4/10/24
Newsletter #582
The Crack of Dawn
Many people, both young and old, male and female, have in recent times shared with me that, “Life is terrible.” They seem to be informing me as though it’s something I need to know. My late friend Rick used to state unequivocally all the time – 30 years ago – “This is the worst of all possible worlds,” and he meant it. I thought he was speaking nonsense then, and I think everybody who says that life is terrible now is speaking nonsense. When the 35-year-old guy installing my new toilet confided in me that life was terrible — those same words — I said, “You mean compared to the good old days before sewage? Back when we used to pour our shit and piss into the street, and there was horseshit everywhere? Those good old days?” He looked away angrily, expressing that I could never understand his particular pain. I can’t.
Right this moment isn’t even close to terrible. This is why we need to teach history. It wasn’t very long ago we had a thing called World War II where 80 million people were killed. That was terrible. The USA isn’t even in a war right now, which is somewhat miraculous.
I’ll tell you one thing that’s better for sure – it’s way better having legal weed than illegal weed. No question.
Also, as my friend John pointed out, “Porn is better.”
There are all sorts of things that are better than they used to be. If you happen to be a filmmaker, digital picture and sound is much easier to deal with than actual film and magnetic tape. And it looks great. Most of the new movies I see, whether they’re good or bad, look really good. The digital image in 4k looks great.
I’ve been watching Jay Leno’s Garage and he and his guys made a perfect engine manifold cover for a 1908 Rolls Royce with 3-D printers. It came out in plastic and they got to see if it fits, and it did, then they had it milled in aluminum. That’s great. You know how hard it would be to find that part? Or make it from scratch? That’s really cool; that’s not terrible.
Meanwhile, I actually spent an hour or more of my life watching someone assemble a miniature V-8 engine, which included, honestly and truly, every single miniaturized part. An extremely deft and patient person assembled it with a tweezers. It all went together properly and in the end, it ran. So, if some yo-yo on the internet could find this model, and build it, then it’s for sale, right? Someone else made it. Every fucking little part.
So, Jay Leno likes steam cars and has quite few of them. I like steam cars too. It seems that the best ones were made by a company named White – White Steam Cars. But the big name was Stanley Steamer. Here’s the difference in how the two cars created steam: a Stanley had to heat up it’s entire 15-gallon tank to run; whereas the White superheated a half gallon at a time, that the heat naturally sucked up from a 20-30 gallon water tank that would last a full day of driving. One highlight of these steam car videos is Jay managing to blow himself up under one of them (he was okay).
Algorithms are bad now. Or are they? They follow us around. Just because I watched all of those Jay Leno steam car videos, I must dearly love old cars, which I do to some extent, but not that much. And wow, there are a bunch of gigantic old car lots in the middle of nowhere all over the wide expanse of America with hundreds and thousands of rusting old cars from the 1930s forward.
Ah-hah! A memory. When my dad threw me out of the house at the age of 16, in 1974, I improbably went to Nova Scotia with two friends. Somewhere in the vastness that is Ontario, Canada, me and my pals came upon an enormous car junk yard, like the ones I’m seeing in the videos – long rows of cars (sort of like the photo I found). However, since my memory is from 1974 – 50 years ago – the old cars didn’t stop at the 1930s, they went all the way back to the very beginning of automobiles. Each row farther back continued to the 1920s and teens and aughts, there was less and less of these cars since the wooden parts had rotted away. The last row was finally nothing more than rusted chassis and engine blocks stuck in the dirt, like dinosaur bones.
Even warmer still today. I officially switched to shorts. And took a walk.
The man with the parrots on the corner has repaired his flagpole. The pole is presently up but flagless.
Happy spring.
Really enjoyed this crack of dawn!
Even the faintest insight about what life is like in much of The world outside the USA can only bring a grateful perspective. That, and I also loved the miniature engine assembly video.
The fulfilled person is not the one who HAS the most, but who NEEDS the least.