One year ago today: January 23, 2016, bachelor alert.
Five years ago today: January 23, 2012, “looking” at Braille?
Nine years ago today: January 23, 2008, based on continued earnings.
Random years ago today: January 23, 2004, a generic day.
MORNING
It would seem to me the world does not want me to have that bottle jack. They grabbed the money out of the account instantly, but then canceled the order because the shipping address did not match the billing address off the credit card as shown on the store system. Got that? The bank is now concerned about the shipping address, as if it is any of their business, and the store wants the address the bank—not the credit card—has on file. So they sent an e-mail to cancel, and as we know, Agt. R left that same day for a Civil War re-enactment with no electricity for three weeks. If they would confirm the jack is in the Macon warehouse, I’d go pick it up, but they won’t even do that. Yes, this is the top story of this morning. We've been trying to buy that jack for 37 days.
There are some tough as rope vines growing on the yard trees and the storm brought one of them down right by the birdfeeder. It’s neat, kind of hanging there. That vine is dead but still can’t be bent and broken. Let me think on what I’d like to do with that. The weather is also cold again. Hold your horses. I’m not working out there until it’s above 60°F. (There’s an interesting punctuation choice in that last sentence. Both “”it’s” and “its” are proper, depending on if you are personifying the atmosphere.)
A modern comparison would be the Arab nations with oil economies. Like China, that wealth lay under the ground for eons, but they never learned to exploit it. Instead, they exploited each other. Human life in China was just another renewable resource. Blind beggars and ragged orphans were an accepted part of society. People were meant to be worked to death by the ruling class. It is only when the Europeans arrived that the natural resources had any value, but it only increased the misery of the masses.
These countries appear to be growing, but only insofar as they adopt western ways. It is their cultures that are deficient and inadequate. The instant the resources run out, or the west develops alternatives, they will be back living in mud huts and slitting each other’s throats. How do we know? Because such has been their custom and tradition for 30 times longer than democracy has existed. They know what works for them.
Slightly out-of-focus oblong vegetables.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
NOON
Yep, I advertised on-line for other folks who’ve had issues with the new Harbor Freight and it looks like I’ve got company. The manager has given everybody the same runaround, like he is the boss and doesn’t give refunds unless you meet his store policy. I think he just pulled that stunt on the wrong guy. So, I have nothing to show for half a day. No oscillating tool and no bottle jack. Why, I went right home and made a pot of coffee and got out the blueberry pie. And read some more on Burma Road.
with a rumble seat, which I can’t even imagine. I thought those went out in the twenties. He describes the work gangs of men along the road, all slowly dying from the work. But that’s apparently preferable to starvation. Only the remote villages are prosperous, though every square inch of productive land is already taken and maxxed out. And don’t drink the water. I read up about cholera this morning. It’s a bacteria that lives in human blood, passed along by contaminated water.
[Author’s note: not so fast. I went through the book photo pages and look what I found. This is a cropped section of one of the prints, not very obvious, but look at the center. The contrast is bad on this poorly taken photo, but if I’m not mistaken, that’s a passenger car just entering the far side. A reminder that all photos on this blog can be enlarged by clicking on them, unless I’ve fixed it so you can’t do that.]
The author, Smith, accurately describes the terrain in northwest Thailand and Burma. It consists mainly of mountains and valleys. That poses a problem. The valleys are sweltering sodden-heat jungle, where to this day they still study a strain of malaria that drops people dead on their feet. The higher elevations bring permanent snow and cold. This leaves civilization to eke out along narrow the temperate strip of the mountainsides, where flat land is almost nonexistent. The road has several single-lane bridges. The superstitious Chinese won’t travel through the tunnels. They’re haunted, wouldn’t you know it. So all the truck drivers are Hindus.
The road, around 700 miles, terminates near the Burmese-India border, from where it is known as the Ledo or Lido road, and carries on to Calcutta. I always thought ships were a cheaper way to transport than motor trucks, so I don’t exactly understand the reasoning for building the road unless there were no ports. Pursue that if you want and get back to me.
[Author’s note: the book regularly describes, but does not pity, the extreme poverty of the countryside. You can call these Asian societies ancient and civilized if you want, but they never seem to have progressed to the point of compassion. That’s what sets Europeans apart. They have the same backgrounds if you go back far enough, but little by little the European ruling classes took mercy on the peasants. In China in 1939, every possible misery dating from back centuries seems to exist by roadside.
I can identify with the poverty, but not on the sheer scale of China. It’s easy for the outsider to point and say look, they all lie around in opium dens or they do nothing with their time. Such people don’t understand how poverty operates. It doesn’t mean famine, although when that happens, the poor get socked first. It means being robbed of every possible thing you could do to get out of that poverty. Except sacrifice your life, which those people in China were already doing slowly.]
Along the way, there are various villages and tribal festivals, I wonder if any of the film footage has survived. I saw several rituals in Thailand and Venezuela which no longer exist in the Club Med atmosphere that has taken over all but the remotest tracts—and those have been under tourist invasion for twenty years. Traditions must be rivals, although the history texts say nothing, for it is always the tribes that adopt the majority of “modern” cultures and not the other way around. I mean, how long does it serve a purpose that the fourth son and fourth daughter of every family have the same name (N’ Tu)?
The route is famous for bandits, but they leave the car unlocked and unguarded. No local within 500 miles knows how to drive and there is no place to fence any stolen cameras and such. Our hero seems to meet the rich man of every village, who is so happy to hear English being spoken that he puts them up for free. That, or they find hotels with electric fans and running water. The Burma Road is barely part of the story, it is merely the theme at a time when a lot of books were written in the same manner.
“He Went To Sleep and The Hogs Ate.”
NIGHT
I talked to Agt. R, who is deep in the woods 30 miles north of here. The guy likes camping out. Me, I like sleeping in my camper, as long as it is parked within walking distance of a diner. Say, I wonder how that will fare now that I have a work shed and dowel technology. I’m more inclined to consider a camper built right on the sidecar frame. It would destroy the looks, but man, the territory I could cover with that. It would, of course, fold out to a comfy sleeping compartment, now that I know how to build those.
The evening turned bitterly cold, an opportunity to practice some celestial navigation exercises. It all came back instantly after some six months of inactivity. However, I still have not charted anything, which after reading the sextant, is the flashiest part. I have all the gear, but never got around to it.
Note that Agt. R. says I’m never at home, while I feel I’m around the house all the time. I go to the library every day, and maybe out for coffee. Agt. R says that is how retirement works, that you start thinking like that. The snag with that theory is that I’ve been doing this for close to fourteen years, so tell me how that is related to retirement. I say the explanation is that I’m rarely at home at the exact times people are apt to visit. And these days, I could be in the back shed, where I would not hear them. And it is not often, but I do siesta. But no way can I sleep 16 or 18 hours a day, did you hear that JZ?
And I’m also reading passages from “Band of Brothers”, a book that has very little in common with the movie. It has a lot to do with the soldier’s experiences, though one should remember that although it was a popular war, the soldiers were as naïve about the whole thing as propaganda could make them. I could never be convinced some atoll in the Pacific was vital to the defense of America.
ADDENDUM
The book, “Burma Road” shares another characteristic of rich-kid travel books. Except for the odd reference to how cheap or expensive a few things are, they never mention the costs of the trip or where they got the money. We all know when they are tight-lipped about the topic that they got their free money from daddy. Where else does a photo-journalist get the money to import late-model cars into China in 1937 and promptly wreck the vehicle on a route designed for 4x4 trucks?
Being familiar with travel expenses, my guess is, at the time, 1939, that little jaunt cost $30,000. In today’s money, that would be $500,000 plus something difficult to calculate called opportunity costs. When the rest of us make such journeys, we are losing paid time at work. And I recall many a time when maintaining the rent at my apartment stateside cost more than I paid for the month’s vacation.
There’s a reason I’m looking at the money. I want to make another trip. Anywhere, by batbike, for at least a week. It takes two days to get out of Florida to somewhere I’ve never been, and two days back, so at least a week is needed to see anything. I missed the autumn mansion trail in Georgia. Buying this place cut me off at the knees. And that is what brought money into the tale. You see, I’ve essentially recovered from that massive hit to the point of little worry again.
That’s the scenario whereby the time I’m hurting, others will be in deep doo-doo, and that would essentially be a state of emergency. And if they start handing out free food, I’ll be first in line. If they got money for the McCubans, then they got money for me. What? Hell, man, you can figure out for yourself what a McCuban is. (Yes, I coined the phrase. I know you can figure it out.)
The point being, although I’ve met my quota, I’m still feeling insecure. I should be more solid about life than I’ve ever been. Yet, I have a nagging sense I’ve overlooked something. Help me go over the money thing one more time and tell me if you spot it. If you measure money by total income, I’m poor. If you measure it by property, I’m still poor by comparison. Any measurement by total accumulation also leaves me in the dust. These are the traditional classes of wealth.
But, if you measure it my way, I’m doing okay. That’s the amount of hard cash left over at the end of each month, the actual gain in wealth that goes on forever. In other words, my fortune, if any, is not measured by volume, but in rate. See the difference? At what rate am I prospering? I won’t answer that question, but let me put it to you this way: I never got a penny from daddy. Take anybody you know who is working for a living and make the following comparison:
Say that person, after taxes, mortgage, insurance, auto, food, all the normal expenses of life, has $500 per month left over. It would be that very $500 “left over” that I’m talking about. And, you’d be statistically wrong if you think anybody you actually know is doing it. These days 66% of all workers have nothing left over, and of another 20%, though counted as “savers”, are in reality living off credit cards. When you are paying down a $250,000 mortgage, saving becomes more of a balancing act than a good business plan. It takes talent to avoid the trap. Thank you very much.
In fact, you would be hard-pressed if not lucky to find anybody who is actually really, really, saving a lousy $100 per month. You don't know anybody like that. They are only 4% of the population and none of them live in your neighborhood. You'd have to show me someone who could prove they put that $100 into savings systematically over say, ten years, and now have $12,000 plus interest tucked away. I’ve personally never seen it, well, except personally. And I’ll tell you it isn’t easy, I never said it was. In the two years it took me to save for this house, I had to maintain the premises at the trailer court and pay for the dozen and a half prospecting trips to the interior to locate this house. That’s all household expenses, travel expenses, and on top of that, saving.
But I will tell you one thing. I’m doing a hell of a lot better than $100 per month. That more than Hector, Ken, Patsie, Wallace, and Theresa combined. Pssst, you people, back in 2003, when I had to stop working, I was banking $500 per week. True, I’m talking rate over volume, but I’ve got that whole gang beat on both them counts. Bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha.
Last Laugh
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
