One year ago today: May 12, 2019, you don’t get ignorant overnight.
Five years ago today: May 12, 2015, Frog City – it exists!
Nine years ago today: May 12, 2011, antennas, my nemesis.
Random years ago today: May 12, 2007, I think I had the flu.
I must be getting somewhere, my song list is getting shorter, but not from dropping tunes. The next item to get the slice in Bonny Tyler’s “It’s A Heartache”. The original is just too long to sustain interest in a saloon setting. How do I know this? Experience, and though I make no claim to being a juke box hero, strangers regularly ask who played that last tune when it was my choice. Twice in row the last two nights I played a tune, so there is something to be said about reading the room. For this reason, I intend to hit the crowd with several 3-song medleys. As I said, though, I cannot get Audacity to concatenate the segments without changing the key to what I don’t want.
Remind me to never go into flooring. It’s okay but takes forever and I’m working with warped lumber. I’m getting may 20 square feet per hour and this is easy going. No corners, only three cutouts. I finally had to take a lengthy break and here we are. According to Agt. R, the indigo snake (now named “Indi” by higher authority) is a perfect specimen in that many have become mottled. I don’t know, I mean, what are the odds of a truly rare example just showing up here? This place is charmed, not blessed.
FREE THE TEXAS 8. The mainstream media is scrambling to bury this story but just read the British Daily News for the real info. The fact is, the police rolled up in an armored personnel carrier. WTF are the police doing with an APC? Who ever the Texas governor is, he just chewed his own balls of with this one. Yes, the men were carrying guns, but they had no ammo. The protesters belong to a group called Open Texas. Is this a trend toward more organized resistance? Once more, this blog predicts this shutdown was aimed at small cash-flow businesses—and they will be the last ones allowed to re-open.
Here are pictures of the eight people arrested. One of the fundamentals of the American Constitution is the right to bear arms. It does not allow the state to specify where, yet these guys had to post $5,000 bail each. As for the saloon, the Declaration of Independence states that the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right—and that means the right to make a living. Look at these people, are they the ones the police should be taking into custody?
I would say the powers that be may have opened a real can of shit on this one. Who is the person elected to pass judgment on which businesses are “essential” anyway?
I’ll have just enough oak to finish the floor. This work moves slow and working hunched over doesn’t agree with me. But for such dry wood, the result is pretty solid. The process saps you and I’ll sleep like a puppy tonight. For siesta break watched a documentary on the Siegfried Line. It was a myth that the Allies had to turn into a reality. A counter to the French Maginot Line, it was more of a make-work project than a serious defensive position. But it was considerably more effective. Poland, bolstered by French and British guarantees of military support, began oppressing it’s German-speaking minority, the outbreak of war was nearly certain.
Germany did not have an entirely mechanized army. It was fearful of a two-front war and built the Siegfried Line as a barrier to Anglo-French attack from the west. German propaganda claimed it was an impregnable defense work, but it was mostly bluff. Other than a few sectors directly viewable from the Allied frontier and newsreels of supplies that could have been taken anywhere in Germany, the line was mainly for show. It was to convince the Allies that any advance would bog down in a repeat of trench warfare. And it worked. The French alone could have marched right into Germany after the reoccupation of the Rhineland or the Polish campaign, facing only a few divisions of second-echelon German conscripts.
The reluctance of the Allies to attack amounted to the “Phoney War”, since Germany did not want war with the west. But Hitler would not cooperate, he kept trying to make peace. That would have been the end the Siegfried Line, except three years later, it was the Allie’s turn to make it into a propaganda stunt. By now, it was in disrepair but no way were the Allies going to admit they had been fooled. So, once more it became a large obstacle. It was also needed to convince the Soviets that the western Allies were doing more than waiting for them to finish the job.
While it did provide some defensive positions for retreating German troops, the line was thin and single breach could render large sections useless. There was no depth to the defenses, and worse, the line was built opposite to French positions, but the German side of the border was much less suitable for static defense. There was no real defense line, so it became necessary to invent one. By this stage of the war, the best German troops were holding off the Red Army and putting up only token resistance to the approaching Allied armies
The American newspapers needed final climatic battles. You know all those pictures you’ve seen of the dragon’s teeth anti-tank obstacles? Think again, you’ve only seen two or three pictures, but lots of times. You get a lot of that with WWII. You know there were countless pictures, but you only see a few. Ergo, the other pictures show something they don’t want you to see. A single band of anti-tank obstacles stretching across opsnfarmland with no bunkers, no covering artillery, no observation posts, and no evidence of being manned by armed soldiers is questionable history, but it isn’t war.
Recycled roofing material.
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How about those Lyft & Uber drivers claiming they are employees? Ha, keep it up you morons, the quicker you become employees, the quicker you become ex-employees, savvy? Better a small fleet of driverless cars than a pack of whining ass-enders. And how about that Auckland woman who gave a restaurant her name, address, phone, & e-mail because they put a “contact tracing form” in front of her. I would have told the restaurant where to shove it, but Jess just gave away her identity. Some goon at the food place used the data to hit on her. I don’t know which of these two people is the creepier. Folks, invent a fake identity for use when filling out forms where you are not under any oath. I go one step further and code the information given out, so when it comes back, I know where it’s been.
And how about the Chinese rocket parts that missed New York City “by fifteen minutes”. At rocket speeds, that’s how many miles out in the middle of the ocean? No word from the same sources how many minutes American rocket parts have been missing Peking by for years. What’s the word for fear og being hit by meteors? Here is a link to Phobialist. Let me peruse the list and pick out phobias I consider ridiculous because they are, if you ask me, coverups.
Dedidophobia – fear of making decisions.
Didaskaleimophobia – fear of going to school.
Arithmophobia – fear of numbers
Epistemophobia – fear of knowledge
Optophobia – fear of opening one’s eyes
Ergophobia – fear of work.
So you see, your Honor, I’m not a lazy, uneducated, stupid, unmotivated, indecisive bastard who likes to sleep until noon, why, I have these six medical conditions. Give me money and all will be okay. Funny, how the law does not recognize a fear of paying taxes. Now there’s a condition I think would be more infectious than the carona thing.
By dusk, I got the floor finished and one of the stud walls up in place. The room is mainly for safe and dry storage of what’s in the house, but if I shoehorn things in there, I can finally get a small work area and possibly a place to play music. When I set up in the house, the equipment always gets in the way of something but I can’t live without it. I play bass over an hour every day, minimum. Usually it is closer to two hours.
Our new visitor is an eastern indigo snake, carnivorous, immune to rattlesnake venom, often cohabitates a burrow with a gopher tortoise, will eat chicken eggs, is docile and rarely bites. They can be kept as pets if you buy a $100 permit. The snake is a good climber and is attracted to debris piles. That’s where I first saw this guy. Under the rakings from preparing the chicken run area.
