Brian J.’s Recycler Tour, Real Estate Development Edition

A two-fer from this date in 2016:

I’m looking to get financing for my new real estate project, a set of apartment buildings with small units for young men just starting out.
I’m gonna call them “The Dude Abodes.”

Except maybe in New Mexico, where they’d be “The Dude Adobes.”

I say “two-fer” because the first was the original post, and I immediately commented with the second.

On a long enough timeline, I imagine I will start repeating my best puns of the day. I’m going to have to start searching the blog to make sure I’m not repeating. So far, so good on these quips.

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Except For All The Other Ways That Have Been Tried

Causeway connecting Florida mainland to island washed away

Storm surge from Hurricane Ian washed away part of Florida’s Sanibel Causeway.

The causeway is the only way to get to or from Sanibel and Captiva Islands to the state’s mainland.

The only way, as boats and aircraft (and hovercraft) do not work in that particular region, a phenomenon known as The Lazy Journalist’s Triangle.

You know, I’ve driven over that span as I drove from a distant airport to Sanibel Island eight years ago. Eight?!

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Ace Agrees

Modern journalism is 24-year-olds putting Twitter into paragraph form sometimes.

Ace says in his fashion:

You know, back in 2001-2002, cable “news” stations used to fill up cheap minutes by paying some Brooklyn idiot $28,000 per year to scroll through Twitter and highlight tweets for them to “react” to during short segments.

But soon, they decided that they would expand this pilot program, and that idiots babbling on Twitter would become their main “research tool.” Now Twitter would become what city hall and the courthouse and the police department used to be — the place you go to find “stories.”

And so they just go to Twitter to find some absurd “microagression” that some axe-grinding, attention-whoring leftwing lunatics are complaining about today, and bang, that’s a “news” story.

Imagine this 20 years ago — that what Stacy in Brooklyn is complaining about, that they’re not properly texturing the milk in frappuccinos lately, or that someone “misgendered” her because she doesn’t feel like a “she” today, she feels like a “shim,” is now “news” which “professional” “news” outlets now make “lead stories” on their actual broadcast “news” shows.

Imagine that.

No one could have imagined such a bizarre and dark world twenty years ago.

But that is the media we have now.

Because it’s just easier for the lazy, unprofessional, stupid, lazy, barely-educated, pig-ignorant “journalists” to get “stories” this way, so this is how 90% of “news” outlets’ “stories” are now “researched.”

True for the big dailies. Not so much the small papers I take.

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So, Basically A Premake Of Xanadu

Hannah K. at Stuff Nobody Cares About posts Rita Hayword in Down to Earth, summarized thusly:

To say Down To Earth (1947) has a bizarre plot-line is an understatement. The goddess Terpsichore comes down from the heavens to earth when she finds out there will be a Broadway play about Greek mythology. She then gets a part in the play and suggests changes to the producer.

Sounds similar to the plot of Xanadu. Well, close enough. I guess I’m not the first to say it–People magazine made the point in 2015.

And probably worth a watch. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Rita Hayworth movie. For someone who thinks of himself of a fan of old movies, I am really light on seeing films from some of the biggest stars. I just plead that they had fifty years of moviemaking before I was born, so Hollywood got quite a head start on me.

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Announcing It Makes It First Degree

COME HOME TO ROOST My neighbours complained about my roosters being too loud – now council says I might have to KILL them… I’m devastated

Although the pronoun with a questionable antecedent does not make it clear whether the woman needs to kill her neighbors or the council.

Maybe the roosters, but it’s only one of three nounds in the subheadline (the capitalized headline has home and roost, none of which could be the direct object of the second).

(Note the article makes it clear they’re talking about the cockerels.)

You know what? I’ve been goofing on headlines like this for nearly two decades, but we’ve gotten to a point where I write posts like this, and I think Is this enough to serve as a pretext for a pre-dawn armed raid by the authorities because I’m posting calls for anti-authority violence? What an exciting world we live in now!

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The Latest Scandal Of Brian J.

Gentle reader, you might have noticed no Good Album Hunting or Good Book Hunting posts recently, even though the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library held its autumn book sale last week.

I did not go.

I alluded to this in book reports leading up to the event–that I might not go–but in the end, I did not go.

I had work for both my employer and my longtime client that chained me to my desk for twelve or fourteen hours a day, which made it difficult for me to get up to the fairgrounds on a weekday. Although I thought about taking a change of clothes to the NFFF Memorial Stair Climb and running through the sale briefly on Saturday, half price day, between the second and third of my stadia last weekend, but I did not–I couldn’t remember how long the stair climb actually took, so I demurred. I also did not want to go up on Sunday afternoon, bag day–in my experience, it’s pretty picked over by then, and I would not have found much.

So I did not go.

And, gentle reader, when my mother-in-law downsized earlier in the year, it broke me.

Well, all right, it didn’t break my spirit, but it really dampened my enthusiasm for book or record buying for a time. For, you see, I could get away with putting a couple or a couple of dozen books or albums on my stuffed book or record shelves, filling gaps in the to-read shelves created as I actually read books.

But the books and records we received from my mother in law were boxes’ worth. I have two boxes of books and a couple atop those boxes in my office that I cannot fit on my current shelves. I will enumerate them when I can find a place to put them. I have a box of records under the desk with the 60s folk music she favors as I have no room on the record shelves until I build more.

So, gentle reader, for the nonce, I have enough.

Or, more to the point, I cannot fit the amount that I would normally accumulate at the book sale into the existing storage.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ll run up to ABC Books from time to time or pick up some records at antique malls as I do my Christmas shopping as long as the prices haven’t gotten too out of hand.

But a book sale? Not until next spring at the earliest.

And here I know you hang onto my look at what I bought! posts. Maybe I’ll do a Musical Balance post since I haven’t done one in…. almost a year? Wow.

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David Gilmour Sings For Grownups

Severian posted this Nerd Fight today: songs for grownups:

Or my other nominee, Bob Seger’s “Night Moves.” Yep, that’s what it feels like, all right, to be a normal teenage boy in a culture that isn’t quite yet terminal. It’s also what it’s like to be a normal adult looking back on that teenage boy. It’s not goopy nostalgia; Bob knows those days are gone. It’s not “Gosh, I wish I’d done this and that differently;” it’s “I’m glad it ended the way it did, because I am a sadder yet wiser person for it.”

In other words, it’s a song by an adult, for adults.

I mean, his first nominee is Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Auld Lang Syne” (::spit::). Heaven and the blog archives know what I think of that song.

Severian invites commenters to identify songs written for adults.

Gentle reader, I’m sure you would remember were you not still young that I posted Music: Not For Grown-Ups Any More in 2003, when I was less of a grownup than I am now, that music of the modern day was/is written for the young. We’ve covered the ground about why popular music tends to be geared to the young (I’m too lazy to find the links now–troll my Music category and see if you can find the posts about how country music was the last genre to fall to the call of the young and why I hate “Same Auld Lang Syne”).

One of his commenters posted about Roger Waters of Pink Floyd (as a co-worker in 1990 called them, “Three old men and a guitar”). However, that commenter missed the proper member of Pink Floyd for adults.

Roger Waters’ solo work was always a bit of youthful naval gazing. The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking resonates when you’re young and your relationships are unstable. Radio K.A.O.S and Amused to Death were political statements. Apparently, he has released music since then, but who cares? I mean, I grokked The Wall because my parents divorced when I was young, but aside from touching that youthful wire, meh.

David Gilmour, on the other hand….

On his 1978 solo album David Gilmour, his song “So Far Away” describes being close to but being far away from a lover:

Sweet Christmas, when I got that tape (audiocassettes were the thing in 1990-1991, child), I was an awkward teenager with no experience with the ladies. And I could imagine how it might feel (more than I could from Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”). Now that I am, ahem, 25 years old and a little more experienced with the lady (my beautiful wife), I think he got it right.

His 1984 album About Face contains a couple of gems. The first is “Out of the Blue”:

Which is all about the passage of time. Not only his, but his children’s.

The last song on the album is “Near the End”:

Jeez, Louise, it’s a song about turning the record over and starting it again, renewal, and:

Thinking that we’re getting older and wiser
when we’re just getting old.

When he wrote that, he was far younger than I am now, albeit older than I was then. But it resonated.

Gilmour’s work has been a mix of mature, grownup songs, political/activist kinds of songs, and a lot of working with the music itself–the la(te)st Pink Floyd album The Endless River and his work with The Orb tend toward the techno and electronica….

But here’s a later work–“Yes, I Have Ghosts”:

You won’t find music for grownups in popular music–that’s all geared to kids. You can find it, even now, if you look for it.

If you want, old man. Me, I’m looking for new metal to exercise by, metal with youthful vigor as befits me when I exercise.

But then Gilmour.

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A Subtle Reminder

We inherited a number of patio decorations and flowerpots from my mother-in-law when she downsized earlier in the year.

Now, when I sit outside at sunset, I’m reminded….

I borrowed Donnie Darko on DVD from my beautiful wife’s former roommate 20 years ago. I have watched it, but I did not want to return it until my wife and I watched it.

In those intervening years, we’ve fallen out of touch. And by “fallen out of touch,” I mean I scoffed when he said Bush was going to round up all the Jews and put them in camps when he and his wife came to our housewarming party in 2006. He unfriended us shortly thereafter on social media for differing political views which meant we were getting cut from social ties before it was cool. His wife has not, though, but she’s a Packers fan from Brown Deer, Wisconsin, so she’s clearly of a better stock.

At any rate, it’s getting to October, and Donnie Darko is kind of a Halloween movie, so perhaps I will watch it with my boys and maybe my beautiful wife. And then send the film back with a thank you note. Although they’re the kind of couple who might not have a DVD player any more.

Aw, c’mon, man, I have to explain?

It was a box office disappointment. And it never really became a cult hit. But I remember it mostly because I have this DVD on a 20-year-old loan.

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The Weekend Of Three Stadia

Well, I broke my streak of weekends where I attended festivals at four. You can find other festivals and small town fall shindigs within an hour’s drive from Nogglestead, but other things were on the agenda this weekend.

Such as the famous, or at least capitalized on this blog, Weekend of the Three Stadia.

So, on Friday night, the marching band performed at the home football game, so of course we were present.

You might ask, “Did they replace #2, the 5’5″ player who has since graduated?” Indeed they did: they have two kids about 5 and a half feet tall this year returning kicks and acting as running back at times.

Friday night’s game was well over three hours, as the score was 68-43 with a lot of penalties. Also, someone was very bad with the clock. The clock stopped in tackles in bounds and for a variety of reasons. Through most of the game, I blamed inexperienced clock keepers, but at one point, I looked down and saw the official signaling time out after a tackle in bounds. So it might have been inexperienced officials. The Missouri State High School Activities Association has a mercy rule that says when the score gets to such a differential in the second half to keep the clock running regardless of the situation–but the home team did not get that far out ahead. They stayed only two or three scores ahead, and their opponent could throw the ball, which led to a number of one down touchdowns. So it went on.

Which was bothersome, because I had not eaten. I had planned to get a burger at the concession stand, but I did not want to surrender my seat in a crowded stadium. So I thought I would get something when I got home a little after 9pm. And with each passing minute of game time, I thought I was closer to it, but I didn’t want to spend the money if I didn’t have to. But I did want to have something because I was supposed to be carb loading, or at least not undernourished when I got to Saturday morning.

Because I had the NFFF Memorial Stair Climb at Plaster Stadium on the MSU campus.

As my boys had a marching band thing that day, they could not join me, so I did it alone.

The Memorial Stair Climb raises funds for the families of the first responders who lost their lives on September 11, 2001, and hopefully others as well.

But when I’m sitting alone, I envy the camaraderie and the bonds that the first responders share. I feel the same sort of envy at the Ruck and Run, which benefits veterans’ organizations. It’s been a long time since I’ve had shared bonds and experiences with people. My family when I was young. Places where I’ve worked a bit, but not something that lasts a lifetime. Instead of sitting alone on the bleachers feeling sorry for myself, I tried to focus on their honor, and I knew I was not the only non-first responder or affiliated family there. I also felt a little guilty that my first thought, and the reason I did it, was not so much to honor them or raise money for them but rather because I wanted to prove to myself that I could climb 110 stories (78 flights according to my fitness tracker) in an hour and ten minutes. How bad of a person does that make me?

Worse than William McGovern, Battalion 2.

So I finished that, went home for a shower and a nap, and then I was off to watch my boys in their marching band.

It was a clinic and not an exhibition. The school took the field at 3:00 sharp (on schedule), performed the show, and then broke into groups (color guard, percussion, everyone else) to get some advice for improvement, and then at 3:40, they reassembled and did the show again, hopefully better.

So we were in and out in under two hours, which is good, because my legs began to stiffen the moment I stopped moving. In the event of an actual exhibition, I could expect to spend eight hours or more in bleachers.

Which is coming next weekend. After the triathlon.

At any rate, I did not visit any stadium on Sunday (or since), although the church sanctuary is kind of like a stadium–pews that rise from the altar in a semi-circle. But I’m not going to count that. It makes it like I’m reaching for blog content or something. Which I am.

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I Don’t Understand The Metaphor

In this column about the Bears doing what the Bears do, we get this simile:

A 27-10 loss to the Green Bay Packers landed like a cement pillar to the gut.

I am not entirely sure in what circumstances one takes a cement pillar to the gut. While skateboarding, and you hit one of those “don’t drive here” pillars?

Because nobody, not even in Chicago, is going to pick up a freaking pillar and hit you with it. And if you’re on foot, other parts of you are likely to impact any pillar you run into.

Metaphors: Leave them to the professionals, children. Not that many remain who are qualified to handle them, and probably none in the papers.

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You Picked The Wrong Man-Made Disaster

‘The Phantom of the Opera’ to close on Broadway next year:

“The Phantom of the Opera” — Broadway’s longest-running show — is scheduled to close in February 2023, the biggest victim yet of the post-pandemic softening in theater attendance in New York.

The musical — a fixture on Broadway since 1988, weathering recessions, war and cultural shifts — will play its final performance on Broadway on Feb. 18, a spokesperson told The Associated Press on Friday. The closing will come less than a month after its 35th anniversary. It will conclude with an eye-popping 13,925 performances.

In news that some people pretend is unrelated because it is the result of the ongoing policy failures of the elite, Two pedestrians — including European tourist — shot while refusing muggers in separate NYC incidents and McDonald’s ax swinger had just been ‘rejected’ by woman, witness says. Key note:

Robbery and other major crimes have increased by about 40% in the city recently, NYPD data show.

One might think that it was not the virus nor the draconian authoritarian and ultimately inconsequential government actions that have led to the decline of downtown life in downtowns that are becoming no-go zones. But that would mean that the current officeholders and bureaucrats and their ongoing decisions are continuing to contribute to this problem.

But if it was COVID, man, that was the last governor and the last mayor of New York. Nothing the current crop can do about it. No need to hold them accountable!

(First New York City crime link via Instapundit who has another example. But I read the New York Post daily, so I see stories like these every day.)

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The Milwaukeean Sumautumn of Brian J.

Wow, gentle reader, it seems as though I have left you out on the biggest adventure of my summer/autumn. Well, adventures, and they’re not very big at all, but I am not 20 years old any more, so my adventures are a little more narrow in scope.

At any rate, for about four weeks, I lived a bit like a Milwaukeean.

I am sure that I’ve gone on and on, if not on this blog then certainly in person, about how many festivals Milwaukee has in the summer. Aside from Summerfest, the ten day (or however they do it now) music festival with multiple national headlining acts every day, the Henry Maier festival park on the lakefront also hosts a variety of ethnic festivals throughout the summer. And Milwaukee’s myriad churches also have festivals of their own. So on a weekend in Milwaukee, one can choose one or more festivals. And one can fill a summer’s full of weekends just so. Assuming, perhaps, that one is high school or college age and has no other real responsibilities.

So in mid-August, we lived like Milwaukeeans.

It started, really, with the Ernst-Fest in Freistatt, Missouri. When the boys were at the Lutheran school, they played basketball against the Trinity Lutheran School Knights from Freistatt, so we visited four or five times, and we’ve sent the school a little money now and then. The Lions Club fairgrounds are a mile north of the school on the one road through town that runs between Mount Vernon and Monett. It was a small affair—a polka band playing in the biergarten, brats and sauerkraut served at a concession stand, and a series of games mostly for kids run by Trinity Lutheran—the principal recognized us and greeted us by name (Springfield Lutheran). We also ran into a family from our church who was originally from Freistatt but live just a couple miles west of us for now. The oldest son went to SLS with my oldest until fifth grade, where the exodus of serious athletes occurred–their parents wanted them to play in public schools with real athletic programs. I guess it worked–the boy had an onside kick recovery on Friday night at the high school.

The next Saturday, we went down to Crane, Missouri, for its annual Broiler Fest (the broiler being broiler chickens—I guess historically Crane has been associated with the poultry industry, although the Tyson plants are down in Monett). I had read about this festival in the Branson and the Stone County papers for years, but in the past, our September weekends were consumed with cross country meets until they were consumed with marching band competitions. This year, I made an effort to attend, and I dragged my boys down to it. The Crane Boiler Fest is a more full-featured festival than Ernst-Fest, with two band stages (gospel and bluegrass), a midway with rides (the boys turned up their noses at the rides now that they’re used to full-sized amusement parks), craft and information booths (where I entered a couple of gun raffles, as is my wont—gun raffles are popular fundraisers in the Ozarks), and, of course, a chicken dinner. Which was delicious.

On Labor Day weekend, as I mentioned, we went to the Kansas City Renaissance Faire. Which I am counting as a festival for blogging purposes and for keeping the streak going.

Last weekend, I went to four different festivals. LIKE A MILWAUKEEAN!

A bit of a note: The second weekend of September is apparently Springfield’s festival weekend, as the only two annual festivals I know of occur on the same weekend and are a mile or two apart.

On Friday night, we went to the St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton Catholic church’s Harvest Home festival. Now this is the festival that most closely tracks with my experience in Milwaukee: Food, some little games, some small rides, and a live band playing old time rock and roll. We only had one boy with us–the oldest was off to Cole Camp with a friend to attend the annual Cole Camp town fair–and my youngest was as interested in the games has he had been oh, five years ago, and not at all interested in the kiddie rides. But we had something to eat, and we listened to the band which featured three guitars, a bass, a drum, a saxophone, and a trombone. I asked my company, both trumpet players, whether the band would be better with a trumpet. The boy said no, my beautiful wife said yes. The answer is, of course, yes.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to the festival at St. Thomas the Apostle Greek Orthodox Church. It’s a small, one-day affair which has a silent auction/Greek Orthodox gift shop tent, tours of the church, a tent serving Greek food, and canned Greek music with some live dancers at times and, presumably, some live Greek music at some time. Most people just come for the food, which is why the line snaked to the parking area and it took me almost an hour to eat–some people also placed To Go orders and carried away large bags of the food. So I ate and left.

On Saturday evening, the remote campus of our church had its second Faith and Friends Festival, also a small affair (so far), Free food, free ice cream, and some small games. We went and ate and socialized a little.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to the Japanese Heritage Festival at the Japanese stroll garden at Nathaniel Greene park. As my wife is a member of the park board, she attends a lot of dedications and events at the parks, and the youngest and I came along. It, too, is a pretty small affair–a stage with different demonstrations and shows, a number of retail booths lumped together, and various business booths. The actual split between Japanese things and American companies was about 50/50. One of the booths was for K-Pop music for some reasons (historical spoiler alert: The Koreans and the Japanese have not been friends through the millenia), and another was for a Springfield cosplay group–and a large number of attendees were in costume as anime characters. One wonders what traditional Japanese people–I understand visitors from Springfield’s Japanese sister city Isesaki attended–thought of that. Although I guess young people in Japan can also be a little, erm, youthful as well.

So that was seven festivals in four weeks. Like a Milwaukeean!

If anyone needs me, I will be at the gym, trying to work of this festival food.

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Good. Now, Do Springfield.

Instapundit is rife with headlines like this: Starlink Provides Service To Antarctic Research Station, Now Accessed On All 7 Continents

Ukraine, cruise ships, now Antarctica.

Meanwhile, I paid a deposit and have been waiting a year for service in my area.

The expected date I see when I log in is still late 2022 (we’re here!), but the date on the map if you type my address is sometime in 2023.

I could really use that now.

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The Brutal World We Live In

Bass Pro Shops wants a special transportation taxing district to improve the infrastructure around Big Cedar Lodge and its various golf courses just south of Branson.

Projects include something called duel drop right lanes.

How far our society has fallen. I mean, lanes so you can just pull over and settle your score? I have seen dystopian films with more optimism.

But it should perhaps drive some people to the Big Cedar Lodge shooting academy. At least once. Maybe only once.

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A Second Look at mRNA?

MicroRNA found to regrow 90% of lost hair, new study finds:

People affected by moderate hair loss turn to topical treatments like minoxidil (antihypertensive potassium channel opener) and finasteride (dihydrotestosterone-suppressing 5α-reductase inhibitor), the only Food and Drug Administration–approved treatments for inducing hair regrowth. Both are designed not for hair loss treatment but serendipity.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have identified a microRNA (miRNA) that could promote hair regeneration. This miRNA – miR-218-5p – plays an important role in regulating the pathway involved in follicle regeneration, and could be a candidate for future drug development.

Yeah, I know, miRNA (Micro RNA) differs from mRNA (Messenger RNA). However, I have become very cautious about anything that deals with my personal nucleic acids. So although I am beginning to notice that I am bald, and old, none of this for me. Yet.

(Link via Instapundit, with whom I share a large percentage of my DNA.)

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A Reader Recommends….

Well, one of you posted this on Facebook:

It’s a YOLOLIV YoloBox Pro,All-in-one Portable Multi-Cam Live Streaming Studio Encoder Recorder Switcher which has 3 HDMI inputs, 1 USB input, 1 Full Featured USBC input, plus local SD card video sources and PDF source from SD card, 1 Mic in, 1 Line in, 1 HDMI out, 1 Audio out.

Meh. I can’t use it unless it has a couple coax inputs, a couple composite inputs, and a set of VHF antenna screws or two.

But I don’t have $1300 lying around, and my sixteen year old projector television would burst into flames if I tried to hook this up, so I guess I’ll have to continue to scout obsolete tech at garage sales.

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