It wasn't a great stretch for me to realize that the Ode to Albert Speer, or whatever it's proper title is, is a Mr. Beagles original. Long ago he mentioned his involvement in some local folk music scene, then there was the reference to the sad ballad Jam on Gerry's Rock, and finally his duty in Berlin. The dates match, it all adds up, and it's no wonder that Uncle Ken hasn't heard it before. Not knowing what kind of tune accompanies it, I'm guessing it has a Gordon Lightfoot kind of sound, something like the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald but this all conjecture. It reads well as it is and doesn't need music.
The song (poem?) took me to Wikipedia where I read up a bit on Speer and Spandau prison. Quite a big place for so few guys; the Allies took the Nuremberg Trials very seriously. Speer must have had quite an imagination, as he is reported to have gone on an imaginary walk across Europe, counting out the steps and reliving his past travels. The guy knew how to do hard time, didn't go crazy, and lived for quite a few years after his release.
I, too, plugged the first two lines of the Speer piece into Google and the Institute came in at number four. I don't know what that means, coming in one place higher that the search by Uncle Ken. The system is rigged.
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I didn't find many recipes for boiled peanuts, AKA goober peas; they take a lot of time, figure at least ten hours of boiling the raw legumes. There are many styles, depending on the southern location, but the Lousiana Cajun style sound particularly tasty. And boiled peanuts are not without a pedigree: they are the official snack food of South Carolina. If you don't want to bother with cooking them yourself they are sold in cans, but pricey, on Amazon. Some Walmarts sell them too, but maybe not the stores up north.
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Nobody seems to care about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, which is fine by me. But I was wondering about something, the possibility that Bitcoin mining is a ruse for a more insidious purpose. You set up these expensive boxes that run 24/7, using software that is supposed to crunch the numbers so you can make money. The software is very specialized, but how do you know that mining is all that it's doing? It could be cracking passwords, laundering money, god knows what else and you would never know until the guys in suits knock on your door while the black helicopters hover nearby. And if it was such a foolproof system of generating income why hasn't Google unleashed all of it's computing firepower and taken it over? There is much I don't know about the whole business, but something is fishy.
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I saw my first Amazon Book Store a few days ago. It's a strange concept for me; they kill the brick & mortar stores and open up their own. I didn't go in, but I've read that prices aren't listed and you have to use a smartphone or device to find out what they cost. Having a Prime account is supposed to be a big help, but I wonder if they accept cash. Odd, very odd. I'm slipping into a future which I cannot grasp very well. No smartphone, no service?
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