December 30, 2016

Yesteryear
One year ago today: December 30, 2015, more on 3D printers.
Five years ago today: December 30, 2011, California is cracking down.
Nine years ago today: December 30, 2007, the number is constant.
Random years ago today: December 30, 2003, Haviture Way.

MORNING
           This is the now-repaired megaphone, Xmas present for Agt. R. He actually doesn’t get it until New Year’s Eve, since that’s the first time he’ll be working when I normally go out. I won’t be doing the midnight party, I’ll just let the fireworks keep me awake. Agt. R. never yells “last call” loud enough. Requires 4xC cells, sold separately.

           She was a cool one last night, but having been tipped of by the trusty Almanac, I had extra coffee and gospel radio. Why do I call it that? All I listen to it for is the country music, it only has gospel early Sundays. I curled up and read two chapters from “Out of Antarctica”, which is a difficult read. So difficult that I suggest leaving it alone unless you have some intense fascination with geological theories. More in the addendum.
           It was leaf-raking weather and I put in an hour. It is so neat how domesticated I’ve become in such record time. I made a cake, too. Substitute evaporated milk for the cup of water, and you get some real non-diet snacks happening. If you see a photo this morning, it’s because I made it out to the coffee shop. Two miles from here. Took the red scooter. It needs a little exercise now and again, too. The brakes are shot, so now is the time for some jerk to steal it.

           I see the outgoing administration in DC is doing everything possible to wreck the system before the now watered-down version of Trump gets in. Expelling Russian spies, as if the entire universe doesn’t know that’s what embassies are. Some says it’s a malicious souring of relations, Congress insists it is just an overdue task. And we know how often they’ve been right in the past. Yeah, overdue until the moment it maximizes damage. I haven’t been paying attention, but I hear there’s a little ethnic trouble in Germany and around this country, too. Good. It’s the only way some people learn.

Picture of the day.
Ulan Bator.
(Compare to Detroit.)
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
           This cold spell is getting serious. I’m all stocked up but the rest of the town isn’t. I wanted some sugar but no way I’m waiting in those lineups. So parked at the coffee shop and kept to myself. In fact, I was alone except for the staff, so I asked them to turn down that ridiculous “Dunkin Donuts” radio overhead. It’s geared to about a third grade mentality and the commercials blast on louder than the programs. That tells us Dunkin is not very bright. There is a reason they outlawed that on television. The ugly broad behind the counter scowled when the staff so readily turned it nearly off. Hey, toots, customer request.
My old man would roll over in his grave if he saw this. Lemons, sixty cents apiece. Not that he ever bought any but that’s one guy who did not understand inflation. His union salary went up every year, but he could not understand why prices did also.

           Next, a few hours in the library, which doesn’t count as research when it’s my day off. I tried to find some more Tom T. Hall music suitable for duo work, but that went nowhere. The new guitar player called and I see that if this goes, once again 110% of the effort has to come from me. It’s not that he’s unenthusiastic, but that he brings very little to the table. That could be zero experience for him at an age I already had ten years.

           He does not grasp my assertion that we not practice on other people’s equipment. Or how to pick which songs are adaptable to duo arranging. Then again, I have yet to meet another Florida musician who chooses his music from what best suits his audience. This is the single largest determinant of why I can wax any guitar player on stage. He plays what he wants, I play what the audience wants.
           I’m going to have to set the equipment up and practice here. Usually I only do this when I’m renting a place, but the cover story is that I rent anyway. The guy has been putting in the time, but it is unfocused because he doesn’t know how to do that yet. And it would not be inaccurate to notice the guy is naturally on the disorganized side. That could be anything. He does a small set at the open mics and one encouraging sign is how he has already incorporated all manner of my suggestions into his act. And getting good results. Apparently, very good. Are you listening, Broward?

           I’m also polishing up my one-liners, I’m woefully out of practice since bingo wound up. I regularly raid English comedy shows. “People keep calling me a hypochondriac, which really hurts.” “My shrink says I have a preoccupation with vengeance. We’ll see about that.” “I like the clothes that mechanics wear, overall.”
           You may have guessed I have a 9:30PM special called “Country Song Lyric of the Day”. My show is rehearsed so the idle listener will miss something unless they pay closer attention than usual, “I got this new app on my phone. It’s a virgin detector. I dunno, it seems to be broken.” I’ve never met a musician in Florida who pays as close attention to this as I do. It’s more common to meet types who never change their act, still using the microphone as a prop like they did back in their teens.

Country Song Lyric of the Day:
“Hand me the Pool Cue and Call Yourself an Ambulance.”
NIGHT
           Here’s a better picture of the north side of the building where I want to maybe put a carport. Just a single port, mainly for parking the batbike out of the rain. It is currently under a tarp, but I should treat it a little better. An other option is to park everything behind the house and put a circular driveway completely around the outside, with this otherwise dead space as the exit.

           What a horrid movie, “Airplane Disaster”. The actors were so bad and ugly I think they used real FBI agents. They didn’t miss many clichés but the classic has to be the lady president in a room full of advisers, directing the show by remote control. The bad guys can always get patched through and there is always a backup backup backup system that nobody’s fully tested yet. And how about those jets that always tail a hijacked liner. What good are they? We know they won’t shoot anybody down.
           The mercury continues to drop, it is 48°F out there. Radio reports say it is already freezing in Orlando, just an hour away. The big room in my place remain uninsulated and I have just the one small heater. My electric blanket won’t heat, what’s with that? It’s less than a couple years old. So I’m bundling up and sleeping in. Sounds like a great ending to 2016.

ADDENDUM
           “Out of Antarctica” covers global geology in relation to Antarctica. Get used to unfamiliar scientific terms. The author brings together around eight theories of glaciations and continental drift which fail to explain many well-known anomalies. Like why the northern hemisphere had ice ages, but not the south. And why huge blocks of stones are often found hundreds of miles from their sources away from the direction that ice would have pushed them.
           He explains the shortcomings of existing systems in quite some exhausting detail. One example is continental drift. At the accepted average of one inch per year, Antarctica would only have moved 20 miles from Australia. I think he is saying that the glacial periods of the north were caused by the magnet pole moving back and forth between the Yukon, Hudson’s Bay, and off Norway. The ice follows the magnetic poles and this causes the apparent advance and retreat of the ice sheets.
           If, he says, the same movement corresponded with the South Pole, it is only recently that pole reached the center of the continent and turned it into a deep freeze. There are no warn currents today that reach the shores, but in the past, there were lush fern forests in the interior. Remember glossopteris. The ancient maps don’t show the peninsula jutting toward the tip of South America. If a land bridge had existed there, it would block the circular flow of cold water at latitude 60°S that isolates the continent for warm streams.
           So far the guy has convinced me we don’t know much about old climate conditions. He presents exhaustive evidence, the kind that takes extreme study. In the case of Greece, he examines how the frescoes on the island palaces depict ferns, lions, and other tropical settings. Then the palaces were destroyed in a single day. All the surviving written tablets of the time are tax inventory lists. The Greeks did not begin to write down history for another 1800 years, by which time nobody could imagine anything but a Mediterranean climate in the vicinity.
           The theme appears to be that there was drastic weather changes in times far more recent than the plodding ice ages, that there is more underneath the Antarctic ice cap than glossopteris fossils. Maybe, but this book is still destined to be placed on my shelf for deep reading “later in life”. I’ve got more important things to tend, like sticking clutch plates on my Honda.


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