For quite a long time now the soft-top roof on my MX5 has not closed very well. It’s apparently a common issue. There’s a rubber or plastic ‘nipple’ (!?) that wears away, allowing the latch to become floppy and loose.
I recently replaced this part, on both sides, with a new pair. Can’t recall who I ordered them from (I ought to find out; I think they’re Jass parts via BOFIracing?). But I’m pretty miffed that one of them – the dodgy one on my side – failed almost instantly.
I’ve subsequently ordered yet another one, this time as I got an individual one, not a pair. Wound up costing nearly a tenner, for a £1.95 part! Really annoying. But even more annoying. It doesn’t bleedin’ fit!
My ‘only option’, at least via MX5parts.co.uk.
I’ve contacted Autolink, who I got the more recent one from, to let them know (via email). Not had a reply as yet. I’ve also contacted MX5parts.co.uk, and they say there’s no longer a choice of two parts, but just the one:
I know that there used to be, and via some channels – e.g. Autolink – there still are, two different parts that have formerly been sold, that do this job. One is curved, the other is more ‘pointy’ (but still a bit curved).
These are the two types.
So, what do I do? Keep buying these little bits? I can’t actually afford any expenses right now. Even a tiny trickle such as this has become. Or do I modify the metal part of the latch; file it down and make the latch fit?
I might be forced to go the latter route, for purely economic reasons.
I have to confess I binge watched this entire mini-series last night. Not a terrifically wise decision, given I started watching it at about 9-10pm! I’m guessing it must have been about 5am when it finished?
I was hankering for some enjoyable adrenal-gland stimulation, that could be administered lying down. And in that respect, this new show – premiered July 1st – ticked the box.
Author and former SEAL, Jack Carr.
The story is based on a book of the same name by former Navy SEAL turned author, Jack Carr. Rather surprisingly, whilst the TV show has a Wikipedia page, Carr himself does not.
I’m not going to delve too deep into Carr’s real life or military career, nor am I going to synopsise the entire TV series. This is just going to be a fairly basic review/reaction to having just watched the entire show.
The fetishisation of macho violence is total.
I’m giving it three stars, for now. Why? Well, it was entertaining and compelling enough that I stayed up most the night to watch it. But it is also rather troubling – very worrying, frankly – in how it relates to the current rise in neo-Fascist aspects of contemporary American Conservatism, US gun culture and modern ideas of masculinity.
Jaws so square they could chisel granite.
What it highlights for me is the incredibly dangerous intersections of whole constellations of myths and reality in the psyche of the modern American right.
To highlight what I’m talking about, let’s just very lightly unpick one aspect of the story… the private contractors hired to provide security for various characters, large numbers of whom wind up as just so much cannon fodder.
This idea is quite well parodied in one of the Austin Powers movies; at one level these functionaries are really just guys doing a job, feeding their families. But here they’re no more than meat for the grinder of ‘righteous’ hatred!
Fails his family…
The attempt to have Reece as both a loving family man, as well as a war hardened super ninja, is, ultimately, as another reviewer I read elsewhere (I can’t recall where) says, really quite boneheaded.
Offing countless mercenaries to get to his targets, some of whom (the latter esp’) he brutally tortures – he’s more successful as a killer and a sadist than as a family man – just doesn’t square well with ‘nice ordinary guy’. Dude’s a freakin’ psycho!
… but excels as sadistic executioner.
Jack Carr loves his weapons, especially his guns, as you might imagine a Navy SEAL would. He hunts big game at home (mountain lion recently, I read somewhere). And he’s hunted humans too, as a sniper, whilst serving overseas.
He goes to gun shows, and gives interviews to people like Soldier of Fortune and The Federalist. The former essentially being ‘Mercernaries Monthly’, the latter a Conservative media organ that has shamelessly spouted anti-vax bollocks, and declared support for Trump’s blatant lies around the whole ‘stolen election’ fraud.
‘Lock and load’ is one thing. ‘Pray and spray’!?
In his SOF interview (read that here) he describes the story, accurately enough, as ‘a story of revenge without constraint.’ His hero Reece goes on the warpath, Stateside, to kill those – on his ‘terminal list’ – who he holds responsible for the deaths of his entire squad (mostly overseas), and his wife and daughter, once back home.
In the same SOF piece Carr expands: Reece kills ‘those involved using the tactics and techniques used by the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan, so at another level it’s about someone abandoning the rule of law and becoming the terrorist and insurgent he’d been fighting … it’s about a veteran of the War on Terror bringing that war home.’
That sounds quite interesting as an idea. There is a chickens coming home to roost side to the ‘war on terror’ that America seems to fundamentally fail to grasp. But that potentially interesting thread is poorly served here, in the end.
The suits and their spooks, always corrupt.
The plot is further complicated by other strands in the story. I’ll refrain from spoilers. Despite these attempts to be confusingly interesting, however, the over familiar ’conspiracy from within’ trope is rather convoluted, and, frankly, veers towards the silly. But it just about serves its purpose, as a plot driver. Don’t examine anything too closely though. It bears very little scrutiny!
Ultimately this one of those recurring and popular fantasies of older right wing males: über machismo uncorked. And ultimately it’s pretty revolting. The ending being particularly dumb and horrid.
But the untethered ego of the hero survives! So… all is well, is it? Really? If I was Carr’s wife, I’d be pretty worried about his priorities and general mental health.
Black, red,white? Wasn’t there a little Austrian chap that liked this combo’?
Returning to the neo-fascist threads, these are on display everywhere, from the unctuous tattooed bodybuilder villain, to the rites of the US military itself, to Reece, part hillbilly demon, part sensitive beautiful powerful man!
There’s a toxic self-regard at the heart of this macho male military culture, in which everything and everybody else is merely an ancillary appendage to the hero’s ego. Not at all attractive, to me at any rate!
Most real world villains prob’ spend less time in gyms and salons.*
In the end it’s all just a rehash of everything from Clint Eastwood to James Bond to Rambo. The lone hero, against pretty much the entire world. Mean, moody. A hardass mo’fo’, who’ll slit you from gullet to gizzard just as readily as buy you a brew.
Clearly made with a huge budget, and pretty decently acted, albeit in a world of cartoonish simplification, I did enjoy ‘the ride’. But as a film that might have anything to leave the viewer with, after the adrenaline subsides? Pretty bleak!
Reece hangs with his bro’.
* I’m sure real-life super vain super villains like Trump spend plenty of time and money on their appearance. They just clearly do so far less successfully than some of the specimens Hollywood style casting agents clearly prefer.
There was a very faint knock on our door at about 9am this morning. I’m amazed I heard it. As I was busy drilling holes in an upstairs wall, to mount a little shelf for a DVD player, ‘neath our bedroom TV.
DVD shelf brackets up; hardboard shelf is temp’!
On going downstairs I spied a young lad with a lorry, with a crane on’t back, and six rather knackered old looking sleepers on it. It is a shame they’re B grade, in all honesty, as they have ruddy great cracks in them, splintered areas and missing chunks.
Unloading the sleepers.
But we were given them, in exchange for my help with some manual labour. So really we’re lucky to have them at all! Thanks, Ken, for helping us out.
Nearly there.
Two other jobs this morning: the above mentioned little DVD-player shelf in our bedroom, and (re)fixing – I already repaired it once – another knackered old drawer from a set of freebie (Freecycle this time, and ages ago now) chest o’mc-drawers.
The drawer in its broken state.
This set of drawers was full of my clothes till yesterday, as were two others. Leaving Teresa with just one set of drawers, and yet more clothes than me! So now we’ll have two chests each, and I’ll have mended us a drawer each in one of them as well.
The drawer fixed, the glue ‘going off’.
The heat today is ridiculous. I did some of the drawer fixing work out in the back garden. And now I’m back indoors, buck naked and sweating profusely (I think at heart I’m a naturist!). I’m going to hop in the shower and freshen up, and have a brief rest.
Another view. Note missing bits of fancy trim!*
Or should I delay the shower until after moving the sleepers? The latter would require enlisting a strong burly neighbour. I wonder… is Sean in at no. 72?
I’ve been aware of George Carlin for many years. And even occasionally watched little bits of his stand-up routines online. But I’d never really bothered to ‘check him out’. And, truth be told, that largely remains the case even now.
That said, I just watched about a half-hour’s worth of him ‘roasting’, as I think they call it these days, religion. When I say religion, really I mean – or rather George Carlin usually means – Christianity, that being the big one in his neighbourhood. And mine too, as it happens.
30 minutes, or thereabouts, is my biggest single dose of Carlin so far. And it was fun. He did allude to other religions a few times, such as when discussing the bewildering array of religious headgear, and rules surrounding it. Or the ‘every country’s army believes it has God on its side’ thing.
It’s kind of weird that we can and do live in a world that holds all this mental or psychological dissonance. Weird, and simultaneously totally predictable. One of life’s enduring paradoxes, perhaps?
On the one hand it seems very obvious to me that the irrational thinking promoted by religion, be it the ‘personal revelation’ or the ‘socially coercive’ kinds, or any other, has been – and perhaps still is? – very useful for the surviving and even thriving of both individuals and groups (often to the detriment of other individuals or groups) at times in our evolution.
And perhaps that’s why it’s so hard to shake? And that brings me to the ‘on the other hand’ aspect; it all seems so obviously foolish and ridiculous. I’m with Carlin, every step of the way, on this (and probably other things, see below).
Funny and wise. Great combo’.
Some folk I know are like, why are you so bothered about all this? Well, because I was brought up in it. Or in certain bits of it. And because it’s still such a big force in the world around me.
Anyway, God rest his sceptical Soul! I think I’ll try and watch the documentary picture at the top of this post.
Yesterday and today I’ve been out in the garden, filling in a hole I dug a whiles back. I had hare-brained plans to dig an underground drum bunker music studio. Actually I still do. But I was eventually persuaded that, for now, such schemes weren’t really on.
More Hollyhocks.
I took these photos whilst working in the garden. What an absolutely gorgeous day it’s been! Our long thin garden is looking lovely. To my eyes at any rate. It’s cluttered and messy, just like ever single room in our home! And that’s actually something I’m determined to start dealing with better.
Look at the roses. Lovely!
I haven’t bothered to document the re-filling of the concrete slab ‘ole. Tho’ I may take some pics tomorrow. As there’s (literally) tons more earth to shift. Pretty flowers and grasses seem more uplifting!
Our ‘cottage garden’ long grasses are out of control.
Fortunately the large tree at the end of the garden meant I was mostly in the shade when doing the earth-moving. We wound up inviting some new-ish neighbours over to have a look around our garden, which was very nice. But it did stop me from doing as much spade work as I’d hoped.
‘Strategic neglect’ creates meadow!
Yesterday I picked up two spades and two forks, all nice old fashioned stuff, from a local Facebook seller, for £5 each. I thought these would be useful for this job, and just to have generally.
Returning to the theme of clutter. I’m determined that 2022 will be the year I turn that side of our home life around. In every area: every room, every outbuilding, the garden. The whole damn lot!
‘Egbert the Egret’, by his ‘nest’.
And to finish, a pic of a bird sculpture. We got two of these, one for us, and one for my mum. It’s not the sort of thing I’d normally go for. But Teresa wanted it, and I’m mellowing and allowing her to change me, in many ways. For the better, I hope!?
Yesterday we visited my sister, Hannah, in her new home in Northstowe. I cooked a baked cabbage recipe I found (above) via YouTube, for us. Einfache Rezepte, the name of the channel posting the video, is German for Simple Recipes.
Hannah’s serving.
It was Wimbledon Ladies’ Singles Final day as well. I was rooting for Rybakina, of Kazakhstan. And she won, beating Ons Jabeur of Tunisia. Yay!
Mine, looking quite pristine!
Hannah is working full time at a local garden centre shop. So cooking a meal for her seemed like a nice little gesture! Hopefully giving her a little time out.
Teresa tucks into hers.
We prepped all the ingredients at home the evening before, and took all the necessary stuff, including three nice new small Pyrex dishes to cook individual servings in. Ali and Sofi had their preferred and usual pizzas!
Teresa also took a few bits and bobs garden wise: some pots, and some seeds to plant. It was nice seeing her and Sofi plant a few seeds.
Lobster, he’s a big lad!
Their cats are very sweet. Lobster’s a bug and very hairy boy! And loves cuddling up, and rolling onto his back to have his belly stroked. And what a belly it is! Sushi, white and short haired, is blind, and tiptoes about cautiously, his head cocked a bit, occasionally bumping into things. The poor little sweetheart!
Not a great pic. But at least we’re all in it!
I realise many folks, myself included, aren’t too keen on photos of ourselves splashed on’ the web. But I hope Teresa and Hannah and the girls won’t mind my sharing this? It’s nice to have a record of our getting together!
Two bits of intriguing Steely Dan/Donald Fagen related news: 1) I Mean To Shine, by Linda Hoover, has been released, after over 50 years in the vaults, and 2) Peter Jones’ Nightfly, a biography of Donald Fagen, is due out in September.
I’ll be reading this when it ‘drops’, as the kids these days say!
Will either be any good? I don’t know. But I’m willing to give both a try, and to find out. Will Amazon offer free Vine copies to everyone but me, as they do with my other main interests (from Napoleon and Hitler to Tintin and Haddock!)? Who knows!
Hoover’s album, recorded in 1970, and featuring Becker, Fagen, ‘Skunk’ Baxter, and five numbers written by the ‘indomitable duo’, pre-Dan, was masterminded by Dan man, Gary Katz.
Tragically for Hoover, Roulette Records label owner ‘Mo’ Levy – not known for treating his acts right – angrily pulled the plug on the whole thing when he discovered publishing rights for almost all of the tunes resided elsewhere. And, ironically, whatever nascent flames I Mean To Shine might’ve promised Hoover, were snuffed out.
Obviously Don, Walt, Skunk, Katz and co. were more persistent and, ultimately, successful, as we all know. Hoover, now 71, has had a long wait for another chance to reach folk with her music and, perhaps, shine.
The only time I’ve encountered genuine 24 carat Steely Dan gold in an unexpected place is when I learned that ‘Canadian Star’ – a beautiful instrumental track by Dr Strut on their self-titled 1979 album (on Motown, no less!) – was in fact a Becker/Fagen composition.
Once you know Canadian Star is The Dan, it’s sooo obvious. The lush chords, the serpentine melodies, the fantastic arrangement. It’s a tribute to the artistry of Dr Strut that they had both the chops and the soul to lay down such a great rendition.
I have this on vinyl. Can’t recall when I last actually listened to it!
Other forays into the ‘early’ musical adventures of the cats who would become The Dan have been less rewarding. For example, an album called The Roots of Steely Dan, and another, You Gotta Walk It Like You Talk It, are both distinctively underwhelming.
I haven’t heard I Mean To Shine yet… not sure whether to buy the CD (£14), the MP3 album (£8), or just stream online? Hmmm…
Many, many moons ago, our pal Patrick gave us an old pine chest o’drawers he wanted rid of. It was in a fairly poor state. But I thought I could salvage it.
I gave it a good clean, sanded it, and fixed one or two bits. But I left the bottom drawer as it was; it had a ruddy great ‘ole in it! Over three-quarters of the base of the drawer was missing.
And we’ve used the chest for years, the middle and top two drawers working fine, the bottom as a kind of semi-operative stash for random crap. Not any more though!
Today I watched a YouTube self-help video about clutter. And although, in all honesty, it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know, it did serve as a tonic reminder of some home truths. And it galvanised me into action. So, although I normally avoid such content like the plague, I’d like to thank Nena Levone for her video. And I include the link to it (above).
My resolve to tackle our clutter (Teresa is bad that way as well!) began with simply trying to tidy our bedroom a bit.
TEAC Tascam 244 packed, ready for storage.
The first thing I did was box up an old Tascam 244 Portastudio. I got this from my dad, Simon, and hope to restore it to full working order one day. But for years it’s just sat around gathering dust and getting in our way.
So it’s getting boxed up and stored in our attic. I had to slightly customise a cardboard box to make it fit. I’ve added bubble-wrap to protect it. And, naturally, only when I’d fully boxed it up, did I find the manual!
Next I started moving stuff around. I do absolutely loads of this. it should probably be top of my resumé! And really I’m wasting time. Anyway, today I’ve been trying to move stuff to more appropriate locations. And once that was done, the chest of drawers – now with no mounds of stuff all over it – kind of hove into view, as an obvious next job.
Removing what’s left of the old base…
I took it – it in this instance being the bottom drawer, not the entire unit – out into the garden, and removed what was left of the former solid pine base. I’d have liked to have kept everything as solid pine, but that would be too labour intensive and expensive. So I got a piece of 9mm ply cut to exactly the size I needed, by Simon at West End DIY.
Lunch break: brie’n’bacon roll, with Guinness!
I needed to slightly bevel three of the surfaces, so they would slide into the friction fit grooves in the drawer. Only the rear face of the drawer is actually attached to the base. This allows the wood to breathe and move a bit.
I did this with one of my Stanley planes, plus a little additional sanding. With a bit of finessing it finally fitted in nicely. I then banged in some very small lost-head nails or tacks, and the drawer was looking great again.
Pinning the new drawer base in position.
Last but not least, I fitted the rather lovely old wooden handles. One still has an original screw. The other I had to bodge a bit, with some dowel filling the vacant ol’ hole, and a new screw. With that done, I could pop the drawer back in and load her up.
Before this repair these drawers were filled with a real mish mash of my clothing, bedding, and random rubbish. Now they’re chock-full o’ naught but my vestments. Very satisfying!
Et voilà, back in use!
There are one or two other little jobs I’d love to get done today, one of which is to put up a mini shelf for our bedroom DVD player, either above or below our bedroomTV.
Not sure that I’ll get around to this today though? Very tired! Plus I might cook our dinner tonight as well. Saw an interesting cooked cabbage recipe on YouTube that I’d like to try!
I’m totally on Jack Stratton’s – or Vulfmon’s – wavelength when it comes to digging the guitar artistry of David T Walker. And what a beautifully minimal rendering of a classic song!
Wahoo!!! Today one of my schools surprised me in the nicest way possible. Head of Music & Performing Arts, Jenny W, told me, on my arrival, ‘There are some boxes you might want to see’.
I knew what this meant. We had a Drumathon fundraiser event s while back. Actually it was what feels like ages ago now. So far back I can’t remember exactly when! A big thanks to all the staff, pupils and parents who helped us with that, as that’s what’s lead to this.
The former drum kit.
I’ve included pictures of both the former or ‘before’ kit, as well as the present or ‘after’ state of affairs. If I was a savvy YouTuber I might’ve made an ‘unboxing’ video. I suppose this a ‘slow’ version of that?
The old school drum kit – actually there are several; but this is the one I teach on – has more than done it’s duty. The current incarnation, which was preceded by a slightly better mostly Pearl Export kit, is mainly not so great CB drums, with the old Export snare, a Leedy floor tom, plus an assortment of cymbals and hardware.
Mostly CB, with a a few other odds and ends.
The schools’ several drum kits, all partial and all none too hot, share one thing in common; they sport plain monochrome wraps. The new Tama Imperialstar , by contrast, has a gorgeous and rich Coffee Teak veneer, in a lovely high gloss finish.
The school’s tired old kits all have ancient and very weathered drum heads. Whilst the new Tama kit has shiny new heads, it has to be admitted they aren’t the best feature of the kit. Hopefully we’ll re-skin this kit with coated ambassadors, and maybe get a CS-dot on the snare? (The kick is fine as is.)
Ye olde mixed bag of cymbals (and stands).
The ancient Frankenstein kits that the school’s soldiered on with have certainly served the school well. But now they’re all way too tired, and long past the point of simply being sad and decrepit, belonging, frankly, to ‘useless scrap’ territory! This shiny new Imperialstar should add a bit of bling and zing to proceedings.
This old kit has done its share of duty.
So anyway, I moved the boxes from the office to the current ‘drum room’ (also the school’s music tech suite), and started the unboxing and assembly process. Some of the kids, who were off on a school music trip today, helped me un-box everything before the left. Shame I didn’t get any pics of that. But schools are funny about teachers photographing students nowadays.
What treasures do these boxes contain?
Opening boxes of new stuff is always fun! I can totally see why unboxing videos have become a thing.
Ooh… what fun!
The drum sizes are as follows: 22” x 16” kick; 14” x 5” snare; 10” x 7” and 12” x 8” rack toms, and a 16” x 15” floor tom. The cymbals are HCS Bronze: 14” hi-hats, 16” crash and 20” ride. They’re not top end cymbals. But they both look and sound better than anything we had previously.
Shiny new Meinl cymbals.What a lovely looking kit!
Although the music trip kids left after the unboxing, I still managed to get a decent chunk assembled before my first pupil, Dan, showed up for his lesson. Fortunately he was happy to spend that lesson helping me finish putting the kit together.
Interesting smaller tom sizes!
The snare and rack toms arrived assembled. The kick and floor tom needed putting together. Once everything was assembled – with a pillow in the bass drum giving instant satisfaction – it was time to start tweaking the tuning.
Everything is shiny and new. There’s even a stool and a drum key.
I’m really chuffed the school went with the brand/line and finish I suggested. I’m wondering did I also suggest these specific sizes? The kit consists of rather fusion-esque smaller tom sizes, which, with the supplied heads, give a pretty high pitched sound.
Love this wooden veneer!
Whenever one has a new kit, it takes a while to tweak it, and get it bedded in. Today that took the form of some tom tuning, tightening up the snare, and getting the toms properly aligned relative to each other.
Gorgeous!
I think the aesthetics of this kit, it’s physical allure, are actually very important. A sexy kit makes friends easily. People want to play it, and that makes teaching a little more fun, and quite a bit easier.
An aerial view; the cymbals look lush!Viewed more or less from the cockpit.I just adore the finish!
So, all in all, how totally terrific! Aren’t we lucky to have such a lovely new kit?
