I'm With Stupid

I think we all know the worst job in the world.  It has to be a substitute teacher anywhere or anyplace.  I always realized what a shit job it was, and never gave my substitutes much trouble.  In fact, one time I even spoke up to a couple of high school males and told them that our sub, was in fact, a human being and to treat her as one.

But that's not to say I didn't do a few juvenile things to a few subs.  This is my one story of when I inflicted Adrian humor on a substitute.  I was in a constitution law type class in 11th grade.  This class explained how the constitution was created, what the laws meant, how they were enacted from their creation to the present day.  It was actually pretty informative.  I'm really glad I took it.

One day we had a substitute.  This, of course, meant mostly book reading and other boring stuff.  Subs were trained in the usual English, Math, and Science, but this was such an oddball class they generally referred to the teacher's notes.  As I said, this meant, "read pages this to that" and answer the questions at the end of the chapter.  Pretty straightforward right?

After the sub gave us our instructions, she passed a paper around telling us to write down our names.  This was odd since most of the time they do roll call.  But no one seemed to care, and we started signing our names for roll call.

It was then I was, shall we say, "inspired."  At first I wrote my name down, "Adrian William Jefferson Clinton."  Underneath my name I wrote, "I.B. Stupid."

It was then that the sub spoke up to me.  I was sure I was caught.  She asked, "Why was I taking so long to write my name?"

I looked up in surprise, and said, "I wasn't aware there was a time limit for writing my name?"

It was then that the other students spoke up, and said, "He has a really "Long" name."

She asked me, "What is your name?"

Looking as innocently as I could I said, "Adrian Raymond Jefferson Long."

She looked somewhat satisfied, although still distrustful.  I quickly passed the roll sheet behind me to the next person.  The sheet was passed around the room without so much as a snicker.  I thought I might get a laugh out of someone, but no.

But then the weirdest thing happened.  The sheet made it back to the sub.  She then started reading the names on the roll sheet to match them up with the roll book.  I have to admit, I was thinking to myself, "There's no way this is going to happen."

But I hear, "Adrian William Jefferson Clinton.  I.B. Stupid?"

That's when I burst out laughing.  The rest of the room looked around at each other, as it took about three seconds for them to realize what just happened.  Then the whole room started laughing.  I honestly couldn't believe that it played out that way.  My prank had worked.

I know the sub wasn't happy with what went on, but for the rest of the period our class just did its book work.  So yes, we settled down after the laugh.

So yes, it was a dick move.  But I didn't think it was too over the top.  If I could go back in time, and tell myself not to do it, I totally would.  Of course, trying to tell 16 year old me anything would have been a waste of time.  I wasn't dumb, just really hardheaded.

To sum it all up that was probably the worst I ever treated a sub.  Except for one other time.  And that time, I won't be writing about.  No, I won't be writing a blog about that.

Badger At Your Feet

I'll get this out of the way now.  I am a Tom Green fan.  That's right.  I loved everything he ever did including his movie, "Freddy Got Fingered."  I know I'm the only person I've ever met who actually likes that movie, but I accept it.  For those who are trying to remember what movie I'm talking about, it's the one where Barry (Tom Green) asks/sings to his father, "Daddy would you like some sausage?"

When it came out I had a classmate named Jocelyn who said it was the only movie she ever walked out of.  It specifically had to do with the scene where Barry (Tom Green) was swinging a baby around by the umbilical cord.

It's also the movie where Barry decides to wear a deer skin, that he skinned off a deer, and ends up getting hit by a truck.

But there is one great thing for me personally that came out of this movie.  There is a scene where Barry gets by security by uttering the throwaway line, "Badger at your feet."  I've found that in my personal life it has helped when being approached by salespeople.

When I walk through Wal-Mart there is always a table occupied by a phone or cable company.  They approach Wal-Mart customers trying to get them to change their phone/internet/cable/etc. service.  This is how the exchange goes with the salesperson and me.

Salesperson:  "Hello sir, how are you doing today?  Would you like to hear some information about..."

Me:  "Badger at your feet!"

Salesperson:  "What sir?  I didn't understand that."

Me:  "Badger at your feet."

Of course, I continue to walk away from them.  The whole point of doing this is not to stand there arguing with the salesperson.  The point is to walk away without having to deal with their sales pitch.
In fact, today I was able to use this strategy.  I was walking out of my favorite sandwich shop when a man walked out of the building next to it.  (Note:  It's a strip mall so all the stores are smushed up against each other.)  A barbershop had moved out, and some sort of cell phone store had taken it's place.

First I heard someone yell, "Hey buddy," or something like that.  It turned out that he was actually yelling at me from the inside of the store.  He then ran out, and started with his sales pitch.

Once I realized what was going on I went to my go-to.  "Badger at your feet."

Cell phone salesman:  "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that?"

Me:  "Badger.  There's a badger at your feet."

Over the years I have had a number of reactions.  Most of the time people are left confused.  One time a guy yelled back at me, "Man, you ly'in!"  I think only twice someone actually laughed at what I said.  Of those two, I think one guy recognized the joke, and where it was from.

So far, it's worked 100% of the time.  But I know what you are going to ask.  What happens when it doesn't work?  That's okay, because I have a back-up line from that movie if the badger line doesn't work.

"You can't hurt me!  Not with my... cheese helmet!"

Idiot Scoutmasters: A True Story of a Scout's Canteen

I have written of my time in the Boy Scouts of America before.  (See the links at the bottom of the page.)  As I look back, I have more angry/disappointed memories than I do good ones.  This does make for great stories on my blog, but remember,  I had to live these moments.  I have held off writing a lot of my bad memories on this blog, well, for as long as I've been writing this blog.  (Roughly 10 years now.)

This memory I have is so ridiculous that I think it's time to share it.  In fact, this may be the first of these memories I may be writing about for the next few months or years.  I don't know.  What I do know, is that, sometimes Scoutmasters make mistakes.  What I hope is that they learn from them.  I don't know if mine ever would.

I graduated from my Webelo's pack to Troop 12 when I was just ten years old.  I was younger than everyone else.  It made it tough to be taken seriously by other scouts much less get along with them.  The original Scoutmaster was Mr. Moore.  He was a bit goofy, quick tongued, and got along great with the boys.  This did not sit well with the some of the committee members, parents, and other adults.

I could see how he could rub people the wrong way, but I believe he put the boys needs and wants first.  He was asked to step down as Scoutmaster.  He refused and was fired because of it.  All the other adults/Assistant Scoutmasters had a talk with us boys.  They asked us not to quit scouting, and to give the new Scoutmaster a chance.  Some boys quit due to their disgust over the whole matter.  At the time the troop had over forty members, something I've never seen in any other Scout troop, then or since.

Mr. Cooper took over as Scoutmaster for the next six months.  He did it as long as he was able, but his job took a lot of his time.  I always got along well with Mr. Cooper.  He stepped down, and went back to being an Assistant Scoutmaster within the troop.

That was when Mr. John R. (Bob) Brasher took over as Scoutmaster.  He took the troop in unseen directions.  I was roughly twelve years old when this happened.  The first thing that happened was, he really took over.  As in, the boys no longer planed what we were doing.  He took hard control of the reins.

The first thing that was decided with no input of the boys was that Troop 12, (of Lutz, Fl.) was to become a backpacking troop.  That's when a lot of boys quit.  They wanted to be in the BSA.  They didn't want to be involved in the Bataan Death March through Florida during the summers.  And remember, it's summer in Florida nine months out of the year.

The thing I remember most about Mr. Brasher was he ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.  He once said that, "The Boy Scouts are not a military organization."  But he also said, "We might have to teach these boys some (military) steps."

If you've ever seen Dr. Phil McGraw (Oprah's friend) spout off some nonsensical country saying, well, Mr. Brasher was the king of that.  You have to remember that I was 10-13 years old while I was in Troop 12.  I wasn't that mature for my age, and I had no idea what he was talking about half the time.

My Dad never wanted to talk bad about other adults in charge.  He didn't want to undermine their credibility/authority.  There was one incident that just made us ask what the cold hell Mr. Brasher was thinking.  It was kind of the beginning of the end as far as me having any respect for Mr. Brasher as a Scoutmaster.

The Troop was on one of its death hikes.  Again, you have to remember was summer is like in Florida.  It's 95 degrees during the day, and only drops to 85 degrees at night.  We were all carrying heavy backpacks.  Remember I was only twelve years old, and carrying a 35 pound backpack.  A lot of that weight was carrying water.  I personally carried six quarts of water when I would start backpacking.  I had two, 2 quart "wine sacks," and two plastic, 1 quart bottles.

Here's what a quart of water looks like:

When we were backpacking we would hike for one hour and rest for ten minutes.  It was during one of the breaks that Mr. Brasher flat told me I should only drink this much water from my canteen.

This is what I actually drank:

Now imagine you have been gardening, landscaping, or mowing the lawn.  If you've been out doing that for a few hours how much water would you drink?  Also, imagine you are doing that in August in the beautiful state of Florida?  Yeah.

Nowadays, outside activities are all about hydration.  Heck, now they make kids drink before activities.  Maybe that's going overboard if you are up in Canada, but when it's 95 degrees out in the woods of Florida, it's not a bad idea.  Heck, there have been times when I'm doing lawn work out here, and I'm sweating as fast as I drinking water.  I'm not being funny.  I really have done that.  

A couple of blogs ago I wrote about working on the travel trailer.  It was so hot that I ended up drinking an entire gallon of water in six hours.  Once I had showered and cleaned up, I started drinking even more.  The reality was I had actually sweated that much out.  

So when Mr. Brasher told me that I was drinking too much water I honestly thought he was completely full of shit.  But more on that later.  He actually had the audacity to walk up to my Father (days later, after the hike) and tell him, "Adrian drinks too much water."  My Dad told him, "You all are out there backpacking in this weather and you're telling him to eat beef jerky and trail mix?  And you wonder why he's thirsty?  Mr. Brasher didn't have much to say to that.  

 

But here lies a problem in backpacking that I was never told.  I didn't actually find this out until later.  Do you know what happens to a person when the following things occur?

1.  Hard work (as in backpacking?)

2.  Not taking enough water in that leads to dehydration?  

3.  Eating salty dehydrated foods?

4.  Pre-teen boys not wanting to drop a deuce in the woods?

5.  Extremely high outdoor temperatures?

I'm going to leave this WebMD link right here, okay?

https://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/what-is-fecal-impaction#1

I know folks may think that today's helicopter parents and coaches might be babying their youth, but look at what a lot of us had to deal with as kids.  Doctors say something that I wish a lot of people would pay attention to.  

They say the body has a natural system for telling a person that they need water.  It's called thirst.  If you feel thirsty, you should drink water.  It's that simple.  It's not like Mr. Brasher said, "You should only drink "this" much water."  No!  If a person is thirsty there's a reason why.  It's your body telling you to put some water in it now.  

Again, that was the beginning of the end for me with Troop 12.  I don't know if I could even call it Troop 12 by that point.  It was Mr. Brasher's Troop by that time.  I ended up getting kicked out of Troop 12 about a year later.  But that's a story for another time.  For now, I leave you with this advice.  Stay hydrated.  

And here are the links I promised earlier.

Adrian reminisces about his childhood days with the Boy Scouts 

Bored Scoutmasters and the Tale of the Wampus

Tele Trouble

I couldn't deny it.  I had G.A.S.  AKA Guitar Acquisition Syndrome.  For over a year I had been looking, nay, lusting at the XGP parts from Guitar Fetish.

 https://www.guitarfetish.com/BEST-QUALITY-XGP-Pro-Necks-and-Bodies_c_517.html

Despite having quite an arsenal of guitars I did not have a Telecaster or Tele style guitar.  Instead of buying one off the rack, I wanted something a little different.  So I bought 95% the parts I wanted off of Guitar Fetish.  Namely the XGP Amber Arched Tele Body and the XGP Tele style neck with rosewood fingerboard and angled neck.

Now comes my screw-up.  I usually take photos of the build process, but I completely forgot.  The good news, is that, it was pretty unremarkable.  The only problem was that the GFS 3 way switch was DOA.  I ended up going to Sam Ash to buy a Fender switch, and it worked just fine.

So here are the "after" photos of the guitar.

Did you notice something a bit different?  Did you notice that neck pickup?  I tried a standard Tele neck pickup, but I just couldn't bond with it.  I considered many options, but decided on routing out the neck pickup slot for a standard humbucker.

I know they say to measure twice cut once, but very luthier I know measures fifty times, and continues to measure as they cut.  I'm no different.  Since I am dealing with measurements as close as 1/128th of an inch, it pays to be as exact as I can.

I used a Dremel and my mini-router converter to slowly cut away the wood.  I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, just cutting away wood, but it pays to work slowly and carefully.  So this step took a fair amount of time.

I have to say, that's pretty awesome for a hand route.  Next up was installing the pickup.

If the pickup looks crooked, it's because I don't have the holding screws in it yet.  Now comes the part where I am mad at myself for not taking an "after" photo.  But know that I put the neck back on and lightly strung up the strings so I could line up the pickup.  It came out perfectly.

I went back and forth deciding on what pickups I should use.  I was pretty set on the bridge pickup.  I decided on the GFS 63 Overwound Tele Bridge Pickup.  It clocks in at 7.8K ohms.

The original neck pickup was a Cali Guitar V50 Tele 1 neck pickup.  However, it was very weak compared to the overwound GFS pickup.  Instead of buying a humbucker that kinda/sorta sounded like what I would want, I went to my parts drawer, and pulled out a Schaller Golden 50 neck pickup.  As you can see I installed a "half cover" on the Schaller pickup.

Once I plugged in the sound was perfect.  It was one of the most balanced pickup sets I've ever played.  It also had that bite I really wanted.  I think Billy Gibbons would dig this guitar.  Although, not everything was up to my liking.

The XGP neck was more than a little thick.  Since most folks have played a Gibson Les Paul at one of the big box stores, I'll compare it to that.  You know how a Gibson has a pretty thick neck?  Well, this was thicker than that.  It was also wider.  Even though I am used to playing Dean guitars, this neck was even thicker and wider than them as well.

So I am not happy with the neck at all.  I'm honestly thinking about changing it.  That, of course, is when I have the money to do so.  Guitaring doesn't come cheap.  So I might have a "Part 2" for this post in the future.  But for the time being I am not going to put a new neck on it just yet.  I'm having fun with it as it is, and that's what's most important.