One year ago today: August 1, 2021, Some Tennessee photos.
Five years ago today: August 1, 2017, the World War Eleven bunch.
Nine years ago today: August 1,2013, the first injections.
Random years ago today: August 1, 2003, build-it-yourself factoids.
Another super-perfect summer morning, long shadows and still the overnight cool in the air. I used this for my Sunday (see gig details below) and used the time to unlax. All the windows in the house are open and the birds have been feeding since dawn. All too soon temp will soar up into the 90s and you can find me under the A/C with a book or two. I feel up to doing a few hours more work, nothing like a great gig to get me moving a bit more. I baked ten pounds of chicken for the upcoming week, including a batch in that jar of honey from Alabama. Didn’t I say? I bought it and found out it is too thick to pour easily, so it sat in the cupboard. Until this morning when I said, let me try nuking it.
The picture? Oh, that’s just a common sight in US stores these days. Products like Tide detergent and SPAM canned meat locked up for security. Some of these items are not that expensive, but because they are the things the store sells for the highest markup.
I did some reading about the early atomic tests in the Pacific after WWII. These were not to test the bombs as many think, but to test if other weapons were still worth anything. For example, the big tests on Bikini Atoll were about seeing if navy ships could survive. Many took the blast, but were capsized by the tons of falling water and mud after the shock wave. As an interesting aside, the test ships that did not sink were German designs captured after the was in Europe, but that’s another tale. It’s so typical of US rivalry that it was the Army who was most interested in the ships sinking, thus hoping to reduce funding to the Navy.
From the same source, here’s a bit of trivia for you. The German ship in focus was the Prinz Eugen, the escort of the doomed Bismarck. Just before they met the Hood, the Bismarck fired a salvo broadside at a shadowing British cruiser. The blast knocked out the Bismarck’s own radar and from then she had to rely on the Prinz Eugen. It’s a mystery to me how the Germans never noticed they were continually being spotted by patrol aircraft, when they knew the English did not have enough planes to cover more than a fraction of the ocean.
The center for missing children whatever it is called these days, has taken on a new tack. For clarity, most Americans do not want the government reading their texts without a warrant. So the government has a motive to package the concept as preventing child abuse. They want all on-line messaging to contain a back door. This is their license to reading your mail—once the right is given, the government never stops at just chasing the bad guys. In fact they let the bad guys go and turn any surveillance back on their own citizens.
What is this new push? It’s a borrowed chapter from the gun-control people. Instead of reporting how many crimes were committed, they now quote an estimated number of “suspected” crimes unreported due to encryption. And they put that number at nearly 15 million. They do the estimating themselves. Norway is planning to control your grocery shopping by amalgamating data from checkout receipts. Or as I traditionally word it, "Golly, now all you libtards have even more of nothing to hide."
Cloned blueberries.
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Cancel any work. I grabbed a nap and did not wake up until 4:30PM. This is your advantage of owning your own place. I got up and noticed a new video on my watch list. It was about a German pilot shooting down poor, defenseless, American bomber crews in their parachutes. On they go about how the men were defenseless and it was an act of supreme cowardice to kill them in cold blood. Just like the bomber crews had been doing to German civilians only moments earlier.
I hate all the pictures from the gig. They don’t make me look old, I am old. Told ya, this next birthday, even I begin calling myself old. It’s a good thing I’ve got all this charm and personality or I’d be as sunk. Like the people around us in Dunkin, remember if you have screaming kids, grab the table next to the two guys who are writing things. That Dunkin seems to attract noisy people but it beats Starbucks. Come to think of it, didn’t the local Starbucks go under? One trend I don’t like is more and more shops like coffee places are now closing earlier.
On the bright side, lumber prices are returning to normal. I bought a new pipe cutter for $13. And If I didn’t say, gas has dropped to $3.69. Still twice what it was, but down from $4.89. Still, one-way to Tennessee is $180. Prices always drop before an election with the party in place claiming the credit. But this round won’t fool anyone because the price rise was so dramatic, part of that being how they tried to pin it n the Russians.
Then, I took some time to watch on-line videos of would-be robber who were shot by their victims. It’s amazing, the smug look on these crooks faces in advance. It’s like they think armed robbery works like in the movies. They pull up in a car right under the closed circuit TV with the owner inside taking plenty of time to load his shotgun. I’m watching more Gab.com as it becomes evident the establishment is trying to shut it down. The Internet does not censor people for lying. I’ve learned to like a new sound. It is the pig-like squealing when one of them takes a bullet. Suddenly, they are all sopranos or better.
ADDENDUM
Overall, the gig was fine but I think the club manager may be slow on the uptake. That’s not his fault, all owners develop a preconceived notion of what quality music is. He expressed a desire for entertainment that kept his audience, and may have got more of that [element] than anticipated. I watched the recordings* and I am already with a counter-offer if he thinks we are not the greatest. Ask him to go by the staff, what did they think. And possibly suggest or get him to suggest we keep playing that Sunday slot. Until Wilford learns his stuff, in which case we become home-town boys in the process, and a diamond in the rough.
You see, I forgot to mention Wilford is like tenth-generation Polk County or so. His family was here before Columbus. And the front tables were packed with his relatives who plainly showed they thought he was doing just great. I wonder what he told them, I’d like a bottle of it. Also, the way the bar is designed, you get the first few stools are kind of stage center. I do not know who those people were, two elderly couples, but they were somebody and they loved the show. Or should I say they greatly appreciated a show that was not the pre-packaged crap making the circuit these days.
I’d best not ignore the uplifting effect of the one-liners. Dang, this is hard work, plus it happens right in the gap where I’m searching for lyrics or scanning the set list. I can do it, but the result for now is an amount of hem-and-haw that I find sub-par. There were two tables of couples, plus a third coming around, that were waiting for the lines by our second set. Alas, Wilford is beyond overwhelmed at this stage so he’ll be no help with such banter. My guess is he needs another 200 hours on stage, an almost impossible hurdle at this time.
*Note: this term “recordings” causes too many misinterpretations. I know it means videos or in this establishment, MP3 music. It’s at the far end I can’t control what’s going on. Hence I am considering using the older term “tapes”. Have you heard the tape? Did you watch the tape? Do you have a copy of the tape? Did you tape the show? See how much easier things become. So at the risk of being labeled out of touch, a slight redefinition of “tape” as a noun or a verb seems suitable.
Hey, if Biden can redefine “recession”, I can redefine “tape”. Of course there will be some AOL in the crowd who thinks you are the one out of date, but we know what’s really happening with that sort.
