One year ago today: June 16, 2015, hobby, and video links.
Five years ago today: June 16, 2011, my annual use of “festoon”.
Nine years ago today: June 16, 2007, it’s not that bad.
Random years ago today: June 16, 2012, another musical false alarm.
MORNING
How are ya? Good, because I’m about to make the next passage as difficult as I can before you throw a punch. I’m going to half-answer the question, “What is luck?” (Keep reading for an explanation of the picture of the axe.) I have every reason to be happy but today I am grouchy, a real crab. But the blog rule says if that is the outstanding issue of the day, I have to report it.
That offer would make sense to me, considering the depreciation, that I don’t own the property underneath, and it needs a new water tank, oven thermostat, and better air conditioners. If this deal goes through, I’m totally out of here first chance. What’s neat: this place will have in the long run cost me a net [accounting] price of less than $17.50 per month. And it isn’t like I busted my ass or the place was a headache. The management, yes, they are jerk-offs, but not the tangible property. Upkeep amounted to basically that hot water tank.
I may actually miss this joint, since there is no returning to the Miami area, ever. Economically, the new place frees me up to visit whenever, but barring another recession, this move is one-way. Have you seen the horrendous rents lately in Dade and Broward. Something like 82% of people can’t afford to live here. $1,900 for a so-so house in a not-so-so neighborhood.
Maybe also luck, I was just able to avoid that dreaded Windows 10 update. The one that causes all your pirated software to quit working. Them bastards never quit. They lack that portion of the brain that says if someone has not bought your crap in forty years, subterfuge isn’t going to work either. I proudly state I have never bought a Windows product. Windows, the company that set computer development back forty years. If not for Gates crowding out innovators, who knows what wonderful applications would be available by now.
And I’ll add another full-time dork to the long list of useless twits who needs to be surgically rectified. The gonad who made those split key-rings left-handed. Such people have serious mental wantages. Like the guy who chopped off, well, here’s the here, you read it. Talk about a sore loser. If you think he’s insane to start with, somebody is going to tell him the part left over was still bigger.
The same goes for those ass-clowns from CINE that post youTube videos with those annoying beeping “subscribe” clips. Listen, if you can’t post it for free, stay off youTube. Put another way, go get your own youTube. If you want to make money, go get a job. What? All the good jobs are taken? Ah, this sounds familiar. Allow me to state:
a) the jobs are everywhere, you just don’t have what it takes to get one.
b) you are looking in all the wrong places.
c) have you tried going to church?
Thank you. I waited a long time for the opportunity to say that to a Millennial.
And while I’m at it, there are two more individuals I would like to address. The corksoaker who makes those power strips where your plug sticks in so hard you need three hands to pull it out. If you uses only two, the plug is jammed in there so solid you will rip the power strip and it’s mounting screws out of the wall. That guy, and his twin, the one who makes the prongs so weak, your plug falls out of the wall from its own weight. They have a cousin by the same mother, you know. The prick from Mapquest who puts the undelete-able icon smack on top of the property you want to see. (Mapquest quickly fixed this later the same day.)
Hawaii, in true color.
NOON
I’ll tell you who is shaping up to be a serious genius. Smarter than I am and leagues ahead of other women in her age group. Taylor Swift. Yes, at first she seemed a bubble-head, but as I see her dump these plastic boyfriends the moment they get boring and I read accounts of her opinions, I lament she doesn’t like older men. Like me, I mean, not like you. Interesting older men, charming and provocative older men.
So this ukulele player hands me some sheet music by Leon Redbone (real name Dickran Gobalian, go figure). I just knew all this unoriginal (except in its sheer simplicity) elevator music had to be coming from somewhere. Leon is proof you can go back in time, locate and dig up a categorically dead brand of music, copy it without a single innovative note, methodically rape it back to death again, and somebody will still call you an artist. Nonetheless, I gave Redbone the usual listen, five times per song, to see if anything grows on me. Nope, not this time.
I tried to listen to his duet with Deschanel because she’s a babe. I could not tolerate such garbage. It is the most mismatched, unbalanced duet, it’s like he doesn’t have a clue that she is also singing. You want to slap the bastard and tell him to sing the same song as her or shut up. I know somebody is going to say he made big money at this, but that’s not the point. The world is full of useless people who made good money and great people who did not. They are not connected points. Some happen to like elevator-grade music. I’m not one of them unless I’m actually in an elevator, a really slow elevator.
Did you see in Britain a pro-immigration MP was shot to death in the street? I won’t link here, but the British press is doing everything they can to cover up the facts. The fact is, the attacker yelled “Britain First”, the name of group that favors traditional British values. Of course, the press labels that right-wing, pro-Nazi, racist, and everything else that doesn’t fit their Libtard agendas. Personally, I’m waiting to hear similar news from Germany. They need to get over their self-imposed guilt and do it fast.
The MP had recently voted to allow 3,000 Syrian refugees into England at other people’s expense. And now she is dead.
So is a former Miss USA contestant. Let’s see, do we wait for the coroner’s report or bet you twenty it’s another overdose. Either her own doing or the creep she was dating. Miss USA contestants don’t exactly go on to medical school, y’know.
Gauri Nanda: Economics, 2005. The inventor of Clocky, the alarm that runs and hides after you hit the snooze button. Now available as Ticky and Tocky, over 500,000 units sold. Rumor has it there was a corresponding surge in sales of baseball bats.
Wow, a half-million units sold. That’s enough profit to get a name change, Guari. I don't mean nothin', I'm just sayin'.
NIGHT
Since I’m mostly packed, I got the evening off. I went for a limited quantity of Chinese food and so should you. Treat yourself, I had the cashew chicken. I see the local outlet has revamped the menu so that all the regular meals, specials, and combinations come with white rice only. Fried rice has become an extra or side order. Sigh, it had to happen that way. I was just hoping it would not be in my lifetime.
Then, with my hobby interest in military matters, I listened to NPR and read over the accounts of the British battle tactics in the Afrikaner wars, more commonly known as the First Boer War. Most people are aware only of the second Boer war, with big battles and Winston Churchill, etc. Most modern documentaries cover only that second war and tend to be, probably for good reason, anti-British. This was the war where England introduced scorched earth, barbed wire, and concentration camps.
But that first war, I’m coming around to the side that considers it to be the beginning of the end of the British Empire. The soldiers were trained mainly in parade ground drills and the officers thought they were fighting local savages armed with spears. The English repeated marched small columns of foot soldiers down narrow valleys lined with rocky outcroppings. I read about battle after battle where the Boers killed the redcoats a hundred to one.
I see the parallel. England had the Transvaal and America has the Middle East. That nasty little war of interference for gold or oil, it doesn’t matter. Even when they win by pouring in countless men and dollars, the big empires never realize that this time the enemy is hitting back, often with weapons and tactics superior to their own. It is the classic formula, the use of hit-and-run against an enemy too bloated to change his ways.
For the English, the pattern is familiar. Commanders more interested in glorifying victories than concern for the troops. Battles lost through incompetence until the government back home starts sacking and replacing generals until one finally produces a victory that bankrupts the motherland. Since the military has long become just another career path, the academies make a fortune churning out third-rate officers from the monied classes who in real life could not run a lemonade stand. You know, just like what has happened to our medical and law schools.
We see the familiar pattern to how a country with the biggest army loses a battle, then a war, then an empire. The British entered the First World War decades later without having learned a thing about attacking entrenched and well-armed enemies. They once more thought they’d be home by Christmas. If Trump does anything but turn the military into a defense force, he’s just buying into the complex that is already set in place and waiting for him.
ADDENDUM
Hmmm, silver at $17.91 this morning. Isn’t that about a five-year high? Yes, but overall the silver trading pattern seems to have reverted to a normal daily up-and-down over a mild spread. That is, until the New Yorkers got to insider trading again. Not the normal insider trading using information before it goes public, but quite legally conducting overwhelming numbers of transactions at a lower price than market. Again, only banks have the wherewithal to pull that one off on a daily basis, and do they ever!
Now the bad news. You’ve read this far, so here is the local update. The office denied my sale [of this unit] because the buyer was not old enough. Unlike me, he did not use fake ID to buy this place, and he won’t be the minimum age for another 56 months. I told you the office was full of finks, but on the other hand, they have kept out a lot of undesirables to date. Pssst, that means people like me are desirable, in case you missed that. The office still does not know I'm moving.
Either way, the sale is a no-go.
Last Laugh
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