One year ago today: April 27, 2018, sexual brinkmanship - nothing new.
Five years ago today: April 27, 2014, Paiget test, that's it.
Nine years ago today: April 27, 2010, Sony's constipation-bot.
Random years ago today: April 27, 2006, consisting primarily of desperation . . .
Does your town have a haunted house? Bartow has a haunted store. It was a great day for bicycling, so I toured the downtown area, all five blocks of it. This store on Main Street is likely not haunted, but it is mysterious. See the passageway right through the walls? The daylight at the other end is the main drag. It looks to me this place got off to a start and came to a halt. Or, if it is proceeding, you’ve heard of a snail’s pace. Bartow, too, has a code enforcement squad. The building has electrical service and an alarm system, notice the chain link fence. I wonder what business they could possibly have in mind for such a location. Bartow does not need any more restaurants, antique stores, or thrifts.
Dang, I got skinned for a dollar. All those thousands of movies I have not seen are available for a dollar, if you want to spend time combing the thrift stores. (Which I do anyway.) You quickly learn to open the cases to make sure the correct DVD, or any DVD, is inside before you buy. In stores like the Lebanon Pike Goodwill, up to one in ten of the cases is empty. There is another alert: some DVDs just don’t play, and dick-heads will donate those to charity. I have one, “The Aviator”, that artifacts half way. So imagine my delight to find another copy. I check the disk, and weeks later, throw it on to play. Argh.
It looks virtually identical to the movie disk, but it is one of those retarded special features disk. Like I want to hear interviews with the crew. Can you imagine if the people who collect garbage did the same? That’s what that crap sounds like to me. They should make such disks a different color, but I have yet to watch a movie and develop a craving for deleted scenes of outtakes from the History Channel, who forgot how to make real documentaries in 1992.
Same with those half-wit interviews with rock musicians. “Well, first I played a Gsus4, duh, and then, like-man, this Em7 spoke to me. Then my uncle, who owns a recording studio said, let’s cut an album, man. And we, like, made history. It was kewl. And why can’t we all get along? Even the people whose uncle doesn’t own a studio and have to claw like animals to get ahead? Chill, man.”
[Artist’s note: extra-irksome is those interviews with the hair and costume designers, all women who looked like they’d lived through the Great Depression. Does the audience really need to know the trials of making hairdos match hundred-year-old photographs? Dammit, just sit down and enjoy the movie.
I wonder if people in the 1920s really dressed that way? Most people, it would seem, didn’t have their pictures taken, or if they did, they posed funny. When viewing newsreels and newspapers of the times, it looks like only socialites really slicked their hair that much, but one boon of those times was the utter lack of fat broads. They were around, I’m sure, but they didn’t demand equal camera time. It was interviews with the women staff that gag me. The set hair stylist looked like her wardrobe assistant belonged in the witness protection program.]
You bring a lawn chair and the family, and they project a movie on the wall of this building. It probably runs afoul of every copyright convention them New York lawyers can imagine, but I wonder if they need any hotdogs. Remind me to ask around about this, I have not noticed any activity recently and I drive right past there often to a nearby thrift. I’ve never stopped to watch. The event is (I forget) either a Friday or Saturday evening, and that is prime time for me to be busy otherwise. As you know, I draw a sharp distinction between live entertainment and recorded entertainment. The problems out there are caused by the recording industry.
To highlight that, watch the unskippable startup warnings on DVDs these days. They no longer stress that you watch a movie, but that you should “own it today”. This ownership is a couched legal term, and you are prompted to “add it to your collection”. They would very much like to know what and where that collection is, and control who you are allowed to share it with. Family seems to be okay, provided you tell them who family is. But friends, nope, that’s out. You own the movie, but not quite that much.
I’ve not paid attention to the blurb that says there is a way to “take your collection with you”, and play it back on any device, including your phone but as of this writing, not yet on your hair dryer. Next time I see the clip, I’ll note the devices to which it refers. Call me old fashioned (if you want an allegorical fat lip), but watching a movie on a 2” screen seems just idiotic enough for people these days. Not only that, watching a movie is at least an hour-long commitment. Those who can do that on cue are leading a life shallow enough to be really scary. But it makes sense. If one had the brain capability to know there was a dead space ahead, like a bus or plane ride, you could pick one comfortable media and put your movies on that. The catch is, you got it, “capability”.
Kona coffee belt.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Here’s “the Pharmacy”. It’s been vacant for as long as I remember, and I began scouting for houses back in 2014. Some of this is repeat info because this is the place I thought would make an ideal lounge and drive-up liquor vendor. It was a pharmacy, according to the faded sign. The attraction is that story and a half section by the alleyway. From what I know, that was at one time the main storage for medical supplies in the district, and it is either air-conditioned or refrigerated. There is a ton of parking, plus the surrounding businesses don’t operate in the evenings, so street parking also. There is a drive through, you can see the service window in the first panel.
So, why not buy this place and go into business. Foremost, the price tag is five times what the place is worth. It includes the next two vacant lots and sells only as a unit. I have not checked recently but the list is something like $1.2 million. In that area, I can see it sitting unoccupied for another how many years. I cannot imagine the cash flow that would be needed to make a go of this. But a country-music club anywhere in Polk County would make a killing. That’s another unknown. Why has nobody stepped up on that one, and why have the other country music venues in the area shut down when I hear rumors they were doing booming business?
Alas, this is the only sunny area of the front yard. I’ve decided not to wait for any help with that pole saw, and I’ll invest in one in early May. The trees are a problem, I have to consider getting them topped at around forty feet, which will involve a ladder truck. I like the shade but not when it overhangs my roof. I was driven into the area along the birdbath to plant shade flowers later today. I had no success last two years, but this time the soil is treated and I’m prepared to weed, weed, weed. According to the box, I planted 5,000 seeds in less than around 80 square feet.
Want to hear some happy news, for me? As I biked out the driveway, the neighbors from up the street were passing by. I don’t really know them, but they stopped and opened the window to say they were impressed by how much weight I’ve lost. They were not sure it was the same guy, they wondered who was wondering around my yard. Now, isn’t that nice? Um, I have not lost that much weight, but as I’ve described, most of it was inches lost where it counted. It’s been what, 510 days and my weight has not changed in the last 100 days.
ADDENDUM
A Saturday. I should be out to dinner and dancing with my lady but the only company I prefer is a bit of a hike from here. I dream better when traveling and I had a recurring theme, but not the dream. Long ago, before I’d learned anything about his life, I believed what I’d heard about Ernest Hemmingway. And like most reputations, I had it all wrong. He was the poor kid who struggled against odds, volunteered as a war medic, and wrote the acclaimed American reading of the last century. Then I find out he was a spoiled rich kid, a reckless adventurist, who (like so many writers) lived off his father’s money until later in life something connected.
But, having done not that much of his own, he could not relate to the physical hardships of life. Instead he focuses on the emotional, which cannot be quantified, kind of a safe way out if you ask me. The point here is that to this day, I still identify with the counterfeit reputation about his rise to fame. I’ve read several of his books and quite forthrightly, they tend toward the stiffly boring. If you want to explain his fame to me, you’ll have to do better than those who have already tried. When I ask what he could have done had he been in my situation, the answer is “not very damn much”.
Another difference is that he, and so many of his type, do not write about themselves. Probably wise. I’m the other extreme, each day is important enough to jot at least something down about the crazy world as it affects me. Let me tell you a bit more about Amelia. This is the gal not counted as a relationship because it was not exclusive, on my part. I met Amelia, we had a fling, she looked after Memphis one time I was in Thailand. I can tell you instantly why she wasn’t a keeper, I’ll get to that. We saw each other over a period of seven years, but when asked to recount my longest relationships, I don’t count that.
The quickest way for a gal to get rid of me is to be a stick in the mud. And that would be a mild description of Amelia. At first, novelty will carry any encounter, and novelty wears off unless you are one of the fortunate few who either have it in permanent supply, or can create it willingly. I’d put myself squarely in the latter slot. Amelia, after the man-woman part was over, was the most boring, limp, do-nothing wallflower that ever got a second date out of me.
You know that part of the story already. Never once did she ever propose anything, or suggest something new or exciting. Everything we did was my idea and I had to talk her into any fun we ever had. Given a free hand, she would do nothing for years on end dreaming about things she was perfectly capable of doing, had she been so inclined. But the only thing she ever accomplished that I know of is she became a seamstress, and hated it. She could not act, or sing, or dance, or party, and had no inclination to pick those things up. After a while we just never went out because she was a dead fish.
So the last five or so years, we’d get together at my place, and call it a date. By the last year it was like married sex. Twice a month when there was nothing else to do, and most of it was reliving memories anyway. I tried a few times to call it off when it could have been easy to split, but she seemed prefer the arrangement as it was. She knew it was going nowhere and it’s where she liked being. If she had any sense of time flying along, she never showed it. But if I was away three months and went to pick up Memphis, it was strange to walk into her house. As it turned out, not a thing happened there, ever. No projects, no interests, no hobby, no nothing. No books, no computer, no stereo, no piano, not even a cookie jar and the fireplace had never been lit.
You want contrast? How about two weeks ago in Hermitage, the Reb & I. True, we are individually quiet extroverts. I’m a bump on the log until you get me on stage, she is on top of her career. But put us together and the synergy is electric. Most everybody picks up on it, yet I would deny that we act any different than average. There are some outward indicators, like we are the only couple in the neighborhood that walk the dogs together. We do sing and play music. And we actually romp around and exercise the pets in the back yard. Okay, we also go to movies, museums, and the nearby lakes.
So, it would be cuckoo to tell me about other couples and quality time, but oh do they talk about it. Talk and talk, they do. Yet, when we went to see “Shazam”, we were the only couple in the theater. We have never had a boring time together, even doing the simplest things, raking leaves, making rice, driving to the market. And yes, there is often an effect on people around us. Look what happened when we stopped for one drink at the Karaoke place two weeks ago today.
All this adds up to an undeniable better time, and it would be absurd to think I’d want otherwise. It’s nice to have someone around who comes up with her own ideas on what to do next, not to mention an enthusiastic supporter of enhancing our time together. A complete contrast to the dreary dating scene. I suspect it is because the Reb & I already know the consequences, if any, of what we do and the outcome is overwhelmingly positive.
There is one more nuance, and it can affect appearances. You know how around some people you have to be mindful of everything you say or do? There is not a shred of that between the Reb & I. It could be that we just know each other that well, but I don’t know. There are others I know better and still have to tread carefully. Yet for all I’ve just said, the situation between the Reb & I is the same as it has been for decades. We grew apart, and for all we’ve done and had, it’s unlikely that will ever change.
Now, let Hemmingway dare try to write anything that sentimental about himself.
