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

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...am here to tap through the walls.



Fri Jan, 27 2006

The World-Leader At Bending Over

So, I just put away an AutoCAD project (not for long, though; this'll be the first revision cycle), and I had had the audio muted in my television window, which was minimized out of the way of the drawing editor. And so I closes ACAD and cranks up the audio, and I sees MSNBC reporting on a buncha dirt-scratching savages burning and shooting in Gaza. And Tom Aspell is going on about how he doesn't see how the West can abandon them to their own crummy devices, and that they're going to have to find a way to send money to these animals, laundered through the UN or something. As if, of course, that will make the difference to Fatah animals enraged because the Hamas animals got the upper hand in all this "democracy" that every jabbering waterhead on the scene has been hollering about forever but now they''re appalled at what it's wrought.

"Schadenfreud", ladies and gentlemen, does not do justice to my attitude about all this. I think it's a riot, and I thought that way before I tuned up the real riot now going on in Gaza.

What is outrageous, however, is the suggestions that productive people in the West (read "America"), who are getting their brains beaten out to the tune of bezillions every year, should keep coughing up in order to pay bribes to animals in the hope that it will keep them from behaving like animals. Now, look: this is what it is.

"If we don't send them money, they'll blow us up!"

This logic goes at least as far back as The Marshall Plan. Go read the history, kids. The whole of the thing was just that simple in its essence: "If we don't send them huge amounts of money, they'll turn commie!"

And more than a half-century later, animals around the world know the whole drill and they've got mouthpieces in the news to drill it for them.

So, just keep sending off your money to all the carers in Washington, ladies and gentlemen. They know how to deal with threats. You bet.

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}