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

image
...am here to tap through the walls.


Tue Jun, 27 2006

Propagating Dis-reason

Go have a look at my comment, here. It's the very first one.

Then, pay close attention to the comment immediately following mine.

What on earth could possibly be the value in pandering to assertions of non-essentials as essentials?

Do you understand? I don't know how to put it more plainly. What would drive an intelligent man to calling a thing what it isn't, and consciously avoiding what it is? This is just horribly corrosive to thought, itself and in general, nevermind productive intercourse of ideas, and the reason I'm given boils down to nothing more than that everyone else is doing it.

I don't know about anyone else, but I have no place in my intellectual workspace to put something like that. There simply is no possibility -- none -- of reason at that point. All bets are off, and anything goes.

"Random images. No order."

Whether you believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, that's the death-knell of a culture like this one, far into its throes already. And you might not believe that, but then you won't believe this, either: you, reading this, right now, were almost certainly never trained to distill anything to essentials. There isn't one in a thousand of you out there.

I don't know what can possibly be done about it before the necessary implications take their place in reality.

Jun 27, 06 | 11:36 pm

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}