One year ago today: May 9, 2016, brain damage in Texas.
Five years ago today: May 9, 2012, worst Nicholas Cage movie.
Nine years ago today: May 9, 2008, I said nobody was home.
Random years ago today: May 9, 2009, aboard the USS N. Carolina.
There it is, Texas baked chicken pie. Breakfast as it should be. Serves six. The secret ingredient? Instead of buttermilk, which I don’t care for, use Mexican cream and milk, half and half. Note other than spices, this pie has only four ingredients. Chicken, celery, onion, and the dough, my secret. This came out of the over around 8:30AM so it wasn’t really breakfast. The timing was right. I used the cool hours to clear the north wall of the bedroom for drywall and to haul more tools and such out to the work shed. While in the yard, I took down the birdfeeder to modify it against the bluejay and did I catch flak from the regulars.
Ha, you want a laugh. Those so-called mortgage help agencies and their ads. I stepped through a set of their rules and every one of them has one ridiculous pre-condition. You must be current on your mortgage payments. If, they say, you are paid up but struggling, then they’ll help. That’s a farce, because almost anyone with a mortgage is already struggling—how are the debtors to spot any additional degree of suffering until they actually fall behind? Here’s something, I’ve often spotted the direct similarity between the rise of labor unions in the USA to the same problems being faced by people with mortgages. A big, uncaring company is dictating what they do. What a concept, a union of people with mortgages going to bat against the banks.
But, that will never happen because of the old truism that the only thing poor people have in common is their poorness. Trying to organize them over a common cause is as impossible as unscrambling an egg. Be aware that I have always thought the primary cause of people staying poor is their lack of ability to form strong associations focusing on self-protection. It shouldn’t surprise anyone how some of the richest corporations in the land are the most organized. Even bad organization beats no organization. Note I said “staying poor”, not “being poor”. If you are organized, it is possible to get out of poverty. I speak from experience.
Royal Gorge Bridge.
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These are purloins. Some call them furring strips. I read that the tech term for them when used in this fashion is purloin, so allow that term to enter parlance round here. The picture shows the correct 24” on center arrangement and, of course, excellent robot club workmanship. I did some further work with the new router table and I’m gaining some real experience of the kind not mentioned in the directions. These stay with me, to increase my value to the project, not that I need any more than I have. But that’s how the game is played.
I finished reading “Out of Antarctica” the second time. I don’t know about continents moving as much as he suggests, but I’m okay with entire continental plates rotating in place, kind of like ice floes. The book remains hard to follow because of his loose interpretation of ancient legends is not as scientific as he would like. These legends tend to refer to similar events, for instance that civilization orginated at the north pole. However, in many societies, like the Chinese, who like to get everything backwards, their maps all have the south pole at the top.
And most legends refer to the gods living on a mountain and there are no mountains at the north pole. What makes sense to me is that the Earth has a habit of changing the way it rotates. With its molten core, there is no reason it has to stick with one axis. Where the logic breaks down for me is that when the axis changes, the poles still have to remain at nearly right angles to the sun’s rays to create the solar night and cold. It doesn’t add up to me, but allow me more time to think it through.
“No Dear, those pants don’t make you look fat,
I mean, how could they?”
Is there a gap in the blog? Polk County underwent a major power surge that knocked out all the routers, including the library. I used the extra time to double fasten down the “purlin” strips in the above photo. That’s correct, I wrongly called them “purloins” which means to steal. Now, I could do a Gen X or Y and go back to sanitize the error. But that would be so 20th century. I left it in. Some may laugh at the mistake, which would amount to inviting the same right back. And we all know about people who avoid criticism by never doing anything. You call them what you want, I call them “family”.
Speaking of major disappointment, I had another guitar player flunk out. He told me he had been playing rhythm for some years in a variety of bands, but he knew only four chords. (G, C, Bm and D). In such settings, I give them a chance to learn fast, instead, I got resistance. That’s a sure sign of a guitar freak. He could not play rhythm and didn’t want to learn. He was soliciting “jam musicians” for his local situation.
Instead you get some trivia. Did you know 54% or Floridians have a library card. That would not include me, I have no card on principle. But I’m part of the 1/2% of Florida that actually uses the library. A higher number, 80%, consider the library to be an essential service. If you like statistics, here’s another. In America, 80% of Catholics live in cities. Even in rural areas, it is extremely rare to find a Catholic who is a farmer or herdsman. Gee, does that mean Catholics like to live in cities? No, that situation is due to immigration patterns back in the 1800s.
More trivia. The average teenage boy today has seen more women naked than all of his ancestors combined. I think that stat refers to pictures, so let’s not confuse that with how many are seen live, which are the only ones I count. Factoid, a woman never wakes up her second child just to see him smile.
Further, I thought about the concept of a washer/ dryer that fed the grey water back into the soil. Who remembers the tap way back in the yard that is embedded in the bog old tree I had cut down? That fully-functional tap is just feet away from the garden area. So I went downtown and thought about the possibilities there. Come back regularly and find out how that progresses. In the absence of any viable women in the entire club, I sketched some plans and wrote some letters.
You know, one thing can be certain of is that my letters are never thrown on the desk unopened. I happen to know by letters are avidly awaited,and they are torn open the instant they are received. Next, they are minutely examined. I ensure this by randomly including a five dollar bill in the envelopes.
ADDENDUM
NPR news, your propaganda unlimited station. It says South Korea is changing its political stripe again. What are we still doing over there? They’ve had sixty years to build up more than enough defenses against the north. The whole communist aggression thing is debunked and admit it, human rights are an issue most clearly delineated by race. We should have got the hell out of Korea by 1960 at the latest. But no, our military wants those radar bases that peer deep into China. To protect us? Don’t make me laugh. To provoke them. The war machine needs wars to get promotions.
What’s this? We are sending more troops to Afghanistan. That is disgusting beyond words. Get the hell out of there as well. Nobody in Afghanistan is defending my freedom. They may be bravely obeying orders and putting their lives on the line, but the political motives fall plenty short of that war as being in the cause of democracy.
Here’s something I think we’ll see more of. A near riot at the Ft. Lauderdale airport over Spirit canceling flights. Remember how I told you business “progress” in America has become nothing more than each layer of management and labor passing the buck so if anything goes wrong, the cost falls on the end consumer. (I consider banks to be the top offender.) That airline situation typifies what I meant. The Spirit people at the gate, the clerks, the pilots, the airline, not one damn person in the entire organization is legally doing anything wrong—but it is the passengers are stranded. Make no mistake, somebody at Spirit is responsible, and as far as I’m concerned the whole lot of them are guilty. They should collectively be exposed to a class action, as should all businesses that hide behind layers of job descriptions and placating customer service that really does nothing.
[Author's note: the above comment gets me ankle-biters from both sides, but I still blame them all. It's not like when they sold the passengers the tickets either labor or management warned them about the dispute. If they sold them a ticket, that is an obligation to get them to a destination even if they have to send them on another airline. The whole "customer service" philosophy sucks--because it is all talk and no action.]
Last Laugh
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