One year ago today: January 18, 2016, people who need people.
Five years ago today: January 18, 2012, the paint job says . . .
Nine years ago today: January 18, 2008, remember California Johnny?
Random years ago today: January 18, 2007, Victoria Crater, Mars.
MORNING
It’s out of sequence because I didn’t get this far until it was dark this evening, but I’m proud of my new screen door in the making. That’s correct, this is now my second door and shown here is some of the pieces being dry-fitted. Some of the stiles and rails are decorative, another aspect I’m deriving a lot of satisfaction from. I’ve said it before, I think I would have made a great carpenter. It was immense fun building this door without a blueprint. It went slow because I kept checking and sometimes triple checking by thinking, “It can’t be this easy.”
Retirement. Face it, I know a lot about early retirement. My review of last evening shows that I’m right back to my best bet for finding a guitarist remains Mack, who just retired. That’s where I get to make a prediction or two. He still doesn’t want to commit to a band, but he will change within the year. Why? Because that’s how long it takes to learn to quit doing things to other people’s schedules. When you work, every hobby or home project becomes part-time. It also stifles many promising individuals.
The immediate effect is as long as you retain your old habits, everything you do, even golfing, you’re tired. You mow the lawn, you’re tired. You have not yet learned to siesta. But the real cruncher is sooner or later you realize you have to get a paying hobby or vegetate. Why paying hobby? Because the non-paying one is just another form of vegetating. It doesn’t have to pay money, but there must be material rewards. That wildflower garden will increase your property value.
It’s like people you see exercising in public. I’m not against the activity, I’m against the lifestyle that makes this kind of thing necessary in the first place. Now musicians, be informed, cannot automatically just go become performers later in life. I know guys who’ve been knocking themselves out perfecting their guitar riffs since they were teens who will never make it as entertainers. No names, Jim Horcoff and Lance Voss. But if you’d listened to me 30 years ago, you’d have a musical legacy.
That’s a good question. Is my hobby the music or maybe this blog? Neither has made me rich. One thing is certain, the blog makes me immortal, though it is such a tiny part of immortality. Still, the blog does give me a bequest—the first full exposure of the mess lead guitar players have made of bands since 1970. I knew this one guy who worked permanent graveyards at the company and used the time to practice his guitar to perfection. And like the people above, and every guitar player I know in Florida, their illustrious talent will die when they do. Same goes for non-musicians like Theresa or Patsie, because they lack the skill to even write down anything for posterity. (They don’t even know posterity isn’t a word.)
There’s an uproar about the out-going president pardoning all kinds of criminals, but they are mostly low-level drug offenders and the model for presidents doing as much damage as possible to the system that voted them down is well-established. No doubt, many people voted against the system as for the new guy. As for the traitors, that one I’m undecided. According to the Founding Fathers, the USA government should not be keeping any secrets in the first place. As for former presidents landing in the hospital, see, there’s your proof this blog isn’t the only media that has slow days.
I add that I remain totally disappointed at Tractor Supply. It is beyond being pissed off at them, now a month and I still don’t have my 30-ton jack. My entire project is being held up while I listen to their excuses and ignorant advice on what I could do. But they are the only local supplier, not that Miami is any better where the suppliers collude. But follow the chain here.
Without the jack, I can’t level the bedroom, which means I can’t level the bathroom, which means I can’t build the bathroom wall, which goes on and on. Until I level the bathroom, I can’t begin measuring out the porch. So when do I get my porch? Like when I’m 65? Maybe some people think retiring and giving up are synonymous but not around here, pal.
Cloud octopus?
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NOON
How do you like my new dresser? The price was right, it’s from the church up the road, they curbed it. It’s got a few scrapes, but nothing a dowel wouldn’t fix. It’s missing all the brass, but I’ve got a box full somewhere. Like the screen door being built, the hardware costs more than the lumber. The shop talk this morning centered on the economy. It has been sliding downhill for so long they say Trump can’t single-handedly staunch the outflow. I say he can, it is reputed that he has already removed 1,000 Liberals from economically sensitive positions. He’ll need to make it 100,000, that is, completely root them out from any civil service positions. Replace them with business people who know how hard people are supposed to be working and how to deal with the ones who won’t.
I contended [at the meeting] that the most Americans will strive for is having enough money so they don’t have to scrounge or live eyeball deep in debt. If they could just be middle-class comfortable, [I say] they would haul back at that point and take things easier. At the same time, they hardly realize how the system conspires to keep them in just that situation. So most are caught working to pay perpetual debt that they can't seem to do a thing about. For every million who talk about paying off their debts, you'll get maybe one who actually accomplishes it. Thank you very much.
The rat race, I say, is not a marathon, but a circular track. If the bankers can’t keep you in debt so you’ll keep working to pay the debt while they tax you to bail them out, well, how are they supposed to make any money and keep bombing countries that refuse to let them set up a central banking system? You know who is behind all that, don’t you? Ut-tut, you can’t say it, you can only think it. You cannot be a central banking system denier.
“She Dropped Me in Denver So I Had a Whole Mile to Fall.”
NIGHT
You gotta love that radio commercial for identity theft. Which blog warned you about identity theft 30 years ago? That’s right. And which blog warned you 29 years ago that banks would begin charging you for “protection” when they are the ones who really stole your identity by keeping enough of your personal information on a computer file that what THEY call your identity could be stolen. They fence it by constantly sending letters to your mailbox with all the information needed to swipe your identity along with your credit cards. Banks are just the middleman.
The commercial narrator says for protection, just call the bank and give them his name, “Osgood”. Let me get this straight . . .
Additionally, I’m stringing out the router tomorrow and I’m going to add some decoration to the door. I didn’t want to do that under a floodlight. What I have in mind may or may not work, yet I feel it is the logical next step once you can build basic shapes. Nor did I want to glue without clamps, which I will buy tomorrow, and I want to be able to watch carefully for squeeze-out, always a problem when you glue robot parts.
ADDENDUM
At the library at noon, I read some numbers theory. Okay, who is aware that the number 666 is infernal? Ah, most of you. But can anyone tell me why? Hello? Is anybody there? Well, this is your lucky day, get it, lucky as in superstition? The number comes from numerology, the first cousin of astrology. You horoscope types are going to like this. For the rest of you, 666 is, according to the Book of Revelations, “the number of the beast”. Here’s where it comes from.
It is the sum of the first seven prime numbers. (The number 1 is not considered prime by mathemeticians.)
666 = 2² + 3² + 5² + 7² + 11² + 13² + 17²
If that isn’t enough, it is also the palindromic sum of the cubes of 1 through 6, like so:
666 = 1³ + 2³ + 3³ + 4³ + 5³ + 6³ + 5³ + 4³ + 3³ + 2³ + 1³
And while you are pondering all that, there is something else you might consider. Myself and many other sources have frequently pointed out how the Liberal system places intelligent people at a disadvantage. Truly smart people will always be outnumbered and outvoted in an “equal” system. Well, there is now evidence that the pool of intelligent humans may be falling below the level to sustain itself.
That’s tricky to follow, but essentially it means that by comparison, stupid people have been protected from their own stupidity so long in society that they are out-breeding the tiny fraction of humans who have that gene nobody in the governments wants to admit exists. That’s the smart gene that prefers white males, and it is not being passed along often enough to compete.
Ah, but I say don’t worry. Only stupid people would think wiping out the smart people is a good thing for humanity. I say that if the breeding population of smart people gets too low, the stupid people will, (as they have been doing) develop their own population controls. Think about it, for instance, look at drug resistant bacteria, incurable sexual diseases, genetic defects, societal breakdown, etc. All of which are readily traced to stupid people—regardless of how ferociously society denies it. (Smart people, for example, understand the danger of over-taking antibiotics and generally don’t do it. Smart people don’t usually rob banks or settle differences with drive-by shootings. But somebody is.) We won’t go there for the moment, but there is also very little wisdom in a Liberal society works against natural selection.
I further say that the extinction of stupid people is the course of evolution, that it has happened many, many times before. And if anyone cares to do the study, I suggest it would correlate to the decline of empires and incidence of dark ages. Every society that tries to stifle their own smart people by enacting laws that force them to “assimilate” or impose any such degenerate co-mingling with the stupid is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Those who don’t give smart people a free hand all wind up dying anyway, but we’ve seen the good news: that in the long run, the smart people prevail because there is overall, but painstaking, progress as time goes by.
Of course, I could be wrong, but think of what would happen if a Libertarian society ever developed that gave smart people a free hand. That allowed them to do what they thought was right, regardless of whether it was unequal for the stupid majority. The rate of progress would be unbelievable. It would eliminate the privileged rich, cure all problems, outlaw politics, it would be unbelievable. I’ve said if the world was me, there would be no jewelry stores, no strip clubs, no pawn shops, and no taxes because nobody would stoop so low as to collect them.
Say, doesn’t that sound like Planet 107.
Last Laugh
Chelsea's early test results.
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