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

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


Fri Dec, 12 2008

Fire 'Em All

E-mail out:

> Have you ever considered not touring and going
> for the doctorates in political science or economics?

No. But I'll tell you this:

On November 2 of this year, at about four o'clock in the morning, I had what might be the single craziest idea of my whole life.

What if I put adverts in the local garage-sale shopping rag, offering lectures?

> Reading your stuff reminds me of the good old
> days when I sat through those classes. Those
> were also the days if you wanted to talk to
> someone on the internet about it you could go fix
> dinner, eat it, clean up after it and still have time
> for the internet page to come up. Now you can
> talk instantly on the net and get more in depth in
> any subject than the halls of higher education.

> In other words, now you can get the same
> education without four years of time and tuition
> and missing out on four years of living. You've
> become the educated person you probably
> never thought you'd be.

Actually, although I was just about the worst student in my high-school -- and generally proud of it (I could have done better at algebra, though) -- I kind of saw this coming, in a far-off and general way.

> The diploma on the wall means nothing but the
> recipient spent years to get it and still missed
> the big picture in life. I shall always think of you
> now as Billy Beck, PhD.

For many years, I've said that I have spent my whole life at Beck University.

How 'bout, "Introduction to Austrian Economics"? "Politics: A Branch Of Philosophy"?

I have wondered how many qualified people and how much time it would take, doing this here and there all over the country, to turn Harvard and Berkeley into cob-webbed ghost-towns.

Dec 12, 08 | 1:47 am

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}