June 18, 2023

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 18, 2022, anti-pallet technology.
Five years ago today: June 18, 2018, Florida LLC guidelines.
Nine years ago today: June 18, 2014, 116 are from Mars.
Random years ago today: June 18, 2001, Siren, Wisconsin.

           Did you see the post about the Canadian lady shocked about the ingredients in ketchup? Apparently there are still people who are unaware American food is slow poison. I have not eaten beef in 25 years and I don’t touch most corporate brands. I intensely read labels but at the same time, I don’t buy into everything said. People have been eating wheat for 6,000 years so don’t think gluten is all that bad for you. Summer’s here with a three-hour downpour. I put on a jacket and went out in the worst of it to check the new roof, since it is 75% as big as the roof above it. The combined runoff is pretty massive.

           But I must address the roof on the white shed. Water is not supposed to run uphill, so it is time to get serious over there. That’s where this plywood comes in. I got it cheap because the laminate has peeled. But the top layer is so nice I may keep it as veneer. Time to settle in for the summer, where it rains most afternoons just as you get off work. Maybe I’ll leave for Miami earlier because there is nothing to do in that town and you get to sit around all day long.

           There’s a new tack on talk shows, a field that is super-heating once Tucker showed he can draw a hundred million viewers with home-made podcasts. They offer cash (to charities) for debate, for example the first person to ask a list of politicians about the J6 prisoners gets $1,000. This is a trivial amount of money (for a news story), but the impact on someone who refuses could be brutal. I like it already. This is “eat anything” Sunday, so this morning we have an increasingly rare food around here – potatoes. Mashed. With a little turkey gravy. Enjoy, it cold be another month till next time. A pity, as I love spuds.

           Now, says the hillbilly, he must learn to play guitar, but don’t hold your breath. He’s heard me play often enough to know what to shoot for. Plus we talk women often enough that he’s figured out how badly he’s missed the boat on that one. Anybody who goes to the old club has seen me reject women, or at least that’s what it looks like because the women approach me and don’t get invited to join in, so to speak. Well, the hillbilly wants to know the trick and I can’t explain there is no trick and who’d believe me?. I always assumed people regarded me as a snob over women, but says the hillbilly, they figure I’m too dumb to know the women are coming on to me. That’s a good one, since I’m usually working a crossword or something.
           Here’s a picture of the added crown pieces later in the day. Why yes, it is made up from old fence pickets. You think I’m rolling in money? The fence will soon be finished and you might get a diet of other news.

           Back to music. I gave him some initial pointers a year or so ago. Surprise, he followed up at least listening to the production of duo music that I described. Want an example? If you listen to old “The Who” recordings, you hear a very full sound from just a trio. Pay attention to the bass and guitar, that’s the sound you’ll hear from me, but improved because the guitar is acoustic. The basic beat is carried by the bass. I’m not a Who fan, so I can’t name tunes. But the sound was developmental to me. The bass and acoustic meshed right obviate any need for a drummer.

           The hillbilly has figured out the place that music has in all this talk about women. I figured it out myself when I was 12 so I snortle at men who only begin to perceive it later in life. They often mistakenly think what I do is a method they can learn. I lined up these concrete blocks for the planter area, but I’m in no rush to start work this morning, so let’s indulge in a little gossip. This is latent info, because the hillbilly cannot afford the club, meaning everything he hears is already second or third-hand. Strange indeed it is to hear one’s own reputation this way. What he reports is less a reputation than comments on certain situations. You want another example.

           The barmaid. A lot of the patrons don’t like her because she’s not approachable. For crying out loud guys, she just got married. I get along fine with her, we sign duets. Well, it seems the other day I had stopped for a cold one while examining the new fuel pump. I had it on the counter in front of me way at the far end of the lounge, away from the crowd. Cathy asks me about it and, reports the hillbilly, the men in the bar can’t believe I talked with a woman for ten minutes about carburetors and lawn tractors and she actually talked back. Now, the hillbilly knows my rule about never joking about sex with a woman, so I’m surprised he was surprised.
           One hope is that the hillbilly has now learned playing music is a relatively quick and easy way to meet women. It transforms beggars into choosers. Florida is a wasteland when it comes to good women, so every tiny advantage should be pursued. At least I didn’t have to remind him if he’d listened to me a year ago, we’d be out there now, meeting all the women he wants. I was more intrigued by hearing my “reputation”. He says in his own way that I’m considered snobby and standoffish to the local women—but that the reasons are obvious. I downplay much because he is hearing opinions only from one side.

           He also knows Petunia, the gal that, if she had any lerts, would be probably dating JZ by now. Yes, she has a rep, this is a small city. At her age, there is some baggage, but nothing untoward. JZ is not fussy that way. Agt. R dated her a while but he’s had such awful luck with women. I mentioned her to JZ on the phone y’day but this is far from a recommendation. One item is that women pick up I’m adaptable to cohabitation but JZ, I dunno. I’m not one to fuss when the Reb helps herself, but I would not tolerate it most other times. It’s the men who are sometimes yes and sometimes no that causes a lot of in-fighting. Let’s go listen to some music.

           Investigating the oxygen cylinder, it is a thought-out design. A device similar to a SCUBA regulator fits into the cap across the stem. I don’t have this piece. Then a simple screw mechanism feeds gas once the cap is unlocked. It seemed elaborate at first, but then I remembered how many clueless idiots there are in America nowadays.

           My bird dripper is plugged. I was out there but nothing is going to get me really kick-started today. Checking my correspondence, I’ll mention Michelle Easter. Every government office must have one good-looking babe. It’s the law. And over at NASA, it is Michelle. But I draw the line at her cover story. I’d hit on that but one does not decide to switch careers from international fashion model to NASA engineer without some shortcuts.
           Her version goes that she built a doghouse and that made her decide, at 28, to return to college for an engineering certificate. As luck would have it, she meets friends who’s parents work at JPL and lands a job next to the guy who invented the brushless electric motor. Her advice to others on a career? “Don’t doubt yourself.” That makes sense. What would a skinny gal who’s family has owned a major acreage in Maryland for the past 100 years have to doubt about herself? I’m just saying if I saw her in my audience, I’d put the squeeze on her but I’m not into bedtime stories.

Picture of the day.
All the roads in Sicily.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           The squirrel trap. The catapult does not get rid of the squirrels and they learn to avoid it. I’ve come up with my own design. It’s not built, so best I can do is describe the reasoning. I don’t want to build it, I want to understand a concept. This works for me many times, that is once you know what might work, go find a design that you can copy.

           My concept is a 4” PVC pipe or larger. I put a screen on one end and a hinge just off center, so I can lay the pipe on a flat surface. One end is blocked with some way to place bait in that area. The assembly is placed horizontally with one end overhanging a sawhorse or something. The squirrel senses the bait and enters the open end toward the bait.

           As the squirrel passes the center of gravity, his weight causes the tube to rotate to an upright position. The smooth sides of the pipe stop him from crawling back out. Aha, within moments of this idea, I found a similar set of plans on-line. Now, if Elliott was here, he’d get on my case saying I was bragging about inventing something new. I never said it was new, I said my idea was independently derived. It’s called a teeter-totter trap. Here are two pictures of the old green pipe cut into two pieces. This short piece is destined for the squirrel trap.

           I see the hillbilly took apart my sittin’ stump and threw it in the fire pile. Hey. I just want to know what he did with the big nails holding it together. I cut and placed the last 8 crown pieces this morning and moved cinder blocks into place. The book shows that avocados are supposed to sprout easy but none of the plans of September 2020 made it. The pecan tree lasted one season. The devil’s backbone survived but you can’t eat that. Let’s have no illusions of big garden salads, this is more of another experiment to find what we could grow if need be. So far, the disaster of a government has walloped mostly people who are living on credit and who cares if they blubber?

           Around late afternoon, the hillbilly showed but I didn’t have any work lined up. So I set him to helping with chores that have no priority. Here’s the other part of that green pipe once considered for underground cooling. (Turns out the ground temperature in Florida is permanently too warm.) Part is now my dryer vent and the other is about to be made into a squirrel trap. The problem with the guy is that he lacks the skill set to work independently in new situations. I’ve never connected a dryer vent before either. The plan here is by the time the dryer exhaust gets to the far end, it has cooled down. See those two brackets holding it in place. I knew I saved those years ago for a reason.

           It’s a pity when people let their learning skills lapse too much. I have a certain patience when it happens because of my family. Yet, after a while, you weary of giving them instructions as they hear the words but lack the background to interpret them properly. It’s a dead giveway with the hillbilly, for instance, he’ll ask how bank interest works. You explain it as clearly as possible and his only question after is, “So are you saying I shouldn’t date Jewish women?” Then you have to explain even more, but the fact is, they cannot see things through any other lens.

           So next, the copper tubing for the compressed air. This involves running the pipe between the back work area and the red shed, via the white shed. All the holes have to be marked and dilled to line up and feed the pipe through. Again, all new to me, but I can figure out if the pipe is too long to fit inside the shed, you have to drill the holes from the other side and feed it through backwards, and so on. He doesn’t really have the imagination to solve this type of situation, which means he is too often standing in the way or waiting for instructions. Here you see the pipe exiting the white shed, where it crosses a gap between the sheds, then through the red shed and out the side, where this end will be cut off.

           Hence, we worked just 90 minutes. The bottom line, and I told him, is that work should go more than twice as fast with two people, but at times we are barely crawling. He further wants to learn the theory behind doing things and he is far past the "learning basics" stage and I’m past the teacher phase. This used to happen at the phone company, when things went wrong it was obvious the supervisors were not leaders, and new leaders emerged from the ranks. The problem with that is terribly often people did not understand that while you are the leader, you have no intention of leading them.

           The good news is the neighbor might have some steadier work for him. Good, because I have to stop what I’m doing to put him to work. I told him to take a few days off as what’s left I can do by myself. By this time tomorrow, I expect we’ll have compressed air in all the main work areas. What luck, the neighbor came and got him. I decided against going out for a quiet drink. Tampa radio says Fox is trying to stop Tucker Carlson from posting on Twitter, saying it violated their old contract that he doesn’t appear on another network. But their true intent is revealed that they only want him silenced until after the 2024 election.

ADDENDUM
           Here are some responses to an on-line survey of how Americans would react to Nancy Pelosi drowning:

a) tell her the Chinese will save her.
b) Keep my foot on her head.
c) Toss her a 3,000 page budget package.
d) The oven will dry her off.
e) Piss in her eyes.
f) Watch to see if shit really floats.
g) Hand her an anvil/concrete block/anchor.
h) I would immediately write a very serious letter to the local 911 staff alerting them to the danger Mrs. Pelosi was in and encourage them in the letter to please forward it to the local emergency response staff. It's so important to act quickly. And if it's on a Friday, I'd be at the post office, Monday morning, 8 o'clock sharp.

Last Laugh