MORNING
I slept right through it and I’m sure I didn’t miss a thing. The only memorable New Years lately was 2000, when I was on the south banks of the Orinoco River. I imagine things there have changed out of all recognition. Lots of people take stock this day, I do it more with the overall financial situation. It is 2:30 AM and here are my predictions. But first, a fancy picture of a moon of Jupiter.
Here's a rare digital photo from 2004. I know it is digital because it arrived from a satellite. This Io, one of the moons of Jupiter. From the trust Galileo probe, there are two volcanoes in the photo. Looks like more than that to me, but if NASA had listened to me, there would be a man on that moon by now. But I think the opportunity is gone. America has become a nation on welfare. Such nations always go under.
I have one different habit that saves me. In this whole world, I do not owe anybody any money. And the only money I am ever likely to borrow is to buy a house, not to be confused with the purchase of income producing assets where there is a strict set of guidelines long in place. I have always viewed personal credit as an evil for the uneducated. Every radio station is back to back ads for zero percent APR and credit repair, yet I seem to be the only one who sees the irony. (Also, they say “zero percent APR”, shouldn’t it be enough to just say “zero percent”? Think it through, because whoever says "zero percent APR" either hasn't or can't. Same thing.)
Not only do I abhor credit, I am against the credit record keeping system, which has removed all privacy most people would otherwise ever have known. Oh, its’ great when you are young and convinced you need a BMW, but it severely restricts you later. Example, job applicants are now screened as to whether or not they are behind on child support payments. Very few people can pass all such tests, and oddly, the details are somehow “public information”. Hey, they laughed when I protested thirty years ago, now they can eat their words. All of this leads up to doubt of how things will go in the short run. Corporate profits are huge, but not quite as huge as the interest paid on the debt incurred to make that profit. And my challenge of 1970 remains unmet: of all the wonderful programs the government has to help and assist people, show me one that I, personally, get for free. I even have to pay a fee for my passport.
Fall back on traditional defenses, that is my eternal plan. When the going gets tough, the smart leave town. The government wastage is no worse than ever, the trick is to simply not be one of the people to whom they will dictate when the bill needs to be paid. The fortunes made by all that idle plant and equipment needed by WWII has been bled away many times over, but people have a hard time seeing it due to credit. One of my “questions” has become stock at the office, “What good is it to make twice what I do if you are spending most of it on servicing your debt?” Alas, so many people think that is just the way the system is, and are truly helpless to get out of the pit.
NOON
My traditional savings is 20% of my take home pay, and my life followed the standard pattern. First round, you lose your money and your youth. Second round, you break even. Third round and it is yours to keep. Only a quarter of Americans have a net worth of over $10,000. I’ve managed to do that just working for a wage. Higher paying jobs, those which produce a personal surplus, always come with some kind of burden you don’t want. The burden I don’t want is reliance on more income from the same company to get by each year. My real increases now are derived from increased investment income, not annual raises. No luck involved there, Greenspan.
This investment is unusual enough to place it at risk, that is if anything goes wrong, it is a logical first target of the bureaucrats. “Nobody should have two mutual funds until everybody has at least one” type of logic. Since there is no way to disguise investment wealth and income, it seems only a matter of time until it is attacked by the have-nots. Just wait till then, and cash it in, they say. That does not work, for ignorance and have-not go together. Such people cannot see the difference between money and assets that produce that money, they will attack both once they know it ever existed. There is very little literature available that gives real, meaningful examples of how to protect your wealth in this country. Remember, only the tax collector really needs to know who and where you are all the time.
This year, the overall plan is to rebuild the “Disaster Fund”, which is a misleading name. It means their (or your) disaster, not mine. It supposes that every year, some disaster will cause the stock of an otherwise solid company to take a 25% dive. Investor-morons like to see their stock prices high even when they are not buying or selling. Did you see what happened to McDonalds stock after mad cow disease? That’s the situation I am targeting. The secondary item is the toothpicks. They have to take less priority, because they are an exception to many of my investment rules, mainly in that they are not easily portable. Physical assets need to be protected physically, which drains me. Example, somebody already stole the hubcabs off unit 15, which has been parked outside the office compound for about a month now. That is the parcel of my resolutions, unless I get back to it. Everything else is stable, and except for finding the gal of my dreams, this looks like another year of quiet accumulation. The real trick was to place the ad on the internet in a form that could not possibly be used to cross-reference anything, even if they wanted to, and yet still have the info go to my free email. It was quite the challenge, though very few ordinary users will know what I mean.
Flashback. When I was young, for years I got away with an unusual attitude. If somebody was such a nobody as to actually pay attention to what I do, I could safely ignore that loser. That's hard to follow, so let me word it another way. Only as an adult did I discover the world is full of people who absolutely hate it when you ignore them. They hate it so bad, they become lawyers and politicians an awful lot. They have a craving need I do not understand.
New Years Day, so JZ and I built shelving for Cory over at the Quizno’s. It was a good afternoon of mild exercise. We talked over the situation in general. Churchill’s has been robbed, up to three times, I heard. They walk in with guns and rob all the patrons. Now that I reflect, it was a ripe plumb, but I still think in terms of don’t steal unless you can get at least $100,000. I forget that for some, $200 is a big score. Plus, the atmosphere has gone downhill over the past couple of years, the really good staff don’t seem to stick around except for the English/Irish working under the table.
NIGHT
JZ is still apprenticing as a plumber. It is a question to the world what him and I could possibly have in common to be pals after all these years. We both like to walk the aisles at Home Depot just to see what is there. Building things, we both can, but only as work. Later, we went to Borders and I showed him the tricks to browsing the bargain bin (he had never heard of Gary Larson and “Far Side”), and I finally bought a book on picture framing. By finally, in case I haven’t said, picture framing is one business that I cannot figure out how they make any money at it. I price out the tools, direct materials and direct labor, and I cannot make a profit on paper. Yet they plainly do well, and it turns out a near relation of JZ's named Anwar has a franchise. Picture framing, hmmm.
We walked over for a nightcap in the most obvious of pubs in Coconut Grove, Fat Tuesdays. The he beer-bellies, the obscene tattoos, the hairy armpits. And you should have seen their boyfriends. JZ doesn’t like rejection, I couldn’t care less about some broad who rejects me, ha, I’ve been turned down more times than “a one-way street in front of a Chinese driving school”. He’s getting the idea that if I live to be 150, I will still look at the skinny young babes. Oh, when we were in Borders, and I can’t understand how JZ missed it, there was a mother daughter team just taken by us.
They were following us around, no doubt about it, readers. I heard the daughter (grand-daughter?) say to the mother basically that they had come there to meet men, why were they being shy. JZ kept wondering why they were always in our way. I even walked over to a far corner thinking he would notice them follow. He didn’t.
For me, the mother was already too old, and looked it, and the daughter was a little on the piggish looking side, already fat (imm-lahy-yo) you might say. Again, the most I will do in situations where everything is not to my exact liking, is make it easy for them to make a move. If they don’t, they are far too weepy to work out with me anyway.
Unusual or new for the day. It was a why-didn’t-I-think-of-that. A doorbell chime built inside a clock. A fully functioning wooden clock.
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