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

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


Wed Apr, 22 2009

You Should Think About It

Not even Radley Balko can keep up with all the New Professionalism out there, although his has been a stellar effort for nearly three years since Scalia's astounding nonsense. Jeffrey Quick brings word from Greater Cleveland:

"A Parma police commander accused of sucker-punching a teen driver in a burst of road rage was found guilty of disorderly conduct this morning in Chardon Municipal Court.

Capt. Kim Cornachio was ordered to pay the maximum fine, $150, after pleading no contest to the misdemeanor. Cornachio and his attorney, Kevin Spellacy, declined to comment after the two-minute hearing in front of Judge Mark Hassett."
Quick:
"I suggest that Judge Mark Hassett blacken a cop’s eye and see what he gets charged with…just to deepen his understanding of the law."
Is this not but the commonest of sense? Yes, it's a sarcastic bite, but that doesn't conceal the principles involved, and why not slag this thing like that? This is a rule of men and not law, contrary to the evasions of the law & order types, and it can never be anything else because it is always in the end individual men who decide whether to act in the auspices of law. What's happening at this point in American history is that pretenses of "equality before the law" are grossly disconnected from the actions of "law enforcement": that quite rather puny minority of the population who actually wield the power of state over the rest of us.

They take the machine for their own ends; the very thing that always makes law & order proponents quake in fear: "You can't let people take the law into their own hands!"

Ladies and gentlemen, I earnestly beg you: whose law, and what order?

Apr 22, 09 | 12:50 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}