Today appears to be a random ramble, but it is an outline of this otherwise general day. My electric bike is down, the scooter is in the shop, and the Honda is gobbling gas. Couple that with my predilection to spending Fridays at home, and here I be. You’ve heard of free verse poetry. This is free paragraph prose. I’ve long associated going out Fridays to spend money as so middle-class. It started when I worked for the phone company and got paid Thursdays, also my best night for meeting women. I stay home and read.I read that fish oil, the Omega-3 that is supposed to help your heart, is bogus. Studies of nearly 70,000 persons found no benefits. I’m so hypersensitive to all side effects that I suspected as much. Then the same source says statins (to lower cholesterol) cause memory loss and fatigue. But only upon exertion, so there is danger civil servants will show no symptoms. I’d laugh, but I’m too exhausted and can’t remember why.
Did you know one adult in five has had a checking account closed for writing bad checks? That’s not the occasional overdraft, hell, I’ve had those in the days when the bank wouldn’t list fees on your withdrawal slip. Writing bad checks is a different philosophy altogether. Banks can and do shut down accounts, 30 million of them since 2007.
There’s a fancy night club up the road I never saw before. Their sign is so high up the wall you can’t see it from a car window and I don’t often stare up at the sky riding the eBike. They have jazz music, though I’m not a fan I thought to go in for a look because the parking lot is full of nice cars. A little trick I use is to take a pocketbook to a new club, it’s a double test. To see if the staff is sharp enough to leave you alone, and to see if any ladies present are sharp enough to do a little prime reading of their own.
And there was electronics. If you’ve ever read an integrated circuit datasheet, you’ll know they are messy. But a pattern is emerging, a type of relearning by rereading. I’ll clamp shut a book that is just impossible to follow, then go back over it after usually a few weeks of non-related learning. The possession of the other knowledge makes it click. That’s how I finally learned the difference between transistors as an amplifier and as a switch. I’ll tell you, but not one of the hordes of books I read mentioned this all important fact. Thanks all you experts for wasting my time.
When the input to the transistor is analog, it acts as an amplifier. When the input is digital, it acts as a switch. We actually had club meetings taken up by testing this apparent contradiction. But once I figured this out on my own, even the funny graphs make sense. It’s a backwards way of learning not helped by the imbalance out there. The ones who know the electronics are the least qualified to write clearly, it seems.
About Thursday being my best pickup day, it’s true. Three-quarters of all the women I’ve dated more than two years were met on a Thursday. My records, which I stress are NOT scientific data, show that I meet good women when I’m not looking. Thursdays I was usually too broke to buy, went out in my work clothes, and generally had some other reason to be where I was. Broke, because back then the paychecks didn’t clear until midnight. My guess is the available women detected that I was a prospect because I wasn’t swooping in for the kill. Strange, I know, and it worked until I was thrity-something. After that age women only go out with millionaires or slobbering idiots, where I exist sort of somewhere in between.
Here is a small experiment. If I just mention the word “silver” my readership bumps up 30%. And that is an easy word because silver is a complicated subject. That’s why I tend to describe rather than predict. So here goes. Gold is nice, but it fails as effective currency. The size needed for daily purchases is tiny, a gram that is easy to lose and blows away in any wind. So that leaves silver.
Besides, there was the matter of the gold rip-off of 1933. Some argue it was not a confiscation, but they are not considering all the facts. People were force to sell at $20.67 per ounce or be branded criminals. After the deadline, the government pegged gold at $35.00 per ounce. Everybody, including those who never had any gold, lost 40% of their purchasing power. So confiscation is a far better term than compensation.
There is also the matter of the stealth clause of the health car bill (Section 9006 of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, effective January 1, 2012). The media has largely ignored the law, but it is there requiring all precious metal transactions over $600 to be reported (Form 8300). That a third of an ounce of gold per transaction, but it is a meaningful lump of silver.
An ounce of silver is handy and the size of a large coin. Unless it goes over $600 per ounce, it can be transacted anonymously. And if it goes over, well, most people can be assured God honestly thinks you are smarter than that. The health care law is an amendment to pre-existing tax rules, where the limit is $10,000 in cash per 24 hours. If you pay by check or wire, you don’t have to say, they already own you. Don’t even think to chain smaller transactions as the other party must report you or be charged as an accomplice.
Other countries have long had these laws, plus in Canada there is a “know you customer” clause that essentially means you cannot open a bank account except in person. You can, but I won’t tell you how. I only mention this because owning precious metals behaves very similar to a foreign bank account. When the dollar drops, the other currency holds is value for a few days. And in thanks for reading this far, here’s a word to the wise. The 1933 law confiscated only bullion and coins, not “jewelry”.
Back to the scooter, my round town ride, I’m waiting. So I read twenty articles on urban survival. I’m not keen on taking advice from “experts” who are selling survival gear, but I was curious how the Internet has changed things. Tragedies tend to be local and the Internet isn’t. The entire USA is not going to implode at once without anybody noticing. Thus, I noticed a shift toward more caution as writers begin to realize whatever you do to survive, it cannot be conspicuous. Like, don’t a gas mask but a dust filter is fine.
Some made sense, like ear plugs because the sirens will be blasting continually. I came away with the idea that one of the worst things to do in a disaster is go outside for any reason. If you have food and water, stay indoors for the first 72 hours, though it could be tricky to know when that begins. If you have those two items, you’re better prepared than 99% of the population. They talk about clothing, shelter, and fire, but if you live in a city, you’ll have those things all around you. No need to stockpile. And anyone whose been in rush hour knows evacuation plans are a pipe dream.
In Florida, where would you go? Not the Everglades, where this year they’ve pulled out 1,800 pythons. The Redlands tomato fields are on the edge of huge residential areas, so don’t even think of slipping in there. And most inland farms grow only horses and sugarcane. Water will disappear, but it will rain so be ready to catch some. Most Americans could do a month without food and that isn’t a compliment. And there is a reason they are called energy bars and not nutrition bars. Read the label.
Again, stay put if you can, with a Remington shotgun. All the survival plans fail in the end by assuming the average Joe can instantly take on a new and unrehearsed lifestyle and distance himself from his immediate situation. Even if he could, others won’t allow that to happen—can you imagine some joker with a backpack and $300 Moabs trying to cross I-95? Bang! Bang! Some experts say you’ll need a compass. What for? Mind you, if you could make the ocean, your chances are probably better with a compass. Maybe up is better, in a balloon, at night.
And that was Friday.
