I recently noticed I didn’t have an actual electric bass in my arsenal, so I set out to cure this anomaly, my old P bass being lost in a lake and all. I noticed an unusual piece for sale and bought it, an Explorer body bass, ready to burn. I wanted to do a smoke color to see if a dark color would work with the carbon black of the burn but it looked rather sad, so I went another way.
The back
Front, erm,
Underway
Ready for color
After two coats of black I oversprayed with red to see the effect. The results were unique, and improved as I went on.
I used five coats of base paint and another three coats of clear lacquer, then a clear coat. It seems to be a durable finish so far. I did strip the guitar shortly after finishing it, though. The clear coat was inadequate, so I added three more coats and now it shines a bit.
Headstock in Midnight Blue
Erm….
Fin
Action!
I build these from many sources: bodies from Taiwan, necks from Bulgaria, and electronics from all over, and design to the need at the time. It’s also the greatest fun burning my dreams.
Custom neckplate
This is not one of my favorite projects but it sounds badass and plays great. It’s kind of too death-looking for me but then again I don’t do death metal. I’m still burning the usual things, kitchenware, skateboards and odd things from the thrift shops. My hope is to have a large inventory ready for spring.
Next
These are so cool. How deep are those burn marks? Looks like there is some texture to them.
Yes it’s quite textured,
Thanks!
That looks awesome.
As a Steve Harris fan, I love a good bass.
lovely work
This popped up in Facebook.
Google Maps shows that it is real.
hopefully I don’t fuck up this link
The intersection of Moose and Squirrel?
Yes 😉
Where’s Boris and Natasha when you need them?
I only get a map of Banff, nothing pinned, and just the town highlighted.
Oops.
Zoom in. All the streets are named after critters.
There is an intersection of Moose St and Squirrel St which may or may not have meaning depending upon your childhood.
“Oh kinnath, that link never works!”
Genuine LOL
Well, he is just trying to Boris.
That show was rarely on.
Sorry, young lad.
I was looking at Cougar Street. Drunken frat boy tourists beware.
Street view
Perfect
🙂
This is actually a good place to post this! Last night I was surfing YouTube and found that Rick Beato did a wonderful interview with Marty Friedmen. It's a full hour so unless you are hardcore guitar person or Marty fan I'm not expecting many will watch it or watch all of it. It's also restricted because of salty language.
The Marty Friedman Interview: From Megadeth to Japanese Guitar Icon">The Marty Friedman Interview: From Megadeth to Japanese Guitar Icon
The first half is about the dismal state of guitar in western pop music, the popularity of guitar in many forms of Japanese music including J-Pop, and the difference in Japanese and western chord use and progression. The second half is how to be better guitarist and his creative processes.
The TLDW summary of the first half:
1. Rick comments at the time of the interview there is only one Top 10 pop song that uses a guitar.
2. Marty comments US pop music does the same old 4 or 5 chord progression while J-Pop does many, many more. They aren't complex chords or changes, but many, many more of them. I agree, I think is part of the attraction for both Marty and I with J-Pop.
3. Marty made a really interesting hypothesis about the popularity in all kinds of Japanese music and guitar. He notes the shamisen, a traditional Japanese stringed instrument, is beloved across generations of Japanese. In many ways it sounds like a distorted guitar and thinks that why the guitar is much more accepted by young and old there.
I've heard interviews with Marty in Japanese, but this was my first extended interview with him in English. He is equally humble in English as he is in his spoken Japanese. Seems like a genuinely nice guy. One quirk with Japanese is that public speaking in things like an interview forces the speaker into speaking politely. I wasn't sure if this was his persona in English or not, but it sure seems like it.
Also Rick did a real nice job letting him speak and asking just the right questions.
I have seen Friedman three times now when he’s come to Dallas.
The first time I was dragged and I assumed it would be some guitar wankery bullshit. It was not. Well, the opening bands were… but … He was incredible and his band was incredible. It’s true that he throws in some guitar shredding stuff like the nearly impossible solo from “Tornado of Souls”, but it was great.
His band played real rock and entertained for the entire set.
I know will make a point to see him every time I can.
*now will make a point…
Rust in Peace is great.
I think parts of it were written just to show off the guitar playing.
In fairness to Dave and Marty, some of the guitar work is amazing.
Guitar magazine back in the 90s published a tablature lesson on the Tornado of Souls sweep picking monster solo and received letter after letter explaining that it was not actually possible to play and he must have been faking it somehow.
I’m glad to have actually seen him bring that out in person just to confirm that it is actually playable.
I was a violist.
There was always something different about “Oops I did it again,” I just didn’t realize what it was until someone told me about this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vWyS_JGwxQ
How to Write a Fugue
https://youtu.be/tgDcC2LOJhQ?si=a2ABVRTzQ1XXA1HG
Isn’t Marty the guy who made HR Puffin’Stuff?
With Marty?
I meant Sid?
I thought it was Marty Feldman. From Young Frankenstein.
No; he was the bug-eyed guy in Young Frankenstein.
I acknowledge that you exist and I did not read your comment first. I go to the box, and feel shame.
Democracy is a nice fantasy, as long as everybody agrees with me
Yes, we should engage oil and gas producers in the global effort to avert climate catastrophe, and perhaps the offer to host the summit was intended as a carrot to encourage them to join rather than obstruct progress. But if the olive branch was offered in good faith, it was cynically turned into a fig leaf to conceal the naked, shameful ambition of Big Oil to increase its planetary rampage.
——-
So, what do we do?
Mend it, don’t end it. We call for a substantial overhaul of the COP rules and processes. It’s almost embarrassing to have to explicitly state, for example, that petro-states — those whose economies heavily depend on the extraction and export of oil and gas — should not be allowed to host the meeting. Given the enormous conflict of interest, oil industry executives should not be allowed to heavily influence, much less preside over, the summit
The weak COP sauce of “name and shame” — publicly exposing and condemning those standing in the way of climate action — is failing, because the bad actors appear to have no shame. There must be financial penalties, such as tariffs or even embargoes, for countries like Saudi Arabia that seek to thwart the global effort to phase out fossil fuels by locking in oil dependency in emerging economies in Africa and Asia. And the COP rules should be changed to allow for a super majority of, say, 75% of nations to approve a decision, rather than the current consensus rules that allow even one holdout to veto any agreement.
These reforms need to happen immediately. The window of opportunity to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius is closing. It will shut tight in a matter of years without rapid and meaningful progress. We must seize this moment to fix the broken COP process and stop the world from barreling down the road to ruin. It’s time to change the rules so we can change the world for the better.
The obvious solution is a global socialist dictatorship, with climate advocates in charge. Then we can finally get down to the serious and necessary work of capping all the oil and gas wells and filling in the mines. That will be a good first step on our journey to appease and heal Gaia.
The window of opportunity to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius is closing.
It’s already closed a dozen times already, according to you guys. What’s one more?
The headline cracked me up:
Progressivism in a nutshell.
This performance art is useless, but we have to do something!
When something has been proven not to work for decades, always double down.
Democracy is fine to elect the local dog catcher, but important stuff like this can’t be left to the unwashed masses.
“Yes, we should engage oil and gas producers in the global effort to avert climate catastrophe”
AND BY ENGAGE, MEAN . . . .
Michael E. Mann is presidential distinguished professor and director of the Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. He is author of the new book “Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons From Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis.”
This is why the University of Pennsylvania should be razed.
I definitely want my money back. Plus interest.
I also attended at the same time as Elon Musk and failed to befriend him. Like a complete idiot.
You laugh, but U Penn turned a blind eye to Michael Mann’s scientific misconduct because he brought them prestige and massive government grants. Mark Steyn has been defending himself now for almost 10 years from a libel lawsuit after he pointed out how laughably worthless the investigation was.
Well duh.
Zelensky meets with our leaders today.
https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1734573829480198544
True story, Raytheon and other weapons manufacturers are all listed as ESG (good for the environment and society). What level of moral bankruptcy must one attain to believe that weapons manufacturers are good for society, but the local natural gas company is the worst?
I had heard that before but I thought it was too outlandish. Then I remembered this is 2023.
At this point I don’t think outlandish is even visible in the rear view mirror.
OK, not to Hyperbole here, but I am unwilling to say that weapons manufacturing is inherently, always and everywhere, bad for society. Even if you somehow carve out the handgun, rifle, and shotgun makers.
It depends on ESG criteria of which there are many.
Also depends on the mix of civilian use in aerospace versus military. And from memory land mines and the like are a generally a big “no”.
I don’t give a crap about ESG. I’m just saying that, given human nature and all of history, weapons manufacturing can be something other than bad for society. Si vis pacem, and all that.
Got it. I don’t disagree.
It’s all for show. On face value, a weapons manufacturer is in no way doing more positive for society than a natural gas company. S&P dropped Tesla as ESG after Musk bought Twitter. It’s all politics. We all know that Raytheon would not be ESG if Bush was president and we were at war in Iraq.
Even their bullshit exceptions about land mines and such is performative nonsense. How do you invest in a company but not one of its products? Bullshit shell game. These are the same companies that make Uranium tipped rockets for conventional military use.
Before WWII, we had an incredible abundance of heavy manufacturing that could be repurposed for war as needed. When the war started, they could crank out huge quantities of high-quality, low-cost weapons.
Today we have very little heavy industry, and a bunch of defense contractors who do nothing except produce exceptionally expensive weapons systems (many of which underperformed in the Ukraine). Those companies seem to exert a huge amount of influence in our national government.
Boeing
Founded Seattle 1916
Moved to Chicago 2001
Moved to Arlington (aka DC) in 2023.
As I like to say a lobbying company that happens to make aerospace products.
I think that weapons manufacturers are great for society. Beretta, Smith and Wesson, Bravo Company, Nightforce Optics, and Trijicon all deserve high accolades.
What Palmetto State Armory has achieved is an American success story. I’ve been impressed with their ammo, firearms, and how they keep recognizing market needs and filling them.
*upvotes*
So, I heard this for the first time yesterday: https://mises.org/wire/what-would-happen-if-us-stopped-supporting-ukraine
Main point:
“According to a draft unsealed this past June [2023], Russia had agreed to pull its forces back to prewar boundaries. In exchange, Ukraine had agreed it would not seek NATO membership [in 2022].
So why didn’t it happen? Well, it may have started to. In early April, Russia withdrew its forces from northern Ukraine, around Kyiv—an action Putin later said was related to the Istanbul agreement. But then, according to Bennett, former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, and the leader of the Ukrainian delegation to the talks, David Arakhamia, the West pressured Zelensky to abandon negotiations and fight. Assuming the best intentions, it’s possible officials in Washington and Brussels believed the Ukrainians could win enough battles to improve their leverage in future negotiations. But that is not what happened. Instead, Washington bankrolled a horrifying twenty-one-month war of attrition that has cost the people of Ukraine greatly in land, lives, and limbs. After talks broke down, Russia laid permanent claim to tens of thousands of square miles of Ukrainian territory that it had earlier agreed to relinquish.”
I know the dates are a little confusing because it’s just a snip. But the negotiations took place in 2022 but the info just came out in 2023. I’m probably way behind the news, but is this true? Was there a deal in place last year?
To be fair, it’s not easy to have an invader just say “OK, never mind. We’ll just pull back to where we invaded you from, and pinky swear not to do it again. That whole death and destruction thing? Let’s just let bygones be bygones.” Probably the smart deal for Ukraine to make, but not easy.
If true, that’s sickening.
I have heard in the past 3-4 months that Biden and Boris Johnson nixed the deal. But I don’t remember seeing any receipts, so to speak.
I recall several stories about Europe and the US pressuring Ukraine not to take a peace treaty that was offered, but I don’t recall any more specific details than that.
It’s true. The Duran guys talked about it many times. It was Boris Johnson who was sent over to torpedo the talks, make promises of endless aid to the Ukraine, and generally make sure this turned into a horrific war.
The Ukrainian army is in retreat now. When we pull the plug on aid, they’ll have to immediately have to go back to negotiations. At that point the Russians are going drive a very hard bargain (i.e. Odessa).
Tragic abandonment of a vital ally
After $130 billion in U.S. taxpayer money since 2022, most of which we are being told has been spent in Ukraine. After hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians dead and maimed, Ukraine’s economy in such a state that the West has to prop it up, and NATO pledging more troops and weapons it doesn’t even seem to have, the issue was afforded a scant few minutes, and used only in the broadest of ways to pound each other. Gone was even the ghost of the old argument that the free world was at stake or that our obligation to Ukrainians was a moral imperative. It’s been reduced to a political cudgel, which is the first step to being memory holed in Washington. It happened to Iraq and Afghanistan in prior president debates 2012 and 2016.
The gist seems to be, maybe if we ignore it, it will just go away?
Kill, kill, kill.
Responsible Statecraft, indeed.
Are there actually people provincial enough to believe this nonsense? Ukraine is an ally? I must have missed all those wars where they never once did anything to assist us ever. Even during WWII they were a Nazi-allied region
Can say the same about Israel.
Meanwhile we have royally screwed actual allies such as Germany. Destroying that pipeline and making energy far more expensive is wrecking their economy.
USA! USA! USA!
I have said the same thing about Israel and called an antisemite for not valuing foreign lives over Americans
Can say the same about Israel.
Not really, the US supported its founding, and they have been a MNNA since the designation was created in the 80’s. They were used as a wedge in the region against the Soviet Bloc during the cold war, particularly Egypt before Sadat.
“You can put lipstick on a Dick Cheney, it is still a fascist neocon today.”
I don’t care if he talks and piss’s at the same time, that is some good shit right there.
“NATO pledging more troops”
Wait, what?
So, after 130 B from the US every player is worse off but we should continue to keep on keeping on. (Whispers while leaning forward) “We need to pay our fair share”
True story, Raytheon and other weapons manufacturers are all listed as ESG (good for the environment and society). What level of moral bankruptcy must one attain to believe that weapons manufacturers are good for society, but the local natural gas company is the worst?
Nuclear winter is a surefire antidote for global warming.
I’ve been saying that for years.
The only issue is picking the right target. Two birds; one stone . . . etc.
Got to get the human population down to 0.5gigapeeps for sustainability!
That’s still a lot of marshmallow chickens.
but is this true? Was there a deal in place last year?
I think there was some talk a while back (I have no idea how legitimate) about Boris Johnson scuppering some negotiations.
It was a rumor until Kiev’s mayor admitted that there was a deal in place that was squashed by Boris Johnson and American representatives. I have a hard time believing that someone in Ukraine would just make that up. It’s being talked about in Ukraine a lot more now, since they have all but lost the war now
I like the one captioned “Action”. Reminds me of this:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059260/mediaviewer/rm2445686016
https://samkriss.substack.com/p/taylor-swift-does-not-exist
Taylor Swift does exist. She haunts the dreams of every involved father. Who wants their daughter to grow-up obsessed with boys and the need for nine month abortions to remain legal?
And we all know that’s she’s the problem with all those relationships
And Travis Kelce is like four times boosted, so good luck having kids and not having a heart attack before 50
Are we back to calling women “birds”?
Does Sam know SugarFree by any chance?
That is way too many words written about a not-so-consequential person.
/curmudgeon
https://www.pennlive.com/politics/2023/12/electric-vehicle-owners-in-pa-could-soon-be-zapped-with-an-annual-fee.html
PAY YOUR FAIR SHARE!
I’m guessing the reason is “Roads!!!” A EV sedan that weighs as much as a full size Truck or SUV and pays no gas taxes must be hard on the PENDOT’s bottom line.
I was right. That insanely expensive gas tax that was only supposed to fund roads and somehow is now funding the State Police is the reason.
Nice work Yusef! I played a 5 string Fender Jazz bass in my youth and now I drive a KIA. Are we related?
Cool stuff Yusef. You’ve taken some hard shots in the past few years, and I do admire the way you just get back up and keep going.