September 11, 2009

Yesteryear
One year ago today: September 11, 2022, pallet talk.
Five years ago today: September 11, 2018, it should be possible . . .
Nine years ago today: September 11, 2014, do nothing, that’s what.
Random years ago today: September 11, 2007, I wrote 1 to 100.

           As you’ve guessed, Google locked me out of my own account y’day. One of those “protection rackets” where their real aim is to get your personal information on file and sell it. I could not log on to the email to get the passcode, I was therefore a victim again of millennial-think, somewhere there is a millennial asshole who thinks he’s smarter than the whole world because he works at Google. Which I hear is now losing ad revenue at a record pace. Anyway, this has happened often before, so bear with it. The only time I’m late myself here is when I’m on the road and my long-term patrons patiently know how that goes—you wait but you get extra goodies because I am a gregarious traveler once I get going. Remember going through the Cherokee Forest in the van?

           Here’s your morning photo of the Vitamin E oil finish, second application. It’s from the dollar store and consists mainly of soybean oil. But 80 of you asked about it, so here’s your view and good luck finding it. That bottle has been in my medicine cabinet for untold years. The finish gives the wood a “tan” and it dries to the touch in around an hour. It was so easy and pleasant to work with and leaves a faint but nice aroma. Enough to have me go through my place to find what other similar products I’m not using.

           As a reminder to myself, all of the boxes I built recently turned out to be around an inch too small for such tools as I have I would like to store properly. And your replacement avocado is already soaking in the kitchen, my incentive to build that armored cage for my seedlings. Ah, the sun has just got to window level, let’s check the plants and if you see this today, I made it to the library this morning. I spent 1-1/2 hours already going over new music for the duo. I’m having a hard time singing and playing simultaneously on most of it, something that only time remedies for me. Break a leg.

           What did I waste an hour on? “Amarillo By Morning”. It’s one of the tunes imported by the Prez and the rub is that he plays it wrong. Sure, I’ll tell you, instead of that minor third, he plays the relative minor. This throws other parts of the song off, but he’s played it that way a number of years and I won’t risk a disagreement over it. It means having to learn the song his way from memory. This is why I usually insist the band agree on what version they will play. This has to remain an exception. Another reason I object to one-off versions is when the band splits, you are stuck with a form you can’t use anyplace else. He also drops a major second, which changes the “feel” of the turnaround and he does not appear to notice the omission.
           Here’s the latest view of the spline jig. A nice coat of white paint and a convenient carry handle. Rarely has a technology worked so well first try. It has a few quirks, like not exactly riding evenly over the table saw surface, but I can live with that. If the heat wave continues, I may attempt to build a box designed for specific interior dimensions. I’ve only done this approximately before.

           At the library I downloaded 18 legal documents over a minor transaction. There’s all the proof you need about government control of what used to be highly private information. These “progressive new wave” people allowed it all to get entrenched because they have no sense of when they are being taken for a ride. It’s an Internet thing, they’ve grown up seeing only the interface and never the real thing. I tried to transfer a file between folders at the library and it was worse than Win7. You cannot open two copies of the transfer page in order to see the actual process.
           You have to either trust MicroSoft or go looking for the file afterward. Because Microsoft will alphabetize the destination folder files without even being asked. But then, it kind of makes sense. Why would anyone born since 1995 ever need some convenient way to transfer a file? Why, you just click and either it works or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t they have zero clue how to do it manually and besides, they can always blame somebody else. They have gotten very good at that even though blaming each other has passed the critical mass and they know it isn’t working for them like it used to, they have no other tools.

           It was a trip to Winter Haven for me, to discover even the out of the way shops have no 386 computers left in the back room. I asked two shops to save any that came it. A year later, nothing. I think I’ll try to cobble something together from what I have left. Who remembers Dimorphos? That’s the asteroid that NASA crashed a craft into last September. The experiment was to test the theory of deflecting an object that would otherwise strike Earth. The mass of the two objects determined the amount of change at the time. The asteroid slowed as predicted but now there is another problem. It has continued to slow down and nobody knows why.
           Another cactus is propagating, this time a weird plant I thought would never make it. It’s this like cactus season or something like that? Anyway, I held back for two days so I could each half a pizza. First in years, and the industry has sunk to the lowest level. Even the crust tastes cheap. Little Caesar no long sells by the slice, that’s how long since I’ve been there. And the computerization of the toppings means the product is almost cloned. The flavor was fine but you could tell the ingredients include chemicals. I had fun eating pizza after so many years. Possibly that is part of what makes it so addicting. So few other foods are eaten like pizza.

Picture of the day.
Horseback in Calalonia.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.

           Usually the older computer shops have some ancient inventory, but I was out of luck. The lowest price and oldest unit was a Win10 HP priced at $300, or a hundred more than it is worth to me. Experience people know a desktop is required to get consistent good work done and that means $300 minimum to check your e-mail. Normally what went wrong with older computers was failure of the mechanical hard drive. I wonder if a solid state drive could revive one of my older pieces. I was only into hardware in minor way in the 00s and left around the time Win7 marked the decline of the computer as a precision tool.

           How hot was it? I drove all the way home at 45 mph on side roads to enjoy the ice-cold van air conditioning. The drive did me good as I mulled over a music situation that has changed yet again in the past year. The market has unmistakably weeded out most of the weaker players but allowed an increase in disc jockeys. For example, the old club now advertises one weekend a month for it. To me, that’s when you plan not to go there, since these guys rarely judge by requests what the room overall wants to hear. Instead, they pump out that pseudo-rap indie stuff normally associated with AM radio.
           Take a look at this album jacket, I’m about to reveal my perspective on it. This has to do with one of their tunes, I’ll get to that soon. I could not tell you which, if any of the people in this photo is Gram Parsons. Yet, he’s supposed to be the famous one. Honestly, when I look at this cover art, the only thing I see is the blonde gal on the left. Anyway, back to indie music.

           Indie creates an even sharper divide between “listening” and “dancing” music. In my teens and twenties, I disliked a lot of country music because of the themes, that is, one should not listen to music that portrays sadness and depression. Even today, my definition of country music is defined largely by my song list, which includes mostly fast music with upbeat themes. So I’m experiencing a repeat of sorts. I like Maroon 5 to listen to, but would I put “Memories” on my song list? It has no bass line and could easily be faked in a duo arrangement, and some minority in the crowd would love it. But is that not making the same mistake as your average guitar player? These, and important management questions kept me busy for the two hour drive.

           Yeah, then getting home in the heat, finding a dead battery in my A/C remote, the one I can’t reach over the fridge. So I stood on a chair to switch it on, full blast. Which cools down the place enough to lull one into a late afternoon nap, only to awaken at 1:30PM the following morning. Which is now, meaning I just lost half a day, ate half a pizza, and seem to have half a working computer. It’s some combination of destiny, fate, and serendipity, but thank the stars I’ve got enough hobbies to fill any down time—like right now, I believe I’ll go over some acoustic guitar parts for the scheduled Wednesday rehearsal, or everything sounds bluegrass. Not a bad sound, but even the Prez likes a break from that by what I can show him, me being not quite the worst guitar player in the vicinity.
           The Prez, by now knows my disaffection toward “sloppy” music does not mean I won’t play it. Heck no, I do the opposite. I make the bass lines so unsloppy they become captivating—again never over play your band. It’s quiet here, so how about an example, I promise not to use too much jargon. Take that nothing (music-wise) tune by the Flying Burrito Bros, “Devil In Disguise”. I detected instantly that was one of his signature tunes. There is not sharply right or wrong way to play that messy guitar, which explains to me why so many guitarists like it. And it has no marked bass line. It sounds to me like somebody handed a guitarist wannabe at the studio a bass and said here, play anything that fits.
           Thus, you get a few generations of listeners to just love the tune. Hey, it was a big hit, I just never heard of it until last month, but these folks never thought about it not having a bass line. Well, that is actually an opportunity for me, since it means any bass line that’s on key is also never “wrong”. And face it, I like to discourage playing too many sloppy songs by the reverse psychology of doing an excellent job on the bass. So, I went through the Devil song phrase by phrase, picking out each note that fit any two keys wherever the many guitars in that song change chords unevenly.

           Next, I went over to my keyboard and picked out a complete bass line that fits every chord and vocal line on average. By average, I mean it fits no matter if the guitar is consistent, and gives it a folk-ballad feel, but with unexpected bass precision that matches the lyrics slightly more than the guitar. Some of you are old enough to remember how often Simon & Garfunkel did this. So although it is a subtle bass line, it captures enough interest to kind of telegraph to the other guy that the professionals have arrived. And I don’t mind if that somehow discourages choosing more such tunes by the guitarist in that he quickly learns if he wants to predict what I’ll play, he’d best listen for the bass lines in advance. Minding the bass line is uncustomary behavior for most guitar players until they meet up with a real bassist.
           Having said that, I came up with such an interesting bass line that I recorded it over the original music. Then sent a copy to Trent, who is a Burrito Bros. fan. Ha, he’ll spot at once what happened and how this treatment makes that song right for duo work. I had to play that boring song 35 times to get it right, but the results are super worth it. Sadly, Google has never added an audio upload feature to this blog. They bought it out so minimize the competition and have done nothing but mess it up since, if you ask me. So come to one of my gigs and you’ll hear it. I call it the “She’s Telling Dirty Lies” song.

ADDENDUM
           My next audio-book is about the murder of a female reporter in wartime London back in the 40s. It’s charming and historically quite accurate—if you accept the Britannica version of the war. You know, that Hitler is bad and started the war because he wanted to conquer the entire world because he was a one-testicle race-hating homo drug-using fanatic dictator. A lady American reporter is murdered in London and we are listening to the investigation. Of course, it has an entirely distinct English focus. The important details simply must include her social status, family connections, net worth, club memberships, to whom her landlady was related and whether the rental property was an inheritance or a leasehold. Around an hour later we discover the victim had her throat slit.

           So, the accuracy is there, but centers on the sharply-defined Brit perspective that does not include any real dissention with how things are going—they never disagree with their government or else. They openly talk of the trickery needed to get America into the war. The plot involves the hiring of a woman ambulance driver volunteer to help with the case. It takes forever, but we’ve learned the dead woman became a reporter against her father’s wished, had given birth several years earlier, and had the tiny initials “GT” tattooed between her toes. Things have to pick up soon or the war will be over before they figure out this woman was spying.

           This book I would already recommend on the basis of adherence to the correct zeitgeist portrayal. The evolution of radio as it takes over from newspapers for news delivery, but never quite replaces it as a foretaste of what television does in turn to radio, then the Internet does to television. There are ominous elements for the astute reader, for example how willingly the proles who did the fighting and dying are to believe propaganda.
           It isn’t meant to be comical but you’d get a laugh out of how the Brits consider their social castes a directive from above and lambaste the Americans for having none of it. The English think it incredulous for the Yanks to exist without each person knowing their “station”.while still being able to distinguish rich from poor. The paradox bewilders them, they hold the Americans in contempt over it, but welcome getting them into the war so that Britain does not have to “go it alone”. They are convinced England single-handedly won the last one.

Last Laugh