One year ago today: June 9, 2015, saving is for idiots.
Five years ago today: June 9, 2011, another “no-women” documentary.
Nine years ago today: June 9, 2007, two bucks in tips.
Random years ago today: June 9, 2008, Wallace's Wall of Shame.
MORNING
What, you want to hear more about the domestic situation with the house? Sure. I called ahead to set up the termite tent for early next week. If all goes well, JZ and I will run a truckload up there on Saturday and buy a guest bed, maybe some chairs to sit on. That would be nice. And right back Sunday, as I don’t want to be anywhere near the bug fumes.
Take a look at this photo, taken at speed last Sunday. I can’t say for sure, but I believe this is one of the orange groves infested with the Mediterranean fruit fly or some similar pest. You can’t see much, but those are thousands of dead orange trees about to be bulldozed and burned. People who hold out trying to save their ornamentals should have to go look at the destruction of these endless acres of crop. I say, if each tree was only worth $500, the devastation is almost beyond comprehension.
More rain meant I was studying and this time I chose to look at ballistics a bit. I did not know that because of air resistance, the maximum range of a cannonball is slightly less than 45°, the theoretical angle. Nor did I know that modern tank ammo can penetrate 32” of steel. So there is no practical tank that can survive by armor plate alone.
Another popular misconception is that WD-40 is “detergent” oil that will wreck your equipment. Nonsense. It is virtually identical to mineral oil and if nothing else it is better for your equipment than most other light lubricants. So there.
And did I ever get a cheer-up call from the lovely Alaine, who is impressed by the new cabin. And assures me the whole family likes it, which is a considerable morale boost around here. They likely associate the long years I talked about it with the short time actually spend looking. You remember the five year plan, from starting to save, to looking for owner financing, to finally having enough cash to wave around. It is not lost to me that JZ will become highly incentivized by this development as well.
Here’s something. My news feed, which is controlled by Google, has changed the search algorithm. Before, a search on Trump would bring up the top news stories. Now, those events and rallies often don’t appear until nearly a week later and meanwhile, you are directed toward pro-Hillary sites, or that aggravating Kulinski faggot. Certainly I’m not the only one who noticed this.
Brooklyn Bridge, 1883.
NOON
Still wondering why the scooter shop has not called, I delved into harmony singing. I can’t fathom it, but that was the same situation with melody singing before it finally “clicked” on in my brain. I was listening to Tucker’s “Delta Dawn” when I found a contemporary version by Helen Reddy. She’s the one I kept confusing with Linda Ronstadt, you know, the 1970s pant-suit shag-cut broads who sang but never put in the 10,000 hours to learn an instrument.
Another anyway, this harmony is based on that raised third. Other notes are supporting but the really great parts you want to hear are that third. I can’t approach this directly as it throws off my melody. I am convinced there is a “trick” to it that I just have not yet clued in on. Here’s a good question: considering the difficulty of a bass player even singing at all, is it even practical to expect both good bass lines and good harmony out of one person?
This is predicated by the point often made here before—most bass players who “sing” are faking it by only playing snappy bass lines between vocals. I call it doing a McCartney. He never really sings and plays well at the same time, just you listen closely to his live recordings. (Studio overdubs don’t count.)
I gave up and walked to the scooter shop. It was ready and nobody called. It purrs like a kitten as I stopped to get boxes and begin packing. Lots of small boxes, folks, no big ones unless necessary. I should be about half finished by today. Even if the day started with a bunch of noisy Italians at the coffee shop telling stale jokes. I had to suppress laughing at their ignorance of most things. For example, they characterize Generation X as lazy, wanting everything handed to them.
What I see is not laziness, but people who have been deprived of any chance of getting ahead legitimately. Stupid people confuse that with laziness. No sir. You can’t flood the country with illegal immigrants who force wages down or go on welfare, then expect other people to work extra to pay for it. That’s the situation Gen X is put in.
They grow up watching rich kids and immigrants have cars, cable TV, free food, whatever, and never working--what exactly are the X-ers supposed to think? They quickly learn the law favors those who never work and punishes those who do (via taxation). So why the hell should an X work at some dead-end job all his life to support such a system? On top of that, then some Liberal dickhead is going to come along and call him lazy? Grab a brain, America. If you don’t, some politician who knows exactly how stupid people think is going to take over and, oops, I’m getting ahead of myself.
AFTERNOON
More music, since I had a country feed in the background. But that new crap coming out of Nashville isn’t country, they need to find a new word to describe it. Country can’t be mass generated. When I was a kid, Conway Twitty typified country. No cowboy hat, but he had the big cowboy haircut and it got steadily worse over the years. His material wasn’t really country either, but like Johnny Cash, it was in the country charts that he got most of his hits. So, I put on a youTube compilation and listened most of the afternoon. I’m trying to avoid saying I’m desperate for new material and am listening to anything.
Kids are mean, and we used to think Conway, see photo, was “somewhere between gospel and queer”. Well, hey, look at the haircut “blown by unseen breezes” and the gold chain. Plus he sang so many sad songs when I was at the age I could not fathom why anybody would like depressing music. For that matter, I’m still a little suspect of people who do that today.
Another mean thing was we laughed at that song he did about Joni, the girl next door who said she’d be forever true and he said she was only 15 and he was 22. Later he goes running back and she’d married his best friend John, you know the song. Anyway, you would not believe the crude jokes we used to make about his moronic understanding of women. We were only 14 year olds in a band, but we already knew how forever true women were.
Still packing, I have documentaries again, this time these “armored fighting vehicles”. I take that to mean armored personnel carriers, or battle taxies. The Bradley kept coming up, labeled as a “fighting vehicle”. Like the space shuttle, the International Space Station, and the F-111, it is a monumental waste of money. The commentator kept on about how in war zones the Bradley had no casualties. Probably something to do with having to keep them covered by tanks.
And I heard that snarky comment about JZ changing my sidecar tire. Listen, I know what the photos don’t show, okay. When he pulled up, the jack was in place, along with the jackstand, the flat was raised, the spare was already taken off the mount, the cotter pin removed, and the wrench and chocks all in place. So yes, he did change the actual tire, but there is a lot more to it than swapping the wheels. that includes remounting the spare and putting all the equipment away afterward, for instance. But that’s okay, I’m quite used to people and family jumping in at the end and taking the credit.
Ben Wilson: Biology, 2004. Hailing from Canada, Ben was head of the team that showed herrings can communicate by collective farting. Now, laugh as you may, this revelation apparently saved the Swedish government millions by enabling them to cancel all those expensive hunts for Soviet submarines “detected” inside Sweden’s territorial waters.
The Swedish parliament moved rapidly to spend the money saved on free housing for rapist immigrants and suppression of free speech. Native Swedes who report the rapes are arrested. Ah, nothing quite like a Liberal, is there?
NIGHT
What do you know. I found a Google picture of the old farmhouse. It was built in 1923, but now has new aluminum siding. The neighbor’s house and the creamery next door are gone and there is an attic vent at the peak. New shingles, too. It did not look like this when I lived there, when the siding was cracked stucco. Those trees were not there either. The only thing the same is that gravel driveway. There used to be a fence in front. It actually looks half-decent in this picture.
The room I dug in the ground is under the living room (there was a concrete basement already under the house). That machinery lot on the side that was not there back in those days. This is the location from which I ran away from home twice. And where I walked to the highway about a quarter-mile away and hitchhiked to university, 350 miles distant. From what I know, this is the only instance in modern history where parents refused to give a straight honors student even a car ride to campus (they had two late-model vehicles). I was 17 years old and did not know what a faculty was, but I sort of knew you were supposed to have one.
And this picture was taken on a rare, clear, mild summer day. In winter, the drifts were up to the window sills.
Last Laugh
(Non-union.)
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