One year ago today: March 3, 2018, yes, constantly receptive.
Five years ago today: March 3, 2014, tastes like sand.
Nine years ago today: March 3, 2010, just another gang.
Random years ago today: March 3, 2005, he got beat up.
I should be working on the bedroom, but the front yard kept calling. It’s a home-owner thing. Here’s a panorama shot of the 18 feet of “hedge” I’m planting, consisting entirely of mother-in-law tongues. They are a carefully matched set, if you peer closely. This entailed crawling deep into the back yard to select the best of the variegated stalks. As a bonus, it cleaned up a lot of the jungle back there. These [plants] are intended to be several ranks, shown here is the first row. Reasoning that the soil must be iron deficient because of the amount of the treatment displayed on store shelves, I applied the mixture area a month ago and again last week. I don’t know if there’s a connection, but my stalks are three times the height of Charla’s. She liked that so much she complimented me in Spanish.
(For my own reference, this is not a panel shot, but a panorama. The white strip in the background is a measuring tape. It’s taking a lot of careful planning to make the yard look untamed.) Being out there has got me acquainted with Old Grey. He’s the grand-daddy squirrel in the area and he is gone grey. He’s mostly blind and I’m sure he is deaf, at least in one ear. He can smell the birdfeeder, which must drive him bananas. I’ve taken to feeding him bread crusts and sometime peanuts. But he is not long for this world. What am I talking about? My own expiry date is May 11, 2024.
Having learned that bulbs grow great in my soil, I found some flowers that looked like a bulb but are called a corm. In French, corme. They all look alike to me so I put in a dozen of them along with the hedge shown above. The package shows a bright pink bloom that should nicely highlight the green. I’m planting things I can’t pronounce. Liatris, that’s what the package says. I’ve planted Liatris. Then I made coffee and sat down. Did I just work another six hours without thinking. Yep, so I made another two chicken pies, the kind you can’t get any more. With mushrooms. One change: half the butter, the ingredients are sauted in coconut oil. Oh, and don’t forget: no added salt. If you like salt, I have some from the Himalayas.
Okay, I give up. How was your first Sunday of March, 2019?
Lake Erie storm wave.
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In Bartow last day, I unhooked the bike and did my daily rounds. I’ve been down this road how many times and never saw this sign before. It made of wrought iron, and I still don’t know what is wrought about it. Two wroughts don’t make a rung? I dunno, you run with it. Because over morning coffee I got an e-mail from Tennessee and I’m considering , well, let’s just say I’m considering. This would entail a major unscheduled change of venue and I’m not all that prepared. I’m just giving notice that I may obligate myself because it is the right thing to do. Even if it makes me a first-class patsy.
If you’ve been in a real office, you’ll notice that people who are getting actual work done use a computer differently. Some people, like Theresa, know so little about it that they cannot tell the difference, but generally, there is more of a faster-paced pattern and movement between mouse and keyboard that you don’t get when somebody is just surfing or gaming.
So anyway, this tub of lard lady spots me. My peripheral vision detects she’s been watching me type [keyboard]. Admittedly, this is a sight because I’ve made it so over the years, but my target is not welfare cases. Who else is putzing around the coffee spot at 10:30AM? Oh, shit, she’s going to say something. I leap up to get a refill. When I return, I quickly insert my earbuds and blast on the Abba. I like Abba and it did not take me long to notice that people stay away from a man listening to Abba. I quickly hide the newspaper puzzles and adopt a defensive sitting posture. I really don’t want to hear anything a fat lady has to say, plus she’s got two children in tow in a manner that spells “single mother”. All my life, my attitude toward single mothers on welfare (single, my eye) is best described as very Ann Coulter.
[Author’s note: TMOR, Ann is the lady who published an expose on how most crime and delinquency in America come from single-parent families. The facts are overwhelming. Above 80% of felons and repeat offenders. Drug addicts, pimps, serial killers, prostitutes, all with one thing in common. Welfare mothers. The Democrats, by expanding welfare to rake in the dependency voters, has destroyed the nuclear family, such as it ever existed.]
While I’m belly-aching, let me say I don’t like the new web coding that blocks copyrighted material. Why? A number of valid reasons. One is that people have gotten used to the Internet being a free-for-all and right or wrong, it should be left alone. It’s not as if these copyrighted items have an identifier that alerts the user in advance. Nope, they have to be jerk-faces about it. You cannot tell the item is “protected” until you try to copy it. Only then they start wasting your time with notices, you know, the way born-agains introduce Jesus into the conversation. Copyrighted material should find its own space on the net and quit co-mingling with what people are used to. They must really think somebody is going to stop and spend $1.99 instead of find the same picture for free elsewhere?
This tells you more about contemporary America. One minority after another pushing their rights in your face. They have a “right” to advertise things for sale where most people are looking for free stuff—and listen to them hoot and hollar and get offended when people just print-screen the picture and photo-shop out the watermark. I’m aware the com part of dot-com means commercial, as in business, but face reality, dot-com has long been the catchall suffix for free everything for so long many people don’t know there is anything else. I know that I automatically look for a free version of anything that tries to sell me on-line. But the big reason I am right and the sellers are wrong is because you cannot filter them out by specifying “free” in the search criteria. That says it all.
Bad restaurant manners can get creative in Florida. How about the fat Latino family that comes in and they all sit at the nearest empty booth to the counter. Then one of them waits in line, and when the clerk asks for his order, he starts shouting back to the table. They start shouting. What do you want? What do they got? Hamburgers. What kind of hamburgers? And so on. That’s correct, shouting back and forth. Do you want fries? How much are they? Today, I timed it. Twenty-four minutes. The manager came out of the back and mercifully opened a second cash register. I’ve lived in Venezuela. Don’t tell me this is a Latino custom. By now, somebody in Caracas would have shot these ignorant slope-heads. The worst one is the “father”, 300+ pounds of pure lard, trying to act trendy by constantly yelling for the other at the counter to wait while he answers the smart phone.
But, this is America. You can’t say or do anything unless you are another minority. The bad guys are instantly and constantly ready to play the race card. It does not stop at customs of their country, as you see, they learn to completely take advantage and become total assholes. The fat father was offended when I got up and moved to the far end of the restaurant. Good. Pleas, Mr. Trump, round them up.
ADDENDUM
I’ve been trying since I was twenty to grow an avocado tree from a pit. Shown here is the traditional method. Three toothpicks suspend the pointy end down into a jar of water laced with rooting powder. The how-to photos show a few days in the sunlight and you are guacamole-bound. Not me. Here is my effort after a week. As usual, it just sits there. For today’s break time, I went deep into Neil Diamond’s “Longfellow Serenade”, picking out the bass notes. Let’s talk about old Neil. I like many of his melodies, but I could not really tell you what most of his songs are about.
The two of his hits that I’ve chosen for this special treatment are “Longfellow Serenade” and “Sweet Caroline”. These can be handily arranged so the bass lines can have real impact on anything the guitar player does. If he gets really fancy, just stop playing, and I know precisely how to weaponize that. He won’t sound proper until I cut back in (because he has to stop playing the off-beats). I already know many of the new guy’s material, such as “Forever in Blue Jeans” but I’m confining my time to what is on his list. The guitarist who has not responded like he said he would. But, it’s the weekend. I’m more inclined to think the other guy will call, the one who lost the audience on Friday. Let me refresh what that was about.
He’s okay as a guitarist, but he doesn’t have enough good material to put on a strong act. Usually this is the mark of a guy who got into playing out before he was ready but now can’t quit because, like most, he needs the money. But without tips, the money stays the same seemingly forever. He’s got to play more and more gigs for the same return, which leaves no time for improving the act. It is a vicious circle that traps most every solo guitar player I’ve seen in Florida. Tell ‘em about it, Hippie.
His name is Keith. The difference here is that around six months ago I was the only patron at one of his shows. I could tell by third set he was running out of material, so I okayed it with the staff that he take a break until more people arrived. In that space, we had a long talk about what would happen with his act if he did not take it to the next level. Polk is too small. Unlike the Hippie, he can’t keep finding new spots or taking so long between bookings that people forget he’s playing the same old. My predictions were on the gloomy side but it looks like that is what’s panned out, both big picture and small picture. I have his card but it would be better if he opens fire first
For the record, what happened on Friday was an expected flop. That third set is critical sometimes. The regulars are getting smashed, the new people want quality. He played tunes he doesn’t really know and worse, got off time and off key. He was also galloping (getting faster toward the end of the song). He saw me and I walked up to ask how it’s going. He said he meant to call. As his music got weaker, the crowd paid less and less attention to the point they neither looked at him or applauded. I reminded him that is precisely the type of audience I can turn around. It is what I do.
I’ll say it again, call it what you want, but when I’m on stage, most of the audience does not dare look away because they’ll miss something. My show is sprinkled with interactive one-liners, meaning each show is unique and cannot be rehearsed—you got to be on the ball. They never know what I’m going to come out with next. And I spend a lot of time making sure it stays that way. Having the gift of gab is also a considerable asset.
