One year ago today: April 3, 2020, the warship sank.
Five years ago today: April 3, 2016, let them repair kiosks.
Nine years ago today: April 3, 2012, almost cancelling Colorado.
Random years ago today: April 3, 2008, Wally’s Folly.
Y’day I watched “Mars Attacks” with the all-star cast, er, for the most part. So I thought, why not step through the ones I know and see if I can find each one’s shortcut that ordinary people could be jealous of. This should be fun.
Christina Applegate – hell, she was born next to a casting studio.
Jack Nicholson – both his suspected fathers were in show biz.
Glenn Close – both parents drowning in money.
Pierce Brosnan – just plain unbelievably lucky.
Danny DiVito – parents had the hard cash for private schooling.
Martin Short – mother was child prodigy married to steel magnate.
Sarah Jessica Parker – father was a journalist sent her to ballet school.
Natalie Portman – an uncle (or six) in the business.
Lisa Marie – somehow became a model in high-school, somehow.
Jack Black – both parents satellite engineers helps getting into LA academies.
Today I bought the biscuit joiner but as with all such tools that require accessories, the most popular ones are increasingly sold out. That would be the #10 biscuit. My theory is the problem is caused once again by the generally weak millennial mindset. They have a really hard time with cause and effect. The #10 is by far the biggest seller, but they come in three size, 00, 10, and 20. That means, to the millennial, there have to be three pegs on the display wall. So, put one of each, never wondering why the middle peg is always empty.
As for the 553 million Facebook people who had all their private data stolen and published? Serves you right. Talking when you shoulda been listening. I hope you all suffer because of the permanent harm you’ve helped create. Be advised, your digital problems are just starting. Good news, one of the leaked phone numbers belonged to Zuckerburg.
I’ll tell you a secret. Part of the demand for the #10s is due to the fact they get 125 in the same size box as 100 of the #20. What they don’t know is the rule that you should always use the biggest biscuit possible. Not only are the joints stronger, you will use fewer discuits.
Worse, it is one of those idiot connections that snowballs. For example, what happened at the bookstores. One business period passes where cookbooks sell well. Soon after, you walk in the door and there are extra aisles of cookbooks, but fewer other books. What do you know, sales of cookbooks go up even more until there’s not much else to buy. Overall revenues are down because why bother going to the bookstores any more, but being millennials, they can always blame that on some other situation. You know what causes that, don’t you? Common core. I had one of them use a calculator today to give me change for a ten.
In one more disappointment, the Yamaha scooter would not start. It isn’t getting gas and I strongly suspect that carburetor. Because you see so many replacements for it on sale. I’m still watching the history documentaries surround Tobruk and I would really like to hear an honest version of the German side on this. The Allied side is so blown out of proportion that you just know there were not that many Germans, just like you know they were not all Nazis.
There is a newsreel that is shown as a German attack that has become stock in so many newsreels. It shows a group of German vehicles driving across the desert sand. But please, quit saying it is an attack. Columns of supply trucks and other non-combatant vehicles are visible and trust me, nobody drives fuel and ammo transports into a head-on attack. Why has nobody told Hollywood that while Allied infantry were trained to fight German infantry, the German infantry was trained to protect their tanks. Yet they still portray German soldiers charging pillboxes, where in reality, they would have ducked for cover and called up a tank.
Searching for Utopia statue.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
I built my first panel with the joiner and even managed to nick my fingertip. It’s a fast learn but not as slick as the videos. The first thing you learn is usually to adjust so the cuts are a little deeper than they need to be. The dry fit can work well but one the glue is applied, give the biscuits a wee wiggle room. And, they are not self-centering as implied by the how-to crowd. Nor are the tool guides particularly accurate. Being very careful to lay the pieces flat and aligning the tool still produces cuts slightly off center.
My justification for such a specialist tool is the price of wide lumber. The cost would triple just before I’m due to build my long-awaited bookshelves. I’ve designed them to set on the south wall of the room where they’ll add another layer away from the radiant heat zone the Sun creates in the summer. It’s noticeable if you put the bed in the middle of the room instead of against the north wall—and that room is expertly insulated on all six sides.
I contacted a guitar player that Bradford knows. These are people who for reasons want to play in bands but never quite get there. They tend toward those dreadful b-sides and technical correctness over stage efficacy. I can’t overlook an opportunity, so we’ll trade song lists. The three tunes he mentioned on the phone I’d never heard of by name, usually not a great indicator for anyone wanting to be a serious entertainer. Club music is, by nature, generalist.
The guy won’t be in this area until May. We have some common motives but the fact he knows Bradford is a hurdle. These guys are terrifically good guitarists which does not always make for good stage adaptations. As just mentioned, he’d heard of every song I mentioned where I only knew one of his, and trust me, two guys cannot do a faithful rendition of “Black Water” with it’s four-part harmonies. Not just that, but when he heard my list, I was reminded of the Hippie. How the Hippie would purposely pretend he did not know the hit song to which you referred, but he knows the Zydeco version of another tune with the same name so you should play that one instead. Huh, dude? I mean really, huh?
I did not know somebody called Townes van Zandt did a song called “Cocaine Blues”. I listened to it and it is unrelated, boring, and obscure. Nothing like the rousing fun dance-singalong tune I was talking about. Same like the millennials that told me they stocked the upper radiator hose but not the one I needed. Golly, you have the hose I didn’t want, are they thinking maybe while I’m here I’ll buy a couple of the ones I don’t need and see how that works out? I do have a second guitarist pending, this one from Indiana, also moving to Lakeland via a few year stopover in California.
ADDENDUM
Keeping a budget is wise and if done right can have good influences down the line. My system is not airtight in that there is no formal way I keep receipts. So time to time I fine a small batch that was overlooked. Nothing that affects the big picture, but these can jolt the memory. Today I found a packet in my old winter coat that I had been wearing on the drive south to Bakersfield in late 2018. That was in the station wagon with the heater acting up, so I didn’t want to take the northern route. I found $164 worth of receipts that reminded me of that episode.
There was no knowing it would be my last regular trip ever to Seattle. I have no reason to go there again. Operations have been entirely relocated away from that area until they smarten up and that’s not going to happen soon. The gas on that trip was $1,180. First trip by car there and back in this century, the other times were motorcycle which involved a lot more side roads, some cross-country, and explorations and the gas was still half that much. Will I ever get used to paying so much again?
I recall that trip because it was one of the few times I felt depressed, though only in the sense that so many things had caught to me at once just when I was trying to adjust to a new level of retirement and the first car I’d bought for regular use since 1989. I did have the first Taurus, used mainly for transporting toothpicks, but that’s another story. Then, just north of Bakersfield, the Reb called to invite me to Thanksgiving. That put a new spin on affairs and I drove from Bakersfield to Nashville in two days. It was actually a bit more because of a stop for repairs, but other than that, I made it in that time frame. I fell asleep in the bathtub.
