One year ago today: April 19, 2015, the Swiss lady.
Five years ago today: April 19, 2011, wrong, stupid, or both.
Nine years ago today: April 19, 2007, his devastating girlfriend.
Random years ago today: April 19, 2009, cute, but weird.
MORNING
There is no doubt I require a third vehicle. This morning was a grind push starting the Goldwing. Carburetors can go dry after a week, meaning the first two pushes are just enough to prime the cylinders. And there are four of them, all thirsty enough to impact the gauge needle if left idling for a quarter hour. But with some helpful strangers, one here and another a block from the other end, the batbike is in the shop now. I spent the morning reading a new book and waiting for the city bus.
What new book? “Port Mortuary”. I meant a rarity: an older book that was misplaced in my floppy disk cabinet. Found it last evening and it is a terrible book so far, which means by page 33. Darn rights I’m going to read it for one good reason. It is written in a style that western women by and large have been brainwashed into thinking is normal. Thanks to my ex, I know it is not normal, for she detested it as much as I do. We recognize it is nothing more than a juvenile method of avoiding either taking charge or accepting blame.
Not that being that way is wrong, I’m not saying that. What I am saying is in a world like mine, that strain of behavior is very, very, well-defined. Not a shred of feminine mystique about it whatsoever. Read the book yourself for an amazing insight into how this category of women actually think, guys, they are a majority and a lot of men could stand to learn a lesson or two about such thought patterns. What amuses me is that the author is obviously writing in ernest what she conceives to be clear and logical thinking.
The style is crime with a sexist, feminist edge. Example. She is called to an emergency situation by the president who sends a driver to pick her up. In her thinking, this is the appropriate response: She insists on an hour’s delay to return home to carefully choose what outfit to wear and find matching but sensible shoes. Your stupid little national emergency situation can wait, she is not going anywhere until she has on her sexiest outfit and French perfume, and spends the rest of the ride not pondering the circumstances, but fretting that the driver’s eyes are “lingering where they have no business”. I simply have to read this book.
The entire plot so far is full of this brand of airhead rationality. A man has been murdered, but she’s more concerned if his dog is being fed. So far, 90% of the content has been about her and her imagined importance in the scheme of things. We know she is descended from monks, she likes citrus shampoo, she’s screwing the General, and the niece she raised as her own daughter is “boyish but feminine, athletically chiseled but with breasts”. Every other sentence she writes is intended to convey how nuturing women are, but it you read closely (like I do), it’s really all about her self-interest and self-infatuation.
But I was surprised to learn that the movement of the magnetic poles does result in runways having to be renumbered over time. See, there is knowledge even in the most ditzy bimbo literature—for those with the cerebral momentum to recognize it.
[Author’s note: the book was written in 2010, when the last hold-outs of the “adult class” of America were finally and begrudgingly beginning to admit there was more to this Internet thing than an alternative to television. That it was time to get off their asses and learn it. The comedy in this book is how the writer, one Patricia Cornwell, tries to fling around computer and networking terms like she is a power-user.
The problem with that approach is that you have to use as many of the new words as possible because just learning the definitions does not teach which words are significant. Her usage, while accurate in point, reveals she totally missed the computer revolution and scrambling to fit back in. But since most adults are in the same position, few will notice this factor as clearly as I, who was raised around computers.
Later, I guessed correctly this lady author was from my generation. She’s also from Miami, and a descendent of Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, a work of fiction.]
The oil spill, 2010.
NOON
Now look what you’ve gone and done. Y’day that joke about living in Arkansas? Well, it backfired. I repeated the joke to JZ. Unbeknownst to us, just a few days earlier, his step-brother-in-law had made the same observation in a sense, “Why don’t you just move to Arkansas. You can get a new house for $15,000.” Dang and bedammed if he didn’t get even the number right?
Meanwhile, JZ is sitting in their customer lounge waiting for the Monticello weather report. Hang on; it is downloading as we speak. A chilly 60°F, it dovetails with my experience (which consists mainly of driving through the state on a sidecar motorcycle) that it is 20 degrees cooler than here most of the time. The picture nearby is in Monticello (population 9,700), a university town. The Selma Methodist Church is listed as the primary tourist attraction and the local government motto is “We’re Ready To Serve”.
This next picture of a cottage is the exact property listing that underpinned the joke about Arkansas. This was two one-bedroom units in a duplex, renovated to a single family dwelling. It still contains the two kitchens. Not clearly visible is that this is half the unit, facing the street, with another similar unit just visible behind the left corner. Both share a wraparound porch. Long before I began funding this search for a property, there were months of discussion concerning the affordability of a place, a feature my city-dwelling compatriots had not considered important.
Just like I myself cannot afford to move back to Texas, the majority of people in the boonies got there thinking they’d have it easy, a life without city stress. Things go wrong immediately. The best paying job in town is already taken by the mayor’s son and you will be regulated by what people think of you.
Ah, but if you have money from the outside, even a trickle, eventually you become the mayor. Ha! The trick is to keep quiet about it, let people assume you are an astute investor. This worries me about JZ, that if he suddenly comes into a vast sum of money, everybody will know something’s changed. With me, there is not even an eyebrow raised. You see, I was raised near small towns. You know who else was raised in a small town? The guy who said he used to value his reputation until he tried to pay his bills with what people thought of him.
My former guitarist, Jag, is due to drop back on Friday. The Fender acoustic I lent him included that Dean Markley pick-up and I now rather need it. We had a few great gigs but he is an electric lead player from the word go. I ran through my coffee house list again and I see another advantage emerging in that I don’t really have any “best” material. While my guitar repertoire is limited to maybe a third of the tunes I can solo on bass, I see that I can keep hitting the crowd with new material for weeks on end.
In this town, that is one tremendous advantage. Every guitarist I’ve ever seen in South Florida plays much the same material every time. They seem incapable of adaptation. And I will grasp at the slimmest of straws to gain a competitive advantage around here. Just like the Donald sensed a lot of people were not voting because there was nobody to vote for, I sense that a lot of rock and blues “fans” are that way because there are no options in a town where every guitar player thinks he’d become the next hero, if only people would listen, dammit.
NIGHT
Now for my (unqualified) interpretation of the silver market since this morning. While near-total conjecture, it could be equally argued I know just as much as any of the experts. This great nation has never produced a single guru who has any clue when silver will move. Here’s the graph.
Damn, silver broaches $17 and the banks fly into full-scale panic. They close ranks in stricken fear, but nothing in their bag of accounting tricks seems to work like it used to. They try to stomp silver back to $14, but barely manage to make a dent by the end of New York trading.
All the suckers buying their “paper” silver have been milked dry. The only buyers left want the real thing and they just can’t be fooled by charts and price-fixing no-how. What’s a bankster supposed to do? Even a 1933 style law will not work again when the buyers are armed and ready. Could be the big bank party is over, but it’s not like they are going to go down without a fight. Witness there desperate efforts to keep the price below $17, but the market is resisting, limping along in a horizontal ripple.
More and more, the sale of real silver begins to erode the completely fake and manipulated prices of silver certificates. Tomorrow it should break $18 as the banksters, unable to even flat-line prices, now shit their tailored pants. Soon, the man on the street, including those holding bank paper, is going to realize there is no real silver to be had. Those holding it are not selling. And people like me will live happily ever after. There, wasn’t that fun?
ADDENDUM
I have the batbike back, with a new starter and a new battery. My annual budget for repairs is already $179 over-spent for the entire year to Dec. 31. Of course, for 2013-2014, I got off easy. But that old starter was surely a problem that compounded its way through the whole electrical system. It now fires up at a touch and certain other operating aspects of the bike have shown an instant improvement. The most noticeable is how the bike can no longer be started (electrically) unless the transmission is in neutral. This demands a test run. Soon. Like tomorrow afternoon.
Maybe a sprint around the lake or a visit to South Miami. Or the Naples loop. Return tomorrow to see. Readership has fallen to an all-time low of this decade. Fortunately this blog can weather that storm for it has never been based on mass distribution, either in concept or in motive. But yes, popularity is always a good motive for extroverts.
Last Laugh
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