The nearly perfect day, contributed to by a lack of telemarketing calls. Whereas I’ve got Linux to a workable state, it has totally let me down as far as networking goes. This is a crucial point, because unlike Windows (which was designed for single users), Linux was reputedly made for networking. First of all, it does not network easily at all, the modules that accomplish this are difficult to find and use and it seems to lack drivers for many otherwise universal features. Like compatibility with other networks.
The picture is my neighbor hanging clothes on the line. Can’t do that many other places these days, your designer jeans will disappear. That brings up the point of dealing with the office here. The pattern is clear now. It is like dating women from the same place you work – they often create a little trouble to show they are working at fising ["fising"? Sorry, that's what it says.] something. I was at odds letting them know I have everything on file, because turkeys will find a way to fault that too. Then again, such people have a hard time thinking so who knows how long they will back off? (I have no idea what this paragraph meant.)It is getting dark so early I can’t get much done outside. This Friday is slated for yard work and painting. I scanned the net for prices and supplies, and I’ve found things like packages of AA batteries (2-pack) for 11 cents and blank CDs for 13 cents. Add on shipping, but these non-perishables can ride the freighter over, nor are delivery dates any real concern. I mean, some time next month will be okay.
My point is only a klutz could not make a profit at such prices. There remains the problem of quantity, shipping and customs. I’ll seek out LCL membership (Less than Container Load) and would have no problem driving to San Diego to pick things up. However, the only time I’ve imported in the last fifteen years, the customs duties made it so difficult and expensive that in the end, you’d wished you’d never bought overseas. It was also very obvious the customs people did that on purpose.
I say that because they had this telephone-book sized manual they kept referring to that had price codes. They would tack on a fee or tax, then consult the manual back and forth. While you are standing there in their office forty miles from civilization. Since they kept adding things on and comparing the results, well, you can make up your own mind on that one.
[Author's note: Okay, some more details are in order here. The customs office was way out at the local airport, making it convenient only for them. Even if you Fedex’d it and paid to your door, the shipment was always intercepted and sent to this customs “clearing house”. It did not matter what the product was, mine was laundry detergent. They would not calculate the tax and tell you on the phone, you had to drive out there and get to the front of the line before they would begin. Also, you had to personally wait in the line, you could not appoint somebody to hold your place. The time to drive, wait and return was on average five and a half hours.
To those who say of course, we must have customs, I reply that it never used to be that way and things were finer than they are now. The government had only the resources it needed to chase the bad guys, not infinite money and power to snoop on everybody. Those who don't know the difference are probably reading the wrong blog.
Furthermore, you had to fill out nonsense paperwork that had little to do with the product and lots to do with creating a huge file on yourself. Only unpatriotic types buy stuff from overseas, get it? It is as close to a police investigation as you can get without a skin check. At one point I asked the clerk where I could get a copy of that manual so that I might learn in advance whether something was worth ordering this way. The reaction was like I was stealing her first-born.]
None of the videos I sent through the email arrived. Back to the drawing board. I am fairly certain I followed all the directions but the attachment did not transmit. It was 8.2 MB, well under the 10 MB memory limit. Ruth called, I’m going over there tomorrow. Tonight, I’m going to the movies, this time with the free pass in my pocket.
This picture is of a cleanup in the park next door. They are waiting for a dumpster, but the shot was too great to pass up. Ah, some people are wondering how it could be a perfect day with all those clouds in the sky? Exactly, that is part of it. You do not want a cloudless day in this town, particularly in the middle of summer.Here’s a thought. Enrique, the guy who sold me this place, was over today and was greatly impressed by how everything is now fixed up and works right. Without explaining, this process made me remember how badly the world treated me when I was a kid. He was right, I now have two of everything important, most of it was given to me in some form. Things are lying around that I would have died for in desperate poverty in my late teens and early twenties. Nobody gave me nothing. I’ll quote myself from twenty-five years ago and the statement is just as true today, “I possess not one thing in my life that was derived through beneficial contact with my family.”
That is so sad in some ways. Now, you walk into JZ’s place and you’ll find almost everything he owns came from family. Even the oil paintings on his walls were by his grandmother and mother. My place has nothing like that, not one solitary item. There was never anything of enduring value worth keeping from my family. Trust me, it is hard to be a good outstanding citizen in such straits. Enrique was looking at the electronic equipment, but still, it made me realize he had a good point.
That point is that all the people who told me things were hard to come by and [that] I had to work a lifetime for everything, they were all liars. With hardly an exception, they could have helped but they did not. They did things the hard way, be damned if you were going to have it any easier. You know the type.
“Home of the Brave”. It was written for the masses and contains no new ideas. Great start, then it flattens out to the emotional issues of returning. The trauma of injuries is explored as well as the difficulties of readjustment. It is often hard to tell where reality stops and Hollywood begins. I’ve always been against married people with children being sent into combat areas. Of course, the female lead did not play a babe, but a divorced 24 year old with a son, (how did we just know).
The early battle scenes were the fastest action, although there are some strange portrayals. Like why a surgical station would be built in a valley ringed by hills within mortar range. Maybe they took lessons from the French [at Dien Bien Phu]? Or after the first shell hits, why soldiers insist on running around in the open. Or why when three soldiers corner one terrorist in an isolated graveyard, one goes in instead of smoking him out. What do I know, I’m not a movie director.
Nonetheless, it is very important that you realize it is totally different when a soldier returns. That being a soldier means that nobody understands you, not even another soldier, not even your parents, wife, children or fiancé. Not even the doctors, psychologists, counselors, psychiatrists, therapists, I mean, like nobody understands and this movie goes a long way to reminding all of you who insist on forgetting that. It would not be unrealistic to say the combined understanding of all these people is still way down in the negative range.
Wallace once said, “Being in the army is like being in jail and on welfare at the same time.”
ADDENDUM
Those who might be curious about the referral to Dien Bien Phu should read about that battle in the early 1950s. It is a case study of how military bureaucracy can screw things up beyond all recognition and still follow every rule they ever learned. Add in the fact that all the highest-ranking French generals were in on the deal and it would be a slapstick comedy had not people died by the thousands. A good start would be reading the book “Hell In A Very Small Place”. The site chosen by the French was in a valley surrounded by hills, thus making it one of the few battles where “the enemy anti-aircraft guns fired downward” [at the airplanes]. Plus, it was hundreds of miles in the middle of enemy territory and of no strategic value anyway. Dien Bien Phu means “seat of the border county prefect”.
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