One year ago today: May 30, 2015, environment favors the average.
Five years ago today: May 30, 2011, I’m picky on that count . . .
Nine years ago today: May 30, 2007, I didn’t go to China.
Random years ago today: May 30, 2013, no comment.
MORNING
I was raised in a granary, so I’m not that surprised by the Popular Mechanics article about metal silos. That would have been luxury for me. It’s one of those why-didn’t-I-think-of-that ideas, but less so since our farm never produced a crop and thus never had any silos. No link, but if you look these up you’ll see the interiors are as expensively finished as other houses. So don’t expect too much of a bargain.
The level of detail leaves no doubt she is privy to inside information. How one bad cop can taint the whole department and two acting in cahoots can get their own way. I’m only half-way through this sad-but-true book and already I give it a thumbs-up.
And why do I type so many hyphenated words?
The red scooter is acting up again. This time it isn’t getting the gas after being parked overnight. I’m only assuming these knock-offs have a fuel pump. It turns over fine but takes progressively longer to fire. That’s another reason for me to pack up and leave, so matters like that quit being a big deal. Face it, nothing new and nobody new has happened around here in years. At least up in the central plain, there is another town ten miles away. I now zip around Lakeland like an old hand.
I suppose the interior will take a year or two to memorize. There are no direct freeways in Florida from southeast to northwest. They all angle off somewhere else before you get to Tampa or Orlando. I’ve gotten lost every time I went through there by motorcycle. Once I thought was near Gainesville and was in fact in a place called Davenport. Overnight at the Denny’s.
The official version.
NOON
Then I felt like singing. Do you think that’s maybe a good reason I should get my own place out in the country? Anyway, this tune, “Blue Yodel #1” is bewitching. The chord patterns are irregular but that adds enough charm that, well, read below. I was able to duplicate the yodel from last day. I’m just now finding out how much of that singers like Jimmy Rogers and Johnny Horton did—and learning why so many of today’s vocalist avoid them. That blue yodel tune can, I think, really throw a surprise at the audience. But it’s not for everyone as it reaches its 89th birthday.
The tune goes back before country and blues developed a definitive 12-bar feel. It lacks the smoothing effect acquired by too many guitar lessons. It’s full of half-measures, inconsistent riffs, and what today would be called dropped chords. (The chords are “dropped”, meaning clipped to match only the parts where the guitar player is singing, which is not at all the same as syncopation as some claim.)
I have no academy training to hamper my progress, so I’m going to have a go at playing it the Jimmy Rodger’s way. The “singing brakeman” sold 500,000 copies of this tune in 1927. This video clearly shows what chords he is playing and I’ll engage the old electric brain to memorize his actual presentation, at least in pattern. He’s a master of the added 2/4 measure. The first verse-chorus is actually 19-1/2 measures long. Watch it closely, this is not going to be easy.
Note, I will use some extra verses borrowed from Johnny Cash and others. I never thought about it before, but yodeling also has a range, and my key is G or lower. How about some coffee ‘round here?
You want to know what sucks? Windows 10. Its sole purpose is to invade and catalog your hard drive. After testing it against good old XP, I conclude by its prominent commands, that Windows 10 users are a strange and lazy lot. They must spend inordinate amounts of time changing screen backgrounds, renaming files, and categorizing their music to insane degrees, such as track number, group description, and including fields for parental rating reason and mood. But just you try to find the command to memorize your picture insertion format. Windows is setting you up for something.
AFTERNOON
Ouch, the budget is in for the month and I’m over in every category. Nothing is out of whack but the two motorcycle trips to Lakeland don’t account for the entire difference. Gas is less than 8% of my budget, entertainment less than 20%, but operating the household is getting out of control. Phone, electric, repairs and miscellaneous have been steadily increasing for years. Groceries were only $135 considering I each quite well. I have been dining out more with the bakery gone.
The book (Abuse of Power) gets better once you get past a few needless passages where the author wastes plot time. The world doesn’t need yet another explanation of why a woman became a prostitute and there is no such thing as one who “used to be” a prostitute. Okay? There’s also that quirky attitude among weaker females that sex is always something that happens to them.
They can’t just do it (have sex), they had to be tricked, or drunk, or desperately lonely, or caught in a moment of weakness. Every damn time. I’d wager that is mindset behind the majority of divorces. About half way, the book gets good, moving along, but also beginning to seem familiar. Is this a movie? You can’t judge a book by its movie.
The story, like Rosenberg's hair style, takes place in California back in 1997. It is a rare bird, a story about a female cop. Fantastically, the tale avoids most of the in-vogue stereotypes of the day. There are no queers or feminists, and even our single-parent protagonist is a widow instead of divorced. You still have to put up with the constant reminders that she's got kids that need mothering. This increases the page count by around 30.
John Richards: Literature, 2001. John is founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society, which even has its own jingle. They took a hammer to our grammar, says Richards. Or is that Richard’s? Just kidding, he prefers Richard’s Richards.
Taking the evening off for music, and I don’t know why I do these things, I jammed with the Hippie over in Dania. That’s the lounge I mentioned. We played the wrong music to the wrong people. Two people picked up on that: myself and the bartender. This is not the turf where you play the odd tune a couple in the audience might recognize. No sir, this place needs a full-time country band that pulls in the crowd. I met a pliant guitar player who might be interested.
It’s one of those ancient pre-cruiseline pubs that survived due to a long–term lease. A lounge it is, with proper furniture and clean corners. For an open mic, it went fairly decently. I wonder if that’s because nobody else showed up. As usual, I declined to play any slow music. I can’t figure what’s come over the dude, he actually complimented me when he noticed the crowd liked my material. I did one bass solo and sang one a cappella number. Hey, I haven’t played bass for nearly a month.
ADDENDUM
Yet another study, and I assure you there will soon be many more, shows 30% of Americans over 55 have S-F-A in retirement savings. The SS system has to revamp their strategy. Yeah, but if you look a little closer, they also have car payments, house payments, cable payments, and consider a credit card a necessity. I’ve met these clowns and they are self-indoctrinated that the system “forces” them to live that way, “How else is a person supposed to raise a family?”
So what I say about them is without mercy because they don’t deserve it. They’ve got decades of looking down their noses at those of us who don’t have a monster house and a new car every three years. Where I doubly laugh is the establishment who keep telling them it is “not too late” to put away the recommended $6,500 per year, which will happen to credit junkies when pigs fly.
Oh, they could cut back if they had any concept of delayed reward. Where I laugh most is the advice the system feeds them. Put this much into bonds and that much into stocks and in this many years you’ll have that much money. Those graphs ignore reality. People with retirement investments are the first to get wiped out when the big bad wolf arrives. They are the natural first target because most of them know dick about investing. And you can’t protect what you don’t understand.
In essence, I’m referring to those “plans” that show the long slow growth of savings over a decade or more. Stupid, stupid, stupid. That projected “$150,000” can get wiped out a couple years of double-digit inflation like the 70s, or one more Chrislam president who tries to bring the US “into line” with the rest of the world. One stroke of his pen and you lose it all. So what is my advice?
Get a place you can live in no matter what. That means no rent, no mortgage, and low annual taxes. Those taxes are the one thing no politician can go after and expect to exist. He’ll attack your stocks and bonds, not your house taxes, believe me. So become the “housing” underdog and the American public will always side with you. This doesn’t apply if you are renting. Even the dodo who does not heed this advice must have noticed the winners have been saying the same thing an awfully long time.
Also, put your money into something that you yourself can make money at right up to the point you become a complete invalid. Most standard investments don’t qualify. As I said forty years ago, you’d also be smart to make sure the income, no matter how seemingly little, does not require a bank account. These waitresses who never declare their tips know what I’m talking about. You use your “legit” income to pay your “legit” bills. I’d do it if I could.
Last Laugh
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