December 28, 2020

Yesteryear
One year ago today: December 28, 2019, some security basics.
Five years ago today: December 28, 2015, the great lightbulb scam.
Nine years ago today: December 28, 2011, my old professor.
Random years ago today: December 28, 2013, civil servants get $38k.

           Notice how the millennial world works. A bomb goes off in Nashville and I can’t register my vehicle. Ah, some say, that is because the computer system is centralized and the downtown office isn’t open. Ah, yes, good old built in deniability, No, Brandon, again you miss the point. The problem is that between the lot of you, nobody knows how to fill out the forms with a pen and paper. The registration has become more than important. Why?

           One of my frost plugs is rotted through. I can almost guess the reason. The so called “prediluted” anti-freeze. This is the scam where they put half-strength anti-freeze in the same size and shape bottle as regular, with only a minor identifying mark. It is a huge rip-off because they charge nearly the same price as full-strength. If, like myself, you diluted it, you now have 1/4 mix and that first night in Georgia it was down to 18F. The car is drivable, so I’ll pull it in the driveway. It’s the single plug easiest to get at, but you know, time to get rid of the car.
           The pic is cat in the box. This is the real reason that some acoustic guitar cases are flock-lined. Will I ever get it [my guitar case] back now? Or, what if I grab the case, head out to the arena for a gig, and sure enough. Instead of my guitar I get meow. This is not your ordinary household. Never mistake this establishment for contemporary normal. Your first clue is there is no television in the place. It goes uphill from there.

           Later, I checked and it is a pinhole leak just enough to cause trouble. I went on-line to see how to replace it, and in typical wired-in fashion, every one of them showed how to do it with the motor taken out of the car. The Internet has lowered our national IQ by twenty points and made it the new norm. And the law prevents you from taking advantage of them. What a situation. I went to the FAQ on “how to replace a freeze plug” and the first twenty replies were your generic millennial non-answer, “How do you know for sure it is the freeze plug?”
           What a pack of useless morons Are you sure you are using a computer? Anyway, all of you can go you-know-what if you can’t answer a simple question. I’m not so sure it is even a one-man job. Still, the unit runs, so it can be driven away. This puts a timetable on how the next week goes.

Picture of the day.
Beaver dam.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           We had a late meal with company. The vegetarian cook cooked up Persian meal, a salad that you place on rice. Great, and a change in fare if you are used to American recipes After a while the meals can get repetitius. This was the most unusual yet, stick around and see if anybody gets into playing the guitar. Let me count. There are five guitars here, one bass, one keyboard, and a host of doo-dads like tambourines. Here’s a table-level shot of my USB hub, with a wooden rhino figurine in the background.

           The cat is still asleep,. Inside the case, which I paid $90 for (on sale) there is extra padding above the sound hole. This was a custom desig for cats to sharpen their claws. It certainly works well for that purpose. It was a great afternoon of playing music, we got into some of the tunes that had already made the rounds long before we met. It was all fun, the youngest people in the room were late forties, so it was all at least familiar.

           Afterward, I took a look at the list of requests I jot down when I can’t play them. Strange, by the late 60s I was old enough to remember every tune I ever heard. I was glued to the radio for new material back then. True, i would ‘tune out’ junk like the “Jackson Five”, but I heard most of it. So I matched up my list with tunes touted as top hits of the 60s. Here’s fifteen I could not place at all.*

Send Me a Postcard
God Only Knows
Wooden Ships
Witch
Alone Again Or
See Emily Play
I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night
A Change Is Gonna Come
I’d Rather Go Blind
Heroin
I Want You Back
Some Velvet Morning
Venus in Furs
Oscillations
Waterloo Sunset

           I might recognize some of these if I heard them, but that’s one piss-poor endorsement. I’m by no means confined by only liking specific music, I don’t even have enough tunes by one author or type to even put together a set special. Elliott & I were bantering the topic, he’s convinced I fire guitarists. Far from it, as long as they show up on time and play, I rarely can anyone. (An example reason would be spewing religion on stage.) Usually, the guitarists just “move on” and the usual reason being that they cannot take over the band. Must be something in the Guitar Center drinking water, but more likely it is an atrocious failure rate amongst guitar players who can’t fit in as equals.
           Elliott got me to admit I view most guitarists as low-effort last-chancers, but he’s never put a band together to know if he could work with such types as well as I do. Come to think of it, I don’t know if he’s every played in a group in his adult life. He is also a wild-eyed Trump hater, but typically knows very little about the situation.

*aside to Google-Goofs, give me ten bucks and I'll show you how I indented this list using only HTML without causing it to Christmas tree. No peeking.

Last Laugh