tubezone.net Blog

I put off publishing a blog for a long time. I didn’t like the idea, it was too trendy for me, and I don’t like being trendy. To me being trendy means someone is putting a lot of mental and life energy into Keeping Up With The Joneses (in this case, the Cyber-Joneses), hopping on social bandwagons and being Conspicuously Consumptive, which could be expended on just doing things like, say, enjoying being alive. Me, even if I had enough money for a Rolex and a Hummer, I would spend (or more likely, invest!) the money in something else, and maybe blow $99 at Earl Scheib to get my Toyota painted.
Besides, what the heck would I blog about? Politics is too much of a hornet’s nest nowadays. Even the blandest and most thoughtful post on politics is going to generate virulent and outraged replies. I’m not a newspaper columnist who has secretary to filter my correspondence and I don’t have 18 hours a day to discuss politics.

Audio & electronics? That’s my job, I’m hardly inclined to spend my few leisure hours discussing it as well. Most of what could be discussed already has been. The basics are well known, electrons go from Point A (signal source) to Point B (output). Air molecules get vibrated at Point A (speaker or headphones), and vibrate Point B (eardrums). There’s innumerable variations on that theme, but there you have it. Many of the violent & lengthy discussions on audio & electronics on the internet involve science-by-bandwagon (ie: I get enough people to agree with me, therefore I’m right), science-by-anecdotes (eg: Moe, Larry and Curly say the $300/meter speaker cables make a difference, so I’m convinced!), true scholarly discussions on the internet hardly exist and if they did are too deep for the casual reader anyway.

Eventually, I’ll set up a bulletin-board system for people who buy and want to discuss audio related items I sell.
The White Sox? Not much to say about them except if you weren’t convinced in 2005 that Ozzie Guillen is a genius (and Jim Rome is full of caca up to his ears), wait’ll next year!

So, not much I could write a %@$*% blog about, anyway, or so I thought.

Then, I ran across this guy’s web page and his blog. Lots of stuff about fast-food outlets in the USA. I had some comments I wanted to make about his blog and his web site content, and started searching for a feedback or comment form, or an email link. Warn’t none. Apparently Mr Graham doesn’t want to hear from, or include comments from, the hoi-polloi, the Peanut Gallery, the Teeming Millions, or whatever you wish to call The Rest Of Us. I entertained the idea that perhaps he was simply tired of being spammed (I am, and the one thing I could find on his site was obviously a spam-dump address), or his blog had been google-bombed by spammers. However, if you read his web page and blog (which I must admit is well written and well researched, this guy either has lots of help or really likes fast food!), the lack of interest in handing out credit to anyone besides himself (he mentions unknown people nagging him to visit certain places) or including anyone else’s input is palpable & obvious.

So, I’m thinking, phooey on you! I’ll start my own blog and comment on your web site and blog, whether you like it or not! Besides, food (and travelling) is an endless source of material. There’s few or no deadlines (as there would be in business or current events) that would make my blog comments un-topical if I post them whenever I have time & feel like it. No one is going to beat me up over being a few days late posting about how I like Juan Talfulano’s tacos or a trip on the Lake Shore Limited… and I can even recycle old material, like my 2nd class train trip on Nacionales de Mexico in 1974.

Note that while you can comment as you please, all comments that are posted publicly are moderated by Yours Truly. This is not a public bulletin board, it’s a private blog. If you make comments and they don’t appear, it ain’t nothing personal (well, it may be), but I simply didn’t think the comments were apropo for this blog.

Best Regards, Uncle Ned