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

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...am here to tap through the walls.


Wed Aug, 26 2009

Mary Jo, Thou Art Avenged

Your killer's brain finally rotted out, today. It's something of a fitting end, given how the evil toad lived anti-conceptually all his rotten life. And he always got a pass on what he did to you from decrepit fan-peeple who would have personally chopped you into a salad if it would have advanced their black-hearted desires to rule others; these throwdowns from the ages of royals and serfs, before freedom ever touched these shores. For decades, this moral crumb traded his slaver's dreams right over your dead body. It's almost as if it's because he killed you that he was taken to the bosom of Amsoc: you were the the crime that he could expunge from his soul with offerings of burnt freedom; he would go forth in crusade of "good" pressed upon his subjects by the awful force of state, and the fan-peeple adored him for it. His corrupt family had settled on his strained neck after they had reaped the wages of rotten power, and he himself settled into the long-term cultivation of crime presumptively organized in the name of a whole nation -- no: an ideal that had made its home here, and which was the bane of his crippled soul, which is also why he betrayed that ideal all his worthless life.

All this, and a lot more, at the price of the life that you didn't get to live.

The horrible thing is gone now. I hope it died choking like Josef Stalin.

The dedicated will press on with his name on their cold blue lips, always with the aim of squeezing the last drip of "tribute" (I cite the word in advance) to this monster who flourished in an ostensibly "free" nation. His specter will walk the land in ways that yours was never allowed, and could not have in any case because of your innocence.

But that grotesque has drawn its last breath on your account.

That's just a small bit of peace today.

Aug 26, 09 | 1:21 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}