One year ago today: June 27, 2016, keeping history alive.
Five years ago today: June 27, 2012, closer than Las Vegas.
Nine years ago today: June 27, 2008, even a little wrong . . .
Random years ago today: June 27, 2004, a matter of opinion.
Well, I made it home, no thanks to the City of Miami. They tried the same low-grade series of stunts on me as before, but this time I was ready for them and deciphered the enigma of the right train color. It turns out there is a sign saying the train is the green or orange line, a miniscule placard in the window of the lead car. This corresponds to the way Miami thinks, where it is your chore to work around their sheer stupidity and lack of those exact two colors of paint. You see, in Miami, the city knows its citizens are dumb and easily occupied by watching the train pull up to read the sign. But an outsider, such as myself, who knows how to read, well! Anyone who likes to be alerted by the train already coming to a stop is going to miss that sign. Unless you live in Dade Country, you’ve got the brains to figure out what I’m pointing a here.
I know, you are thinking nobody could be that thick-headed stupid. Ah, but when were you last in Miami or New York? Their attitude is it is your fault if you miss the train. You’re supposed to be watching for their eentsy sign, not have your nose stuck in some stupid book or something. Well, this morning I grabbed a coffee near the station, visited with Alaine, and once again, had to go past my stop into Hialeah, switch trains, and double back. To all who travel to south Florida, bear in mind since the cancellation of the bus lines, the lowest grade of travel is now the trains, and this is strongly reflected in the clientele.
This photo shows a broken lid to an underground service vault. The homeless bums like to remove the cones. Shown here, civic-minded JZ is replacing one that had been thrown down the street. This hole is some nine feet deep and easily capable of maiming the careless. Some car had backed over it, probably from drinking too much mango wine. But this is typical of the City of Miami. Instead sealing off the danger zone, they throw out a traffic cone and take off to harvest mangoes.
Viking rodeo.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
And I do have a beef. Here is a letter I am tempted to email to the Washington Post, kind of as a challenge to see if they dare to print it. Don’t bother writing anything to Dear Abby. She’s living off her sister’s rep and tends toward only printing letters for which she has a prepared answer, she always takes the woman’s side, and she is more concerned with appearing to be fair than in actually giving out good advice. And you can see from this photo it was not crowded on board, so there was no pressing need to tell anybody what to do.
I have a message for the employees of bus companies, airlines and railways of America, in particular those well-meaning but often naïve types who assign seating. I frequently travel solo, so I believe I am speaking for thousands of men. I’m 50+ and old enough to know what I like, so please, when there are other options, will you stop sitting little old ladies next to me?
I’m a professional entertainer, clean-cut and blue-eyed. I do not find your average old ladies either interesting nor attractive. My point is I do not have anything in common with the grandmother type and I have no intention to start unless I live to be 90.
What’s more, I’ve traveled the world and know the whole “age appropriate” concept is Judeo-Christian baloney, so please don’t hand me another lecture. I worked 20 years in a cubicle surrounded by 300 old ladies and have wearied of pretending to be interested in their shallow chatter.
I’m asking the travel people to sit a 30, maybe 40-ish slim academic lady next to me so I we can hold an intelligent conversation. Otherwise, please leave the seat vacant.
There, doesn’t that have just enough serious ring to it to get the goat of some lady gossip columnist? Hey, I pegged the grandmother right. When she miraculously determined I was not the world’s greatest conversationalist on subjects like grandchildren, weather, and knew not the location of any Olive Garden, I kid you not, she took out her knitting. Now, how old lady is that?
However, I’ve been around enough of these types to know that is for show and that knitting will outlast her attention span. Now if I had brought my knitting, that would supply the missing moments of drama from this saga. (Because I can knit and think at the same time, thus knit for hours.) She sat it down after ten minutes and was better absorbed the remainder of the trip playing solitaire on her smart phone. Like I said, nothing in common.
The heat got me inside to watch “They Came To Carduro”, a 1959 rather deep movie about the US Cavalry in the Mexican War featuring some reluctant heroes. I found it prophetic in how the system caught men up in something they did not want, but the bull-headed discipline of army life gave them no choice. Interestingly, the main thing the men wanted to avoid, for a variety of valid reasons, was publicity. The newspaper coverage would cause plenty of hardship for the men who joined up in most cases to get away from the rest of the world.
Starring Gary Cooper and Katherine Hepburne, an actress who’s career was still active when I was a kid, but you know, I barely remember her. I did not care for her, Sophia Loren, or Marilyn Monroe, since all three had that touch of housewife look, the last thing I found attractive in my actresses.
"Don’t tell me what they say about me.
Tell me why they feel comfortable telling you.”
~ Unknown
I’m around half-way through “Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee” and the book is heavy on the theme that the Indians “owned” the land they hunted on. This notion is not accurate, but it does provide an easy way for slow learners to view the situation. I will entirely agree that the average Indian agent and cavalry officer were total low-life scum hiding behind an intentionally misinterpreted rule-book. But I just described most of the US civil service. Of course, DC was aware of the inhuman goings-on and did nothing. That’s the one tradition they still drive to perfection down to this very day.
That is symptomatic of an entirely different mental problem that cannot be blamed on others. Since day one, such people, Indian or not, have always been condemned to take what is dished out to them. And you’ll get nowhere expecting history is going to pity one such group over any other. The tribes had regular war councils before battle but it seems not one Indian ever suggested they had best try something more inventive than charging toward repeating rifles and circular galloping around wagons. By any standard, the Indians should have made a far better showing.
It seems they were also dreadful snipers. Time and again they trapped enemy columns in box canyons, firing off all their ammunition to kill only six or seven soldiers while taking immense casualties. Ammunition was short, yet they did not strategically attack supply wagons, instead relying on the faint hope of finding a few abandoned bullets after the action. It does not take that long to train men to shoot a rifle, yet they were bizarrely slow at that, as well. And don’t even talk about their leadership and discipline issues. It was every man for himself and that alone guaranteed they’d be thrashed.
The red scooter developed a short after I installed the LED, so I had it torn apart when the storm hit. I had to move fast, this later giving me a chance to review the musician’s listings. No names, but I see one of the guitarists I flunked [last year] is advertising again, calling himself an expert in Cajun, Blues, and early Rock. Such a liar, he’s one of the losers who could not learn Jambalaya. He can play exactly one song of each type. This is why I quickly press each new guitar player to learn my easiest material first. It’s to see if he’s lying.
Like that loser from New York. He was clever enough to fool me for nearly a month before I tricked him into playing his hand. The way this is done is to agree to learn one of his songs even though he has not learned any of mine. He’ll try to “teach” you the way he plays it, but that is precisely what I told him—and to which he agreed--will never happen. I learn from a million-seller recording, never from a two-bit guitar player. We agree in advance which MP3 we would play and conform to that. This is specifically to prevent the guitar player tricking the entire band into learning his version—which has invariably (as in always) been changed to cover up his lack of ability to play it right.
The New York guy was aggravating in another way. He was constantly trying to twist what you said right backwards. When I’d tell him he cannot change the chord pattern in a song, he’d make remarks how I would change the ending of songs. It’s evident that I did not mean song endings, which I won’t explain again even if space permits. Every time I’d tell him not change song patterns, he’d point out that I was doing it in the outro. Like he was clever and catching me, and we must have had that same damn conversation ten times. It was obvious he was itching to fight over it to get his own way. Um, how can I politely say this? His only strumming pattern sucked bit time.
Another thing he’d do is constantly display some minor knowledge about a song. How many times I wanted to tell him he might amount to something if he’d channel similar energy into playing the music right. Like Bill from my big band era 2013-2014, he’d go on about who “really wrote that song”, like anybody gives a hoot. He especially thought it was delightful whenever I sang a chick song to state it was a man who first wrote it. Again, like who gives? Take a hike, Ike. Preferably back to New York.
Here’s a side bet. As for the ad mentioned above, it has heavily borrowed from me. He’s shamelessly lifted many keywords from my posting, like “seasoned”, “flair”, and “rhythmist”. I wonder if he even realizes how pea-brained he comes across? He’s certainly slow-witted enough to think nobody is going to notice.
ADDENDUM
Having some extra time, we went girl-watching at Trader Joes. Take your money to shop there, but the best sights are the women.. Sure, they tend to be young-marrieds, but they are so much nicer than the downtown or uptown broads. I’m hardly the first guy to notice how classy babes tend to keep their figures much longer and better than their working class counterparts after they have kids. (Or as RofR would say, being classy, they knew how important it was.) And you can confirm this by walking up and down the aisles at Trader Joes, ostensibly looking at items like this Dragon Sauce.
Another annoyance I’d forgotten about Miami is the only paper with a decent crossword doubled in price to $2 per issue. The Miami Herald, which is just another pro-Cuban, pro-illegal immigrant, liberal, taxpayer-hating rag. Example, today’s paper reports there is an epidemic of drug overdose deaths in Florida. This, of course, is utter nonsense. There is no epidemic. The number of overdose deaths is exactly what it should be. No more, no less. And on they go about how 26 million Americans will “lose” medical coverage in the next decade, so that must be Trump’s fault.
Yeah, but the Herald does not point out that if they equally refuse to pay for gas, booze, and hookers, they are also going to “lose” those things. It is not Trump’s job to provide insurance for people who will not buy it for themselves. But you can always rely on the Miami Herald to imply it is. The one I really like, however, is the constant bombardment of the airwaves with this “Russian” election interference. I don’t care a deuce about the Russians, but I would like to know exactly what it is they supposedly did, and how. The media isn’t telling us the interesting part.
The sad part is if the Russians did do something, who’s fault was it? My finger points at the people who devised a system without sufficient safeguards. They should be punished instead of promoted. But nothing will ever happen to them. It’s like they are descendents of Indian agents and cavalry officers.
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
