One year ago today: May 22, 2017, circumference is 12.57”
Five years ago today: May 22, 2013, a generic day.
Nine years ago today: May 22, 2009, since 1521.
Random years ago today: May 22, 2007, now them’s old pictures!
Things like property liens are public information, they say. Go on line, get all the info, it’s supposed to be easy. Actually that is a load of crap. In Polk County, there are five or six databases that claim to have the files and none of them entirely agree. Add to that another batch of sites masquerading as official, often designed to trick the user into thinking they are the real thing. None will guarantee they have the complete reports, and indeed, the one item I was seeking never appears. But it definitely exists because the other party’s lawyer appears as a co-defendant on the court papers received today.
The Judge was quite helpful, carefully going over the document while explaining that the reasons given for the dismissal, that is, the dual-tracking, were a separate issue and he denied the motion. This is the point where we became aware of the lien. We’d seen it before, but not being attorneys, thought it was just a matter of the ex-wife being named a co-defendant. Nope, she not only has a lien on the house, it is large enough for her to have a lawyer show up at this obscure hearing. This is not very good news for my buddy. Oddly, the only way for him to prevent her from getting a share would be to let the foreclosure proceed. Way to go, American law.
The emerging story is the old tale of disaster. My pal was taken quite badly almost every step of the way. Nobody blames him for his outlook on this, and now it just got a major step worse. Be warned, folks, American marriage is a legal contract with every clause against the husband. Stay away from women whose only ambition in life is to become a mother. The most I’ll say is the whole story is far, far worse than what I can write here. He was in love and didn’t even do a background check. The only worse story I know of is my own.
In an effort to find that lien, I went over to my real estate agent’s office. Nope, she doesn’t know either. I had asked that lawyer, but he was singularly unhelpful, he would not even tell me the amount of the lien. That’s situation normal for me, I’ll have to go in and find out the entire process myself. What I mean is too often you cannot just dig out the detail you want. Rather, you have to learn as much as the people who do it for a living to utilize the system once. Time and again that happens, yet that big lie persists that there is nothing stopping you from getting ahead. Bull. That’s exactly what the system does.
The link here is my real estate lady is also a fan of evolution and the search for extraterrestrial life. She knows how I feel about Mars and has no doubt life exists everywhere it possibly can. We chatted a half hour on DNA. When I brought up “Darwin’s Radio” (see today’s addendum), she went as wide-eyed as I did over the concept of the redundant strands being a type of read only memory, not just genetic messengers. Problem: the book only mentions it once as a hint kind-of, so good luck trying to find that sentence.
We also discussed the concept that DNA was originally a virus that invaded a host and stuck around. What I know is from reading medical, not biology texts. Hence, for me that is a convenient explanation. She believes that given the right mixture, life can begin spontaneously. That’s a bit of chicken and egg situation. We both want Mars to produce answers. So far there is no evidence that life ever existed that wasn’t DNA-based, but I believe it possible. DNA just happens to be the mode that won out on Earth [I think].
That theory that we are alien garbage is plausible. We might be the only life form that was introduced but that’s not to say we could not simply have crowded out everything else. I read an article on the drone designed to operate in the thin Martian atmosphere. The idea of gliders and balloons has been around since I was a kid, so why do these things take so long? Anyway, I would be just as happy if they find evidence of life as finding life itself. Various religions that formerly denied this possibility have lately backtracked to an embarrassing degree, but I am holding them to their original position. They’ve held up progress for centuries and it is time to get the intellectual pitchforks ready.
[Author’s note: here’s a strange tale from the trailer court. I’ve always had a custom of whenever I go into a court room, I wear a really expensive pair of socks. Today, I was mistaken so much for a lawyer than security waved us through the private check in. As we all passed through the scanner, for unknown reasons, the clerk asked me and only me to hike up my trouser legs to check my socks. Huh?
So I did. Oooh, went the crowd. What surprised me was not the search itself, but how so many people watching knew they were Argyles. If you can explain this, I’d like to hear it.]
Malta, Montana, 1940.
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I’m rewatching the DVD “Stealth”, not that distinctive a title these days. It has a few classic scenes. The one memorable to me is the part where the lady pilot ejects over North Korea. I find the portrayal of the North Korean officer leading the chase to be a masterful depiction of the difference that sets leaders apart from the rabble of this world. I didn’t find the actors name but talk about typecasting.
It’s action-packed with some hard-hitting material, corruption at the top, and an actress [Jessica Biel] I’d be okay with going through basic training. The sound track music is for dorks, especially that muck that plays during the end credits. Seriously the worst piece of music I’ve heard this century, and I’ve been through some bad patches. The band is called “BT” or Trevor Morris or Alan Meyerson, I think, it is hard to tell from either the credits or the lyrics. It could be called “Aqueous Transmission” or “Lost Souls Forever” but I’m not subjecting myself to the ordeal of listening again to pick it out. The movie has a quick clip after the ending where the CAV “eyeball” comes to life on its own.
Oddly, I think, there is a special featurette on the music. It sounds like somebody hitting old drain pipes with spikes because it is. That is what, in our troubled times, passes for creativity. This band, “Incubus”, no thanks. They make a big deal that some of the music was written special for the movie and that is absolutely what it sounds like. Hail on a tin roof. Just because your mixer has 128 channels doesn’t mean you have to put a dorky percussion track on each one.
That near-situation [teen marriage] reminds me of the significant number of men I’ve met in this new city who are paying child support. It would almost seem to be the norm around central Florida. Usually I hear about it because of some penalty or confiscation that occurs over late payment. Strange how that whole system has never reached a critical mass, you know, where each male victim eventually shacks up with some divorcee who is receiving roughly the same income on the big, big merry-go-round. America is proof that welfare creates divorce. Why be a good wife when you can make all men your husband through taxation? Oh, I’ve heard the arguments that the old ways kept women barefoot and in the kitchen, but how many of them are ever better off on their own? Maybe ask the cats?
ADDENDUM
I’m half-way through “Darwin’s Radio”. It’s getting hard to follow, as if the author is including events designed to liven things up. Why would women riot in a San Diego hotel because some other woman in Mexico City had a deformed baby? [Insert Mexican dead baby joke here.] Why would two drunks shoot the man who had acquired the vaccine patent? The plot also includes too many characters whose role isn’t clear. It makes the book full of details that get hard to recall many chapters later.
No, don’t read this book unless DNA interests you. There are easier ways to learn what is happening with DNA research. The terminology is confusing and just more to remember. By chapter 44 we all know Mitch and Kaye are going to do the wild thing, so get it over with, you two. The tale isn’t even good science fiction because we all want to know what these freaky fetuses look like. All we got so far is they are cramped-over lizard-like and have one eye, which you can observe any weekday down at the DMV.
Worse, the parts you want to get at are not evenly distributed. The massacres in some former soviet republic crop up once every ten chapters until you forget why they are relevant. Best are the medical board meetings and brainstorming, provided you like big words. The prose can get tedious and that decreases how much I read each day. It could be a while yet before I finish this book.
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