One year ago today: May 10, 2015, what would Jimmy Buffet say?
Five years ago today: May 10, 2011, a generic day.
Nine years ago today: May 10, 2007, I finally get a DVD player.
Random years ago today: May 10, 2006, a generic day.
MORNING
Shopping for non-GMO food isn’t getting easier. Here is a typical label appearing on the shelves, it is a product of Uruguay, bearing the insignia (not shown) “since 1898”. You might conclude it is healthy food. But in 1898, there were no facilities in Uruguay to hydrogenate soybeans, extract rapeseed (canola) oil, or genetically modify corn starch. The only “asparagus” in this soup is a processed flavoring additive and the primary ingredient is the starch. This packaged poison is placed on shelves nearby other items bearing a label saying non-GMO. I fear misleading labels are becoming a fact of life and I’ve wager there is an American company lurking behind this Uruguayan front operation.
How did our real estate, or actually anti-real estate, meeting go this morning? We agree something has to be done that works better than us going to them. Them being the bankers and real estate agents, who are plainly working the same side of the street. As long as you go to them, they behave as if they have the upper hand in every conversation. This becomes very evident when they try to snowball us and find out we often know much more about the rules and conditions of the property than they do. The one exception was Michelle, from Arcadia, but she’s an all-round exception.
Don’t read me wrong, we don’t know what the enemy is thinking, often they don’t know themselves. I’m aware that it is futile to butt horns with an entrenched bureaucracy and have no intention of doing so. The idea is to outflank them. The stronger the enemy, the less nimble they are. At this early stage of our counter-planning, any idea no matter how outlandish, will be entertained.
Ah, you want examples of what is being tossed around. Okay, but you have to promise not to conclude any of these tactics would actually happen. Who remembers that “Press” flyer I bought in Mulberry? JZ points out there were no real estate ads in there, and I say, “Exactly.” It was full of errors that would appeal to the lowest levels of functional illiteracy, again, “Exactly”. Because if you were looking for a segment of the population that hates bankers and snake-oil salesmen, there is your crowd.
Here’s one from JZ, never, never rule out an idea from JZ if it has to do with the church. He thinks I should learn to sing a couple of sure-fire religious songs. Think “How Great Thou Art” and he says, hit the next church social or the fairgrounds. There is even the option of scare tactics, like a letter to the editor that if you let a real estate agent do your sale, there is a danger of terrorists moving into your old neighborhood.
My preference is to manipulate the commodity I am most familiar with—the small-town gossip mill. Let ‘em know if they don’t trust the whole crooked system, there is such a nice little old man who reads books that is looking for a place to retire. Remember how close this almost worked in Deland. Just leave out the part that the little old man plays dynamite rock bass and wants to hump your thirty-something daughter, and you’ve still got a fairly accurate picture of what’s going on. The important adjective being “fairly”.
Robin Hunicke
NOON
This is what it looks like, a picture of the inside of my fridge. That’s as much excitement as I want today, I’m staying home with a good book or two or three. If I go out, it will be for coffee much later, right now it is passion fruit tea. Hey, it was on sale. Blog rules says I have to point out anything unusual in the picture. Well, there’s a can of diced black olive, and two mini-limes. My frosted mug of peach tea, all pretty standard so far. Ah, those cucumbers. They are the small “sweet” cukes that cost twice as much. And beside them is a jar of Mexican sour cream, the kind that has no cream in it.
I just got hit with Obamacare. I must either change to an unsuitable plan which favors conditions I don’t have or use, like pregnancy or aromatherapy, or lose the primary care people who brought me back from the brink thirteen years ago. Of course, I have no choice. I cannot wait until they take that Obama freak and toss him onto the garbage heap of history.
The same with these political committees that are closing ranks against Trump. They are skating on thin ice. The bulk of people who intend to vote in this election have a strong belief that they are voting directly for a man to be president. They believe a vote for Trump is a vote against other choices, one on one. If these Republican committees try the Colorado stunt of pretending those votes are merely something to take into consideration as they go along their merry way, there’ll be a pitchfork party.
As for the Cruz-bot and his minions, with their Chicago values, man it took them a long, long time to figure out they are precisely what the public is fed up with. How right the Donald was to point out as their “campaigns” quickly mutated away from global warming and immigrant rights to copycat his own “build that wall” and “bring back jobs”. I just wonder how the return of those jobs to an over-entitled and inefficient American system will upset the applecart in the short run. The proletariat don’t merely want the jobs back, they want all the benefits, too. Just you watch and see.
AFTERNOON
I’ve got my 15 songs ready and I never got that far before. Why is this time different that the fifty or so instances where I’ve tried to learn guitar before? May I say, after that many tries, there is nothing musical that’s any different, so other factors loom large. One is that this time, I’m not even trying to learn guitar. I play it the way I do, end of story. Although the influence of my bass is there in spades, I am not learning my “bass list” like before, when I tended to play only songs where I knew the bass line.
I was also learning the tunes with an ear to how I would like them to sound if accompanying a bass. That is now out the window. Instead, I found my tendency to “capture” the feel of each song carries over to my guitar playing. Watching the videos of my progress, I subconciously play each tune the same way after a few passes. And no two songs have quite the same strum. This surprises me because so many guitar strummers play the same chops in many songs.
Next, I’ve not only passed the twelve-song barrier, less than half of them are old bass tunes, and this time I’ve played everything on that list out on stage in public. That has never happened before but just you be careful, that is a qualified statement. I have played guitar in private settings before. This time, I also have invested in the PA system I’ll need, and know I have a winner of a show with the sing-a-long microphones.
So yes, in those senses, this time is different. It’s a leap for me to begin learning songs that either I don’t know the bass or the bass line is trivial. Like all greenhorns, I learn the relatively easy material first. I can be thankful I don’t have to pick it all up from scratch, for instance, I have a very good idea of how to behave on stage and what I can get away with. Will I need another month to get another twenty songs? Stick around and find out.
John Hagelin: waltzes away with the 1994 Peace Prize for his contention that his team of 4,000 meditationalists caused a decrease in Washington, DC, crimes. John, whose formal title is “Raja of Invincible America”, is no slouch, he is a particle physicist and has been cited hundreds of times. Pesky police blotter sheets for the period show an increase in the murder rate. Hence, John’s statistics are nicknamed, “quantum flapdoodle”.
I spent a quiet evening reading up on design, focused mainly on streamlining. This was a big fad in the 1920s and 1930s, I see. The influences are still with us, one need only look at the iconic 1934 Hupmobile to see every major feature of car design today, although it may not be obvious. Some of the prominent ones are the curved windshield, rounded corners, wheel wells, and how the passengers ride “in” the chassis, rather than “on” it.
The books I read were more about how Americans streamlined their railroad locomotives. They were compromises, since the aerodynamics were really a shell that fit over the still-bulky and complicated steam boilers. They must have been a maintenance nightmare to get at, since I know from other readings that steam engines are far from care-free.
After the Second World War, trains were poised to compete with airlines. I don’t know why they failed. Anyone who has ever ridden coach on the Amtrak knows airplanes make a joke out of legroom, even in first class. Please don’t mention the time-savings of air travel, the poor transportation networks and delays at airports make even the same travel times nothing but an exercise in frustration. I’ve already written what happened to the steam locomotive when the diesel-electric came along. It was basic instant extinction.
Trivia. Hastening that event was the cost of water. The mid-century railway companies had to stockpile water along the routes. Through Arizona and New Mexico, this required millions of gallons. Even at a low cost of pennies per gallon, it quickly added up to losses along those routes. Then along came the diesel-electric, don’t quote me on this, at around 85% more efficient. The writing was on the wall. The spray paint was on the boxcar. I’m not fascinated by trains, but I do like them.
ADDENDUM
Well, the spring house price “droop” is over. Prices in the $30k range have climbed to $45, meaning I may have missed the boat as far as conventional house-hunting is concerned. The houses entering the market for double their 2013 prices is raising expectations. Hey, it would not bother me to move out of Florida, but fact is I have put down roots here. But shallow roots they are. Not one keeper of a woman in all these years.
Nothing but weirdoes, leftovers, and gold-diggers, every last one. Fifteen years and fourteen flings, that accounts for my life in Florida, the missing year being that waste of time named Theresa. Strangely enough, if she had kept her word, she would be living for free today. Some people have to screw up everything they touch, it’s a way of life. I’m weary of women who cannot be satisfied with a happy, easy go of things. Instead they have to sink their fangs into every man that looks their way—and complain that he doesn’t like it.
This is why, if I buy a place, I will put it in a trust. Living with any woman in this climate, unless she is independently wealthy (every woman I ever dated long term had her own family money), is all risky business. In the upcoming week or two, I’ll probably be up in Lakeland for a day. There are a couple of places I feel need too much repair, but the plan is to let JZ take a look. While anything we inspect will have already been rejected by local contractors, they have to make a profit at it and I do not.
