One year ago today: July 30, 2017, coconut vinegar, anyone?
Five years ago today: July 30, 2013, politicians endorse snooping.
Nine years ago today: July 30, 2009, something like 43.6 years.
Random years ago today: July 30, 2007, I've actually used Dazzle.
I hope it is only wires crossed, but Twood wasn’t in last day when I arrived for rehearsal. He does get tied up with church functions though usually he calls. (This time he texted, I do not have texting.) Could be he landed in the hospital again. I need to get out playing again, it’s terrible having to go out and sit in the crowd. Or in the case of Polk County on a Sunday, the lack of a crowd. Nobody to dance with, not that there is anybody in the town who even knows how. Nor am I singling out Polk, since most of Florida is the same. A singularly unaccomplished herd of cattle. And you know me, I prefer people who at least do something with their lives even if I don’t get along with them.
[Author’s note: the club is still in existence, but dormant. There is a monthly newsletter.]
There’s some consolation knowing I could get in the car and take off for California right now if I felt like it. Sadly, I’d be alone because I do not know one person in the world in the same position. Even Char, who would feed the cats? I wonder if it is an American thing , this option to wind up with nothing? I still get e-mail from that Meet-Up site that announces local get-togethers, but they were a waste of time. No clubs or societies with intellectual or academic pursuits and I have nothing much in common with the others. Seriously, I spend up to twenty hours per week in the library and have never bumped into anyone from town over there. I could not state for absolute fact that most people in this area even know how to read. I certainly would not bet my life on it.
Can anyone remember if I used a pattern for the wooden feeder? If so, where is it? The design was highly successful so I may reverse engineer what I have. Here’s a photo of the original. It is dated April of 2016, which must be about right because of the brand new looking wood. Let me dig into the blog records and get you an exact date. Dang, they are that damn docx format, so you’ll have to wait. The feeder of today looks much different; it is festooned with screens and wood grates to ward off larger birds. A new feeder would be a dandy project for my new work table slash coffee table slash chalk table slash dining table. It’s the only table in the house. The second layer of green paint is drying.
I finished watching “Vera Dake”, and the watching the trial was agony for me. She got 30 months. The judge openly admitted he wanted her punishment to serve as a deterrent, which is totally illegal. She has no duty to serve extra time as a bad example. (If it had been a man, he would have gotten life.) But worst was the police. Don’t hand me that crap they are just doing their job. They are in court as hostile witnesses acting totally for the prosecution. Vera made them witnesses by giving them a statement. She was tricked into thinking she was telling her side of the story to sympathetic ears. The law is clear, she is entitled to the best possible defense—and I don’t see how that is served by having uniformed police with specialized training sifting through her statement in advance and agreeing between them how to present segments of it in court under the worst possible light.
And this whole concept of cooperating with the police has no place in a courtroom. Considering what the police themselves have morphed that notion into, the topic of how you and the police got along should not even be allowed, unless they care to put in a good word. No cooperating with the people who arrest you and try to coerce you into a confession is a judgment call, and by the time things get to trial, you are hardly interested in the opinions of any sort. Poor Vera, since it is a true story, remind me to look up what happened.
Benban complex, Egypt.
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Then, I found the DVD “Bullitt”. I was just a kid and it was the first “modern” movie I’d seen, it was 1969. There was a movie theater in our town, but the guy at the pharmacy ran it so “teens” would have something to do on Saturday nights. So he regularly played old B&W Tarzan movies. Bullitt was the movie that convinced me I wanted to live in a city. It was a break from the corny movie style of the 1950s and I was enthralled by the San Francisco scenery. Dial telephones, elevators, and gals in miniskirts. For me, it was all new and different. They were careful to portray hippies only as bartenders and musicians. And now in hindsight, all skinny girls with no tattoos. The movie convinced me I wanted to drive a Mustang, but as happens all to often, by the time I could afford one, they had quit making them.
It was odd to see people lighting up in the airport terminals. And the old telephone fax machines where you hung the head set into suction cups. Little did I know that in 12 years, I’d be using that equipment every day. I never did like it. The first time I got any messages over the phone was on my Apple []e via modem. Text only, that was 1982. And yes, there were already sex lines. You bought the directory like a small catalog and dialed up. The calls must have been awfully short. Once I learned to bypass the toll charges, I logged on to one of the sites.
It was one female and about six males. She was one of the type that I find a joke, the woman who is not really sexy, but has learned what the average desperate man wants to hear. You know, the stripper kind of sexy. Off duty, she’s hardly worth looking at and has the personality of a chain saw .
And she was playacting all six men. There was no privacy, whoever was logged on could read all messages both ways. You could dial in privacy, but full long distance charges applied. The Internet was around, but back then without any browsers, it was just one of many ways to waste your time. I never even bothered to log on to the ‘net until the early 1990s, and there was nothing to see. Airport schedules, but you could print out the passenger lists. By then, I’d had a complete home computer system for over ten years, so I had learned to work, not how to play. That’s part of the reason you get to read my blog. Computer games bore me .
Home by dark, here’s your health food snack. I’m making campfire coffee, that means it is percolated instead of dripped. You might not like it. But the cake? All natural ingredients, such as flour, corn meal, baking powder. Visible is the greased and floured baking dish, the walnuts being chopped, and in the measuring cup is milk, olive oil, and molasses. I happen to like molasses by itself. I’ll put it on pancakes. The cake is in the oven now, come back in 35 minutes and help yourself. I make just one loaf at a time because it doesn’t keep, so slice it thick.
Yes, the substrate material did continue to swell and burr up, but I will apply as many coats of paint and sanding as it takes to make it smooth. The table is in my kitchen/dining/living room, so I’ll be able to watch the molasses bake. Unlike bread dough recipes, this cake does not fill the kitchen with aromas. You have to keep an eye. I don’t use buttermilk, so baking times vary. There, the router caddy. The blade fits through a recessed hole in the base, protecting it as well. How do you like it? Little handholds and everything. And those cleats for the power cable? Sweet. Banana for scale.
ADDENDUM
! It seems there was a government seizure of “restaurant equipment” a few years back. Not a peep in the newspapers indicates the targets were largely ethnics. It was not some ordinary going out of business affair, as the carts did not flood the market. These are like cars, they will deteriorate if not used regularly. Occam’s Razor says all these factors have one common cause. Only the authorities could grab the carts and let them go to rot, and follow that with a series of laws making it difficult to get back into the business. That’s what I ran into. Something put a sudden stop to 7,000 carts and I’m obeying the rules to the hilt until I learn why.
Judging by the reaction, I seem to be the only one asking these questions. True, I have a vested interest, but it is on a different plane altogether from others who are involved. They, too often, have that same “hurry up and make money” preconditioning. That is rarely wise because the authorities make it so. I’ve got another form to complete and going on-line for instructions? Fifty-seven pages. I have not read it all, but it is a requirement to register with the State Department. That would mean anybody with a criminal record, delinquent support payments, late taxes, or even an expired driver’s license need not try to operate a vending cart. Or, it seems, even lease or work at one as a 1099 contractor. Remember, it was me who first said the system was tightening up this way back in 2003. (Maybe that date is not posted yet. It was hand-written.)
And that’s just another reason I know so many carts out there are illegal. The instructions seem to say that if anybody works for me for more than twenty days total in any capacity, it is my responsibility to turn in their name to the authorities. Child support is the reason given, but that is what is wrong with the government. They use that as an excuse to keep tabs on everybody. Equality, DC style. Wait, there’s more. I’ve only glanced, but there appears to be a requirement I was unaware of.
Here’s the scenario. You have a cart that is inspected and ready to roll. Can you just rent or lease it to somebody? Apparently not. That person has to be as registered and qualified on paper as you are. The reading is difficult, but I think that is what it is saying. The primary qualification of running a cart appears to be identifying yourself to the authorities. Now I know most people are cheating.
I’ve also been paying attention to the cities that are shutting down vending operations. They’ve been hitting some 13-year-olds in Tampa and Minnesota somewhere. That is getting pretty hard-nosed. And some guy in Lehigh Acres, south of here, was shut down despite having all the proper licensing. The city changed its mind after they took his money. And, get this, he is still in operation because he is giving the food away for free and asking for a “donation”. Apparently he is unaware that it is illegal to give food away on this basis. He’s on church property, which might explain why they haven’t clapped the cuffs on him yet.
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