One year ago today: February 7, 2015, Popes and penguins.
Five years ago today: February 7, 2011, day of non-reckoning.
Nine years ago today: February 7, 2007, a generic day.
Random years ago today: February 7, 2010, not smiling hard enough.
MORNING
I am completely out of any interesting photos. That’s what I get going for a month staying at home like some old retired guy. Who can I blame? Okay, the cold weather. The rainy weather. Or my pal, JZ for canceling out, what was the reason this time? Some unexpected bills or something. So here is a picture from the website “Caption This”. With any luck it will distract you from how dull things have been around here lately. You know what I did this morning? I repaired an electric heater. Dreary.
How about some Super Bowl trivia? Hooray. Except this is not what you’d expect. This blog probably has zero or negative affinity for jocks, a fact I would be proud of. Considering a regard sports fans as slightly retarded ten year olds males with an inordinate allowance of gender confusion. Or those who cannot form scientific teams, so they join physical ones. Anyway, here is what I’ve got to say after 17 years of attending Super Bowl dinners over at Alaine’s. These statements are truth as God is my witness, I’m only writing them down because I expect disbelief.
1) I am not certain the game is football. I presume it is because most men I know into contact sports are football fans. I’ve been around the big screen at times, but it never held my interest long enough to actually pay attention. As for it being football, I would not bet my life on it.
2) One of the teams is called Broncos. I’ve seen the balloons and jerseys for sale everywhere.
3) Hanging out with the women instead of the men has been a sports game habit of mine wince the age of nine. This is where I learned what never to say around women. Because you don’t have to say it.
4) I do not know the name of one professional sports team, nor the name of any sports star except Wayne Gretzky.
5) The only two games where I know how the scoring works are baseball and hockey.
So there. Call me dumb. There is a sixth point I could add that I do know the names of 26 women I’ve met during sports games, where their brothers, fathers, and/or boyfriends were glued to the tube. But I won’t, I don’t tell names. And I stay away from marrieds as a rule. I don’t even go near divorces much either. Call me dumb again, but 26 is a big enough number that only men with fewer would doubt my claim. And that’s just during sports games, we have not talked music.
Is biodiesel green? Nope, not a chance. It costs more to produce than the equivalent gasoline and the true costs of pollution and production are hidden behind a veil of government subsidies and rhetoric. The fertilizers and tractors used to cultivate the corn all work on petrochemicals. The majority of these fuels are derived from frankencorn, which has disastrous consequences for the soil it is grown on. Not to mention the unlucky smallholders who live downwind from both the farmlands and the bumper crops of Monsanto/Cargill lawyers.
A tepui. I’ve been to this one.
NOON
Next, we kiss the game goodbye. What a disappointment for everyone. When I started up the batbike, the throttle cable popped. Um, there are two cables, one for each direction, and it was the return cable. Completely sheared off at the knuckle, shown here. This is unrepairable in the field and may involve a callout because I cannot even drive into the shop.
Until I get a place, the Honda has to wait. But once I do, one of the urgencies is to get some kind of covered parking for my vehicles. The Honda has aged a depressing lot in the past three years, mainly from outdoor storage. It’s been mostly under a tarp when parked more than a week but the paint is fading and the chrome is tarnished. My plan is to replace it with a 1985 Goldwing of 1,200cc.
None of this can happen until I buy a place of my own. At the present rate of annual increase, if I remain here, my rent since 2009 will be double by 2019. And every penny of that is lost equity though I can’t regret it because there was nothing I could do about it at the time. Thanks to the Wallace-Theresa Conspiracy, I had to come up with twice as much money because of the delay. I hope Wallace knows the money for my down payment is the exact amount I had promised him, if he’d kept his word.
Moving is thus not an option. The land rental here is well over $500 per month, yet this is the lowest priced area in town. I chuckle when I see places that are worse charging over $600 already, but really, time to get out of this area.
Just for the record, there are large numbers of Honda motorcycles for sale that would be suitable replacements for my sidecar. As far as I know, the frames were the same up until 1986. I knew the bike was old when I bought it, I think I got the whole rig for $2100, about half the asking price. Here is a selection available locally that would be compatible with the sidecar. All of these are in the $2500 price range and have between 12,000 and 33,000 miles. That’s like nothing compared to the nearly 200,000 on my 1978.
If I shop around, I think I could find a beautiful model for $1500 in near mint condition. That’s due to the way these motorcycles were originally marketed. There are hundreds of them sitting in storage because the owners got old and prefer to sit inside an air conditioned car. One consideration is that I hope to avoid carburetors in favor of fuel injectors. I would also like a 1200cc, not for speed, but because of the electronics and pulling a wagon. My model is the Interstate which was produced parallel to the Aspencade for some years back then. By 1987, the styling was getting too bizarre for me.
The reality is I cannot even dream of replacing this motorcycle until I have a secure place to live. There should be a mini-flurry of listings any time now, then a pull-back, then dozens of places for sale by early spring. (JZ is still saying buy anything livable asap and I’ll save whatever dollars I shell out on it by having an operational base in the interior to wait out a real bargain. The concept has merit.)
NIGHT
Before I forget, the negotiations on the latest property are down to a $5,000 difference. I don’t have the cash and he won’t budge. He attitude remains just go borrow the five grand. Yeah, from who? He won't "lend" it to me. Everybody I know who is financially sound is also up to their neck in mortgage debt. And certainly, none of them have that kind of cash available to help anyone but themselves. But, he’s as hard-nosed as I am.
Even when I prove I can pay him off in four payments guaranteed, he wants the moolah up front. I see his point, since I’m only giving him half price, but that still does not create a pile of surplus money out of thin air.
And a stockpile of olive oil like this is by no means extensive. In Florida. This is just all I could fit in one clear picture. I buy one small bottle for salads and it lasts me a year. I find it too expensive for cooking or baking. I’ve heard it is healthy for you, but I’m skeptical. One vegetable product can’t be uniquely good for you when the rest are totally bad. Like corn. If corn is bad for you, how can corn oil be good?
Speaking of bad food, I’ve had to take my favorite ham cubes off my diet. Those are now processed with modified corn starch, and I mean a lot of it. It is the third most prevalent ingredient. I’ve found substitutes for this ham, but much of it contains additives I have not yet looked into, like cherry powder and cultured celery. Oh boy, celery that’s been to the opera. It’s like regular celery except when you finally taste it you realize because of the packaging you paid a lot more than it was worth.
Deciding to stay home, I watched some documentaries on gold, seeking the ones that discuss the fact that tons of it are missing. Like the gold France sent to Canada for safekeeping during the war. Poof! Nowhere to be found. I have a suggestion for Trump once he puts Hillary in prison. His next move should be to jail everyone in the US government that took the gold recovered by Odyssey and gave it to Spain in return for some paintings that a certain US family wanted. Then disband the entire department, whichever one it was. Who cares. Corruption is corruption.
ADDENDUM
Oh boy, more music theory. Bluegrass pickin’. Like most, I have a core of five or six bluegrass tunes I really like, but you could take the rest. They sound like wannabe filler music, a phrase I normally associate with the indie on-line wired-in Millennial bunch. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t totally dislike all Millennials, and if that was my age group today, I would treat them like I did Hippies. A crowd that I can expertly blend into whenever convenient for me to do so. I only say I was a Hippie because I was so broke when I was young I looked like them.
Several times, I’ve delved into chicken-pickin’, a guitar technique that is often presented as specialized or advanced. This video exemplifies the method. There is a reason I bring it up, and it is that I have used this style on the bass since the day I began playing. Don’t go thinking I said I would riff like the guy in the video, I never said that. But watch what he is doing.
He’s using a pick and so do I. This partially explains why my bass playing adds a little “sparkle” to every country tune. I am faking chicken-pickin’ on the bass as far as it can be done. You’ll notice his right hand is only moving a fraction of the speed that he is fretting notes because he is playing two note chords with is other fingers. And who is the master of the two-note chord on bass? I can’t really chord and pick, but I know where to play “piano notes” that fake it.
On the bass, where I think it safe to say I play slower passages, I often really emphasize this right hand action, holding the pick away from the strings. Part of my act is looking like I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do next. Hey, I heard that back there. And if you think it is easy, why don’t you try it in a variety of different surprise settings making sure it is always appropriate and make it look spontaneous. You’ll find it is work to get the right response instead of the response most people get when they really are clueless.
My hillbilly act only fools newcomers for a few minutes, but it is that critical few minutes that they walk in, sit down, and order something. Most quickly catch on I’ve done this before and one interesting side effect is my inclination to “train the audience”. After a while the staff and regulars go along with my act when strangers arrive.
Today’s bassists are group-trained to hardly move their arm at all. They seem brainwashed to use only finger motions for sound. Wrong, you should play what sounds right no matter how it looks. I’ve kind of made exaggerating how it looks into a bit of a stage art form. I’ve learned what attracts attention the right way. Nor is it taboo to for good bassists to watch their left hand. That’s guitar crap that says don’t look. I watch my hand all the time. So do Anna Sentina and Scott Grove. These people have no time for losers.
And now, I’m going out for coffee. A sit down restaurant coffee.
[Author’s note: to prevent misunderstanding, what I do is not “chicken-pickin’ on the bass”. Instead, here’s a mouthful: I’m describing a technique I employ along with other procedures I’ve developed to get an effect that, if isolated, would be a close cousin to chicken-pickin’. I do not use my other fingers, only the pick on one note at a time. However, that note is often so important, I may require an hour and a piano keyboard to find it.
I have a lifetime of experience figuring out which note “captures” the essence of that piece of music, to the extent that that note is often “wrong”. Once I get the note or the run memorized, that is where I will flatpick it with that crisp chicken-pickin’ sound. I will also hold certain fretted notes, which I have never seen another bassist do. They’ll let an open string sound, but that’s not what I do, I avoid open strings. I will fret a note and use it as a decaying harmony sound while picking other runs. Think the steel guitar sounds of Garth Brooks or Merle Haggard, but on the bass. Sort of.]
Last Laugh
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