( NEW) Incongruous and Disconnected Thoughts V2.0
- Thread starter Highbank
- Start date
The Devil should just stop challenging people to music contests. This morning I have heard him lose against a fiddle, banjo, piano, and two guitar players.
2013 Ford Falcon XR6 FG MkII Manual
It's only done 55,000km but they're asking $625,000 for it.
The 6 speed Manual isn't standard; neither is the 5L V8 as this car originally cam with the 4L inline-6.
It's only done 55,000km but they're asking $625,000 for it.
The 6 speed Manual isn't standard; neither is the 5L V8 as this car originally cam with the 4L inline-6.
I'm in a bit of a funk. Everywhere I look, people are acting like the world is burning, always negative, and it is sapping all my positivity out. I don't even want to talk about the NASCAR community as a whole. At this point I need to separate myself from humanity for a few weeks just to get away from the drama.
Remember to take care of yourself 
Go for a run, play sport, read something, meditate, walk outside in the sunshine, read a book under a tree, draw, scribble, play music...
I don't know what sort of religious traditions that you might adhere to (or even none), but most of the major religions of the world embrace some sort of silence/rest/recharge as part of their make up.
Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev'd, recluse
by myself, for my own ears only;
Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again,
O Nature, your primal sanities!
- from "Give Me The Splendid Silent Sun", Walt Whitman.
This too shall pass
Go for a run, play sport, read something, meditate, walk outside in the sunshine, read a book under a tree, draw, scribble, play music...
I don't know what sort of religious traditions that you might adhere to (or even none), but most of the major religions of the world embrace some sort of silence/rest/recharge as part of their make up.
Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev'd, recluse
by myself, for my own ears only;
Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again,
O Nature, your primal sanities!
- from "Give Me The Splendid Silent Sun", Walt Whitman.
This too shall pass
I got my first real six-string
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played it 'til my fingers bled
Was the summer of sixty-nine
- Summer of '69, Bryan Adams
Dear Bryan Adams,
You are a liar. Even in 1969, there is no way in Hades VA that you are buying a guitar at an actual "five-and-dime" store.
If you alllow for inflation, a nickel in 1880 at the original F. W. Woolworth Company store, is worth $1.29 in 2019. Nobody gets a guitar for a buck and a half.
Second to that, you are a moron. Six strings is three more than you need. 3-strings is magic. 2-strings is pretty sweet. 1-string can be crankin'. No-strings is hillarious.
Please amend your song and stop carrying on like a pork chop.
Yours etc.
Rollo.
PS: Bryan is dumb way of spelling that name. Please amend that to "Brian" like a normal person.
Bought it at the five-and-dime
Played it 'til my fingers bled
Was the summer of sixty-nine
- Summer of '69, Bryan Adams
Dear Bryan Adams,
You are a liar. Even in 1969, there is no way in Hades VA that you are buying a guitar at an actual "five-and-dime" store.
If you alllow for inflation, a nickel in 1880 at the original F. W. Woolworth Company store, is worth $1.29 in 2019. Nobody gets a guitar for a buck and a half.
Second to that, you are a moron. Six strings is three more than you need. 3-strings is magic. 2-strings is pretty sweet. 1-string can be crankin'. No-strings is hillarious.
Please amend your song and stop carrying on like a pork chop.
Yours etc.
Rollo.
PS: Bryan is dumb way of spelling that name. Please amend that to "Brian" like a normal person.
Don't know about guitar prices anywhere..... BUT as for spelling Bryan with an Y , I have been for years... It's the only way. BRYAN. Look at
Bryan Bautista, Bryan Garris, Singer. Bryan Williams Jr., Bryan Herta, Race Car Driver. Bryan Scott, Football Player. Bryan Robson, Soccer Coach. Bryan Simon, 37. Bryan Andrew, TV Actor.
.Also spelling with an 'Y' is consider the manly spelling....
Bryan Bautista, Bryan Garris, Singer. Bryan Williams Jr., Bryan Herta, Race Car Driver. Bryan Scott, Football Player. Bryan Robson, Soccer Coach. Bryan Simon, 37. Bryan Andrew, TV Actor.
.Also spelling with an 'Y' is consider the manly spelling....
"The Long Dark Barrel of Innocence"
By Bill Harrison
Texas, people have come to think, owns big. Everything is bigger and better in Texas. If it's in Texas, it's the biggest. Growing up in Upper Peninsula Michigan, on an Air Force Bomber Base just outside Sault Saint Marie, I didn't know this. When I say me, I really mean we, the boys that called Kincheloe Air Force Base our home in the mid-'60s. Everything we saw around us was big, the big eight engine B-52s that roared into the air from the base, the big deep forests of northern Michigan, the big lakes, of course, they were known as "the Great Lakes", we wouldn't have argued that.
And then there were the snow storms that left us with all that wonderful fresh snow to make forts with, conduct snowball wars, yes wars, that's right, these were no mere "fights", but wars. They lasted not hours, not even days, but months. The snowball fights that began in one kid's snow-covered front yard would escalate into battles between kids on one side of Sykes Street with the kids on the other. These would then further escalate into wars involving kids from all the way around the block. The epic snowball conflicts would be conducted largely in the "big" common backyard that we all shared because the "block" was actually a large circle of duplex houses with one large unfenced "backyard" in the middle. Walls of carefully rolled snowballs would be built within throwing distance of each other with trenches dug behind them filled with heavily clad youngsters waiting for the signal to loose all icy hell and snowballs upon each other.
Truces would be made on the Big Hill. The Big Hill was, in fact, a small hill on one side of the big circle. It served as the center of our world.
We had sled races down that Big Hill. We had something we called Iceman competition there. Ice-what? You ask. We had this variation on sled races in which we had one boy lie down on a sled to steer, while a second boy would straddle the first boy with a hockey stick and attempt to push his counterpart who was attempting the same thing on another sled beside him as they raced down the Big Hill. We called it Ironman. You would be the Ironman until someone removed you from the sled you rode. It grew very much more intense as the day went on. Boys would lose their stick and jump onto the other sled to wrestle the other rider off his sled then jump back to his own to claim victory. Broken bones and teeth were just part of the fun! Being small as a boy I was always the one steering while the battle went on above me. I was never the Ironman.
Big Hill was the place where the only trees grew in the Big Backyard. As we flew kites many times, though they were the only trees to be seen, we managed to get our kites stuck in them. Odd though it is, I have no memories of those trees with leaves. I can vividly see Big Hill in my mind. The houses were closest to it. The trees. Snow covering it. The trees. But no pictures in my mind whatsoever of those trees on Big Hill with leaves.
Perhaps, this is why.
Among the sled races, hanging out, wagon races, and Ironman atop Big Hill, there is one event that stands out in my mind. One that changed me forever. We were innocent, though somewhat wild and crazy boys living in a time where boys were indeed just that. Boys. We had no interest in T.V. for more than a short Bugs Bunny cartoon. We did like to watch "Combat", "Rat Patrol", and a John Wayne movie, whether it be John Wayne the cowboy or John Wayne the
Flying Tiger, or John Wayne on the beach at Wake Island. It was all good. But hours of mindless T.V. watching? Not us. We were outside on Big Hill working at being boys by playing at being men. We were outside until our fathers yelled for us to come in... Biiillllleeeeee! I can still hear my Dads voice thundering through the night calling me to come home. Boys always stayed out too late. OK, at least I did. I wasn't getting in trouble, I was playing. I wasn't in danger of being abducted, it was the mid-60s. We were innocent. So was my world, until that day on Big Hill.
The Spegals catalog was second only to the Sears Christmas catalog in my world. One day my Dad was flipping through the Spegals catalog when he came across every man's dream: An all in one complete fishing outfit for four. Four rod and reel combos, four tackle boxes, four complete sets of every type of lure, bobber, rubber worm, jig, spinner, and sinker a John Wayne loving man could want. This deal was complete, complete, complete! Never mind that my Dad was really not much of an outdoorsman. This complete fishing package could change that in one weekend! After all, we lived in the Great Lake State, bound to be some fish close by, you’d think? Despite my Mom's groans. That baby showed up one day and what-do-you-know-bob one of them their complete fishing combos was mine! Boy Howdy! My Dad tied a rubber practice weight on the end of my line, took me outside, and commenced to showing me how to cast out my rubber sinker to catch the Big Lunker in the Big Backyard. This is the stuff of a boy's dreams. Innocence celebrated via the Spegals catalog! Isn’t America great!
It was fall. Must have been. I can't remember any leaves on the trees atop Big Hill. And it was cool outside. The day before my dad had taken my little brother Bobby and I to the Sue Locks to watch them raise Iron boats up into Lake Superior from Lake Erie. We spent hours watching the big ships come into the lock from the lower leveled Lake Erie and raised up to the level of Lake Superior and then they would go on their way to mills in Wisconsin. We stood side by side as my Dad aimed the Brownie camera looking into the little hole in the back to snap the photos. One of the pictures showed the two of us smiling into the camera and you could clearly see a ship behind us being allowed onto the Lake. On her bow, you could read the name...Edmond Fitzgerald. A few years later that ship would go down just fifteen miles off Whitefish Bay where we took our fishing rigs to the very next summer. We caught nothing. The ship went down with her entire crew lost. 29 men died in the icy water. They still don't know exactly why she sank.
I had been practicing my casting when a friend of mine from the other side of the Big Backyard came over and watched for a bit. We went to his house by Big Hill and he fetched his rig, which was quite similar to mine and had a casting contest. Innocent boys are very competitive. It went on for hours. About dinner time, and I don't know how exactly I knew it was that time. Some might argue fate. My Mom and Grandma Flori would tell you it was the hand of the Lord, I, though a strong believer, would tend to say that the half a bologna sandwich and glass of milk I had for lunch so many hours ago had run out and I was hungry, but whatever, something moved me to say I was going to head on home. And started to do just that.
They always say," It was like slow motion." I'll say it too. It was like slow motion what happened over the next few moments. I had just reeled in my rubber practice weight and was turning to say, "see ya" to my friend who was atop Big Hill casting one more cast before going home himself. As my eyes crossed from left to right, seeing the last two-story duplex and then the trees on the side of Big Hill, the sun caught something sticking out of an open window on the second floor. That something was the long dark barrel of a rifle. It was turning towards my friend and I suppose, me, standing on Big Hill. Before I could understand what I was seeing, the quiet of that fall day, the last day of my innocence, was broken by a loud sudden blast from that long dark barrel. I looked at my friend immediately and saw his shoulder blow apart. I saw him crumple in a heap and drop his fishing pole. I stepped forward half a step to run to him but stopped. I looked up at the window. I couldn't see it anymore. I had taken that half step and stopped, putting a Big birch tree between me and the window. I was about to step around it to look when I heard a second shot and a "Thwack" as that shot hit the tree I was stopped behind. Splintering wood was flying everywhere as I fell down at the tree's base and shook. There was quiet again for about a second then sirens. And then a third shot. I didn't hear it hit. I know now that it hit the man doing the shooting. I know now that he fired it.
I don't remember my friend’s name. I don't remember hearing anybody ever talking about it after I told the Air Policeman what I saw. I don't remember them putting my friend on a stretcher or even picking him up and taking him away. I never saw him again.
I look back and remember my boyhood in Michigan as my boyhood. We moved to California after Michigan. I remember the big forests of northern Michigan, the big Lakes, the big iron boats, the big snows, Big Hill and the big birch trees atop it.
I play guitar and sing now. I'm kind of a folkie by taste and influence. I sing out now and then. A regular song in my set is the Gordon Lightfoot classic, 'Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald". After ending the song, many times people are kind and offer a well done, they say, "You sing that with such emotion". I say thank-you and explain how my little brother and I got to see the Fitzgerald one time in the Sue Locks. And I remember fishing in Whitefish Bay, which is mentioned in the song. I don't tell them that the emotion behind my rendition is not for the 29 men lost that day, though that is so tragic, but for two boys lost in a tragedy the day after I saw "the Big Fitz". My friend, whose name I can't remember and myself. I always remember my innocence in Michigan and the day it died. But I don't remember any leaves on the trees atop Big Hill.
Copyright © 2014 Bill Harrison
All Rights Reserved
Last edited:
In Australia, our Tax Year runs from July 1 - June 30.
I asked the Australian Taxation office about the theoretical depreciation of a DS-1 Orbital Defence Sphere.
The rate of depreciation for a DS-1 Orbital Defence Sphere is 4.0% as the ATO thinks that it is a spacecraft.
A DS-1 Orbital Defence Sphere unfortunately offers little defence against space wizards who use laser swords; and may be needed to be rebuilt.
I asked the Australian Taxation office about the theoretical depreciation of a DS-1 Orbital Defence Sphere.
The rate of depreciation for a DS-1 Orbital Defence Sphere is 4.0% as the ATO thinks that it is a spacecraft.
A DS-1 Orbital Defence Sphere unfortunately offers little defence against space wizards who use laser swords; and may be needed to be rebuilt.
Five Cent coin:
The planchet for this came out in 1816 as the British sixpence.
If you use the historical inflation rate of 4% since the beginning of Rome (1AU = 753BCE), then you get a coin with the modern buying power of A$28.69; which sounds about right.
Even if you take the 1966 value for when decimalisation happened, then the 5c coin is now worth just half a cent in 1966 dollars.
It is so useless and worthless to people that they don't even bother to pick them up off of the pavement. NZ already got rid of their 5c coins. Australia should do likewise.
Australian Civil Aircraft are registered "VH" and then three letters.
After listening to Air Traffic Control for Victor 1 (the route across Sydney Harbour) for an hour; nobody talks about Victor Hotel but Victor Huey and I don't know why.
After listening to Air Traffic Control for Victor 1 (the route across Sydney Harbour) for an hour; nobody talks about Victor Hotel but Victor Huey and I don't know why.
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