(second block, fourth letter of the prisoners' quadratic tap code...)

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Thu Nov, 04 2004

Clean Miss

I just heard the damndest story on MSNBC.

Last night, the janitor at the elementary school at Little Egg Harbor, New Jersey heard a noise that he described as "footsteps running across the roof" of the building. Investigation seems to have revealed that the noise was, in fact, the sound of 25 rounds pumped into the joint by an F-16 driver who was supposed to be looking at a target three and a half miles away.

Question: d'ya think someone's going to get yelled at?

Wow.

Nov 04, 04 | 12:56 pm

Solemn Nod

"I've got to say that when people try to convert lions to Christianity (or Budhism, Taoism, whatever) and then they get bit, it's a sign to me that the universe is humming along properly."
(Jonah Goldberg, remarking on this moment of obvious lunacy.)

That's the single most sensible thing I've ever seen Goldberg write.

Many years ago, The National Lampoon did an oddly intriguing bit collecting news articles world-wide reporting on "bus plunges". (A representative item might have gone something like: "Sixty-seven people -- many of them clinging to the roof and bumpers -- were killed when their bus plunged into a ravine near the remote village of Branhiwupashir, Pakistan...") It's nearly gotten to a point where someone could do a similar collection of manifest psychotics who want to pet the Big Kitties.

What the hell gives?

Nov 04, 04 | 6:15 am

Good Morning

I just want to say that I'm so happy that ridiculous fool Megan McArdle is no longer blogging at Instapundit. For the life of me, I cannot understand what Reynolds had in his mind when he invited her to do that, but seeing the end of it is like finally getting back on the road after dealing with a flat tire and a snotty four year-old along the way.

Stoopid cow. Shut up, already.

Nov 04, 04 | 4:17 am
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AxeBites

Various guitars I see floating by, mostly Gibson and mostly eBay.

Early Norlin ES-335 -- 1970, in Walnut ("ES-335TDW"). This is a period-piece look and feel, and arguably the sound as well but that's to cut things very finely. A "classic" 335 would be the original of 1958 in the Sunburst or Natural finish, or the Cherry Red of 1959; the Walnut of 1970 (second year of that finish offering) is not really a "classic" 335. In the history of the Gibson aesthetic, this is analogous to, say, vertically-striped polyester bell-bottoms or Bahama Blue shag carpeting. None of this is to say that they're not cool guitars, and this is a nice one. Excellent photographs.

Chrome hardware, featuring the trapeze tailpiece (like my L-47 and I've always liked it) and ABR-1 bridge with period-typical nylon saddles. Bound rosewood fretboard, with small block markers, and then the crown inlay at the machine head. These would be the T-top Humbuckers. Vintage Nazis would moan that the upper bouts are pointy (the body templates were wearing-out in the factory) and the fourteen-degree machine head with the volute signals a sometimes not-fun era of the line, but these things really do rock or moan or whatever you want a 335-type semi-hollow to do. ...which, of course, is because it really is a 335.


In the months since I've let AxeBites languish all to bleedin' hell, Gibson's Robot Guitar technology has sifted out to other models than the original Les Paul application. I don't know how it's going: I still haven't even seen one of these self-tuners. I don't see piles of them burning on the sides of the highway, nor reverent hangings in display cases over bars, so who knows? This 2008 Robot SG is ready to rock in the Metallic Red. Nickel hardware; it's the stoptail wired for data to send to the tuners, with dual Humbuckers. It's a bound rosewood fretboard, but I really like the single-bound machine head with the crown inlay. That's a real cool old-school look, right there, to set off that crazy-ass color. {nod}