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

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


Tue Nov, 07 2006

Think She'll Call Back?

rrrriinnnggg...

Me: "Hello."

Caller: "Hi. My name is Melissa, and I'd like to remind you to vote tonight."

Me: "Are you serious?"

Melissa (very meekly): "Yes."

Me: "Melissa, honey... how old are you?"

Melissa: "Eighteen."

Me: "Okay. So... this is the first election that you've ever really seriously looked at in your life."

Melissa: "Well, it's the first one that I could vote in."

Me: "That's serious enough. Well, let me tell you something then, luv. I have never voted in my whole life -- I'm going to be fifty years old this month -- and I never, ever will. Now, I have excellent moral reasons for this. And I would like to you stop voting, too. It's a horrible idea.

Melissa: "..."

Me: "And I would like to tell you something else. What you're seeing tonight is only a rehearsal for full-blast civil war in America. Now, it breaks my heart to have to tell you this, and I don't want to see that any more than you do, but there can be no other natural course of these affairs. Sooner or later, that's what it's coming to. And I want you to remember me, Melissa: the kook who told you this back in 2006. Okay?"

Melissa (even more meekly, yet): "Okay."

Me: "Okay, then. Off you go."

>click<

I know damned well that she won't call back.

But I think there is a damned good chance that she might remember.

Nov 07, 06 | 7:13 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}