Everybody bitches about his job
I goofed off tonight playing Hearthstone (sad, sad little weasel), so please accept a link to this amusing article about marginalia I read earlier this week.
You know, back in the days before Gutenberg, when every book in our world was laboriously hand-copied by monks, sometimes they’d spare a minute to bitch about it in the margins. Like
“Now I’ve written the whole thing: for Christ’s sake give me a drink”
or
“The parchment is hairy”
or (this is rather sweet)
“This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, ‘The hand that wrote it is no more.'”
The picture? It’s the third one that turns up in a Google Images search of “marginalia.” If you right click it (using Chrome) and ask Google to identify the image, its best guess is, “kanye west amber rose memes.”
Yeah, you know? Sometimes I don’t want to know.
March 3, 2016 — 10:53 pm
Comments: 4
The Lurve Banjo
It came! And it’s in better-than-expected shape. I got it mostly apart tonight. It was grubby as hell (and full of dead spiders!), but not too damaged and the metal bits don’t seem brittle or otherwise fatigued.
I had doubted that it really was homemade, but I’m not so sure now. See the horizontal guideline across the tailpiece in the picture? Clearly to line up the holes properly. Also, note the slightly crude scroll cuts at the edges. The geared tuners and spunover pot were probably cannibalized from another instrument, but I do think this was a labor of lurve, possibly on the part of a Swiss redneck.
Only hitch is, the neck is held to the pot with a pin through it. I don’t think I can get the pin out without breaking it off flush. It would be a kjillion times easier to fix this up if the neck and the pot were separated, but I may have to eat the inconvenience.
Wanna see another great British eccentric? Check out this eBay zither banjo. Barnes and Mullins is a well-known brand. It’s still around. In fact, my very best banjo is a B&M Lyratone. But I’ll let this one go…errr…unless, of course, the price stays stupid low.
March 2, 2016 — 10:34 pm
Comments: 10
Mine! All mine!
Look at this fugly beast. JUST LOOK AT IT! This is probably the ugliest banjo I’ve ever seen, and now it belongs to me.
Well, it will do, if the eBay seller ever puts it in the post. The suspense is killing me.
If I’d known Britain was the Land of Goofy Banjos, I’d have moved here years ago. This will be goofy banjo number ten, if anyone is keeping score (eleven, if I manage to pull off the ukulele conversion I’ve been playing with). Though technically, this one is (probably) Swiss. From the description:
Here is my uncles old banjo he had in his shed I don’t know exactly how old it is but I’m 50 and remember he had when we were kids my auntie said that he bought it backdrop abroad before she knew him when he was in the army and she thinks it was Switzerland and can only remember him say he got it off an old man on a farm who made it for his loved one
That’s right, it’s a lurve banjo.
It’s a proper five string. Four store-bought ones either side, and then see that peg in the middle? The one that looks like it was chewed out of a rutabaga by a frenzied mink? That’s the fifth string peg: the string goes under the fretboard below the nut and pops out again at the fifth fret (that little white dot is the fifth-string nut). Very common feature in goofy British banjos (actually, a tunneled fifth is now an option on custom-made fine American banjos, one of which this emphatically isn’t).
These old things often don’t age well, owing to some of their more eccentric design features. But, then, they don’t cost much, either. And it’s not like they’re musical instruments or anything.
March 1, 2016 — 9:15 pm
Comments: 13