Miss American Pie

 Up With The Sun

I woke up and saw that it was 6:30 in the morning, there was faint light coming between the Venetian blinds, and Harold the cat had been out all night.

I had "American Pie" by Don McClean on repeat in my head; with the only connection being the line: "But February made me shiver" coinciding with this being the last day of January...

I had forgotten to put in my weekly claim for unemployment. 

When the deadline for the previous week rolled around at midnight, I was passed out on the bed with the lights still on, after having consumed a six pack of Modelo Negro beer; one of my favorites.

But, of course something almost always seems to get neglected, on the occasion of drinking. 

All I have to do is remember to put in my weekly certification between Wednesday and midnight Saturday, yet, through procrastination, combined with forgetting, and with beer drinking factored in, along with the microwaving of a couple of the meals that I found a couple days ago, it became a recipe for forgetting to do the only thing I have to do in order to get money. I will probably have to wait an extra week to get a double payment.. What, me worry?

I made a strong cup of coffee, and then went out and rang my keys for Harold.

I think Harold can hear the key chain from up to about a tenth of a mile; and he knows it is my keys, I am pretty sure. After I got my last bike lock and added its two keys to the existing ones on my ring, Harold made a slight hesitation before dashing out from under a parked car; something was not quite right.

Harold didn't come this morning, but it is 65 degrees out, so he will be OK. The past couple days, when it had been something like 45, he came flying after less than 8 hours of being out there, after I rang the keys.

Electronic Cat Whistle

Another thing I want to do, Project #31, is to get one of those DIY electronics kits that has the breadboards, the soldering iron, and maybe a cheap voltmeter, so I can build an electronic cat whistle. I can experiment with putting the pitch generated up to over 20,000 hertz, which we humans can't hear, and seeing if I can use it to fetch Harold. It will be cool to dust off the "LC" circuits which I used to love messing around with most, out of all the things I studied at Sylvania Technical School, back in 1982.

Heck, had I not been diverted by the carrot in front of my nose, which was a job in "computers," which required more of a digital logic focus, rather than a concern over audio waves, I might have steered my studies in that direction, and, who knows, today there might be an effects pedal one the market that, when you step on it; gives you the "Daniel" sound, as defined by me 35 years ago..

It might be called something like "The Carcass Distortion," or the "Box of Sound,"and would have been invented, by me, in the early 80's in a laboratory with a lot of wave shape measurement and analysis equipment.

Tom Schultz was a hero to me.

The legend of how Tom Schultz, lead guitarist for the band Boston, recorded the first Boston album in his bedroom, using effects that he himself had designed the circuits for in his garage (for use in the bedroom) became amplified, given that we lived 50 miles from Boston, and so, felt that we could take some of the credit, and feel a sense of pride in just how inventive we all were in "Silicon Valley East" which was a nickname given to the part of Route 128, where it skirts Boston.

But, rather than concentrate on analog electronics, I went for the instant "high paying" job in computer repair and maintenance, with my strategy being that I would work in computers and use the high pay to build a studio in my bedroom, and "get into music" that way.

Had I gone into audio engineering, I might have found an equally high paying job, and I would, to a degree, have been working on my music while on the job, as I tried to invent some kind of device that would be valued by musicians, because I surely would have recorded my first album in order to feature the new sound, hoping that it would at least be the kind of flash in the pan success that would allow me to market the effect, like Tom.

When the Rockman® came out on the market, for something like $79.99, it was an immediate sensation. You could plug your electric guitar into it, and put the little Walkman® style headphones on, and when you played, it would sound like A: you were in a huge arena, where you almost expect to hear faint crowd noises in the background, and B: the first Boston album. Depending upon what you had the switches set to, you could narrow that down to sounding like a particular song on the first Boston album. Flip it to "clean 1" and go ahead and play the intro to "More Than a Feeling" while shouting "Look, ma, no hands!!"

I have totally forgotten the point of this post, readers; sorry. I ran to the store in between the last two paragraphs...

But, anyways, if my cat whistle circuit works, then I could conceivably increase the wattage output, so that I could crank it up to call Harold from a mile away, and no humans would complain about the whistle. I would have to estimate Harold's distance from the signal by timing how long it took him to arrive at the door, factoring in how fast he was going when he showed up. I'm not sure if he accelerates upon seeing me at the door from across the parking lot, after he comes through the gate.

I think I would need a special "piezo" tweeter, or maybe, and I don't doubt one bit that this product would exist, a specially made dog whistle speaker, that takes maybe 12 volts to drive, and which puts out those superhuman frequencies. There are also those "deer" whistles that were popular in rural Virginia that supposedly emit a tone, from the air passing through them as they sit on the grill of a car that is being driven 45 miles per hour or so, towards a deer in the road. Deer can not only hear them, but they supposedly fear them, also. The things must just sound a lot like the screech of some giant, awful predator.

Goodreads

The picture to the left is just one cubbie-hole in my place, crammed with books. Books that I am going to read, really I am; after I cut out the drinking and quit weed. The latter makes it so I will read maybe one sentence out of a given book, and then, taking it as poetry, maybe lose myself in a daydream, inspired by the sentence..

All the books in this shot, I have cracked open and read from, at least once. That fat black one, that looks like it is disintegrating, is the Penguin Book of English Verse, with a "used" sticker on it.

The cosmic connections that books have is worth noting.

The Bhagavad Gita, I found, abandoned in an abandoned shopping cart, in brand new condition, on the same day that Harold, as a new-born kitten, was given to me, after he was abandoned in the parking lot, by someone whose new girlfriend was allergic to cats. The book and Harold's fir are the exact same color.

Harold may have faded a bit..

Then, at the far right, "The Color Purple," which I recently read some of, and then went out to make a store run and, on my way back, a lady whom I have often seen, sitting on the front porch of her purple house, was there, and wearing a purple shirt. I made a comment about her shirt matching her house, before walking on, and a little further on, found an unopened tube of purple watercolor paint laying on the sidewalk. There are always those types of things that happen around books.

I found John Kerry's book "A Call To Duty" at the Goodwill Store, and within hours of my buying it for 50 cents, the author was chosen by Biden to be in his cabinet, just as I was placing the book in my cabinet, I imagine...

The Dental Plan Thing

I have mismanaged my teeth my whole life.

The last time I went to the Louisiana School of Dentistry's place to have a tooth pulled for 98 dollars, I brought my little mp3 player, which I had loaded with the "Psycho violin screech" sound effect, cued so it would play whenever I pressed the play button.

This I did, every time I opened wide, so the female dentist could go after the tooth.

This made for some levity for the staff there, it seemed, but didn't lower my bill any; and you probably don't want someone using sharp dental instruments on you when they are trying not to laugh.

But, they strongly advised me that, as soon as I came across a spare 98 dollars per each, I should have certain procedures done -root canals in some instances- in order to save certain teeth.

I have been straddling the fence between trying to "save" original teeth, and just having them all pulled out and resuming with a set of dentures glued to your gums.

There are pros and cons. The biggest concern of mine, and one that I have actually come up with an idea for is that dentures are too perfectly shaped and too white to not announce their presence like the wearing of dark shades on a cloudy day announces the presence of a guy who is trying so hard to be anonymous...

The idea is that they use old photos, like a yearbook one, and then 3-D rendering technology to create dentures that are exact replacements, in dimension, at least of the teeth a person had in high school; or when their teeth were x-rayed in the military. Then, they could actually make them a shade less white, as if the person does sometimes take coffee.

I am, of course doing neither. I am procrastinating. That thing I got in the mail, informing me that I have some kind of dental procedure purchasing power, I need to respond to by, I guess, going out and finding a dentist that I like, from the list of them provided. So far I like the closest one to my apartment the most; just barely over the one a couple blocks further away.

Seriously, though. Now that we have "Here you go, here's a pen..." Biden in office, this should become the heyday for things like dental implants that can be attached to a living human's jawbone, using bone-welding technology, or whatever, and can be made to match x-rays of a patient's original teeth and sculpted accordingly; which will be permanent and will remind a person of how it really felt to chew, back when they were teenagers. 

So, I am waiting for that technology to become available to people on the Dentaquest program, as I now apparently am. Then I will go and get all my original teeth implanted in porcelain form.