May 26, 2018

Yesteryear
One year ago today: May 26, 2017, even dorks have rights.
Five years ago today: May 26, 2013, remember 10,000?
Nine years ago today: May 26, 2009, on the SOBE diet.
Random years ago today: May 26, 2010, yeah, I sing chick songs.

           I bought a book on building amateur kaleidoscopes. Something to divert myself, I’ve always wondered about those. Turns out they were at one point an important parlor piece of entertainment. That must have been before sex was invented, which as we all know happened in Demming, New Mexico, during the mid 1960s. Kaleidoscopes have quite a background being first described but not built by Brewster, the man who devised the color wheel you see in many art magazines. I see there are several types, the most common being the hexagon or snowflake shaped image. Maybe I’ll even find out why, when some of these get old, the colors get darker to one side.

           Another downpour, so I took an 81 mile car drive. You bet, that normally would have been reserved for a sunny day by motorcycle, but we’re working with what we got. I drove out to the Thrift in Pierce whatever to pick up more DVDs. I have hundreds of them since I moved here, but there are two entities known to science that have no upper limit. The expectations of old women and the number of times Van Damme can burglarize the Faberge egg. This gave me time to click on the dashcam and make a few recordings of the events surround this installment of guitar auditioning. This included finally enumerating the non-musical reasons for failure on their part, of which six represent the most common. They overlap, but six for ease of understanding.

           1. Comping
           2. Too pushy
           3. No theory
           4. Unadaptable, can’t capo
           5. No spatial skills
           6. Can’t transpose

           If these don’t make sense, you don’t play bass, but I’ll give you representative examples. Comping is playing every song the same way. Pushy usually involves them telling me what to do as if that is the natural course of things. (This includes guitarists who refuse to simply strum along unless I tell them what song we are playing.) No theory, that covers a lot, including inability or refusal (same thing) to learn their circle of fifths. Unadaptable means they cannot change what they do to match a duo setting, and it is very common. No spatial skills includes lack of imagination, the worst instance is when they can’t follow a chord finger pattern if I show it to them on the bass rather than another guitar. That, I consider to be borderline retarded. And can’t transpose relates to the circle of fifths but it is far worse because they cannot even play the song in another key even if you tell them the chords.

           That item about the finger pattern is a curious situation. I could mostly tell you what guitar chord you are playing if you showed me the finger pattern in thin air. Yet time and again, I’ve had to put down the bass, pick up a six-string, and show some stupid-ass guitar player what to do. Because they can’t grasp it when I show them by gripping the bass neck.

           The capo item is also too simple as I’ve worded it. Some tunes sound better with a capo because open strings tend to linger a moment. Try it by taking a song in A, and place the capo so you actually play a G pattern. Most guitarists I’ve met, for the life of them, can’t do that without being shown. But it is not like they are good at being shown, either. For example, some still try to get away with following my left hand. This does not work because I play a lot of thirds. They see me change strings and assume I changed chords. You know what I tell guitarists who try it even after they are warned?
“So, you assume I changed chords. You know what assume stands for? It stands for you make an ass out of me and your mother.”
           I do not take crap from third rate guitar players. It still ires me when I remember that one dork who told me it was my job to tell him each time what chord the song started on, because I was “just the bass player”. He lasted about two minutes.

           I just updated the books for the week, and it’s the old pattern again. A month after I gig, my finances show a remarkable improvement. Due to the materials on this place, I’ve been running a regular deficit, but not in the same sense as the government. What it means is I bring in real dollars from elsewhere, not print up fake money and inch it into the system. The deficit is about half what it was in Broward but as soon as I gig, no matter how little I actually make, it eliminates the deficit. So I’m happy.
           I’m also exhausted. Read on, and support my motion for a good eight hours sack time tonight. I’ve also got some sore shoulders, so I was working, alright. It’s a pity the attic fan can’t help with the humidity, which was 95% up there. Couple that with the temperature of 82.7°F, it was four hours in the virtual sauna. Bottom line – get that insulation finished.

Picture of the day.
Kale, Macedonia.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Here’s the attic all nicely lit up and with the ventilation fan, the work is proceeding nicely. But from an accounting point of view, probably at a loss. While it takes roughly 15 minutes to fit each batt of insulation, in sixteen hours, we have sixteen batts. At a shop rate of $80 per hour, normal these days, that’s a loss. It’s explainable that I can’t bust my chops, but even so, much of the work is from shifting around a lot. The hours include trips to the store for supplies, cutting and forming the tarpaper, stuffing everything through the hatch, dragging it along the planks, stapling the tarpaper, then fitting, stuffing, stretching, and stapling the insulation.

           It’s a two person job, since I probably crawled up and down the ladder forty times so far. Time adds up if you run out of staples or can only fit four batts at a time or it gets in your own way. It’s moving faster now that I know the routine and have a system. The lights were indeed a smart idea, since the single drop light I was using cast a shadow off every spar. And look how many just in this photo. There are only three 100 watt bulbs, and a fourth to follow over the bedroom, since I am going to redo most of that.

           There went my afternoon, just me and Bushnell radio. And the libtard Tampa news relays. I mean, haven’t we heard enough of North Korea already. Just ignore them, or I mean, keep an eye on them but quit giving them all the free press they could hope for. Seriously, if these damn US televisions cut them off, how many Americans would tune into a Korean radio station for the latest?
           I worked until 8:00 PM upstairs. There are no decent coffee shops or after hours places to hang out in this area, same as Broward. Even hanging at a coffee house can set you back ten bucks, maybe twelve. The nearest movie theater is geared toward teens, I mean Spiderman isn’t exactly an original product of their generation. And the radio played a taped interview with one of these teens countless times, calling for searches of students as they enter. This is what is wrong with America. They would use such a rule to search everyone, when in fact they should be targeting only those most likely to offend. How can they tell? It’s called profiling. If somebody fits a profile they don’t like, that could be just too bad. But it is even worse to search and inconvenience everybody because some minority might get offended.

           I’m adamant about that. It’s not just appearances as many like to make out. I’m with the Constitution that says there must be reasonable and probably grounds. That does not give the authorities the excuse to monitor and search everyone. They are legally authorized to only go after individuals or small groups, not society at large. When you go after most of the population that is totalitarianism. Or maybe I was just up in the attic a little too long today?
           This is a parlor grade kaleidoscope. There is no official term for people who build these. This variation does not rotate colored crystals in a lens, but derives the patterns from both sliding and twisting the rod of colored beads. There are countless objects used for the colors including butterfly wings, and from what I hear, a set made for Queen Victoria containing precious stones. There are all kinds of mirror arrangements but most of the views have been replaced by computer graphics programs. The popular type are called Mandelbrot.

           I have not read the book yet, but there are chapter titles such as 3D viewers and a section on devices that look at surface patterns for their source. The last chapter describes a kaleidoscope some six feet long designed for mounting in a yard. It has no objective lens, rather is meant to view ordinary scenery with all the distortions. I think that has a different name, but the concept is the same.

ADDENDUM

           And while I’m grousing, take a look at this still from the Van Damme movie. Of course, he always finds some reason to visit the strip bars. You may like this scene, but I don’t. Look at the rumples on that lady’s ass. If you can't see 'em, click to expand. The dimples are actually a message in Braille saying “single mother”. C’mon, Claude, shell out the extra twenty bucks and get some babe with smooth cheeks. I know stretch marks exist, but I don’t want to see them when I go to the movies. Enough with these politically correct strippers and hookers, altready. It’s not like there’s a shortage of pretty ones hanging around the casting lots. They sure aren’t hanging around here, so I would like to see them when I watch a movie, okay?
           Plus I’m extra grumpy from managing to get a staple in my thumb while inserting a cartridge. Innit strange how this late in life I’m getting injuries a lot of men are glad to say they never get any more? The actual insulation for the entire ceiling costs $186. Not a bad investment for the difference it’s making already. With any luck, I might enjoy staying in town all summer.

Last Laugh

(The future of Facebook dating.)

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