One year ago today: September 8, 2022, like “married guy” work.
Five years ago today: September 8, 2018, he sold zero dogs.
Nine years ago today: September 8, 2014, a junkyard morning.
Random years ago today: September 8, 2009, I never made it . . . .
A balmy 74°F this morning and we feel like getting some work done. Are you with me, or need I bribe you with a hearty breakfast of grits and eggs? That’s a reminder I’m now 20 years on a diet, you get mostly to hear about my lapses. This diet does not include anything I bake, but I’m lazy enough for that to be self-regulating. Here is a hot sauce I found here, not in Tennessee. I can’t find my favorite Ho Chi Minh sauce, and this unusual concoction is my substitute. Refrigerate after opening. Due to band practice, we missed gas chain saw fire-up day a week or so back, so that can be our benchmark today. That’s not my quota, just my biggest task planned.
I missed a good one for you this morning. I should have been ready because there is a lot more to it than I thought—the bird video that shows they know when I’m playing bass. Of course, that’s anthropomorphological as they’ve merely learned to associate music with the food, but my point is, I’m playing bass and birds can’t hear low notes. If I don’t have the camera and tripod set up and ready, they’re gone when I walk outside. I prefer to not tame them any more than that, memories of Memphis. Due to Florida rain, I can’t set the camera out early. Dang, the flurry of birdies this morning would have convinced the world they can hear bass. I’m going to build them a special little perch that swings like tree branches. I understand for me it is low notes, for birdies it is millions of years of evolution to get theme free sunflower seeds.
Ah, there’s the old PA system, both speakers and the Gigrac on top. It's kind of hard to spot, it's the grey object with a roll of white electric cable resting on top, all of this setting atop a stack of speakers. It's there. There should be a short clip for for you shortly explaining what all the channels on the PA are for. This is the gear that stood the test of time. To spell it out, here are the channel demarcations, but confirm with the video, these things are pretty mercurial and this is, after all, show biz.
Channel 1 – reserved for vocalist
Channel 2 – guitar player
Channel 3 – guitar microphone
Channel 4 – bass player
Channel 5 – bass microphone
Channel 6 – used to be the drum box
Channel 7 & 8 – left & right for stereo
Pick a movie for this afternoon, it is heading up to 100°F again. I wanted to watch that DVD where the Dupree actor gets a job at Google, but can’t find it at the dollar store. Hey, that’s what it is worth to me, same with “The Way Way Back”, but only for the babes trying to look like teens again. There’s only a few things I can’t look at very long and one of them is women who should be young but have rumpled thighs. It irks me. I’m open to any comedy movie here at 2:00PM sharp. Coffee and soda is free, I baked muffins, and I’ll throw on a tray of cornbread because other people like it way more than I do. Owen Wilson, that’s the Dupree guy. Never could remember his name just like that.
I’m finished with “Hidden Empire” which is not the same book that tops a search. (The version I mean is by Orson Scott Card, in 2009, and at the end of the book he tries to justify being such a candy-ass.) The last half of the book is designed to educate all you ignoramuses to the real problems of Africa that you missed because your brain pores are clogged by Happy Meals. It’s quite circular, the problems are actually caused by you not understanding, and one you understand, the problems will still be there, but at least they are understood. Don’t bother with this book. Even the vocabulary is annoying. They keep referring to “jeesh” as in personal jeesh, military squad jeesh, and I don’t know if that’s the spelling. It’s an audio-book.
Boxcar grafitti.
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It was hot indeed but we got a reprieve in the form of complete cloud cover. This had me all over the yard. Here’s two fence posts getting a coat of oil paint where they will be buried. These are for a better roof over the table saw lean-to and a better stand for the birdbath sprayer. The second picture is where I planed down the silo door stoop where the storm rain got into the plywood and swelled it a bit. That electric planer is the poor carpenters handy helper. Especially somebody like me who cannot saw all that great. My theory is the better you play bass, the worse you saw wood, but not always.
No big project got accomplished today but five hours got a few things out of the way. On the new northside work canopy, the header was whatever I had on hand the right length, and it was beginning ot sag. I since scored a second identical but cull piece of lumber, the two together are more than enough. What I didn’t factor was the twists, crowd, curls, and bends. Fortunately I had enough clamps to get the shape reasonably close, then drove 16 screws into it. Five minutes later you could still hear the wood creaking into place. But that job took two hours. It required seven clamps and all kinds of positioning.
The DVD I chose was “The Heat” with Sandra B. Played until the 12 minute mark and crapped. So, I found “Laser Mission”. A late 80s flick with fashions and hairstyles out of 1966. Brandon Lee practices his acting on Debi Monahan, who in turn is trying to act like a teen babe at age 33. All those poodle cuts and flowing dresses. Fat calves were still a horror story n 1989 so camouflage was considered high fashion. I got to the 27 minute mark and ejected the disk.
This was the beginning of the era where movies ceased featuring young actresses, and it was a sad day for viewers like me. Did I mention my neighbor once worked in a corporate sales office with a few hundred women? Thus, he’s a rare individual who experienced what I did, namely years of working around women who got their first job. However, his take on the situation was the opposite of mine. He was enthralled by a process that I lamented. He said the new girls were all plain-looking, but six months later, after they got some paychecks, they turned into beauties. How so? Well, he said, they got their hair done and got fashionable clothes and learned to use makeup.
I saw the opposite. Girls that were naturally beautiful now opted for artificial means to get all gussied up. I liked the ones who didn’t change, he liked the ones who did. There was a peculiar outcome of these women that resorted to getting, as they used to say, “dolled up” to attract a man. They inevitably ended up complaining that all men were alike. Go figure.
ADDENDUM
I spent an hour in the library, mostly checking e-mail, it’s much faster than my home system and I suspect I’ve got bad ROM in this old HP unit. I was trading comments with some guy who says he has a huge following on Twitter, we were talking about business on the Internet. Could he not monetize this blog without selling out? He says no. Mind you, he was also surprised to learn that every facet of on-line business he knew and believed in had a former name from the pre-computer era. The link was sometimes vague, but it was always there. Before continuing, here is the bucket with the papaya seedlings. Do those look like papaya babies to you?
This relates to what I call the “comic book economy”. If you take 99% of the on-line businesses that seem to come and go all the time, you’ll find the same caliber of small-scale rip-off scams that we used to see advertised in the back of comic books. They were all along the line of “buy two eggs and start a chicken ranch”. The pitch was usually no skill required, work at home, set your own hours, make big money, amazing new process, you get the idea. Not the corny ads for pet monkeys and toy soldiers, but the ads that said make big money at your own business. The ones that come to mind are become a locksmith, be a draftsman, how to be a professional magician, or plumber, and even one that said customize vans inside and out.
Get rich, they said, selling shoes, magazines, space helmets, or fake beards. Common themes were “make money while you sleep” and “proven method”. It makes sense to me how anyone who was not aware all of this existed long before the Internet came along might mistakenly think these schemes are new. Instead of a world where most people remain middle class, this “comic book” approach changes the formula to where 1% make any money and the other 99% scramble for the leftovers and end up trying to vote themselves $15 per hour.
Back in the 80s, I read a book by a man who had scoured the entire USA for a legitimate work-at-home business. He listed ten that had potential, but again, amounted to buying yourself a job. The vast bulk of people got scammed. Most were pyramid sales and Amway-style where you bought kits or supplies, but never could sell enough to make your money back. I first noticed this about the music recording industry when I was a teen. The challenge was not to produce a first-rate recording and I know dozens of people who did that. Where they failed was selling it, an industry that is completely owned and dominated by big players—unless you get lucky.
This partially explains why so many older people view computers with suspicion. It is not the computer itself, but the way younger people are using them. People who’ve been around can see the “comic book” connection with all these so-called “new computer businesses” and know they are all worthless scams. What they never thought was any generation would come along dumb enough to try to base an entire economy on comic-book scams. Yet, in context, that is exactly what millennials and XYZers tried—and failed. The only way out for them involves great pain and sacrifice to the extent the nation may not make it.
