June 20, 2020

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 20, 2019, Tennessee State Museum.
Five years ago today: June 20, 2015, remember my $780 flat?
Nine years ago today: June 20, 2011, a tendency toward average.
Random years ago today: June 20, 2009, it’s not really random.

           Complete olfactory and gustatory numbness. At least it isn’t Covid-19. I got up this morning unable to smell or taste a thing. What kind of day can it be when I can’t taste my grits and coffee? I even tried the Reb’s wasabi cure. It cleared things up but zero flavor. I’ve had it bad before, but this round is complete shut down the flavor buds.. Just don’t go thinking it curbs the appetite. If so, I’d like to catch this bug for another 30 pounds. The hunger part remains. I closed the books on the 3-way switch. It totaled $71.14 in materials. This caused me to go over the books where I found a small glitch, nothing material, just a wrong daily average formula. Let’s have a look at some daily costs in contemporary America.

           Tennessee has shifted my spending patterns like nothing before. And music has again become an expense category. Nowadays, each month I spend $164 on groceries because I cook at home. My largest expense is entertainment, but that is about to take a huge plunge. Gasoline is $77 per month for local consumption. I still average $49 per month at the thrifts and overall expenses living like I do are just under $1,100 per month. But don’t you try this. It costs money to stand still and do nothing in this country.

           Trivia. The last typewriter factory closed in 2009, but it might be coming back. What? The factory was in India and producing 12,000 units per year. They got wiped out by computers, but take a guess where there may be a new demand. Government agencies. Privacy concerns may bring these unhackable mechanical devices back for use in defense, courts, and hush-hush government offices. The last typewriter ever designed was in 1989, it was Canon’s electronic Typestar 110.
           With a day’s delay, that attic work caught up to me. I forget how many times I said I was up that ladder. The reality was around ten times with a different muscle group that yard work. It’s a tiredness or weariness that emerges from your bones into your muscles. So I was lucky to have the get-up to pack the equipment and set up. We are talking a four hour nap before gig time. Suboptimal conditions.

           We finally found where Matilda is laying her egg a day. The postal driver across the lane has an outdoor washer and Matilda must like that lid. My chicken coop has been overgrown with kudzu from disuse. But remember Sandi, the catering lady? Seems her teen got on line and ordered two baby chickens. Put them Sandi’s credit card. I have no idea what age they can be left on their own. No promises, but my yard is chicken-ready. Can you see the coop under all that growth?

Picture of the day.
Lake Schrecksee.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           This picture shows the roof problem. Where the valley runs down, a pile of leaves accumulated near the eave. This stays wet long enough after a rain to cause problems. I’m tempted to line the entire spot with flashing because that’s a hard spot to clean. There is nowhere to stand without the crap falling on your head. Tomorrow we commence. Blog rules, I have to record the top stories.

           Tonight was a flop. This is a term from my pre-teens, allow me to explain the vocabulary. The gig was a flop, not a bomb or a wipeout. A flop means not enough people showed up to make the gig pay. There can be unfathomable reasons for this, never blame yourself. For all you know, somebody up the block was giving away free beer. Now a bomb, that is when there’s lots of people show up, but they don’t like your music. To a musician like me that is the worst that can happen, so I got off easy. A wipeout is when another band nearby puts on a show that grabs your crowd.
           All evening, maybe 8 people wandered in and 6 of them came to play pool in the side room. I played the full allocated time, carefully noting errors, and there were plenty. The barmaid loved it. Foremost, I don’t have enough material, I need another twelve tunes minimum. The PA is also “bassier” at club volumes That could prove tricky. A short term solution is to find a venue that suits what I can do until I’ve got my 100 hours stage time. That’s an arbitrary number I chose after finding it unwise to make major changes before then.

           Which tunes did best? Dwight and Johnny. The age group that did show was late-twenties so I suspect many of them had never even heard much of this. Tips zero, the crowd looked skinflint so none were expected. All night two rounds but stepping out back to “get something from the car” every hour. What took me by surprise was how quickly I tired, which is directly related to that work in the attic. It could not wait till morning and I had to press on a few times. Once again, the solution is to play sitting down, but I’m not good enough yet and to me standing is a hallmark.
           Afterward, I stopped at the Fubar for the birthday party. Again, a small crowd, and same checking at the old club on the way home. This plain happens around here. I used to get broke past the middle of the month myself, don’t overlook that dynamic. There’s nothing a hot shower won’t cure, so I got home and turned in on the aching shoulders. I didn’t use that muscle group much but it complains the most. Good old-fashioned muscle ache, like I used to get on the farm. The mild cold I have doesn’t help matters. How was your day?

ADDENDUM
           Just some junk news, since I’m all rested up. How do you like those news feeds showing the empty arena at the Trump rally, claiming he’s failing. Yeah, they should come back later when the rally starts. Another study at MIT reports face recognition is “racist”. It keeps picking out latinos, blacks, and Asians. The illustrious MIT people don’t seem to have considered that maybe the software is working. In good news, Adobe Flash is dead. Those bastards led the way with their phony updates, forcing users to download spyware by disabling earlier versions. Good riddance. They were even beginning to infect Apples.
           Napster may be back in a new form. The classic American road to riches involves using your fortune to block others from doing the same. It’s worked for Chevrolet, MicroSoft, Coca-Cola; the tactic has proven its worth. Where Napster was used for pirating, the new Napster seeks to prevent it. How it works is nothing new, rather a conglomeration of bastardized tactics. It plans to embed watermarks in new digital movies which prevent playback unless the use has “the necessary permissions” (plural). It will work of your phone or your TV, both equipped to tattle on you and no doubt there are those stupid enough to think it will stop there.

           It also employs a good old web crawler which scans the Internet for unauthorized copies. They claim the watermark cannot be removed without destroying the image. We shall see. The plan also has a “mechanical” component, called P2P Polluter. When it finds a network with a pirated copy, it floods that site with thousands of polluted copies of the file, nothing new there. Where do I stand? I’d say against. I’m against any system that, for its success, involves monitoring people without their consent. And I don’t think anybody buys a phone or TV with the view to have it spy on them. And breaking the package seal is a far cry from proper consent, DC.
           Secondly, their numbers are still based on the fake narrative that each person who could not get a pirated copy would go out and purchase a valid copy. This is utter nonsense. The ultimate goal for Napster, and here it comes, is to release first run movies same day for a price tag of $50. If you need the real reason the industry is ailing and people pirate, there’s your answer.
           Like cable TV, let them price themselves out of the market.

Last Laugh