One year ago today: August 30, 2023, Rufus Leeking.
Five years ago today: August 30, 2019, early box-making.
Nine years ago today: August 30, 2015, the almost house.
Random years ago today: August 30, 2010,a disjointed tale.
To the day, 37 years since the Reb & I began collaborating on our first band. That was McBand, and everybody dropped out except her and I. The lead player because he could only shred, not play actual lead solos. The drummer because we played songs he did not like. August 30, 1987. Nobody could have known we’d wind up all these years later, but collaborating on just about everything else. More than half a life-time. This photo shows boxes with one corner spray-painted. So the box can be labeled. It is 6:30AM and that is how I began my day off.
Other files, I don’t know why they are kept. There is one that shows the word counts on all the Beatles songs. Most often used word was “you: with 2,622 instances, but that’s a preposition. The most numerous noun is “love” with a tally of 613. Too bad today’s teens will never grasp the impact of the Beatles, they have nothing to compare it to. They are blasted on all sides and the social architecture that made possible a band like the Beatles no longer even exists.
They’ve split what is there today into so many categories I’ve lost track. Can you imagine any band today having 80% of all rock & pop music sold in one month? I believe the Beatles managed that in 1966 and came close it on several other occasions. My guess is the recording industry works to prevent another market domination. Even Taylor’s top sales don’t dent the overall cash flow that much. In American media, you should be careful not to wipe out your uncle.
The morning was not that eventful, I was just up late sifting through these old files. It’s scary to think others have put this volume of data about themselves on-line. Most of my files, however, are not personal, but more like personal instances. The cost of a trip to Oregon in 1993 and a picture of Mt. Shasta in 1984. None of the files carry much impact except when described by this blog. And unlike social media, this blog is a narrative that I can micro-manage. The boxes above are for tubes, I’ve glued up, not the most thrilling, but representative of hard work and a challenge. Now we know that tube sales is not a viable business for here as it is now done on eBay. Note the qualifications of “now” and “eBay”.
I’ve decided a large number of smaller boxes is the better option to keeping all tubes of one brand and size in a larger box. They are unwieldy and trickier to update. I estimate if all the tubes sold for top dollar, the net would be less than $6,000. On the bright side, folks, this is how you learn things. This is a repeat of many such ventures in my life, pursuits that could probably not have been learned any other way. Don’t associate no-go with failure, I learned something from each attempt and never quit. It is just the luck I have that none of them paid much big time.
The next logical short-run step is to find some way to millennial market them. I’ve already thought about steam punk, but they would need sockets and a 6V power supply. That would stump 99% of them. I dunno, maybe the old “new improved” or “super-long-lasting”, or like light bulbs, where 150 lumens becomes 150,000 micro-lumens. (Trust me, such shit sells.) Work with me here, the radio is saying the people have spoken. And they are saying, “We want waffles.” Now lower your IQ and think like a millennial, let’s move some tubes. Look how they marketed Babble.
Get your identity on their database and spend hundreds of dollars, and within three weeks, you’ll be having conversations in Spanish—with your CD player. You see, learning a new language takes years of daily usage and you don’t have any Spanish friends to practice with. I know, because Cubans are the most racist of Latinos and the only thing they hate worse than Mexicans is Gringo putas They know we stole California and Texas from them, never your mind who started those wars. Now that we’ve made those places into something while they turned their countries into you-know, they want them back, along with the welfare payments. But first you gotta help me move these tubes.
Let’s finish the morning with some trivia. You go to a fancy restaurant and the waiter wraps a napkin around the wine before he pours it. Classy? Hardly. Want to know the real reason? Or are you just here because your job is boring. Just kidding, this blog would bore people who are already boring, who would nob be here, so that must not be you. Five dollars, please. Seriously, the reason for the napkin is to hide the label.
The “Lady Be Good” today.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
Did we score? You decide. Remember our $65 trip budget? We spend $41 of it and made it to Orlando. On line, a rare “Radio Shack” outlet appeared, so I ignored the GPS and actually got the 84 miles in only two and a half hours, amazing. In fact, here is a photo of the most successful tactic Orlando uses for speed control. The morons who do head-ons in broad daylight at controlled intersections with ample turn lanes. Smack, right into each other, blocking traffic for a half-hour minimum.
By using my de Lorme, I found a side road called McQuire and got past the worst of it, arriving at what looked like a 1960s plaza but no Radio Shack. It turns out one aisle of the store had a set up of those famous trays of components. But what I found has a robot buff’s paradise, a huge warehouse of components.
Happy to locate a source relatively nearby, I took the scenic route back, along Colonial Drive. That’s where I was at the MakerFaire back one year. They have another in November, the one time of the year I cannot plan to be there. By now I was famished and had most of my money, so I stopped at a food truck for a $15 chicken sandwich, shown here. With fries and ice water. It was worth it. I was in Dundee, the first convenient stop, since I was back on Hwy 27.
What a good time to finally visit that railroad depot museum in that town, I thought. Wrong. They should take down the museum sign and put up a better one saying, “Never Open”. It’s the old train station moved to a location on the west end of their tiny main street. I’ve been at the other end a lot by motorcycle, years ago. They also parked an old red caboose but today we saw only the exteriors. Not counting gas, the round tip was the mentioned $41, so we will end this otherwise-disastrous month with a slight surplus on the books. With gas, we probably broke even.
Later, the Reb called, mainly to touch bases. Life goes on, but she remains one of the few women I would talk with about appliances. She’s a total babe, in case anyone has forgotten. Lifelong vegetarian and it shows. Not an ounce of fat anywhere. How did it ever get to where we spent ten minutes talking about the new fridge? I’ll tell you, time. What counts is how you spent that time. Say, that’s where this journal (blog) comes in. Otherwise, I could be faking this whole time and I’ve really spent my life being bored to death.
The fact is, finances are tight, and remain so until at least December 7. No major purchases, reliance on existing resources, and a large helping of fending of anything else that could go wrong. I call it the 100-Day Plan for now. That’s 100 days related not to the recent series of unfortunate breakdowns (vans, fridges, tow trucks fences) , but by the amount of time our investments will permanently remain behind schedule. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. Folks, plan ahead, no more of this living for the moment like it was 1960 all over again.
I know because I had the van radio on. The Democrats claim they can’t take JFK off the ballot because of the cost, but they sure found the money to get Biden’s name off. My current opinion is that Trump-dee-doo is making two big mistakes and two small one. Big is that he is not attacking individuals who are attacking him and he still campaigning instead of sitting back and enjoying the Libtard shit-show. Small is he has not learned to gear his methods not with regard to the effect on voters, but to the effect it will have on the Democrat reactions. The other is that he has not tackled voter fraud where it begins—with the civil service. He should announce layoffs will be in proportion to Democrat city voter turnout. As a warning to the counties where the voter turnout is 125%.
Anyone who thinks the workplace does not pressure voters has not worked at a union. I believe there are millions of civil servants who know what they are doing is wrong, but fear workplace retaliation. That could be something as simple as gossip or as serious as loss of promotion. The threat of layoff would, in my view, cause entire departments to defect.
Last, who can recall the name of that cancer treatment that delays the disease. Vyblok, Vytac, what was it? I can tell you why I don’t recall it because it is the same reason you don’t. The drug is totally repressed. What’s the reason for that, you ask? Have you heard of NICE? That’s the department that determines the value of human life, and at this time the annual price of the drug (around $142,000) is more than your life is worth.
Upon returning home, I stopped at the Legion and we are booked for Labor Day, an afternoon gig. The response lacked enthusiasm, which means nothing in the overall scheme but it amounts to a discouraging word for the band. This is a factor there is little written about except in this blog. How the staff eventually gets to know your entire song list. Fortunately, our list is a good one but if you want enthusiasm, it will only arise from the crowd who do not hear you often enough to grow accustomed. Return tomorrow to find out about the book I bought.
ADDENDUM
I’m finishing the desert war book, it has taken to slightly favoring the British, but no their Empire troops and very little about Tobruk despite it’s tremendous importance. Plenty of great ground action, that’s keeping me reading. How the Honey tanks could move faster than many of the German turrets could crank, adopting quick hint-and-run tactics that involved ducking between sand dumes. Two Britannica myths persist, one that the Germans had “tens of thousands of vehicles”, and that the soldiers not as brave, just highly more trained to kill. One example would be the way the Brits complained how rapidly the German columns, taken by surprise, could leash off the first rounds of defensive artillery fire.
The silo is full. This means I have to start getting rid of things I don’t use any more, never my strong point. You need it right after it’s thrown out. But today, I could not find my portable DVD player. That does it, too much junk in the shed, All good junk, mind you. Yeah, yeah. And my hard drive is more that half full. I also know there are a lot of duplicate files. I used to have an excellent program that compared duplicates side-by-side and gave you options what you wanted to do. I’ll look again, but I’ve looked for it before with zero luck. (The program had a different name, which I’ve forgotten. The find duplicates was one of its sub-routines.)
