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

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Wed Aug, 05 2009

A Bonfire Of The Inanities

Reader Greg writes:

"I'm trying to get over it, but today I saw someone on tv pour sodium silicate down a perfectly good engine then proceed to turn it over, bricking the whole damn thing. Then I saw cars in running condition get crushed. What's next, people will be paid to throw rocks at random windows to help the glass industry?

It's like nobody remembers AAA and the slaughtering of millions of pigs and burning of crops.

This Dystopia is writing itself, already."
It's a rotten thing to watch a culture eating itself, isn't it?

This so-called "Cash For Clunkers program" is just hideous in its atavistic primitivity. We have the spectacle of stolen money (it's not "free", Radley, and you know it) being shotgun-blasted out the doors of roped-up car dealers, "targeted" (you just knew that the freak Sullivan would love that metaphor) at ideological stiffs who thrill when a jobholder tickles their ears with bullshit. And so, real actual values get destroyed right out-loud.

Anyone with a moment's common sense would instantly understand what the proposition will do to people poor enough to be out in the darkness beyond the light of the fires. All those engines and spare parts would have come in handy someday.

(See Matt Welch: "What do you think happens to the $800 car market when the guvmint is handing out $4,500 checks to have the things destroyed? I'll go ahead and state the obvious: It shrinks, making it more expensive for the truly poor people, the ones who want to make that daring leap from the bus system to an awful old bucket of rust.")

In a national orgy of nonsense, however, where dummies sway as seaweeds in crossing currents like "environmentalism" and "free money" (I know Balko doesn't really believe that but millions do), facts of reality are just not getting traction in peoples' minds. And not nearly enough of them are hearing that grating screech in their minds when they see a running automobile engine being deliberately destroyed as a matter of official government policy.

In America.

It's an amazing fact, and here we are.

Wotta show, kids. Wotta show.

Aug 05, 09 | 9:48 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}