One year ago today: December 26, 2015, Kassoys, only $3,999.99.
Five years ago today: December 26, 2011, unexplained ten-year gaps . . .
Nine years ago today: December 26, 2007, early mention of Craigslist.
Random years ago today: December 26, 2006, opening day, Mardi Gras.
MORNING
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’m settled into as much of a routine as I can. Me and the cardinals at the birdfeeder. Today, I work the crossword puzzles and make a materials list for the shed and raising the house. That’s going to have to pass for ambition because I also have some leaves to rake. I’ve been away or hibernating for a week. I’m out of photos from the trip already. What you’ve seen here represents the keepers from a total of 475 pictures taken total. See how nice I am to you?
The picture? It’s the Dundee water tower. I told you I was out of trip pictures. Stay close, though. I’m hankering for another road trip soon, just a local day trip.
The newest song I’m learning, well, I can’t sing it. That’s Tom T. Hall’s “That’s How I Got To Memphis”. No matter what starting key, it is out of my range. Naturally, I’m miffed because I have not a New Year’s gig in nine years. I’m old school and base a lot on that, because it involves having a band in working order. I did quit the five-piece over a dispute involving such a gig—they wanted to sell out and play until 2:00AM for $110 each. I balked, that led to an argument, that led to my quitting. All I said was that we should leave our options open until mid-October, not take the first offer in August.
There was also the piano player who was in another band and pressuring that he would play in which one confirmed the first gig. I will never tolerate or allow for that behavior, and told them so. But the drummer sided with the keyboards saying it was my decision. Okay, in that case I decide not. Don’t even try shifting a conflict of interest situation on me. It didn’t help that’s the same band that regards bass players as nobodies who arrived on a turnip truck. As I walked out, I added that for $110, I’d rather take the night off and go to some other gig.
Before I forget, everybody wants to know how my harmony is progressing. I understand your out-and-out enthusiasm, since you know harmonies would be the final musical accomplishment of my career. Well, I got a little practice out of the way but it will be a while before I’m doing any Abba.
See me pointing at the numbers. Here’s part of the rotor score system from that pinball machine in the old shed. It’s too far gone for anything except maybe salvage any switches that still work. Not today, though. The libraries are closed, but it was too hot to work in the yard.
Venezuelan ranchitos. (I've lived there.)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
The Monday crosswords were “easy as my last wife” so I was back here in time to tackle the chores. What? You want to know about that? I think you are just smug to see me having to do them, that’s what. Okay, I varnished all the yardsticks, found my lyrics book while looking for my 1” sanding belts, cut an experimental wooden frame to replace my scooter speedometer lens, and baked a cherry pie. Here’s a snap of the mystery pipes buried in the yard leading to the shed. That’s no sprinkler system. Two pipes means hot and cold, most of the time.
Here’s the prototype of my new speedometer dash lens. The old one, well, you can’t see through it and I’m done trying every known cleaning product. They don’t work because the plastic itself oxidizes deep into its own surface, it’s rust. People who create such products should be shot. Products that don’t work as well as what they replace. That may sound severe over some opaque plastic, but you would only have to shoot the first couple. Or they’ll breed and each eats away a little at a time. If you don’t execute the first few bastards as an example, pretty soon you get Canada.
For siesta, I read some stats on the production capabilities of the Japanese during WWII. Shortly after they overran their initial objectives, they were already unable to supply their forces. They stopped at the Solomons and New Guinea because they had no more food or fuel. They were no more of threat to the continental US than the places they conquered. Malaysia? Singapore? Sure they had raw materials, but it takes time to adapt those commodities.
This lends support to the theory that Japan expected the US to sue for peace. Ha, little did they know about the US banking system. The banks had been itching to get into the war for years by the time they pressured the President to park all the obsolete battleships in neat rows at Pearl Harbor. I’m reading now about the tons of supplies per soldier that the US was shipping and flying to these “strategic islands”. Strategic, my eye. All they had to do was sit and wait until the Japs got hungry and went home. There was nothing of military value on any of those islands. They were nothing but a drain on Japanese resources had the Yanks just left them alone.
But that will be the day when a Liberal administration ever leaves anybody alone.
“How Come Your Dog Don't Bite Nobody But Me?”
NIGHT
I twiddled around till nightfall on the scooter lens. The polarized sheet was not “bright” enough, so I opted for a piece of plastic that highly resembles a CD “crystal” case. It’s fastening with liquid nails until tomorrow, which is fine because I can’t find my rubber insulation. Most adhesives don’t stay flexible and the lens casing is slightly ovoid. This took a little time to get even this far. For that matter, it [this lens] was problematical enough that I spent more time in the shed digging around for the right tools. Until I get that shed happening, I’m not really unpacked.
Correction, Sebring has the second lowest household income in the nation. I didn’t check who was first because it wasn’t in Florida, so hardly interested me. If you are under 65, the poverty level this year is $12,082. Oddly, I would have lived quite well on that much in the 2006-2011 hard times. Handed to me by people who would have their own houses today if they had simply kept their promises.
“You want me to keep my promise? You mean, like, right now? Today?” Yeah, that bunch, “How can I give you that ride to the airport I promised you last week when I sold the car y’day? What? I never promised to call you about that. Are you crazy, a taxi? Get your own taxi”
I’ve got experience with that brand of dipshit.
Here’s a chart of information I finally got to from a few weeks back. It is an aging chart of the music on my song list. I arbitrarily chose the top 25 songs that I do. This chart is NOT the year that song came out, but the year I added it to my song list. The purpose here was to examine how often my set list changes compared to musicians I can name who have never learned a new song that I can think of. They know who they are.
Yes, the chart is boring, but it tells a story. These are not all the songs I’ve ever played, these are the songs that are on my set list today. Only 12% of my songs have been on my list since 1986. Got that, Glen? Mike? Eddie? Johnny? Three songs (Folsom Prison Blues, Jambalaya, These Boots Are Made For Walking). I still play Party Till The Money Runs Out as the only song added in 2003. In 2006, I added 8 songs, that’s the year I began to recover a bit. In 2009, I learned to sing and added 4 songs. Last year, 1 song (Don’t Rock The Jukebox) made the grade. Then 8 songs this year.
In other words, anybody who came to see my show would hear 32% new songs compared to a year ago, 52% new material from seven years ago, and full 84% from ten years back. That mops the floor with every guitar player I know. Most have been playing the same list for 30 years. If someone from that long ago heard me, they’d hear mostly tunes they never heard me play before. The message here is that if your song list is that old, it is stale.
Now right about here some joker will pipe up that I can learn new music because “bass is easy”. If so, I would like the hear that person stand on stage and play a bass solo for an hour and entertain a crowd. Just the bass and vocals. I’ve done it. Colorado, Texas, Tennessee, Florida. The fact is, guitar is easy. I can solo with that, too. Not like a pro, but I can do it.
It’s a on-going matter of audience appeal. Most popular music has a best-before date. The Eagles, Neil Young, Clapton, it’s all going moldy except to that small group of other guitarists or a crowd that’s drunk enough. That hardly passes muster in my league. If anybody still likes “Simple Man” it means they do not have to stand on stage and listen to it year-in-and-out. Real musicians consider what that must be like for the rest of the band. I know I do. Except for lead guitar, every song on my list has something interesting or novel for each musician.
I cheated on the chart just a little. A couple of the tunes, like “Sea of Heartbreak”, I did play back in the 90s with my band, “Not Half Bad”. But when I re-learned the tune to solo, the bass line bears very little resemblance to my 1991 style. “Six Days On The Road” got a similar upgrade.
I could stagger the chart immensely in my favor, given that in 2013 – 2014, I learned a whopping 61 songs I had never played before with the five-piece band. They also had the attitude bass was easy, but in fact, they had on their list some of the most challenging bass classics in history. Kinks, Doors, a lot of those recording-studio classics. “Tuesday Afternoon”, “Walk Away Rene”, “Pretty Woman”, these are not easy to play right which explains why I was the stage darling every gig—by playing them note-for-note perfect. I learned a total of around 90 songs with that band. Not one is on my list today. The most labor-intensive band I’ve ever had much to do with.
Here are the songs added to my list in the past 12 months:
√ Here’s A Quarter (Tritt)
√ What’s A Guy Gotta Do (?)
√ Tell Me Momma (Unknown)
√ You’re My Bestest Friend (I forget)
√ Don’t Rock The Jukebox (Jackson)
√ Diggin’ Up Bones (I forget, like, who cares)
√ It’s All Goin’ To Pot (Willie)
√ That’s How I Got To Memphis. (Tom T. Hall)
What? Oh, I forgot to update you. I can, after all, sing the Memphis song in G major, where this only one obscure note I can’t quite hit, but I can whistle it.
ADDENDUM
I’m having fun reading the new book on navigation. It’s what I figured but still nice to confirm I’m thinking right. The ship’s bearing is clockwise in relation to true north, while objects viewed from the ship are talked of in terms of the vessel’s heading, known as a lubber line. I like an intellectual challenge and navigation is still at the learning phase for me. For reasons unknown, it is a painstaking study for me. I’ve concluded that’s because I am not just memorizing the formulas, I’m learning the theory, but I believe we’ve already had that conversation.
So as to not feel totally dumb, there was a family at the coffee shop this morning that was gabbing up a storm. Until they saw me do all four crossword puzzles, the Sudoku, the Jumble, and solve the Crytogram. By the end of the hour, they were kind of like sitting there staring at me. I slurped my coffee especially loud to emphasize the silence. At least they were not my relatives who would accuse me of making up the words.
Next, the statistics on rags-to-riches. It is still a myth, the vast majority of rich people and business heads coming from “privileged positions”. Except for Andrew Carnegie, I find no real stories of the transition from poor to enduring rich in American history. We presume sports figures do it, but if so, where are the vast sub-divisions of prize fighters and footballers? Long before I encountered the statistics that showed this trend, I always contended I had never met a true instance of anyone getting rich without getting lucky. (In every Horatio Alger story, the kid never got rich, he got lucky which Alger attributed to his being a good boy.)
What I have encountered far more often is the rich kid fond of claiming he is self-made. I was known at the phone company to slowly pick apart each of their stories for the amusement of the department—but only after the brat made comments about his personal role in getting rich or insinuating anybody could do it if they would only be more like him.
Remember “Just Once Mark”. I taunted him for years because he would not quit with the pretense that he made it on his own. Gee, Mark, how many times did your dad put you through college? Just once. How many times did he buy you a condo? Just once. How many times did he send you on a cruise around the world to play soccer on a third-rate team? Just once. And how many times did he buy you a cushy job at the phone company? You got it.
There was a purpose in this extra review. The bottom line is that less than 2% of people from poverty-stricken backgrounds ever make it to the social elite, and these tend to be widows who “benefited from advantages not available to their sisters”. [Author’s quotation marks.] For that matter, only 6% of middle-class people ever end their lives in an improved situation. This hints that the major gripe of the proletariat arises from their expectation that America is a land where hard work pays off and are miffed to find otherwise.
I have a motive, hardly hidden, for studying this subject. I was born and raised the poorest of the poor, the kid whose family refused to pay for anything, but [they] made enough to disqualify me from any form of assistance. So, yes, I am concerned, as I approach retirement age that being rated as well-to-do by current poverty standards could damage my future livelihood, and I should at least prepare for it. It would be totally unfair [for the system] to classify me with others as a target for extra taxes, simply because statistics show the majority of them did not work for it. They would be inconvenienced, where I would be punished.
It is now 35 years since I realized I would not make it on my own, and thus resolved to at least not slave my life away in credit-induced desperation. Like everybody around me. I never got a any kind of break in my youth, and no real breaks after that. By the time I was 20, I realized I did not possess a single thing in the world, real or imagined, that resulted from beneficial contact with my family. That, closer to the facts, people even knowing I was related to such people was dragging me down. Interesting to some, nobody in my family is aware I went to work at the phone place. I didn’t want them showing up at the door on payday.
Yet I feel I could have taken on the world if I’d met the right woman. The one I met that quashed all that came before, she moved on, but the problem was that she also quashed anything that came since. And that’s hardly her fault, she could not have known. It was more my fault for sampling the forbidden fruit. I actually felt that I had worked hard enough and run a clean enough life that I deserved someone like that. Circumstances have shown otherwise.
Here’s a curious thought. I point out that what most people who have what I do did not work for it, but neither did I. I actually avoided working for it because I knew after my first summer laboring job that was not the answer. While it was largely a process of avoiding known pitfalls and predictable crises, I attribute any comfort I’ve found in this life to thinking before acting. Normally, this takes the form of budgeting, which everybody I know avoids like the Ebola.
I’ve been hit throughout life with the same bad luck and bureaucratic minefields as the next guy, actually probably a little more. But I did not rely on a line of credit to bail me out. After age maybe 24, I always had a small reserve tucked away to subsist on no matter who lied to me or came along and tried to trip me up. I won’t quote the most recent examples, because I’ve already ragged on Wallace, Patsie, and Theresa a lot, god knows they deserve it.
Who’s right? I dunno. But by the time I’m 65, I will not have anything like the doubts that are destined to dog the people who think I’m wrong. Folks, retire as soon as you can live in dignity because working the rest of your life isn’t going to improve that any. The system is designed to gobble up everything you earn as a cost of living.
Last Laugh
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