Here’s your generic pic of a Florida public trash can. Note the fine construction and maintenance of your tax dollars at work. Who builds anything out of wood in a climate like this? I’ll explain below that I did nothing today by choice, and this is a recent picture I thought was representative of our declining infrastructure.
For the umpteenth time, they have finally launched the final shuttle mission. Nobody would mourn its passing if they understood how it set the space program back 30 years and bankrupted NASA. The mission to Mars may not happen in my lifetime because some pinheaded bureaucrats wanted brownie points for flying ethnic minorities and school teachers around in circles sixty miles up in the air. The shuttle brought a whole new meaning to the phrase“cruises to nowhere”.It’s another Sunday look around the fragile real estate pyramid. Just amazing, the media stating it is the time to buy “before the market turns around”. Around what? My locations today were Colorado and Oregon, the two serious contenders for my next move. I plain like to live where most people are like me. You can’t walk down the street in Florida without somebody bothering you for something or other, usually blood or money.
Amusing is the word for people who advertise a mobile home for sale without stating the pad rental. I also peeked at vacant lots in the countryside. It is tempting but I think the real price plunge has yet to happen. Everything is being artificially propped up by the banks and the collapse has been too slow, too controlled.
The ratios are all wrong somehow, prices don’t jive with reality. For instance, the unemployment rate among first time buyers is over 30%. In Florida alone, some 60% of the mortgages are underwater (although the officials admit only 48%). While some 2 million boomers have retired since February, the imbalance hasn’t made as big a difference as I predicted, probably because they haven’t started dying in droves yet. Life expectancy is around 78 years.
But that stat is misleading because it applies to a person born this year. Such a baby has access to far better everything than somebody born in 1946. For those born in that year, life expectancy was 66 years 8 months. (Yes, I picked up that means they start croaking in December 2012.)
Sunday says hotcakes. Times have changed. I used whole wheat flour, artificial sweetener, egg substitute, soy milk, butter flavoring, and diet syrup. On the other hand, I can eat as many as I want. Thanks to bingo, it was actually pancakes and pork chops for breakfast, around noon-ish. For the remainder of the day, my plan is to do nothing. Lots of nothing. Like a boss.
And I report later that nothing has been expertly accomplished. I didn’t even open the door and look outside. This was a nothing Sunday like the kind you can only have when you are totally broke or live in Tsawwassen. I did listen to indie music for a while, including a group from Ft. Lauderdale seeking a bassist. One thing I never cared for in the thousands of clone bands of the 80s was the lack of musical dynamics. Everybody in the band played as loud and often as they could get away with.
I’m receiving the same message from home recording labels. Just because Garage Band has a zillion tracks it does not mean you have to use them all every time. The music, even the best stuff, just comes at you. My ear also detects an annoying “perfect balance” you don’t get from live drummers and guitarists who tend to slough off toward the end of the song. I listened to the intros, first verse and chorus for most. Not one of these original tunes had a catchy melody or lyrics that stuck with me.
When I drove a lot, I could tell a new hit the first time it came on the car radio. None of the music I heard today had that instant spark. Most of it sounded like Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots, that is, like older guitar riffs strung together. It lacks distinct hooks. I can appreciate a good live recording session over this music which sounds like what it is: built up layer by layer by the same mediocre guy on every instrument.
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