One year ago today: September 24, 2024, 11 different dollar amounts.
Five years ago today: September 24, 2020, that dragging near-slur.
Nine years ago today: September 24, 2016, pulse width modulation.
Random years ago today: September 24, 2004, ha, a mandolin coincidence.
Up with the cardinals, it’s still quite dark but the balmy 76°F morning has them feeding, and they are loud feeders. Just ten feet from my bedroom window. I’ve already got a coffee and wonder if we’ll manage anything today. I have some yard pics I’ve been meaning to show you, and I have time now. It isn’t absolute when I say nothing will grow here. More like everything grows that shouldn’t, in the sense that to me nice means a green lawn with flowers around the perimeter. These two photos show the lush setting around the birdbath, with that purple underside of the stalks. I took it to be a type of palm, I don’t know.
You might notice some kudzu/kudzoo vine, which cannot be eradicated by normal means. Instead, to one side of the birdbath, I installed that old metal grid to overgrow with the vine so that it is at least useful in providing shade. This formerly sun-baked area of the yard is now 65% shaded most of the day. It is still sunny in patches and not a great work area after midday.
ep, the heavy lifting last day has me on light duty, so I have music news for you. News that contrasts good band members with runts like the Hippie, who has such a severe case of potty-mouth. Instead, I have news from the Prez, up north.
The bluegrass group that was too far away from his new house may be moving closer, that’s a rare enough event. Either that or they found a member who lives closer where the two of them could rehearse independently. The connection: the Prez is now fully versed on duo formation and how to adapt that as the core of a larger group. He’s in Bluegrass paradise, just a little far out of town. I view Pennsylvania, where I’ve never been, as one constant Bluegrass festival, you know, people square dancing 24/7. And the Prez plays a mean mandolin.
I looked at a map after he moved and I know he is near enough to Reading, where they have a famous Mountain Folk event. To me, Bluegrass is like most music I like but don’t play much, meaning I know the top ten hits but then draw a blank. In other former band member news, showing clearly that my bands are solid associations (got that, Hippie), the Kaiser has taken a day job and lucky for that in Nashville. Ray-B is still working but not gigging, and Trent reports doing well, but no bands like ours in Jacksonville.
What’s this, there is a rumor that vaxxed people, due to their altered DNA, should be categorized a Homo borg rather than Homo sapien (yes, that is the correct spelling, Homo is capitalized). A video of a homeowner shooting a burglar who stripped naked and began smashing up the house has the police calling them both “suspects”. Google admits to what everybody knows, they were censoring, but now trying to get back the business saying it was not them but Biden. ICE raids have been stepped up in sanctuary cities—but 2 million gone is 90% behind what the voters want. America wants 50 million illegals gone and another 51 visas not renewed. The free ride is over.
The UN elevator stops as Trump steps on it and the US teleprompter quits when he speaks. Too bad for the Democrats, Trump can climb stairs and talk coherently. This Omar lady is going to get her ass thrown back to Somalia.
Snowy cabbage field.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
What did I learn today? It was recently I discovered my radial arm saw would cut bevels, but what took so long? I had seen the angle marking gauge, but had wrongly guessed it either was broken or that part seized up, which is how I got it on sale so cheap. Guess what? I thought I was holding the wood upside down and I’d figure it out. Nope, the saw is left-handed. It cannot be converted. The cast metal bracket (I was trying to tilt it the wrong way) is the culprit. Don’t laugh, I habitually investigate before buying and read the user manuals. I have never seen this “feature” prominently pointed out.
Here’s a pic of one of the Tennessee birdhouses, now residing in Florida. I have nothing else for you today. Notice the porthole has been gnawed wider by squirrels. I will tack a metal ring in place.
What’s this, some staff at the UN are saying they stopped the escalator on Trump because he didn’t give them enough money to keep it running. The Hildebeest says it is White Christian men who are destroying America. And Kimmel is saying Trump caused millions of people to watch his show because Trump was trying to “pick and choose” what was broadcast. LiveScience is saying species divergence is proof of climate change. NASA says the will orbit the Moon next year after a half-century’s needless delay. What an insult to the trade, calling the crew “astronauts”.
To get Ray-B some of my latest list, I recorded myself playing some material that fits his guitar style. I know, I should record more of the playing I often describe, but part of my aversion to “live” recording is that it quickly becomes “studio” recording. You know, with every tiny error punched out to perfection. And that is not live, see my point? The Hippie used a complete backup band on his demo tapes, so we often played clubs that wondered why we did sound like big show group. I adapted my bass to fill in as much as I could for the guy. You can easily tell it isn’t ordinary bass lines, but I doubt he ever even noticed. Then again, he always had some excuse why he could not play any tune that had a bass line that could not be ignored. Except “Gimme Three Steps”. Guitar players love that one because the bass line is a lead break.
Ray-B is great to talk to, a dude who made his total living from music, both teaching and playing, all his adult life. He got a raw deal having his gig canceled over COVID. He’s had some experience with people in the wrong working together when his cruise ship contract was breached, though I’ve never understood why he didn’t sue them for a half-million. Then again, he’s never had the scale of experience I’ve got with collective lying. Remember my various descriptions of how my siblings would lie if they thought it impressed strangers?
That was not actually the majority of the cases, because there were not always strangers around. So I should point out they were not lying as a team, heaven’s no, they were never that organized. What would happen is one would lie, then the others would all “agree” to appear “cooperative”. Facts be damned. Aha, you guess it, this came to mind from the book I’m reading, “Runaway Jury”. I’ve seen the movie long ago. The book is better. Even as a child I was leery of juries over the potential for manipulation. In a group that size, one is always a con-man who will persuade others to follow.
The book has character bloat, with people mentioned chapters ago reappearing like you are supposed to remember them. I dislike people who focus on memorizing names rather than the reason they were called together. The story now has me curious to compare how they handle this to the way I do.
ADDENDUM
Here’s the plan. JZ gets on the Amtrak on Friday. This is a two minute walk from his place, I’m surprised he doesn’t use the train all the time. Arrives here in time for Happy Hour, he can crash on the sofa. Saturday morning we drive to Punta Gorda for the Pet Blessing and Brunch. Then he can either stay there and return as planned before, or show up back here, where he can have the spare room. What could go wrong with Plan B? Plenty, so I sent him a printout of the schedule. He does not like timed plannings. JZ views travel as a chore rather than a treat. Some may perceive this as interference. JZ may require a lift back to Miami or the station, which takes up to a day.
Ah, some may say, these kind of plans also cost money, and if I’m so broke, where does it come from. Good questions, the answer is a failure of wording. I’m broke, not poor. Thanks to no help from nobody, I have a working system. What’s happened is my strategy for handling being broke is strongly inherited from my youth, when poverty was an hourly concern. It does no good to say that because I’m in America It was easy, simply because living here costs more than you think. A person in American with $500 is just as poor as foreigners with $5.
The bearing on today is that my austerity measures were developed in years of horrific poverty, in many ways unimaginable today. You can’t live in a tarpaper shack even if you wanted to, they’d arrest you for vagrancy. You cannot walk to work, factories must be inside industrial zones. We also have a thing here called winter. I’m saying careful with the comparisons. It costs a small and ongoing, unrelenting fortune just to stand still in America.
What’s happened is my budget controls have remained “wartime” fifty years later. No half-measures were ever developed. When I clamp down, it is traditional spending that gets hit, items from long ago. Hence I may not get a haircut this month, but I still have a travel allowance. This also explains why welfare does not work. To get out of poverty, cash by itself does little good, because there is no framework for stability. Giving them a framework does not work because you would have to teach them how to support that system. And that is prohibitively expensive because they would take it, chop it up, and build a bonfire with it.
In a sense, welfare and credit cards create a surprising equal outcome. They allow people to skid through life without ever getting a firm footing. They could, but why bother? Let society bail them out. And that, folks, is why I would abolish both.
