One year ago today: October 24, 2018, Miami 99.
Five years ago today: October 24, 2014, it’s French-Canadian for “mess”.
Nine years ago today: October 24, 2010, never heard of chicken soup?
Random years ago today: October 24, 2016, things will go slow now . . .
Here’s something most have never seen before. This is a spare tire ruptured by the Florida summer heat. You can see it has never been used, even the factory paint is intact. Notice how the blast went right through the steel belts. Yep, by 1997, America still had not invented a spare tire that would not split open by itself and Ford still puts those in your car for emergencies. Yeah, team! Turns out this is a rare event. JZ called and has never seen it. He’s slow to read my letters because, well, they tend to provide this type of technical information and are not easy reading. In his case, I mean. I keep him current on this place so if he ever finally shows up he can walk into a familiar setting.
I’ve contacted the Reb and everybody expecting me that plans have changed. No way I can make both Miami and Nashville between Friday morning and Monday without pushing myself to the limit. What I get is concern about the repairs from everybody, meaning I seem to be the only one who is prepared in advance for these costs. Guys, I am $1,100 under budget on this vehicle. My breakdowns and repairs may be more frequent than a new car, but it would be worse torture on me to have to make monthly payments. There never is a convenient time for a car repair, so why sweat over it? I’m fine.
Does that extent to bicycle repairs? Nope, and as I rode home from the garage to spend the day packing, my chain snapped. Then I find out nobody I know has one of those punches to repair the link. So I used the bike skate-board style to get over to Agt. R’s, who threw it in the back and gave me a ride home to the scooter. Add all this up and you see why I cannot plan to leave for Miami before I head north. Florida is synonymous with things going wrong all at once. At least I’m invited to Thanksgiving. That might work out because it’s way over in Tennessee. I found the chain repair kit at Wal*Mart. It comes with only two spare links, talk about cheap, Bell.
The chain repair was a fail. It had already been repaired once, using the easy to manage outer link. The inner link is trickier, and the pin punch is a defective design. Once you push the pin out far enough to remove the roller and broken link, it is pushed too far to punch back in. To fit it into the tool, you have to take the screw punch out so far the threads won’t engage. Up yours, Bell. I’ll modify the tool.
It’s not just the bad tool design, Bell. You people have been in business for how long now and you can’t make a simple tool work right. It’s the inconvenience. My bicycle was needed today to commute to the car. No bicycle means I had to talk one of the garage guys into following me as far as Main Street, but no further because they were holding a parade. Then I parked the scooter, rode back to the shop, drove my car way around the parade route, parked it and walked back to Main Street, hoping my scooter had not be stolen. The only other tool I have with the pressure to reseat those pins is my bench vice, which is no help putting in a bicycle chain. Up yours twice, Bell.
Them suckers got sold a dream and $40,000 worth of recording tackle that will get them nothing but a demo disc nobody will listen to. Success isn’t dependent on the quality of the music. You need a nationwide distribution system. The only one we have is locked up by a few select recording labels. I’ve never been inside an indie outlet, which is related to how dull I find all the on-line indie hits. When I’m out pubbing, slow unfamiliar music turns me right off. The only recognizable thing about indie tunes is the over-use of standard licks from the past. Rock (music) lingers on beyond its time because America hasn’t hatched anything better in thirty/forty years.
Bamboo fan.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Here is the oldest dog I’ve seen. Only three years on Sparkie and Sammy, this guy did not have a health-food diet and it’s unlikely somebody like me took him for walks twice a day, often at the lake. This is not to say the little guy didn’t have a wonderful life, but that life could include everything from laying around on the sofa and eating Alpo. When I met this little guy, I saw those things had the same effect on doggies as people. He’s 105 people years old, and has tumors, arthritis, cancer, and is blind, mostly deaf, and a barely functioning sense of smell. Cute as a button, but his owner can’t bear to part because the tyke doesn’t seem to be in any pain of constant sorts.
I’ve gone from hoping the government will ever do anything about these rip-offs. It’s a simple matter of following the money, rounding them up wholesale, and putting them in jail for the thieves that they are. Don’t hand us that crap about it provides employment. I’ve never personally met an American who approves of telemarketing, and that says it all. Why should they find real jobs when they can get away with stealing?
I’ve made a list of what I want to take on this journey, then lost the list. One more incident like this and I’m taking the rest of the day off. How does one manufacture an incident? See? There is never a Democrat around on the rare occasion you could use one. According to Agt. R, the best non-fruit tree would be the pecan, which grows to a stately height and lives over 100 years. But, you should plant two of them. Where would I put two 100-foot trees? The pecans require hot weather to ripen. If Florida can burst tires, it can grow pecans.
Here’s a photo of the climate control mechanism inside JeePee’s aquarium. Temperature and humidity, but these devices are not regularly monitored and have no recording capability. I many have to do something about that. There is already a turtle hacienda sketch on the books for the outdoor cage and some form of fountain or aquarium pump is not out of the question.
Again, I’m down to some mediocre siesta DVDs. Here’s one filmed in New Zealand, “The Ferryman”. Even I know you don’t answer a marine distress signal without telling somebody you are sailing into a fogbank. I don’t know, can fog banks even form in the middle of the ocean? I usually associate them with inlets and coastlines. I’m looking that one up, since if I live long enough, I’ll have a boat of some kind. I’ve been poised for years now that if anything major goes right or wrong, I’ll come out ahead.
I just never thought things would remain evenly stable in my arena for close to eight years now. Silver trundles along, Trump ups and downs don’t affect me, Taylor is playing hard to get, this type of scenario. It is change I need. I have had my way on several deals only because I had the cash, which is no easier for me to get than the next guy, so that doesn’t count as a score. No finger-wagging, folks. If I have any money today it is because I paid my dues twice over so very long ago. In American all success is still far too highly dependent on sheer luck.
I know that sounds weird and probably arrogant to people who consider just being in America as lucky, but that is getting off the topic. Besides, it is wrong to compare America to cultures that have only two classes. Until they change themselves, nobody is listening. Don’t forget, in America, freedom required a revolution. We didn’t stand back and complain how well others were doing. At the time of that revolution, the two-class cultures were the richest in the world. But they had not changed in a thousand years. Even today, only the few who have a growing middle class are being heard. Cultures that hated the Americans seem to only get ahead by, in some form, adopting that hated culture. Ironic, innit?
What I mean is that hard work in America does not increase your chances of success as much as it used to. Too many welfare types parasite on the system. If I have seen a change in America in my lifetime, it has been the growth of the welfare attitude. That is the mental aberration how those who are willing and/or capable (whatever) of hard work owe part of it back. Look at the Obama-era claim that nobody got rich independent of the system that provided them with roads, schools, etc. That is laughable because those items only level the playing field, they don’t confer any advantage on the worker who uses them that is not available to the non-worker who does not.
This is why, much as I find the Koch brothers to be shifty as hell, they are fighting a system that was imposed on them for the benefit of others who personally rarely deserve a share. In my own life, if taxes and regulations demand a cut of my hard work, the first thing to suffer is where I would otherwise help others, that is, the difference between them asking and insisting. Lesson number one in human nature is that nobody ever wants change unless it is in their own favor. And that is how I view “progressives” who want to change the American Constitution. Shifty.
Note that the same could be said, that those who resist change also do so out of self-interest. That’s not a fair point. The difference is easy to spot. One side wants to be let alone while the other side wants to take over with themselves in charge. You can figure out which on your own.
ADDENDUM
According to the aforementioned SkillSet magazine (I’m considering a subscription because they have a survivalist theme and review excellent products), 30% of prisoners want their last meal to be fried chicken. Now that I can eat it again, I’ve lost any appetite for it. Now for the on-going news of the car. The front end needs an alignment and the tie-rod ends are loose. In money, that’s around $500 but I will be shopping for a bargain, in Spanish. There is too much play in there to set it right without replacing the rods, or at least I think that is the problem.
Those two new rear tires from Tennessee? One of them developed a slow leak and we found a screw had pierced the tread. It’s now plugged. I could not say much because, although the car is not parked anywhere near the work area in my yard, it is a brand of screw I use around here all the time. Also, it was due to the uneven tread wear that the tires never got rotated. Front tires the edges go round and rear tires the tread goes shallow. The front was too far gone by the time I noticed.
