May 16, 2021

Yesteryear
One year ago today: May 16, 2020, first clear drone pic.
Five years ago today: May 16, 2016, batbike to Bartow.
Nine years ago today: May 16, 2012, $49k is downhill.
Random years ago today: May 16, 2014, a gripe-fest.

           Get out there with some non-power tools, I thought, and attack that yard. Damn, this was a sweaty, tiring day. Jump in and help any time you feel ready. I went at it before the noon sun and urge you feel free to take over. The neighbor found the remains of the hen, which confirms it was a badger. Since that predator never goes away, I shall try to use the raccoon trap. Why look, it’s a thrilling picture of the ashes added to the elm tree soil. Gives it a nice, but ersatz black earth appearance. Neat.

           I tackled the yard, mostly rake & shovel work. It’s a rare spring cool spell, quite chilly in the morning. I moved a several loads of cut logs to the back. Make that a six-hour day which is borderline incredible for me. Then I got it, this was your telepathic signal that you want me to talk about my yard. Okay, the birds. We have six species as regular visitors. The cardinals, finches, bluejays, a hawk, titmouses, and that yellow-dabbled one that isn’t in my books. Matilda is gone and Howie found the remains. It was a badger.

           The cut tree limbs cleared away double the space in the yard that is easily accessible, unless you like crawling over logs. Five of the “pistachio” trees have sprung up in the back yard and I’m leaving them for now because they cause a lot of shade. The trick is keeping them trimmed back. All of the African spear plants are going as they don’t take to transplanting. The soil mixed with the ashes already shows signs of holding water better and the agave plant from JZ will grow without fuss, even if it isn’t the prettiest. The tree limbs over-hanging the house will be a super challenge to cut and this cannot be delayed much longer.
           You should see a couple of built-up wood panels. These are constructed using the biscuit joiner. They are actually quite easy and fast to make and incredible lumber prices make this the only option for building boxes. I need this one for my nice new chain saw. The material shown here is 7/8th inch pallet planks. Making two at a time uses up every available wood clamp I own. The pieces are not naturally as flat and straight as what you see in this view.

           That jar of Russian jam I bought because of the nice fruit pictures on the label turns out to be spaghetti sauce. Oh no, they’ve learned American fake-out procedures. On the other hand it had no GMOs and is delicious. Trivia, the most shoplifted food item is cheese, in fact, 4% of all cheese disappears this way. More Tampa libtard radio went on about why Africa is a poor continent. Apparently there are people who still have not figured it out by themselves. There is another misconception strong amongst liberals that the US President is Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. Not so, and there are ugly rumors the military does not like this President at all.

           [Author’s note: to be clear, the President of the US only becomes the Commander-in-Chief AFTER war has been formally declared by Congress. This has not happened since 1942, when Congress declared war on Germany’s allies to appease the Soviets.]

           The Arizona audit is taboo to the mainstream media. Every other outlet is announcing a different number of bad ballots. One thing is clear the Democrats are worried, and in particular they are scared how if the audit goes near any of the things so hotly denied by the leftists at the time of the election. I find that most fascinating. Did you know Trump has more supporters in England than the party in power over there? Yep, if Trump was in London, some twenty million people would vote for him. He’d be running against “the potato in a wig”.
           That mutant-looking Lemon person is history at CNN, though not as much as the Cheney woman who just got her walking papers. It’s great to know Trump is still firmly in control of everything that’s going right in this country—see, I told you he wasn’t a politician, but a businessman and that’s why I support him. Every crisis that crops up in a way supports my contention that Trump stepped down precisely to let the liberals hang themselves.

           And let’s not forget inflation. We already have the $10 bowl of soup and the $80 sheet of plywood. It’s appearing that thanks to crypto-currency, there are zero affordable hedge items to invest in any more except precious metals. If you can find any. And when in Colorado, remember to dine at Deep Space Parker. It’s a restaurant that will not knowingly serve Democrats. I wonder how they enforce that.
           Meanwhile the Democrat panic continues, as they flail their usual misdirections over the audit purpose. They scream the audit tarnishes America’s reputation and destroys public confidence in democracy. Ha, but they’ve revealed themselves. Cheat, lie, and steal to get into power, then demand the other side now “play nice”. As Californians form caravans to leave the place, that ferret-faced governor guy is still on about mask enforcement. I’m glad I have a yard to work on, so I often have a shovel handy when Tampa news comes on the radio. If you ask me, the Democrats have denied so much so vehemently that any evidence of fraud at all will now blast them in the face.

Picture of the day.
Seattle “rain yard”.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
           While watching that video of Africa which blames their poverty on anything but themselves, I learned about the red-billed quelea. The bird swarms like locusts. Numbering in the hundreds of millions, they prevent any large scale crop-growing in central or sub-Saharan Africa. They outbreed any attempts at control. Watch a few videos and you’ll see how bad it is. I was amused by another video about the food that hippies in the 1960s ate. I was around near the end of the hippie era and I dislike the way they are portrayed as “poor” in the sense they shunned “capitalism”.

           The fact is, it took money to be a hippie. They could not normally get jobs if they looked scruffy. In reality, a lot of the money they pretended to dislike was from rich parents. They were dropping out not from wealth, but from working a traditional job for that wealth. It costs serious money to establish communes and health food stores. Remember “Alice’s Restaurant (real name Chez Panisse)”? Peace, groovy man, Arlo, and everything anti-establishment? When I left California, destitute, in 1974, the cheapest thing on the menu was $10 ($54 today). Ten bucks was a day’s wages back then. It is no surprise I’ve never met anyone who ate there.

           Hippies, my eye. Most of them were professional students, playing the system. Burbank and UCLA are not cheap schools. I know hippie chicks who "rejected" all material things, so much they would buy a brand new pair of bell-bottom jeans and immediately wash them fifty times to get that faded look. The few hippies I met by conviction I didn’t care for, since they denigrated the way I worked for money. Why, they could not understand, didn’t I just “cool it”? Take the summer off and tour Europe like they did.
           These 1960s hippies were the offspring of the upper middle class and they have no connection with the grassroots they claim to embrace. They were not champions of the working or lower classes. Some might ask, why not just tune these phonies out, ignore them, and get on with your life? Try it. The rest of us had to go to work while these AOLs infiltrated government jobs. Guess who is behind this whole fake virus mask scam? Fauci, born 1940. Go figure.

           Want a laugh? Let me tell you about the chain saw and this afternoon. The gas power of this tool produces “firewood” at around six times the pace of the puny electric models. This meant I had stacks of logs ready for this afternoon’s burn. Another change is the burn barrel has rusted through, leaving an opening near the bottom for air intake. I had wanted to make an oxygen intake port but never got to it. The rust accomplished this, so I could direct the bellows (my leaf blower) into the barrel, creating a furnace.
           This burned the wood so rapidly, it was only a six-beer fire. So I barely had time to take out my guitar and put together three tunes. That’s your laugh, I am so bad it hurts. I get regular reminders that most people successful in music and computers were raised around them and my experience was the opposite. Not only were they absent, the very thought of doing such things was scorned. I basically play guitar the same way I did when I first tried. So, what are the three tunes “adapted” to the way I strum?

                      “Hot Dog” – Led Zep
                      “Fireman” – George Strait
                      “All You Ever Do” – Dwight Yoakum

           Say what you want, you gotta be a brave man on stage to play “Hot Dog” as a solo. The videos of the acoustic-bass band a week ago did not work out. Where camcorders pick up too much bass in a quiet room, in a noisy club all I got was clutter and chatter. There is a tune that I believe would be great for duo arrangement if I could find a proper guitarist, if only because the audience would not be expecting it. It is the old Beatles’ tune, “Lady Madonna”. Imagine a clever strum with a bass playing the piano riff. And can this cowboy play a piano riff.

ADDENDUM
           Just a wee more technology. Controlled explosions are the last major untapped source of chemical energy. While burning rocket fuel is often called a controlled explosion, they are short of the real thing, that is, a continuous burn. The theory of accelerating artillery shells up a tube by successive detonations have so far failed because of timing difficulties. Improvements to timing have recently allowed experiments where the shock wave of one explosion triggers the next, making for accumulated power. In a rocket motor, each detonation must clear the chamber before the next blast. While improvement is not as great as advancement, this new process is said to boost potential aircraft speeds to Mach 17. It’s called oblique wave detonation.

           In electric airplane news, Alice has finally received an order. This is the three-prop electric airplane that now has a 500-mile range. The airplanes are more expensive to buy, but operating costs are so low the other airlines best watch out. As usual, this new airplane will not stop at just flying you, there will be all manner of tracking and privacy invasion going on, just you watch. The plane has little new design-wise. It is all made possible by lithium ion battery packs.

           Have you seen any of the hardware used on the Chinese Mars rover mission? What a joke. Copycat stolen American technology right down to the last bolt and rivet. They should be ashamed of themselves calling it “a victory for the motherland”. It’s a clone operation, even mimicking the parachute & rocket touchdown sequence and the staged mission control “hoorah”. NASA should also be ashamed to let this taxpayer-funded information be so easily copied and duplicated.

Last Laugh