One year ago today: May 8, 2023, yes, but countless fools.
Five years ago today: May 8, 2019, another disappearing guitarist.
Nine years ago today: May 8, 2015, Wayne is now gone.
Random years ago today: May 8, 2008, down the empty street.
Time out, though I did get a message from Bradford canceling out tonight’s rendezvous. I texted I’d be there anyway. That’s with my congestion, so I’ll take the rest of the day off. We have a solitary woodpecker and now some wrens, I think, keeping me company. Tell you what, let’s sit down and decide later if we’re going to get up. For excitement, check the Trump feeds or something. Remember the movie “Oblivion”? I’ve never seen it. I’m going to type in some filters from my old DOS files and if they kill the ads, let’s watch a movie.
To my surprise a comparatively large woodpecker appeared. Much too large for a downey, its large bill gave it away. It left the suet and snacked on the seeds. The book says it is a hairy woodpecker, though this one had more red feathers. No photo. By mid-morning I developed a rare upset stomach. Protocol says I must document it and this is unusual. Good-bye morning, I went back to sleep until 3:30PM. Not the greatest day recently, maybe I should have taken that free kava last day. That mellows you right out.
“Oblivion”, later, what a long movie. Nope, I’ve never seen it before, it was just another of those alien takeover plots defeated by the human spirit that no advanced race in the Universe will ever understand. The last hour of the movie is almost a waste of time. If I go back to basics, it means 1924, not the Stone Ages. I’d be okay with domesticated animals but I’d be first to figure out how to get some running water. The special effects were all okay, if predictable. I somehow did not get it with the two women, did they hate each other or not?
Who remembers WebCrawler? It was an early search engine that operated much like its name suggests. It would slowly but eventually find every matching set of search characters. I often left it to run overnight. Thus it was interesting to learn Google, faced with competition for A.I. searches, it looking backwards toward what looks to me like a crawler. Few things would please me more than to see the collapse of Google for all the evil they have done to privacy. They have taken to paying billions in bribes to keep Google as the default in products like Apple and my smart phone. You can’t get rid of it.
German high schoolers
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Now awake, I have tummy grumblings. No change in my diet, is it this weird flu? I watched the first hour of “Oblivion”, finding the lead actress too politically correct for my tastes, and the one they rescue later isn’t much better. Hey, if you are going to make a movie, hire the best looking, I mean the roles nowadays are not that challenging. By 5:00PM (the show starts at 6:00PM) I’m in a rough way. I’ve never missed a show yet and this one is iffy. I’ve not eaten all day. All you budding med students, see if you can get anything by that.
This was from around age nine to age twelve, after I started playing in a band, I never had to question that my life was not infinitely more interesting than those around me. Careful of my wording, this gives you a glimmering of what time- and life-wasters surrounded me. I did not write it down and it was not really every Friday. But I certainly had a sense of time floating away that was not present in the others. I don’t really recall any time except the first one, where I imagined time was like water going down a drain.
But it was only months later, the September that I was nine, when I demanded I be allowed to go to piano lessons with my older sister. I was allowed to sit and watch, mostly watch how she hated it. And let’s be clear about something—I never set out to become a musician. You think I did not know about their drug addictions and high death rate? Nor did I set out to become a star, why, those people had talent and I’m no fool My plan was to be a live entertainer on a local scale, get all the babes, have fun, and make spending money.
It’s been a lot of hard work but it was worth everything to avoid a dull and empty life. And that is the balance on which I should be measured. The rest can keep their groupies and hotel parties and limos. I’ve had more wholesome farmer’s daughters than any of them. This is why I say my biggest regret of getting old is the lack of good women. Yes, it is fun getting ten times more than the rest. Imagine if I’d had some talent and money, etc.
I made it to the club but did not play. It’s what I gathered from the talk. It’s piano bar atmosphere and that dos not appeal to me. Maybe if you are in the habit of going our for an expensive quiet time, okay. The music was technically perfect, but a flop for keeping the crownd. I can see how Bradford is extremely impressed by such presentation. It’s like the people who do not appreciate a lot of art until they take courses that tell them what they are supposed to like.
If you don’t mind slowed-down piano-tinkling adaptations, there’s your spot. Every song got the “piano man” treatment and there was no shortage of crackerjack itinerant drummers. The sort who could play “Dock of the Bay” and “Girl From Ipanema” to death and back and pretend they’ve never heard of “Wipeout” The couple from Lake Wales were there, the ones who’ve been to music school. Like myself, they could not tolerate the summer heat and this club had no stage fans. I connected with them only insofar as my duo would appreciate any party gigs.
Live music and I took a different tack. I prefer a band that entertains me and the room. Not some background group sounding alike a cross between AM and the lowest jukebox setting. I can play and have played such music before, but in four-piece bands, which, I hope, I never have the misfortune to play in again.
I didn’t stay, but I did talk to the xylophone couple. This is more their lounge-lizard setting. Not for me at all, the sparse crowd and high prices ($6.40) for a domestic and no atmosphere will keep me at a distance. The humidity today was also right off the Gulf and this music gig is outdoors. Everybody suffered, it’s just generally not a place that fits or feels right locally, but it is the closest thing in town to classy. About forty minutes was all I could stay and back home, I was not cooling down Fever? Not really, but I was only able to function by cranking the air conditioning to much colder than usual. What’s happening go me? What if I melt?
ADDENDUM
Instead, here’s the leaked (they say) photo of the robo-dog with a rifle. We’ve seen these before, why is this one different? Because you can’t see the price tag. Mass production of robot parts has brought the cost of this weapon down to $2,995. The talk is the decision to fire still requires a human in the loop, but that bunk only lasts until the first person breaks the rules. So now the machine gun costs more than the robot dog.
