One year ago today: July 25, 2018, five stoopid questions.
Five years ago today: July 25, 2014, over-printed maps.
Nine years ago today: July 25, 2010, I tried watching TV.
Random years ago today: July 25, 2012, the sidecar, test driving.
Under the house again, no choice with the plumbing. Boss Hogg is not helping. They’ve mercilessly let that Lady Z have a prime slot. She may walk and talk like she’s only in her 70s, but her taste in music says no way. All morning with that icky pre-war jazz. She goes on how without it we would not have blues, rock, bluegrass, and country music without jazz. Somebody tell that simple-minded woman there is a reason these types of music superseded that big band cacophony. Okay, there was one good tune came out of the jazz era. “Mambo Italiano”, and not just because I can play the melody on bass.
Here’s a revealing incident. I stopped at the Thrift for DVDs when I noticed a fresh stack of newspapers they use for wrapping glass. It beats paying $3 for the Ledger and the staff doesn’t mind so I grabbed a couple of sections with the crossword puzzles. The one lady sees this and says the people they get the newspapers from always do the crosswords, like so why was I bothering. Ha, I quickly peeled a few out to show her they were blank. How did I know? Because they were dated last weekend. I won’t elaborate, except to say I would be impressed indeed to see a completed weekend puzzle in these parts.
The work is around half done by noon, sadly I have to slow down. The extra stubs (should be visible) made light work, though I had to turn off Boss Hogg. Dang that new lady. She tries so soften you up to the jazz by playing a more modern tune between, pointing out how to spot the “influences”. The snag is that the only influence she knows is that gloomy depressing jazz. These guys are going to lose listenership if they don’t put a cork in that broad. Even the faster tunes she plays have cheerless lyrics concerning mostly dejection. So she didn’t get asked to the prom—that doesn’t mean other people are suddenly going to like sad music. The world needs me because we’ve already got enough entertainers singing the blues. I’ll sing the blues, but not about the “struggle” of music. You know what they say about bringing home the ship.
That old textbook I bought at the Olga Mall has a chapter on factory work in the 1860s. Some of the people who are protesting the low pay and conditions over at Amazon should read it. Particularly anyone who regards their suffering is anything new. Long hours at dull, underpaid labor isn’t supposed to provide a decent living. If you do the math, it can’t, or the factory goes broke replacing workers who retire early or quit, sometimes going into competition. The answer for them is to form a union and at least have some say in what they get. They have a legal right to organize. But what am I thinking? That would require thinking, fortitude, leadership, and a host of other qualities that would flunk them out of entitlement school.
Drone softball.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
By 4:00PM the water is back on. Again, a perfect first test, but a lot of planning came first. Here is a panel showing the day’s progress. The drywall removed and the pipes exposed, a shot of the before scene, and lastly, the water back on. The drainpipe needs a 22-1/2° elbow, one of the few things I don’t have a spare of. Thanks to the stubs, I didn’t have to crawl under the house and other than butchering the drywall, I didn’t have to do that much mickey-mousing. You might say the pressure’s off because the pressure’s on. Ha-ha, a little plumbing humor there and if I had a day job, I’d keep it.
I got further than I thought, which means I’ve earned a celebration. But I decided to stay put, maybe get in some extra bass time. Except for a one hour shopping trip, it looks like I was busy another 13 hours. Mind you, I didn’t exactly bust my chops, and the work area is less than four steps from the coffee maker. The shop was fortuitous; the rest of the day was endless rain. When it pours, I get a small leak in the section that isn’t leveled yet. Most of the day was a crashing thunderstorm. What’s that effect when thunder from further away rumbles in at the same time as nearby thunderclaps. I forget, but there is even a name for a phobia some people have about that.
Why $250 for the new toilet? Because thinking ahead, that’s why. I carefull compared the newer models and they are both higher and longer. When JZ complained that it was too small, I thought the nerve of the guy because it is the same size as the one at his place. But now I see he meant old-fashioned, not small. He installs these for a living and the literature says the newer designs are easier on senior citizens. Ha, I’d have thought they’d make them wider, not longer. The top end model is self-cleaning (I’d like to see how they manage that), uses less water, and is supposed to be comfortable.
I guess comfortable is a game-changer when you hit 70
ADDENDUM
My music completion index today is 33.802%.
A note from Dood, who confirms they have some concerts lined up. Careful, a concert in this context could mean they are the warm-up band. That doesn’t subtract an iota from my determination to give it my best. Every entertainer I saw in Nashville was exceptional, and all but the old fogey places had something going on besides darts & pool. There’s just something about playing in a Nashville show band that intrigues me because I never thought I’d get the chance. Part of the “starving artist” sequence is that places like Nashville don’t offer an array of good jobs for somebody waiting for a break. Time and again, we’ve seen it was not the most talented people who get the role, but the people who had the resources to hang out nearest the agent’s office. Think Streisand, Zellwenger, and Sheen.
The list is certainly rounding out my bass playing. Around a third of it I would not normally bother with, even to listen to. I can’t think of a better way to spend retirement than entertaining people. Trying to find a good guitarist in Florida has already occupied twenty years. The height of arrogance is the guitarist who can’t sing but still thinks the band has to learn his set list.
Like greed, ego is often under-rated. These are driving qualities that create most of the real progress in the world. Societies that allow massive wealth inequality have a lot of nerve criticizing hunger. I have an ego, and it’s feeding time. I don’t know how it will pan out, but it has crossed my mind that it would be nice to have guitar players trying to recruit me. I wouldn’t be a fink and tell them to reformat their files to match my unspecified system. The Nashville band has dozens of clips posted on youTube, but rarely with the same members. Sure, I’d like to meet that chick acoustic player who’ll teach me how to sing harmony. I’m not meeting the type over here in Polk.
It came to me in a dream, but there’s a small riff in “One More Last Chance” that can be expanded to sharpen up the lead break. Naturally, I was up at 3:15AM making it sparkle. Love it, because the original song has such feeble bass. It now fits my method admirably, tricky timing, difficult to fret, looks spiffy, sounds impossible, and with a left hand that lead players hate.
Buried way down here is some good news, kind of sort of. Who recalls that last pension fund I never tapped into. I didn’t need it until I bought that damn car. The deposits are now 8 months late. They’ve said they would include a makeup check with the first payment, but the delay is busting my balls. I’ve called every morning for a week and morning or night, I get a recording with a forty-minute wait time. I wonder if my old phone battery even lasts that long. Anyway, the good news is I’m getting the maximum. What’s the amount? None of your business, but it’s more than enough to own and operate the car, including the insurance.
America is planned around the motor car. And until recently, auto insurance is the only industry in our otherwise proud history that you are compelled by law to purchase from a private company. Recently health insurance has attained that repellent status, which goes to show you who is really running this country. My apprehension is that they don’t really insure your car, since what they really want is your identity. Even my cars registered in a company name must show a person as the end owner.
These folks recognized the value of keeping records on people long before Google and Facebook came along. There is something so familiar about this system that I wonder where they learned it. And did you see that pissy little fine Equifax got for losing all those private records? It works out to a few pennies per file. That, folks, is how much the American system values your privacy. Could be the only large group not destined for the FEMA camps were once mockingly called “conspiracy theorists”.
