January 5, 2023

Yesteryear
One year ago today: January 5, 2021, 400 people taking pictures.
Five years ago today: January 5, 2017, the detested Calibri 11.
Nine years ago today: January 5, 2013, I was ripped-off.
Random years ago today: January 5, 2017, quality can vary.

           Other than a last-minute scheduled chest X-ray, I’ve got the day off. JZ still has a nagging cough so he won’t go to the library, which is where I’m headed. He insisted on making squash omelets, which is too vegan for me. I can tolerate turnip-like vegetables but give me onions. He’s got these free passes to the science museum. That place was under construction last time we showed up and I’m not expecting it to be finished. I don’t recommend the place, it is not a real museum. More a museum-themed children’s entertainment park.

           Good morning, and here’s a closeup of the new stopwatch. This is a modern design, you can tell because of a weird feature. You see, to set the time, it involves a eight or ten step sequence of pressing the buttons in the correct order. Yet, if you slip the watch into your pocket, that’s twice now it randomly pressed its own enough to change the time. Figure that one.

           Being out of supplies, we stopped at Dollar Tree. When my diet-conscious pal picks up nutritious barbequed corn chip, fritos, and if they had them barbequed popsicles. Had to haul the guy of there before he starts buying the shopping carts. Folks, Dollar Tree now has self-checkouts. The lowest paid jobs in town are now disappearing, it’s the end of democracy. I demonstrated my psychic ability by guessing in advance what the voice would say as JZ scanned each item.

           In a strange disinflation quirk, the price rise to $1.25 at Dollar Tree also created a new range of products that were just out of the old price margins. JZ has taken cold medicine, so I drove that junker of a truck he’s got himself. Did I get you a picture of the wood peg holding the passenger window shut? Hey, don’t get me wrong, this truck would have been luxury back on the farm because it has a radio and A/C even if he never uses them.

           I stayed in the library a few hours. I combed over the Medicare Part A, finding it incredibly bad reading. Not difficult, just bad. It’s how I would go about writing something if I was trying to avoid a straight answer. You’d think others should know a lot more about that stuff than myself, but even depending on it does not seem to fill them with any sense of inquiry. So when things go wrong, I guess they just do. (I’m completely covered so I have an excuse to not fret about exclusions to Part A.)
Here’s an item for my overseas readers. This is how the American news media attempts to indoctrinate the masses. Here is a crossword puzzle clue in today’s Miami Herald. The answer is “drag” but the clue is angled as if queers are such an accepted part of our society that they can be popularized in games and puzzle clues. This is false, queers are a detested segment of society and it is widely recognized this is just the next degenerate step taken when parasites infect a nation. Most Americans see it as a repeat of what created fascism a hundred years ago.

Picture of the day.
Diego Garcia
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           Next, I reported back to JZ what I found, but the conversation quickly changed to which tasted better, Triscuits or lawn furniture. And a discussion of whether birds who perch on trees are sight-seeing or not. We’ve decided to go over to his brother’s place tomorrow and move a 200 pound glass table top back onto its stand. He spent 14 hours sanding and painting the aluminum structure seen here.

           I said okay, but he’s going to injure himself picking up that much weight. Worse, he didn’t tell us he got a booster shot in his left arm, so now both are painful. Recovered or not, we lift that glass tomorrow, folks. People who get the jabs get no sympathy from me when they get pains and damage. The evidence of the vaccine being poisonous is too big a mountain to ignore. He also spent a fortune on magnesium pills, I told him to bite the end off a road flare. Which results in an admission when he was a kid, he stole strips of it from the lab like the rest of us and burnt it on the asphalt.

           He has no interest in navigation, which would kind of intrigue me if, like his condo, my house was five feet below sea level. He retorts that he lives on the fourth floor. Then again, this is the guy that thinks tornado alley is in California and can’t find China on a map. He’s decided not to learn where the flood, or earthquake, or tidal wave zones are by just calling them disaster zones. Okay. Then he decides drinking a rum & coke is better than me having a second vegetarian spring roll. This is the guy eating frito chips. Like I don’t know he eats the whole package of rolls when I’m not around.
           Still a TV watcher, he got one of those antennas that picks up all the free stations. It’s actually only 5 stations of repetition. I’m staying inside, it’s record hot spell, enough to get me to watch TV, anyway. It was 116°F inside the van in the sunlight. The new “tape” recorder can turn itself on in a pocket and times out after 168,751,000 bytes. I once paid $200 for 8,000,000 bytes. You can tell a TV watcher, they keep coming up with phrases like, “After fifty life is nifty.”

ADDENDUM
           The new guitar guy has sent back his first choice of tunes to play. If this is a repeat, tough, I’m on the road and don’t have time to review every entry. Anyway, he’s chosen tunes that he may not realize are going to force him to share his thunder. While I don’t play jazz music, I’m aware of the notes that make up chords and have an affinity to use them as passing tones or after fifths. This often enough harmonizes with melody notes to make people think I know what’s going on. Um, I do, but in a general sense of what a bass line should be.
           At least this guy is okay with trying the duo arrangements, and from what I see he catches on quickly. His reaction to the sound we had was more of a jolt, he realized he’s on to something here and chose his tunes with that in mind. It’s often years between when I meet people who will even try. I can name dozens who failed at this, even people who I paid to try. The bunch that show up with an electric to an acoustic audition.

           Anyway, here’s something. I advised him to not cancel his ad for a band at the same time I cancel my listing on Bandmix. He forgot. Now come the e-mails of deadbeats who would not speak to us a week ago with a hundred ideas on how they can improve things. No, they don’t need to hear us, that’s not how it works. My viewpoint is they had their chance, I hope he’s as good at ignoring them. Polk is not such a big place, if you are not in a band, I know why. Instead of muting my ad, I should have gone in there and lambasted the time-wasters.
           For example, you show up at an audition and all goes well, but you don’t hear back. Later you find out somebody in the band decided you have a strong personality. And they have the peasant mind-set that two strong ego not work when in fact, the problem is they lack the brain-power to deal with it. They have a problem of an entirely different magnitude. If you are such a wimp you cannot deal with another personality at that echelon, then go jump off a cliff. Quit passing yourself off as a viable musician when you can’t function unless surrounded by obsequious jellyfish.

Last Laugh