Day 109 – Catch the Wind and Did You Hear?

Friday May 9, 2021

Okay, okay. I usually don’t go on and on about one topic, but just when you think it can’t get any dumber, any stupider, it does.

Rachel reported a little something last night I had not heard before. There’s a chain of association here, so hold on. Rudy has let his “entourage” go. Turns out he usually wanders around with five people. He has to cut back to the son of a friend as a part time driver. Tough. Money problems? Maybe Donnie hasn’t paid him? Well, we know that to be true, because Satan wasn’t happy with him. So now Rudy is pleading with Trump to join him in a lawsuit and he’s also asking the RNC to come to his aid. Rudy may be getting ready to be disbarred from New York. Whoops. Double problem. Where’s the pressure coming from? Well, he’s been personally named in a billion dollar law suit. It’s all about the voting machine stuff he and others on the right claimed about the election. The suit and others are holding up in court and various right wing media have published retractions saying, basically, “We lied. We’re sorry.” Which I hope doesn’t mean they get out from under the legal lawsuit that could crush them. And here’s the new bit. There was a guy who has not recanted a word, says it’s all true about the election and the voting machine fraud, and he wrote a position paper all about it. Turns out that’s what Rudy, and the various news organizations, and politicians used to claim that the voting machine were “in on the steal.” Turns out there’s nothing to any of the claims. And here is the new-new thing – the guy behind all that is the guy who is head of Cyber Ninjas, who is conducting the ballot re-examination in Arizona.

Now, here’s where it gets weird. (What? You thought it was already weird? Come on.) None of the ballot stuff is true, just like none of the election fraud is real and they are both emanating from the same guy. So it seems to me that the election re-examinaiton will end by or before May 14th as they will have no where to do the job after that. There will be charges from the Feds and a suit for $1B from the voting machine companies. 

Then what? 

Well, I have a theory. It revolves around a gentleman from my hometown. He went to the music teacher and asked to be taught a few opening bars of a really great classical piece. Didn’t he want to learn more? No. Just a few bars. Why? He said at cocktail parties there was frequently a piano in the room. He wanted to be able to go up to the piano, hit a few really impressive notes and then say, “You don’t want to hear the rest of it.” The secret he told my dad was, “to never sit down at the piano.”

This idiot sat down at the piano! He got trapped. Maybe, he never thought that anyone would actually pay him to inspect the ballots and he could keep thumping his chest. Or ..

Maybe he really believes his own BS?

Does Satan actually believe he won the 2020 election?

Are we seeing a Stockholm Syndrome at work, but on the perpetrator and the victim are one in the same?

I think it highly likely. How else can you explain this behavior?

I get that the Republicans in Congress may or are going along with this nonsense because they are raising a ton of money off this scam. But beyond that? Are there true believers? What does this say about us?

Switching gears. Completely. The other day I asked Alexa to play “The Blues Project.” Maybe, they’ve faded from view, but Al Kooper was in the group at one point. Their second album “Projections” didn’t even list the members on the record sleeve or cover. A lot of classic blues numbers are on that album like “Two Trains Running”, as well as “some other stuff that is hard to classify. Not blues, not rock, kind of Classical instrumental? I dunno. Great album. When I asked Alexa to play The Blues Project one of the songs she played was Catch The Wind. There’s nothing fancy about the rendition. It’s clean, bare, and beautiful. The way Dylan would have done it with a band if he could sing beautifully.

I forget sometimes how wonderful some of that music is. This is music that grew out of the folk music of the early 60s like what The Kingston Trio and Peter Paul and Mary were doing. Jefferson Airplane on the Surrealistic Pillow album had Grace Slick’s two iconic songs: “White Rabbit “and “Someone to Love”, but there were also plaintive folks ballads – “Coming Back to Me.” Wow. (Sorry that was titled “Today.”)

There was blues and speeded up blues, and folk, and classically trained musicians playing their instruments and just some great stuff.

Now? I don’t get that feeling or sense from most of what I hear today. It’s a shame. But, in a way, a fast talking make-no-sense-as-long-as-it-ryhmes song kind of fits the times, doesn’t it?

PS A WWII bomber with the Norden bombsight. My dad was working for Perkin Elmer and this was one of their first jobs. It was Top Secret and my dad never talked about it. Mom said he carried a book with lots of equations in it. Perkin Elmer made the optics for the site. That means they ground and fitted the lens together. Mr. Perkin worked on a fixed cost basis and therefore never wanted to be the one who had to submit endless paperwork for cost over runs. I think Rand had their name associated with making the bombsight, but what the operators were really looking through was P-E optics. When I checked with Tom Crouch at the Smithsonian, Perkin Elmer’s name is not mentioned in any of their paperwork. Pity.

The problem with he initial design was that no one could assemble the thing. Mom said Dad spent a lot of time “fishing in a tube.” Had he not figured it out, I doubt Perkin Elmer would have survived.