One year ago today: May 7, 2015, actresses & Kraft Dinner.
Five years ago today: May 7, 2011, gasoline & food shopping.
Nine years ago today: May 7, 2007, on the Titanic.
Random years ago today: May 7, 2006, ugly women & bad music.
MORNING
Gulp, imagine my surprise to see the old Argus 1600 priced at $145. This is the original $12 camera that started the pictures on this blog around 2006. Back then, there was no automated method, you had to embed the photos with HTML. I told you how this was a good rugged little camera (I reviewed it on ePinion) and how it worked for years after falling in the Atlantic Ocean. Once again, the marketplace has caught up with my estimation of a good product. I lost it when left behind at breakfast in South Miami or it would be in service to this day.
And all of those are brands I’ve tried and found wanting. I refuse to spend that kind of money on equipment with known, and as far as I’m concerned, deliberate faults. There is not one of those cameras that works decently in the long run.
Also, beware of Target, they are starting to pull a Tiger Direct. That’s where they confirm they have the product, but once you drive over there, it is at some other branch. Saying if you’ll just give them all your personal information they can have it for you tomorrow shows a callous disregard for your privacy and time. You would not even have driven over there once if they’d told you it was not available now.
Music. I’ve decided to go ahead with one Freddy Fender tune, “Wasted Days & Wasted Nights”. But I had to use transposition software to lower it down to into human audio range. This also stopped confusing the bats at night and some of the neighborhood dogs howling so late. I’m reaching another hurdle, in that clipping the guitar solos out of my version shortens most songs to less than two minutes. Mind you, it is a busy and audience-grabbing two minutes.
But that ups the ante to 48 suitable songs. This is a tall order, since I refuse to play any guitar ballads on principle alone. I may even bill myself as the only one who doesn’t play the moaner droner groaners. That would mean I’ve got some real work to do between now and pulling off a full show. Another suitable tune is the old Nichol’s “What’s A Guy Gotta Do”. I use Audacity to bring the key into my range and to delete the unsuitable passages.
Bipolar planetary nebula.
NOON
Once again, with things to do, I only had a computer monitor overhead. There’s Trump again. Look at this guy, exuding total confidence now. He knows he’s got them on the run. He continues to lambaste the press, but he still is not going far enough. Time to name names. I cannot figure out why he does not have a camera crew filming the press. Or why he does not have a crew with cameras facing the crowd. If your opponents are trying to hide something, that is where you strike hardest.
Ah, success. Here is your photo. This is the rear side of my Ibanez coffee shop guitar showing the little stickers and cheat sheets. They are prompts, song lists, keys, and such. You see, normally 30% of what I play at an open mic is not adequately rehearsed. I’m learning a new discipline here.
For the benefit of any new arrivals, pictures in this blog are not a given. This blog is primarily prose and the photos have a supporting role most of the time. I don’t just tell you I go to Colorado, I show you the pictures. I think that such graphics give the blog more impact and a better balanced presentation. Long-term readers will recognize the evolution, how I gradually learned how to break the rules of publication to give the blog a better on-line appearance. I never did like “block” style presentation. And it took a while to find what worked best without too much departure from standard publication guidelines.
Or as I sometimes like to put it, “pub date” means something entirely different to an author. If I remain with the Argus, the likely outcome here, it means no macros (close-ups), no night pictures, and lots of photos of the batbike, music events, and good food.
AFTERNOON
Ah, finally, we have a dump in house prices—but it is too far away and below sea level. Who remembers the great motorcycle trek to Steinhatchee? There’s a huge unexplored area of Florida to the northwest, I can name you towns you’ve never heard of. Fanning Springs, Lebenon Station, Tennville. They are on the old route 27, which in that part of the state breezes past these communities with no reason to stop there. You would have tanked up in either St. Pete’s or Tallahassee. Did you know that last city is built on land taken from the Talasi tribe? That’s your trivia.
The area is half again as far as Lakeland. Fanning Springs, the nearest city to Steinhatchee, is 345 miles from here. That’s too far to drive in a single day by motorcycle. I’ve done it, but it isn’t fun. Prices have fallen so you can pick up a mobile with land for $15,000. There’s nothing that says this price drop has to affect other areas, but it sure did last time.
Finally, I have an alternate explanation why these foreclosure houses are reappearing on the market after the bank closing date. Simple, the banks are not obeying the rules and are leaving the listing up. Since they do not have to accept “the highest or any offer”, the trick is to leave the listing and say it is the doing of the web site. Now, should a better offer come along, well, you see that the closing date is just another bogus number in the listing.
No, I did not know that, but I caught on when the real estate lady, who pushed like a banshee to get my offer in before the deadline, kept calling me after the deadline. What I still can’t figure out is why does she call me when she knows there are other, higher offers on the same address. It has to do with the money, it always does. Anyway, I now relegate foreclosures to just another scam. Nor it is the first time I mistakenly thought the banks had to obey the rulebook.
Pepsi-Cola: the 1993 Ig Nobel Peace Prize goes to this soft drink for inciting riots in the Philippines after they announced wrong winning numbers to a promotional lottery. Many of the 830,000 sore losers were “warring factions” until the riots united them into a successful revolution. Smile, you’re in the Pepsi generation!
[Author’s note: Pepsi was the leading soft drink in Russia until Coca-Cola pulled some fast ones with the leadership after the Cold War. Pepsi then entered a barter agreement, in which they were paid in vodka. And that’s why you see the “Stolichnaya” brand on store shelves in America.]
NIGHT
Here’s a snap of the prototype “battery holder” breadboard. This is actually just a mockup to see how long the battery lasts if components are left plugged in. If it is too long, I may have to put in a pilot light. You can see the small blue switch read for that situation.
Even a few likely candidates are already on my plate, which includes medleys and I have not yet done the sing-a-long portion of my act. It’s the same old story. I’m not saying I’m first, I’m saying I’ve never seen anyone else do this, so I’m not copying a thing. This is a signicant contrast to the totally rehearsed acts at the open mic. One thing is certain, I won’t be playing any guitar ballads. I long ago determined that a major component of older people not liking younger music is because of message—the music fails to hold their interest so they don’t really listen to it.
ADDENDUM
What’s going on with silver? It continues to hover, but at a price that the banksters can’t afford. Um, that’s not strictly true. They could afford it by printing up enough money and spending it all really fast before the small fry at the bottom catch as bread hits $25 per loaf. And I’ve figured out how Trump is going to both lower taxes and bring back business. Tariffs. That form of taxes is generally the least offensive to people, although it still results in higher domestic prices.
I got it when Trump finally admitted that prices would be higher, but that more people would have jobs to buy things. So tariffs it is, you want to buy something made in Japan, you pay through the nose for it. Another thing I see is that Trump cannot possibly be blind to the waste in government. It is ten times larger than it needs to be. If the Donald wants things back in line, he’s got to do something about that. Better a million civil servants out of work than a million miners and lumberjacks. You know where that last statement is from? Right here. I invented it.
What concerns me about tariffs is that the rest of the marketplace is not exactly free from distortions that affect supply and demand. Many occupations are overpaid due to these unequal forces and many businesses as we know them would not be able to survive if the economy returned to normalcy. Take doctors, cable companies, and taxis. Their prices would be slashed in half by the invisible hand. Back to tariffs, the main thing I like about them is it does not take many people to collect them. Maybe one or two staff in each port of entry. If it’s done right.
Trivia. SPAM, the meat, is ubiquitous, with close to 8 billion cans being sold since 1937. Be informed it is, of its class, the highest quality because it uses real pork shoulders and ham, where the other brands use animal byproduct. The urban legend is that SPAM means “spiced ham” but the truth is, the actual meaning is a closely guarded company secret.
And as for the jokes about Hawaiians being the highest consumers, you should try some of the recipes before you speak. They do not eat SPAM out of the can like you do, Ken. Here’s a SPAM Thanksgiving recipe.
There are no diet food dishes in the Hawaiian menu and no black olives in Chinese cooking.
Happy 1/2 b'day, Eatmore. I still think about you every day and it has been 16,071 days.
Last Laugh
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
