One year ago today: February 20, 2024, I found a bakery.
Five years ago today: February 20, 2020, ain’t no safe place.
Nine years ago today: February 20, 2016, breakfast, Lake Placid.
Random years ago today: February 20, 2009, um, about equal pay . . . .
Of course, if we get any DOGE money it is going to get invested. I told you, I was born poor and that I know what it takes to get un-poor. If others can’t be bothered, let them use their $5,000 to play catch-up. Serves them right. This, folks, is why the rich get richer. It’s all self-control, baby, and the major factor that determines that is planning ahead. Those who have no infrastructure can’t think that far. Did you know one telltale sign of the well-to-do is they still mark important dates on a wall calendar? It’s the digital dummies who don’t. By the way, I not only keep my calendars on file, I dedicate an afternoon each December to marking the dates. That’s how I know I have two CDs maturing next week and not to renew them.
Nothing will change much today, I went downtown of a haircut and some lumber to close in the laundry deck. I wanted to avoid that but I can’t be sweeping a bag of leaves every time I need to do a load. It’s the way the wind eddies the leaves in and under the overhead, something few would have checked for in advance. The radio says Florida has sued Target for trying to conceal its (now illegal) DEI practices. The weirdo Hindu has been appointed head of the FBI, who tried to railroad him, so this could be the start of some real woe for the entrenched Left.
Nothing much this morning but I read the reports on two outfits that claim to have beaten the “ignition” problem with nuclear fusion. One in China, another in France, the challenge was a sustained reaction of longer than ten seconds. I do not know the process, but it involves creating conditions similar to the interior or the sun, where hydrogen is fused into helium, releasing about third more energy than required by ignition. The trick is to control that process, but it isn’t easy.
You see, the matter has to be heated to the stage of plasma, which either is contaminated by or destroys anything it touches. I believe the reaction is held in place by extreme magnetic force, but again, I have never taken a course on the subject. The attraction of these reactors is the immense cheap power they would produce with no byproduct. I could use some of that energy, I’m not feeling chipper at all after moving ten or twelve light pieces of lumber all morning.
Record-breaking conga line.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
My day off, and I took it. All is well in both here and Tennessee, but by rights it should be much better, and I mean something by that. Strange as it may sound, we are not comparatively as well off as those who did not prepare, and we should be. It is only recently that we’ve talked that much ever about money and that is due to investments, not expenses. We long ago reached that Nirvana where we each pay all of our own bills plus half of those we incur together. (This does not apply to entertainment such as movies, dinners, etc, where I pick up the tab in return for the right to insist on the best. I do not take my lady to franchises—and there is no budget cap on dating, she could go anywhere but doesn’t and that’s part of why we’ve lasted so long.)
[Author's note: the reference the barber is a 1982 thing, so I'll explain. The surging Kuwaiti market of that time was stoked by billions on inflowing American oil dollars. Speculation in gold was rampant and the accounts were frequently paid by post-dated check. The popular version is that some barber went to the bank with a check from his billioniare customer, but instead of depositing, he wanted cash. The check bounced and the souk (Arab word for 'market') came crashing down. Gold stocks lost 30% in days.]
The temperature is plunging again, overnight in the 40s. That puts things back on hold unless we get some afternoon sun, so let’s enjoy some down time. I was invited to Karaoke but I can’t remember by who, so I’ll skip out. I had planned a DVD movie “Conspiracy” but realized I’d seen it before. Meh, there are so many of these movies who keeps track, maybe I’ll watch it again. Sigh, what a pity life has slowed to this level, the only thing better about Miami is there was more of nothing to do. Ha, the closest thing it reminds me of is summer when I was in grade school. There was nobody to play with as everybody went on holidays except us.
Later, cripes it is cold. It’s that 75% humidity off the Gulf of America again. But to heat things up, this is a picture of the actress for the re-release of “Jesus Christ, Superstar”. This is the type of crap that America is so weary of, so weary. Today I drove 30 miles, so we got some progress on our librarian story, which has turned into a murder mystery. Marjorie is arrested and gives birth to Virginia while awaiting trial. I’ll speculate as you won’t ever read this obscure book. The body was found on the mountain in the spring thaw, clutching a missing library book. Here’s what I figure.
The black lady who kept the ledgers had kicked the record book under the desk so the police would not know which librarian was on the mountain that day. But a witness had seen Marjorie. Well, that missing book might be in that ledger, showing it had been checked out by somebody else. That person had something against Marjorie, and that would be her father-in-law, van Cleef. But, he had been trying to get the library closed, so who checked out the book? We are finishing disk 10, so we will know shortly.
So I finally made a batch of fried chicken and round the old original of the Bourne Identity, which I’ve only seen in parts. Quite well done, actually, for its time which I think was 1988. The lead was Richard Chamberlain. I also read further back in time when Assembly was less fouled by MicroSoft and some parts are coming back to me. Funny that, over 50 years later it makes some sense because of my knowledge of registers. What a difference had somebody explained this. And if I call it Assembler instead of Assembly, at this point it’s the same to me.
ADDENDUM
This gig was a turning point in my musical non-career. I’ve told what an immense series of needless, senseless struggles it was, and this was one more. I not only had to fight the system and the town and attitudes, but backstabbing as well. It seems, I suppose, trivial now, but at the time it was a damn close-run thing. Here’s a repeat post of me playing “Never Can Tell” (Chuck Berry) in February six years go. It’s also one of my most-used advertising clips.
Well, the hew & cry that started up. Suddenly that shed became an indispensable part of the daily lives of my five brothers and sisters. I was depriving them of their rights to that shed, for which they now had big plans, monstrous but unspecified plans. (They waited, of course, until the work was done.) It may seem laughable today, but at the time, it was this close to shutting me down. This is why, to this day, I’m still prickly about such people. I was required to build a wall across the back third of the shed, meaning there was barely room for the band equipment.
Backstabbing. The front of that shed was never used for anything else. The turning point was I realized that even though I got that band going, the opposition was never going to relent. When I see that day on the calendar, oops, it was only 54 years ago, I’m reminded what I was up against, and that although I never made the television show, I beat the odds. It must have been an easier thing to do back them.
