Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Since today's Happy Hour theme is opulence (see two posts below) we decided to go upmarket and listen to the Brandenburg concertos... ALL six of 'em.  But Number Three is our favorite...

I defy anyone to NOT hum along... or play a lil air-cello or air-violin.  Bach was rock 'n' roll before there was such a thing.

We'll return to our mean-spirited musical posts at some point in the near future. 

Update, 1715 hrs:  You know how sometimes "things" just seem to work out right, e.g., everything comes together like it should... no ifs, ands, or buts?   Today's Happy Hour was (and is) a lot like that, in that our cigar lasted for two beers and the complete Brandenburg song-cycle, which is to say all six concertos.  

It was SO good, in fact, that we've decided to extend Happy Hour.  All we have to do at this point is select our next cigar, our musical accompaniment, and decide if we'll stay with beer or move on to gin and tonics... coz the weather is just perfect (81 degrees and 20% relative humidity) for that sorta thang.  It don't hardly get better than this, Gentle Reader.  All that's missing is suitable company. 

Linkage

This piece by Blog-Bud Alison will do your hard flinty conservative heart much good, assuming you have such a heart. That said, you should still go read if you have one of those famous hearts that bleed, for there's an object lesson there specifically for YOU.   Just to whet your appetite...

Eventually a group of extremely well spoken young women came in. Polished looking. Chatting away. They rather apologetically asked me if I would mind if they shared my table. The seating means you all become best buddies in a heart beat whether you want to or not.  Of course I didn’t mind since that was the nature of this little place and assumed the chatter would be low key and banal given our collective circumstances. I hadn’t bargained at all on them discussing in suddenly super obnoxious tones who they had voted for in the ongoing Labour leader elections. As Party members. And why. One of them was American. She listened and questioned her friends about the leadership contest. This went on for some time and for most of it I managed to escape into my food or click on my iphone and text or email friends. Anything to avoid being by default pulled right into the heart of their politics with no way of escape.

...


I’m sick to death of the assumption in political conversation that everyone these days is a leftist and that right of centre must simply shut up and speak in hushed embarrassed tones or accept Left is the only polite political conversation to be had out loud these days. So that was my opening shot. “Ok I’ve had enough” I addressed them quietly, smiling.

DO go read.  And be amazed.  There be knickers, too, if only briefly.

Placeholder

There ain't nuthin' like rollin' out o' bed at the crack o' noon, is there?  But we only do that because we CAN, Gentle Reader.  In my defense: I didn't go to bed until 0430 this morning, so we got slightly less than the regulation eight hours.  But it was GOOD sleep... the sort o' sleep with the windows open and an extra blanket on the bed.  Finest kind.

So, we're halfway into our second cup and life is good.  I'll prolly be back later once I'm fully caffeinated and the errands have been run.  In the meantime, here's another four o'clock I forgot to put up yesterday:

I love the pink tinge in this one; it's different than the splattered purple splotches or half-and-half of the others.

Update, 1300 hrs:  The first of our errands is complete, that being retrieving the mail from Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park's mail kiosk.  Where we found these:

That's a box of Acid Opulence 3s, a freebie five-pack of selected Acids, and the Fall issue of Cigar Magazine.  Woo-EEE!  Great cigars and glossy reading material!


I love the packaging...

And the built-in, feel-good marketing message...

I think Happy Hour will be most happy today.

A Soundtrack of Another Sort

We just finished watching this (excerpt from the link):

With conductor Franz Welser-Möst at the helm, the Vienna Philharmonic returns to the magnificent gardens of Austria’s Imperial Schönbrunn Palace for the orchestra’s annual summertime celebration in Vienna Philharmonic Summer Night Concert 2010, premiering on THIRTEEN’s Great Performances. (Wednesday, August 25 at 8pm on PBS)

Watch the full episode. See more Great Performances.

It was a feast for both eye and ear, mainly coz we watched it in HD, Gentle Reader.  There are many things to love about PBS, not the least of which are their music programs.  If you missed this particular performance I'd suggest you consult your local listings... coz another great thing about PBS is they always do re-runs.  I'll watch this performance a second time when they re-run it.  Just sayin'.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

We have some weird thoughts from time to time during Happy Hour.  Our latest weird thought is we should title our blog-posts in this particular vein "Songs for Our Beloved" rather than "Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack," coz that's mostly what they are.  With exceptions, of course.  But the fact remains that our former relationship consumed 23 years of our life... arguably the best 23 years.  Arguably.  There were good times preceding the time we spent with that woman and there have been good times since she walked away... but the good times since she walked have been few and far between.  That's just fact.

I suppose the point is that it's hard to NOT associate any given song released in that time period... which would be between 1975 and 1998... with our love/lust object.  That's human nature, innit?  Still and even, I hesitate to name these posts "Songs for Our Beloved," mainly coz I don't want you to think I'm mean-spirited, Gentle Reader.  Let's just let it lay that I would be mean-spirited most of the time... in a tongue in cheek sorta way... but sometimes that wouldn't be the case.  And how would you tell the difference?  More to the point, why would you even give a shit?

I'm still debating the point with myself.  That said... we were listening to The Cars this afternoon and this song popped up in the rotation:

The tune brings to mind road trips that my beloved and I made during the three years we spent in Ol' Blighty... road trips both short and long.  That first Cars album lived in (ahem) the car and was always played several times, whether we were on our way from High Wycombe to Upper Heyford... a shortie of a trip... or to other points on that Sceptered Isle.  The album was just what I (we) needed... and this post is straight-up.  We'll save the sarcastic bits for later... IF we decide to go down that road.  The Deity At Hand knows there are thousands of candidate songs in THAT space.

Update, 1830 hrs:  An explanation is in order, of sorts.  I received an offline from a friend, asking...

My "beloved"?  Are you nuts? 

Well, no.  No, I'm not.  I've used the term... sarcastically... for a long time when I refer to the woman in discussions with (certain) friends and fam'bly.  I shouldn't assume everyone knows these things.  I didn't mean to be taken literally.

Meanwhile, North of the DMZ...

So, there I was... listening to KC & the Sunshine Band... No, REALLY, I was: see?

And whilst so doing I drop by Lex's place and see this:

Dang.  "Get down, get down, get down tonite, Babe..."  Or something like that.

Artsy-Fartsy

It's SUCH a beautiful morning!  I'll also add that it was a beautiful night, as well.  Last night was the first time since Spring sprung that I slept with my windows open and my blankets pulled up to my chin.  Rumor has it we got down to 54 degrees last night; the temp at Cannon Airplane Patch was 58 when I rolled out in mid-morning.  I just had to get that outta the way before we begin.  Yes, we ARE gloating.  Sorta.

We made the coffee, answered the overnight mail, and then stared out our window for a bit, whereupon we noticed the four o'clocks are in full bloom and were still open... it being early in the day and the temperature cool.  We decided to play with the camera for a bit.  Here are the results; click to embiggen... as always:

A longish view of the flower bed.

A red four o'clock.  Or purple if you prefer.  Let's not quibble about color again, OK?

Yellow-red (1)

Yellow-red (2)

That's just four of the 40 pics I took this morning, not counting the many I deleted.  We've done this sorta thing before... four years ago.

Miscellaneous Musings

Today is The Major's 44th birthday.  Here's a couple o' "then and now" shots...

SN1 on the left, SN2 on the right.  What a couple o' ragamuffins, eh?

Just last month.  I like this pic a LOT.

Happy birthday, Buck.  You've come a long way, Bay-bee.

―:☺:―

CTS update (as if you care):  It looks like we're gonna keep The Green Hornet.  There are a couple o' reasons for this.  First of all... I called the GM Employee Purchase Program yesterday to ask 'em a couple o' questions about the lease vs buy thang and to get an authorization number for when I got serious.  In so doing I found out that I'm no longer eligible for the program, seeing as how EDS no longer exists (I'm now a Hewlett-Packard retiree, fyi).  The employee discount isn't much in the grand scheme of things, amounting to only about $2,500.00 or so on a CTS.  But every little bit helps, yanno? 

Second... SN2 decided to spend his hard-earned money on orthodontia for the grandkids rather than a spiffy green Miata.  How very self-centered of him, eh? 

Third...  I finally ran a payment estimate on the car as I want it and was shocked.  Shocked, I tell ya!  I can afford the freight but it offends my sensibilities.  We're talking about a freakin' CAR here, not a second house!  But I've always been cheap.  Kinda sorta.  If you ignore the bar bill and the cigar expenditures.

So.  It looks like The Green Hornet and I will celebrate our tenth anniversary together come October.  Unless I decide to buy a Camaro.

―:☺:―

It's not a nice day here on The High Plains of New Mexico.  We had a cold front... complete with wind and rain... move in overnight.  It's a mere 62 degrees outside as we speak; the high today is only supposed to be 76 with storms in the forecast all day.  So it looks like we'll have an indoor Happy Hour today...

Drat!

Every once in a while I'm treated to a fleeting display of one of Cannon's AC-130s engaged in air-to-air refueling and I never have the camera at hand.  These sorts of ops always seem to take place around sunset and one can get some breathtaking views of the KC-135 and the AC-130 bathed in the setting sun as they hook up.  It can be a spectacular sight.

It was different this evening, in that I saw the guys setting up for the refueling operation and I had time to run inside to get the camera.  Well, true to form... the aircrews flew a different route tonight, deciding to operate to the northwest of Beautiful La Hacienda Trailer Park instead of passing directly overhead around 10K feet like they usually do.  This was the best shot I could get:

Figures, doesn't it?  I'm always a day late and about a dollar short.  But some day...

In The News...

So... I read this lil blurb:

AUGUST 23--The Department of Justice is seeking to hire linguists fluent in Ebonics to help monitor, translate, and transcribe the secretly recorded conversations of subjects of narcotics investigations, according to federal records.

A maximum of nine Ebonics experts will work with the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta field division, where the linguists, after obtaining a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance, will help investigators decipher the results of “telephonic monitoring of court ordered nonconsensual intercepts, consensual listening devices, and other media.”

The DEA’s need for full-time linguists specializing in Ebonics is detailed in bid documents related to the agency’s mid-May issuance of a request for proposal (RFP) covering the provision of as many as 2100 linguists for the drug agency’s various field offices. Answers to the proposal were due from contractors on July 29.

I immediately thought of this:



Heh.  "I speak jive."  That's egg-zactly who DOJ is looking for, innit?

Speaking of Allstate...

... and we were, right?  (This sorta tagline is gettin' old and it's only the second time I've used it.)  There's this:

OMG!  Every American teen-aged girl and their BFFs are six different kinds of pissed now.

This Makes Me HURT

Dunno if you've seen these ads, Gentle Reader, or... not.  There are several in this series, this being just one of 'em:

I have NO ideer how they (Allstate) pulled off these ads, but I DO know they make my skin crawl for a couple o' reasons.  First and foremost... there are only two kinds of bikers: those that have been down and those that are gonna go down... and for those of us who have been down these ads evoke painful memories.  Second:  those are some NICE mo'sickles that were sacrificed to make the ad(s).  That's a frickin' crime in my book.

Still... well done, Allstate.  You've made your point and emphatically, at that.  I just wish you hadn't done that SO graphically.  I have to look away whenever these ads come on.

The Sunday Re-Run

Speaking of Cadillacs... and we were, weren't we?  There's this:

Old and Older Wheels

When all else fails I turn to cars…I’m speaking of a lack of motivation and/or nothing of note elsewhere. And so it is today… Here’s a couple of rides from my past, one of which is on my “All-Time Favorite Cars” list (maybe even THE All-Time fave, but most certainly in the Top Three) and the other was something I thought would be fun but turned out to be a money-sink. First the Money Sink…

This is a 1954 Cadillac Sedan De Ville, your garden variety doctor’s car of the mid-50s. A four-door sedan with a big (for its time) 331 cubic inch V-8 that was surprisingly powerful, even by 1992 standards. Surprising to a lot of Honda and Toyota owners, anyway, who had the temerity to challenge me at various stop lights in the metropolitan Deetroit area. That two-ton blue whale could charge off the line quite impressively for something as big and old as she was…

My buddy Greg, a power train engineer with General Motors, had (and still has) a 1955 Eldorado two-door coupe at the time, a beautiful car by anyone’s standards and one that I quite admired. I was very vocal in my admiration of that car…even though it was a “work-in-progress” restoration… and one Saturday morning Greg calls me up and sez something to the effect of “Hey! I found a great looking Caddy sedan that’s in pretty good shape down in Inkster (or somewhere like Inkster, anyway). You should check it out!” We talked a lil bit more, and Greg and The Second Mrs. Pennington talked a while, and then TSMP and I loaded ourselves up and headed down to Inkster. Long story short… I took my checkbook with me when we went to look at the car and I drove the Caddy home that afternoon. Thus began a year-long adventure in old car restoration.

I became intimate with Hemmings Motor News. Greg introduced me to several Big Dogs in the Detroit Cadillac restoration community, including a guy who ultimately did a lot of the mechanical work on the car. The Brown Truck of Happiness became a regular sight in our neighborhood. Most of my spare change was poured into that car…and it was about three or four months before she was truly road-worthy and safe, with reliable brakes and hoses that wouldn’t open up and spew coolant all over the street, among other things.  

Greg, TSMP, and I had one truly embarrassing moment before the Caddy was completely road-worthy… when the Caddy stopped dead…right in the middle of Woodward Avenue somewhere in Birmingham during the First Annual Woodward Dream Cruise. The three of us wound up pushing the car several blocks to Greg’s house, which (thankfully) wasn’t all that far away when she quit. And we got her running again…

TSMP christened the car “The Smokin’, Drinkin’, Partyin’ Car” and she most certainly was that. The best story about that car can only be told in “wink-wink, nudge-nudge” terms and involved TSMP and I splitting the upholstery in the Caddy’s back seat. Or, to put it another way…we were exuberant and the upholstery was old. In our garage. On a Saturday afternoon. Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.

But. I lost interest in the project after about a year, sad to say. There were so many things on my “to-do” list for that car…and most of ‘em involved significant sums of money, money TSMP had other uses for… that it became overwhelming. The cost/benefit equation got seriously out of balance, in other words. And then the 1995/96 Impala SS hit the market and I fell in motor-lust. The Caddie’s fate was sealed. I sold her and the family ride (a SAAB 9000) off to buy my ‘96 Impala. I don’t regret that decision at all. The Impala was just as much fun…if not more so… and not near as much work. But I do look back on that ol’ Caddy fondly. She was a lot of fun, even while she was parked in our garage.

Which brings us to Vehicle Number Two… which is a 1992 Vette. 1992 was the first year for the now-venerable LT1 small-block V-8, a 350 cu. in. power plant that put out 300 horsepower, which was simply wonderful, in and of itself. At the time. There are more than a few cars out there at the moment that would clean this car’s clock… no debate, no questions asked… and more than a few of ‘em are sedans, albeit rather pricey sedans, mostly of German origins. But in its day…WOW!

The Vette was TSMP’s daily driver in the Michigan Spring, summer, and Fall and was garaged during the Deetroit winters, at which time TSMP took over the SAAB and I drove the “other Vette,” an 80-something Chevy Chevette, which I will not talk about here, coz it was a nasty little car. The Chevette was entirely functional, in that it got me to my place of business and back everyday without fail, and asked for little more than gas. But I was oh-so-glad to see Spring roll around, which meant I got the SAAB back, and got to drive the other, other Vette occasionally. Let’s just leave it at that.

Corvettes used to be notorious for bad build quality and for being just a lil bit unreliable. Such was NOT the case with this car, Gentle Reader. The car was tight from Day One until the day I sold her, with only “normal” squeaks and rattles that develop in all cars, regardless of origin. As for reliability… I owned that Vette for seven years and replaced but a single item during that time…the air conditioner’s condenser. Other than that, nada. Zip. She still had the original spark plugs in her when she left my possession. I might still own that car today, had I not chosen a mobile life style.

There was a lot to like about that car. She was beautiful, fast, and just a little bit difficult to get in and out of. You might ask why I consider the difficulty of egress/ingress to be a good thing, and that’s a fair point. But…try and visualize, if you will, a good looking blonde in a skirt or a dress getting into…or out of… that car. Get the picture? That was a fine sight… Oh, My. Yes, it was.

A question I’m frequently asked is “How fast did it go?” I can’t answer that in absolute terms, but I know the car will do 135 mph…which is all the faster I ever took it. Vettes of that generation were supposedly good for 150 mph, and I have no reason to doubt it. I might have gotten her up near there had TSMP ceased beating on my head and shoulders when we hit 135. Distracting, that, at those sorts of speeds. Ironic, too, since TSMP drove the living HELL out of that car. It got to a point where I’d refuse to ride with her if she was gonna put her foot in it…which she did. A LOT. And she’d giggle like a mad-woman all the while, too. I rather enjoyed the giggling; but her driving? Not so much.

As always, click the pics for the larger versions. The Caddy pics were taken in our driveway in Ferndale, MI, and in Bloomfield Hills. The Vette pictures were taken midway between Deetroit and Harbor Beach, MI... on Lake Huron, in early Spring of 1992.

I'm hopin' the CTS will be one helluva lot more reliable than that '54 Caddy was.  IF I get it, of course. 

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Well, now.  This kinda rang a bell...

I say "kinda" because the lyrics would have most certainly fit about ten or 12 years ago... or so.  Today?  Not so much.  Not at ALL, actually.  But the tune DID ring a bell.  Ya just gotta love Pandora, even when it goes to places you'd rather not go.

Should I Keep Her?

Or should I run off with some young tart who'll stroke my ego and make me feel comfortable in my dotage?  I'm terribly conflicted at the moment.

The Green Hornet got back from her stint at the automotive cosmetician yesterday, and the ol' girl is looking pretty spiffy for someone "of a certain age."  A few pics...

The rear view.  She looks particularly good from this angle.  Like most ladies.

Before.

After.

So.  Late yesterday afternoon we turned in that young tart of a CTS to Rierson Motors and picked up TGH from Rembrandt's Auto Body... who do GOOD work, by the way... that is definitely a recommendation if you live in this part o' the world.  We motored back from The Big(ger) City™ by way of Cannon Airplane Patch, with the top up on account o' the heat.  We noticed just how much noisier it is in TGH's cabin at speed, as opposed to the quiet interior space of the CTS.  Speaking of space... there's SO much more of that in the CTS, TGH feels decidedly cramped in comparison.  And our Bose system seems lacking compared to the Caddy's.  You most certainly have to crank the volume in TGH at speed, compared to the Caddy.  There's that interior quiet thing, again.  Finally... TGH seems downright lethargic compared to the CTS.  I ran her up to red-line in the lower four gears on the way home yesterday and her 148 horses just don't seem as motivated as the Caddy's 270... even with her weight advantage.

Just to refresh your memory, Gentle Reader: The Tart...

That's the way I'd buy her... black on black.  Which is totally impractical for The High Plains of New Mexico, given (a) the heat and (b) the ever-present dust.  The Tart would be dirty an hour after I washed her... ALL the time.  But there are only two colors for Cadillacs... black or white.  I don't do white.

So: conflicted.  Should I stay or should I go?  TGH whispered a sweet something in my ear this morning when I went out to shoot the pics of her new paint.  To wit: "I know you're thinking about leaving me, Buck.  But don't forget... I'm PAID FOR, Bay-bee.  I'm ALL yours."

The girl has a point.

When Parenting Fails...

Just in case you don't stay up into the wee hours of the morning to watch Red Eye... there's this, which you might have missed:

Good God.  Gutfeld is absolutely, positively correct with his assertion that this "Peace Forest" ideer is about as stoopid as it gets and the parents are bat-shit crazy.  What sort of parent would take their kid to North-Frickin'-Korea to talk about a "Peace Forest?"  Well, I know someone who might, actually, but I'll leave that alone. 

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

You're the priestess I must confess
Those little red panties they pass the test
Slide up around the belly face down on the mattress

Well, they were black, but let's not quibble over details.  I love the lyrics to this tune... they bring back memories of Former Happy Days... but not each and every lyric, yanno?  There wasn't any meth involved.  The rest is pretty accurate, though.

Congratulations!

Congrats for what, you may ask?  Well... after today you get to keep everything you make for your own personal use.  Everything you made this year... up to this point in time... went to support the gub'mints -- federal, state, and local.  From my congressman's e-mail news letter (chase the link below):

You've worked all year to this point just to pay for federal, state and local government. 231 days into the year and you can finally say you've worked enough to pay for your government according to the Americans for Tax Reform Foundation's Center for Fiscal Accountability.

Out of control government spending from the failed stimulus to the repeated bailouts of state and local governments and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have got us to this point. Just two years ago, Cost of Government Day fell in mid-July. Now it falls more than a month later, and yet Congress and this White House want to keep spending.

Americans should not be spending 63% of their year working to pay for government and all its rules and regulations.

Had enough?  The mid-terms are coming...  As for me?  I'll vote to send Mr. Brady back to Washington.  He's my kinda guy.

Q&A

Q:  What's the difference between a good haircut and a bad one?

A:  Two weeks.

Sigh.  They always take too much off the top... no matter WHERE I get my hair cut.  Now I have to walk around looking like a frickin' rooster for the next two weeks.  Or not.  I usually have a ball cap on, anyway.

Psst! Buddy! Wanna Buy a Mosque?

In today's NYT, just below MoDo's editorial on Obama and the Ground Zero mosque.  No, I didn't click the link.  I'm pretty sure there aren't any distressed mosques near me.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

Simon and Garfunkel - America - MyVideo

"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"

Yeah, well... it's ALL dreams now, innit?  But we loves us some Simon and Garfunkel... especially the old stuff... from time to time.  It goes down SO well during those introspective moments we all seem to have.

Amazing. And Not So Amazing.

First... this lil blurb from the AFA's Daily Report:

Global Observer Completes First Flight: AeroVironment's Global Observer high-altitude, hybrid-electric, remotely piloted aircraft has made its first flight. The aircraft took to the skies over Edwards AFB, Calif., climbing to 4,000 feet and maneuvering under the watchful eye of its remote operator before landing successfully after one hour aloft earlier this month. "This flight marks the beginning of an exciting new phase in the Global Observer technology demonstration program," said Tim Conver, AeroVironment's chairman and CEO, in a company release. The company is maturing Global Observer under a Pentagon-sponsored joint capability technology demonstration. The RPA is designed to loiter at altitudes between 55,000 feet and 65,000 feet and stay aloft for up to a week, performing roles such as relaying communications or monitoring weather. With the maiden flight in the books, the company is now prepping for a long-endurance operational utility assessment later this year. (For more, see UPI report.)

Didja get that?  All of that?  "Hybrid-electric?" Unmanned week long flights at 55 - 65 thousand feet?  Here's a quote from the linked UPI article:

"Two Global Observer aircraft, each flying for up to a week at a time, will alternate coverage over any area on the Earth, providing a seamless, persistent platform for high-value missions such as communications relay, remote sensing, long-term surveillance and disaster recovery," the company said.

Here's an illustration of the concept of operations (CONOPS):

I dunno about you, Gentle Reader, but I think this is just VERY frickin' cool... especially the technology behind the concept.  The CONOPS is amazing in itself.  Talk about persistent observation!  This brings new meaning to the ol' saw about "you can run but you sure can't hide!"

―:☺:―

This, OTOH, ain't so cool.

If you mouse over the sender's name in G-mail you'll see who sent ya the message.  Except that the feature is often wrong, especially when it comes to blog comments.  WHY does G-mail think everyone that comments at EIP is Kris?  This got me in trouble in comments recently, until I figgered it out.

My New Ride

Well, it's my ride for the next two or three days while The Green Hornet is in the shop getting her ass-end repainted.  

That's an older Caddy CTS, exact vintage unknown.  She has 73K on her clock and is tight and rattle-free.  She doesn't have that famous Caddy Float-O-Matic ride in that you can actually feel the road, good steering feel, more than enough motor, and a kick-ass Bose stereo system.  I think I'm gonna like this car based upon my initial experience with it.  This is one rental I'll be sorry to see go.

I Can Relate...

From The Beeb:

'21st-Century minimalist'

Meet Kelly Sutton, a spiky-haired 22-year-old software engineer with thick-rimmed glasses and an empty apartment in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighbourhood - a hotbed for New York's young, early adopters of new technology.

Mr Sutton is the founder of CultofLess.com, a website which has helped him sell or give away his possessions - apart from his laptop, an iPad, an Amazon Kindle, two external hard drives, a "few" articles of clothing and bed sheets for a mattress that was left in his newly rented apartment.  (Photo from the BBC article)

I guess I was just slightly ahead of my time when I got rid of 90% of my possessions back in 1999.  But RV'ers have been doing this sort of thing... Hell, people in general have been doing it... for ages now.  It's just that technology has made it possible to "take it with you" to a greater extent than before.

In that same vein... Getting rid of my books was perhaps THE most painful part of my downsizing.  But there's an app for that... I think I'm finally going to buy a Kindle.  The newest wi-fi version is selling for a reasonable $139.00, but they're completely sold out at this point.  I'll give 'em a month or two to re-stock and then I'll buy.  It'll be good to have my library back.

As for my other stuff... I don't miss it.  It's amazing how much easier life is without "stuff."  OTOH, the linked article features people who have taken the minimalist approach to life to extremes.  I'm not quite ready to live out of a backpack and on the streets.  El Casa Móvil De Pennington may be small and cozy but it also has a kitchen, a bathroom, heat, and AC.  Backpacks don't.

Update, 0600 hrs:  I ordered the Kindle; estimated ship date is September 10th.  (Sigh)  Someday I'll get over this instant-gratification thing.  Wait!  It ain't instant... I waited until the price came down.  What am I thinking?

Heh

Yet more thievery from The Awl:

Listicle Without Commentary: 38 Delightful Names Gathered While Perusing College Football Rosters

38. Gee Gee Greene

37. Roddy Maginot

36. Jacquizz Rodgers

35. Justin Cabbagestalk

34. Rantavious Wooten

33. Bacarri Rambo

32. Ferbia Allen READ MORE

OK, I gotta say it:  What WERE they (the parents) thinking?  In related news... it's almost September!

Wonderful

Just.  Shut.  Up.

No Reason...

... other than it's just a beautiful tune with some evocative guitar work.  Lovely.

More of the Same

We remain enamored with Pandora... if you remember yesterday's post I mentioned that we were so taken with Pandora's eclecticism that we were gonna create a Steely Dan station for the remainder of yesterday's Happy Hour.  And we did, and we continued on with that same station for the balance of last afternoon/evening and into today, as well.  Not to flog a dead horse or anything, but the music on the Steely Dan station is right dead center in my sweet spot.  Not the least of which would be this:

"Hypnotized" is from my second favorite incarnation of Fleetwood Mac... the Bob Welch years, my first being the original Peter Green blues-based Mac of yore.  But we digress.  Here's "Hypnotized" in all its wondrous glory: 

That's some damned good stuff, innit?  I remain amazed at Pandora's ability to hit me right exactly where I live; the selections on the Steely Dan station seem like they've been taken directly from my music library.  There's the Police, James Taylor, the latter-day Doobie Bros, Donald Fagen's solo work, and on and on.  Great good stuff and highly recommended.  And it's the recommendations I'm on about Gentle Reader...

―:☺:―

The Big Story in the political world today is The One's endorsement of the Ground Zero mosque.  Witness memeorandum at this hour:

Has The One truly lost his frickin' mind?  There were three ways he could have gone here... (1) keep his mouth shut, (2) endorse the mosque, or (3) appeal to those proposing this affront to our sensibilities to abandon the project or, at the VERY least, build it elsewhere.  I SO wish he would have exercised his prerogative as President to defuse this issue with a rational appeal for the Muslims to come to their senses and back off of this stupid-ass and needless controversy.   It's indicative of just how out of touch Obama is with the American people that he chose Option Two.  This, Gentle Reader, is his Waterloo.  That's it, it's really and truly OVER now.

This issue is a sticky wicket, to say the least.  The group proposing the mosque/Islamic cultural center is entirely within their rights to build anything they want, anywhere they want from a legal perspective, as long as they comply with zoning regulations and building codes.  But life is much more than legalities; the group proposing the mosque in this location has lost its freakin' mind.  

Forgive me, for I know it's so VERY wrong of me to suggest this or even mention it, but I fervently hope some crazy comes out of the woodwork and firebombs the mosque should it be built.  Burn it right down to the ground.  I KNOW I'm not alone in thinking this, and Obama should have damned well known it, too.  Enough, already.  

To put it another way... if some SOB called your mother a whore to your face would you smile wistfully and say "I wish you'd have chosen other words to describe my mother but I respect your First Amendment right to say any-damn-thing you please"?  No, you wouldn't.  You'd hit that sonofabitch in the mouth as hard as you possibly could, just as soon as the insult left his lips... because them's fightin' words.  It's the same thing with the mosque.

Today's Happy Hour Soundtrack

I really have NO ideer what Steely Dan has in common with Little Feat... but I'm glad The Dan is included in Pandora's Little Feat Mix, to wit:

I love this tune so much I feel compelled to force it on YOU, Gentle Reader.

And here's yet another, from "Gaucho:"

Steely Dan - "Babylon Sisters"

I was drawn to the band on the strength of their rock 'n' roll Top 40 hit, "Do It Again," like most Steely Dan fans in my age cohort.  They only got better... in my eyes... when they ventured off into jazz-like arrangements and melodies like those found on "Aja" and "Gaucho."  THAT'S when I really became a serious fan.  The earlier stuff was pretty danged good but the fat horn charts and innovative guitar riffs on the later albums really, seriously floated my boat.  So much so that we've defined a Steely Dan station on Pandora for the rest of the afternoon's festivities.

And now it's back outside... yadda, yadda, yadda.