offsite, but you don’t need to know that. This went on while I was searching for properties and for a place we can rent to stay for a few weeks. The hotel/motel idea is out of the question, we only have so much in the budget. JZ, however, can really reveal his lack of experience when he suggests I look for a mobile home with low pad rental and retire in that. This picture is a house in my price range, but was in a suspect neighborhood in Plant City. (Suspect means the "crime color" is anything but nice and green.)
JZ says Tuesday, but I don’t want to start until I find a replacement heater. I prefer we fix it all in one day so there is no hot water interruption. There were used units all over until I needed one. The ordinary tank heaters have shot up in price tremendously. To think, thanks to Wallace, I gave a perfectly good unit away to Enrique a couple years ago. Wallace did not really wipe me out like he probably thinks. Nope, he slowed me down a bit. Not four years either. That's just how long it took me to find a place and it is not like I had to go to Memphis, Denver, Yakima, Bakersfield, Savannah, St. Augustine, Demopolis, and Naples five times in the process.
Then I made some preliminaries to mount the old Nikon in a wooden case, to replace the one that got butchered making it work again. Not so fast, modern technology is, I suspect, purposely designed so you cannot jury rig things. Try as you might, there is no easy was to line up all the buttons and controls on the first or second try. Plus the only transformer I had has a cable strong enough to sway the camera, so I have to clamp the camera down so it doesn’t move when I plug it in.
EVENING
It’s a slow recovery this time, jet lag from Lakeland. Which gave me time to search the entire corridor (Tampa-Orlando) to find nothing except a few properties in the areas of town we did not investigate. This Australian movie, “Oyster Farmer” was on the feed, so I stayed put and watched it. Are all Australian movies weird? It was about this guy who robs an armored card and mails the packet to himself at an oyster fishery. But the mailman has a heart attack and the packet falls in the river.
Now, he picks the only oyster farm where all the women are sex goddesses. Even his boss’s wife collects $1,000 shoes because she didn’t get a bathtub for a honeymoon gift. From what I can tell, the thief finally catches the boss’s father cutting up the $100 dollar bills to decorate a bathtub. He found it and realizes the money cannot be spent without the hero being caught. So I think the thief decides to abandon his sister, maimed from a car accident, and takes up with the postmistress.
Yeah, I know. Australian.
Myself, I got a hankering to program something on the Arduino. Just to keep current, so give me a day to cook up something worth coding. Flashing lights are always a good bet. I’m still reading the history book. The military armaments segments are great, but not so much the endless processing of Kings and Popes.
And Trump gave a speech about curtailing some of the federal control over the banking system. Careful, Don old boy, in Hebrew, them’s fighting words. Stay away from Dallas, DJ. Is it only me, or as anyone else noticed that that anti-Trump types are now patently reduced to simpletons who owe their livelihoods to patronage under the old and corrupt political system?
ADDENDUM
I’m the type without much sympathy for drug addicts. Watch this video on Meth if you have an hour. Some feel so sorry for those goofs, but I don’t, because I grew up with such goofs. Pay attention how they describe the drug rush. They say you can’t breathe; it is like dying for a moment. Well, people who find that sort of thing pleasurable and addictive have to be a special kind of stupid.
If I could find something to do in Montana as a teen, I’m not going to buy their tales that there is nothing else to do except drugs. Don’t call me cruel, these people should be helped by those others who feel they should be helped. But that help should not be in the form of pumping public money on clinics and such which are known to be ineffective. Cold turkey, that’s what works once pregnant women start using drugs.
But sympathy? It is wrong to auto-think that sympathy is part of every solution. Too often feeling sorry just complicates the goal, particularly when these addicts detect it brings special treatment—and oh, are they quick on the take-up. All too often, this “sympathetic” treatment does not offer these addicts the hard choices that must be made. I remain the Libertarian. Help them all you want, but do not compel others to do the same. Doing so just makes you a different type of addict.
Are you too sympathetic? Ask yourself if you ask this question: are they stoopid because they do drugs, or do they do drugs because they are stoopid? Bothering with such nonsense is, in my opinion, already siding with the bad side of the matter.
Last Laugh
Not this guy again . . .
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