One year ago today: September 15, 2019, quality crossword time.
Five years ago today: September 15, 2015, it is not illegal.
Nine years ago today: September 15, 2011, we can’t afford it.
Random years ago today: September 15, 2014, something all too often.
Today you get random pictures of Nashville and maybe St. Augustine. Nothing else much happened except the shed, I’ll list that when I’m done for the day, probably this afternoon. Here’s the spotlessly clean washrooms at the Peabody (the blog that dares). There may be a loop of names scrawled on the fence stones at Graceland, and a shot of my broken shovel, repaired with wood glue and epoxy but no longer good for much other than moving soft dirt.
My biggest contribution to the industry is my warning that programming is not a team or committee effort. One man has to be in overall charge and have his work painstakingly monitored by underlings who, in total, catch all the major errors. That’s all they are good for. I will concede there are many two-person programming partnerships, but they are like Simon & Garfunkel. The winning ticket is the synergy, not the talent of the lesser man. It sounds harsh, but until the facts are faced, expect many more
This is the muggiest summer in twenty years say the locals. I worked through, dipping into the house every hour for a cold drink. I got the garden wall back up, this time proper, and have started on the third and final shed door. I searched on documentary and found a rather one-sided account of the 1967 Six Day War. True, the Israelis were outnumbered something like 80 to 1 in fighting men, but the Arab armies were mostly trained for the parade ground. Much has been made of the Israeli prowess but the fact is, the Israelis had some 1,800 German-trained combat officers of the highest quality, many with tank experience and most veterans of the Russian front. If you look closely, that is how the Israelis won—by copying WWII German tactics, or you might say if you follow their historians, “Nazi” tactics.
The Arabs made the mistake of aligning their forces for a breakthrough attack. This means the line was thin and brittle in the sense that all the fuel and ammunition was clustered nearby in anticipation of a forward attack. The Israelis knew that blitzkrieg worked fantastically against such dispositions, a fact the Allied propaganda carefully conceals to this day. Poland, France, and initially the Soviet Union, fell in weeks because they were arrayed for attack. When the Germans attacked first, that is aggression, when the Israelis do the same, it is “pre-emptive”. The Israelis copied the German “schwerpunkt” spearhead attack method to spread out into the enemy rear.
What the Arabs did wrong was try a broad frontal advance. When you outnumber the enemy and he is defending a long border, he cannot be strong everywhere. With the edge in manpower, you can constantly be probing the entire front line for your enemy’s weak spots. As soon as you find one, cross over into his territory and begin building up for a flank attack. If you succeed, the enemy collapses, if he diverts his forces to counter attack, you set the rest of your army on his now-weakened front. The best the Arabs ever did was the Yom Kippur attack, where they had missiles to keep the Israeli air force at bay. But it takes time and money to retrain an entire army and once the missiles were gone, so were the Arabs.
Rare Kikyo snowflake flowers.
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Little visible progress again [today], but lots behind the scenes. I took out the temporary shelving and rigged up a solid piece above the table saw. The side pieces for the third door are cut and chiseled, a process that took 1/3 the time now that I’ve done it. Once more only AM radio came in but there was minimal sferics and I heard the next incentive package is approved. Do I need the money? Probably not, but I’ll take it because I was a taxpayer for so many years, supporting lazy people who disagreed with everything I believed in. I’ve been to the welfare office and seen for myself, only one person in maybe ten actually needs any help, and it should be temporary with compulsory job training. So my list is made up and the top item is my new water heater.
I’m also against student loan forbearance for the same reason I don’t like mortgage bailouts. It is too easy for people who don’t really grasp how the system works to get these loans, and the result is wild spending that forces prices up for the rest of us. Who in their right mind would spend $500,000 for a house in Florida? Or $80,000 on a Masters Degree? Somebody who found the money easy to borrow, that’s who.
Johnny Rocket from Boss Hogg died last month, I just heard today. He’s the big guy I sort of knew who’s wife owns the local laundromat. And there is something funny as the Democrats begin a press briefing attack on McEnany, the White House press lady. I would simply cancel the briefings until these people quit using them as a platform for their hateful attacks on the President. I tried to watch the footage, but it’s the old liberal trick of talking back when the speaker is trying to answer. Leading and baiting questions that would not be allowed in a court should probably not be tolerated at press briefings either. It’s so blantant they are trying to stymie her or get her goat rather than seek any facts or truth. And that queer-looking New York mayor is in his glory, milking the city crisis for all the publicity he can.
I miss the good ones and apparently there was a video depicting the Democrat-supported violence, the clips says an anti-Biden ad. It’s been “pulled” before I saw it. Instead I found that excellent video of Biden getting off the airplane and waving to a completely empty field. Serves these people right, they thought they had this country in their back pocket. How about that Latinos for Biden parade where ten cars showed up. Ha, remember, this blog was ahead of ALL the media in stating that the Democrats cannot win without cheating and said so long before Trump was the clear winner. The media says voter fraud, I meant it in a much larger sense where vote-buying and harvesting were but one part of a much larger process. I found the deleted video, it was just more footage of the lawlessness in Portland.
TMOR, Portland is not historically a violent or even leftist city. It was more like a sleepy cousin of Seattle. What actually happened is California got so bad even the losers were leaving the state. To the east you got a thousand miles of desert, so they went north. There they found the sleepy and unsuspecting communities of the Pacific northwest. To the radical Democrats, the place ripe for the plucking. It was a liberal Marxist’s dream come true, entire white-run cities full of working taxpayers with a live-and-let-live attitude. Low police budgets because of low crime, quiet city parks that were unpatrolled at night, lazy little towns where people didn’t lock doors, and city administrations who had no counter to extremist voting blocs.
Within ten years, they had infiltrated all levels of government and voting in free welfare and drugs to anybody who would leave California to come support their takeover. Seattle and Portland became shitholes for the homeless and useless. America has no more or fewer useless bastards than any other country, but here, our system lets them blame anybody but themselves.
I mentioned the electoral college last day, the system that seeks to keep large cities from out-voting smaller communities. Thus, a Democrat stronghold like Portland cannot outvote the rest of the state. In 2016, Trump got 65 million votes that gave him a majority in the electoral college, but Hillary got more total votes from the Democrat-controlled areas. She is still screaming about it, but the result was nothing more than the electoral college doing what it was supposed to. I reported in this blog that Trump got more confirmed votes than Hillary, which still holds true. Her claim to more votes includes districts where more than 100% of the eligible voters turned up at the last minute.
ADDENDUM
Bradford, the guitarist. I finally got what I call a “must-play” list out of the guy. The audience has an instinct for when you are playing what you like and hopefully there is match with the brand of music they want. This is not a given. And we’ve got less than stellar results with this guy before. Here’s my take on the twenty minute conversation. Top story there is the entertainment at the old club has, in Bradford’s estimation, gone downhill since I’ve been in regularly, that’s about 18 months ago. I would attribute that to the general economy and COVID, nothing more. Even then, I see the Saturday show, where Fridays are their big night. I’ll go if the mother-daughter team is there, but most of the others I can tell you their song list from sitting right here.
Later, I gave a listen to some of the tunes Bradford named, but he’s up to his old tricks. He won’t commit to any given piece of music, simply saying he’d like to work on it. This usually means the speaker intends to make some “improvements”, a thin disguise for inability to play the original. But the local supply of musicians is that I’ll even consider such things. He’s still the best option though I have to be careful not to get roped into what he really seeks—endless practice and “jam sessions” over at his fancy place.
Careful about that, although he denies playing many covers, he’s stuck on many remakes of super-old tunes played by some contemporary flat-picker. His latest hero is this Billy Strings who is great if you are totally into ordinary guitar patterns at lightning speed—and unsuitable for stage presentation. And come on, Billy “Strings”. Is his piano player Joey “Keys”, is his drummer Tommy “Tom-tom”? Bradford is into names, he does not believe I never knew Crosby’s first name was Ben. Didn’t know, didn’t care. When I pressed for a list, he came up with these tunes.
Wagon Wheel – the Old Crow version
Tennessee Stud – Billy Strings
Treetop Flyer – boring Ben Crosby
Soul Shine – Allman Brothers, another sleeper
Come & Go Blues – Allman Brothers
Ain’t Wastin’ Time – Allman Brothers
Queen Double Wide – various, slow as shit
The Lights Went Out Georgia – various, but Reba
Return of the Mack – Mack Morrison? Half-disco.
Green Grass Grows - Tim McGraw, identical to Wagon Wheel
Front Porch – T. Lawrence, sort of okay.
Louisiana Saturday Night - Mel McDaniel
He’s still into what he likes, like those 1972 Allman Bros. tunes, I’ve told him he must already be able to sing and play anything on his list. I will not spend time practicing studio music or waiting for somebody to take lessons. We play rehearse each tune a few times and go play it or drop it. I will be flexible on that at first, but if he insists on this material there are two outcomes. One, he does a lousy job on stage and I steal the show, or he tries the old guitar player getting you into his space, which doesn’t work on me. Only a rank amateur thinks the Allman's can possibly be represented by a duo in the way he is imagining. That usually leads to him “bringing in” more people toward his goal of being the next Clapton. I usually make it clear if the band gets bigger than a duo, you pay him out of your half.
This round, I’ve kept up with my own guitar playing, I have ten new songs, three of them ready at a time. I’ve told him to only put songs on his list that he can already sing and play, as I don’t do startups. But he’s the type that will lie about such things. If so, as long as I can get him on stage, he’ll be playing right into my hands. All his tunes are sleepers and he’s making a serious mistake, all are slow “listening” music, but his lack of stage experience may be telling him that’s what people want, mood music.
Listen to Louisiana Saturday Night. I’ve heard him sing and he’s dreaming if he thinks he can handle that song. Even if I could do such harmonies, it would throw him off. There was an accidental file delete, so sorry if this is a repeat, but I wanted you to see the visual difference between two average song choices, the on the top stereo track is one of Bradford’s, the one on the bottom is one of mine.
The tiniest difference in these visual sound representations represents a tremendous difference in audio perception, often called dynamics. Lack of dynamics creates flat-sounding music, all the instruments playing full blast all the time. It’s a feature of a lot of indie music that is built up track-by-track and most types of electronic disco music. Just by looking, which would you rather listen to a band play?
