One year ago today: March 10, 2021, the $85k+ market disappeared.
Five years ago today: March 10, 2017, “cropped”, get it, ha-ha.
Nine years ago today: March 10, 2013, I walked 2+ miles.
Random years ago today: March 10, 2009, researching the Panama Canal
Where does VPN break down? Anytime you have a numbskull designing your search engine. Today, I searched for a Wal*Mart in Orlando, where there are approximately 54 stores. The Internet says the nearest is 5,180 miles away adding that is 8 to 10 hours by jet fighter. All I wanted was some chicken for the dog. McDonald’s has broken up a fraud ring that was operating on their Monopoly game. Always an inside job, it was the security chief of the area that produced the tokens. An ex-cop. Hey, food chains should not be involved in gambling anyway. Ah, here we go, the Wal*Mart over in Bartow opens at 6:00AM. Catch you later.
Where is that hillbilly? He’s disappeared again so I’m going to have to forbid him leaving the dog here. I cannot deal with an animal that big and feeding him is becoming a budget item. I’m okay for now, since I’m working around the yard, but I want to take a trip to Miami. I’m reading up on modern warship design, they don’t call them ships any more, but “platforms”. It has something to do with their no longer being designed only to fight other ships. That’s a weird one, since tanks followed naval design and now it is back the otherway. Tanks now fight other tanks, where they were originally intended to fight infantry.
The 5-string bass needs a new set of strings. And these DR Neons are idea. Ah, the keener-eyed say, there are only four shown. Correct, the 5th is purchased separately and is black. A stealth string. This bass in intended to be a lead player’s worst nightmare. I’ve long lamented the electric bass was patterned on a guitar without much thought to what needed accomplishing. Many a 5-string adds a higher C-string, where I will attach a lower B-string. I’m out to play bass, not riff off, slap, thumb, snap, or noodle.
Ray-B does not care for 5-strings, but I say that is because he is listening to non-bass playing when he hears the instrument. We get along for he is a rhythm player and it is lead players who tend to a get first competitive, then defensive, and then antsy. The reason is pure simplicity, I am better on bass than most lead players are on guitar. How can that be a negative, you may ask, and rightly so. Should not two great musicians complement each other? Yes, in a perfect world. But that is something I’ve rarely seen on stage. The problem is ego. Note, the bass pictured is not my bass. The picture shows six strings all the same size. Six is the ultimate case of bass wannabes. For a sample of how I do not play bass, click here.
I believe every stage musician or actor has an ego that must be fed and have no pains with that, as long as the overall presentation is a mutual improvement. You can grab the spotlight as long as you leave others the same right. The whammy begins when someone considers the focus as their right and others are there as support staff only. And 100% of the time to date, it has always been a lead player.
So what do I do? Nothing, except put on a better show. Experience shows taking even a few per cent of the attention away from a show-off can steal an entire show, mainly because neither the audience or prima donna are expecting it. I emphasize, I am not over-playing or out-playing the guitar guy, in fact, he is free to try those amateurish tactics on me. I’m ready. I have a whole bag of tricks when some lead azz-clown says, “Follow me”. Two of my classics are playing a four-octave walkdown (the bass has only three octaves) and playing the lead lick a phrase ahead of the guitarist, making it appear he is following me.
There is nothing wrong or even unfriendly about this, I told you the problem is ego. Now, once you get the audience to glance your direction, remember that lead player is going to try to get it back. Keeping their attention is my specialty, it involves making them wonder what you will do next. This is the majority of my bag of tricks, keeping their attention. My favorites are:
a) making something complicated look easyYou may ask how some of these are done, just don’t expect me to say. That extra low string will add several new facets to how I deal with show-offs. I’m not clobbering them, merely sharing the limelight. Ha, remember the Hippie? It took him years to figure out what was going on because he was so blindsided by his self-infatuation that he was the best. My playing naturally throws off guitarists who try to follow my hand positions and I don’t help any who do that. Learn the song, dammit. I’ll say it again, the best lead players ever can, at best, expect a 50/50 situation on stage with me.
b) pretending to trap yourself in a corner
c) lightning fast leaps up and down the fretboard
d) playing notes past the last fret in either direction
e) fingering one note while playing another
f) playing with my hand off the neck
Nor do I play loudly. It is below my dignity to get attention that way, but I have no problem with getting attention if you do it nicely. Nicely would mean any method that bothers nobody except the person trying to do it any other way. The connection here is bass amps. Before 1999 most of them were really guitar amps and they could not handle frequencies lower than the open E and many didn’t handle even that too well. I learned to play a little quieter rather than frap a speaker and this is how I discovered that playing “too quiet” was a tremendous stage technique.
2015 Australian autogyro club.
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It’s raining, I’m indoors, you get lots to read. How about this relay box, from years ago. This is from the tow-behind trailer that had wonky signal lights that could not be rewired without mucking up the brake lights. This was at the time a three day project beginning July 19, 2014. You’ll find this box, which I still have. At the time, a major project for me to design and build a complete relay circuit with “dumb” components. It was a learning curve, for example, I did not have to build indicator lights because the relays clicked so loud I could hear them.
As predicted, Trudeau has outlawed funding of any opposition to his regime. This is why I’ve said for years, if you want to know where America is heading, watch what happens in Canada—except that is hard to do because Canada retains a firm grip on its national media. So instead, I watched videos on what the US is sending Ukraine. Absent are the Javelin infrared anti-tank missiles. It’s a 50-lb fire-and-forget system that locks on to infrared signatures. The joke is the missile costs more than its intended targets. The Javelin curves up and plunges down on the tank from above, where the armor is thinnest, and it has a tandem mode in case the tank is equipped with reactive armor. I’m only aware of the Javelin being used in one battle, in Iran. It hit 17 of the 20 targets, something like that.
It settled down to a light sprinkle, so I worked in the rain for 3-1/2 hours. No big deal in this climate. I got the shed trim built, that wood warps so easily if not used fast. Next, I put some of the soffitt blocks, which probably have a proper name. The space between the rafters and the ledgerboard, but I ran out of lumber for that. So what I had went on the silo west wall, where I’ve got around a third of it complete. Cash was available for moral support.
Watch for massive increases in interest rates. Inflation is crazy and the Feds need to slow it down before the elections. It won’t help much, since prices will stay high and the highest priced commodity is borrowed money. Have you heard of the Wright 1? It’s an electric jet, something I can’t find info about, but I will. Electric motors turning propellers are easy to imagine, but this is a real jet according to the blurbs. The rub is that millennials have been known to lie. I think it is a turbine instead of a propellor, but with electricity instead of hot gas driving the blades.
Of greater interest for me is electric airplanes and the related problem of battery power. The only breakthrough worthy of the title was some guy named Goodenough invented the lithium ion. But most power is needed to get the plane off the ground, and it is a huge surge of power depending on the weight and drag of the airplane. I’m no chemist but I suggest there is an avenue they have not investigated. They all want permanent batteries that are rechargeable. Whereas the bulk of jet fuel is consumed, the bulk of the battery remains when it is used.
Well, how about a chemical battery that decomposes to produce electricity? Or in some ways becomes lighter as it is used up. Currently (ha-ha) you cannot have a battery that produces both the oomph to take off and lasts a long time. A “consumable” battery may be far-fetched, but it would not be the first time such a compromise solved a problem. After all, if you want to get technical, the nuclear submarine is really just a steamship.
You don’t want Tesla technology. Please, no self-flying airplanes that crash and burn while the two male occupants who should have been in control were busy with other tasks. Would I fly in an electric airplane. Maybe. I rode in a helicopter when I was only four but never since. My memory is how it made me seasick a bit. The target range is 500 miles, which is around half of US air travel, so the money is big enough to attract even Rolls Royce. However, I foresee a problem. The 11,000 airports in America long enough for the electrics are like train stations. Either too far from downtown or in the wrong neighborhoods.
If you wonder why lithium ion batteries catch fire, the cause is “dendritic growth”. The batteries have a positive and negative, separated by a substance called electrolyte. Over time, tiny “fingers” begin to grow from the anode through this electrolyte. If they make contact, that’s a short circuit.
And I just read one of the most obsequious articles possible by “The Atlantic” magazine which up to now I thought was a neutral news source. Instead they claim a million recorded COVID deaths. See the scam. What is a “recorded” death? The doctors who have been paid to lie? The hospitals who get money for writing COVID as the cause? Further wild claims are that unvaxxed people are 53 times more likely to die of COVID and the portrayal of unvaxxed being uninsured, low income, less educated and, get this, more like to be evicted.
I know of only around six people who are jabbed, including my eye doctor and JZ. And JZ regrets it because he’s had persistent arm pains at the site for over a year now. It is not a vaccine, folks, it is experimental gene therapy. The people dying from the jab and some say the only good news is that a certain mid-east country jabbed 90% of their people. Let me guess, that would be 6 gorzillion of them. The forecast for Saturday is rain all day, so the gig is postponed until Sunday. Good, extra practice time and I need it. I tend to forget these marginal tunes played because the band, not the audience, cares for them.
ADDENDUM
What a pity 37 states have had to move legislation that bars men from women’s sports. It is always men trying to get away with something. And now we listen to the whiners that “transgender” creatures are not fairly represented. Remember my tale about the bicycle? These transgenders don’t want their own sports. They want yours.
It’s interesting to see Mel Gibson speaking against jews again. (With a small “j” means I didn’t say Jew.) They almost canned Mel’s career over calling out a jew cop, but he’s plainly both recovered from having to rely on them by producing his own movies. When his Rothschild production due, I’d like to see it. Others say it is a rumor, the movie was announced at a film festival hoping to have Gibson star in it.
Wal*Mart has lowered the price on their ice cream pizza, and the Noob Factory (fake Rolex watches) has also gone up. How are the pseudo-playboys to manage? I’ve laughed at that “James Bond” scenario before, I first saw it at Club Med in the 80s. The supreme suckers in this world are the boys who think acting like you have money gets the women. And the women who play them for suckers. They deserve each other, in spades. I’m the other extreme, I have no concept of paying for sex and minimal contact with people who do. Marriage is the highest priced of all.
There’s another related facet, it’s a misleading impression of living in Florida. I fell for it. You think this is an easy place to get things done because nobody gets in your way. The reality is the place is so full of deadbeats that you never cross paths. You are doing things, they aren’t, so you move along having nothing in common. Ah, until something goes wrong like that one time you sleep in and have to get somewhere in a hurry.. Then they block your way by the thousands, you see, now you have something in common.
