This photo was placed here later to give the page some color. Digital photos, by that I mean original digital photos, are hard to find from 2004. This is water colored red by iron. The accompanying note says that 95% of the metal mined on Earth is iron, by weight. Trivia, since Apollo 17, the last mission to the moon, no human has traveled far enough away in space to take a picture of the entire Earth at once.
Today I begin my hunt for a foam mattress. An ordinary polyurethane 4” camper’s foam mattress. In Miami. After enough places swore that no such thing had ever existed, I pulled into a Mattress Giant. They would know, right? For a few minutes my inquiries as to whether they sold foam mattresses were answered by question of how much I wanted to spend. Finally, after great restraint on my part, by continually asking the question over and over, it turns out they don’t sell them. Now I was curious, why, if they didn’t [sell the product], were they insisting on knowing how much I wanted to spend. It’s because they have something called a Dream Bed. It’s a bed. With a foam mattress. I asked what the 999 was, she said it was the price. I laughed out loud, a thousand dollars for a foam bed! No she said, just for the mattress. I thought, "She must be dreaming."
[Author's note: skip ahead to September 24, 2013 to read much the same quest for a foam mattress, this time a camper pad. You ask for a foam pad and you get back all this hype about expensive memory foam, and that is really putting me off to that product. I'm getting so fed up with those people I may just buy a futon mattress and use that.
Later, the best futon mattresses are over at Wal*Mart. These other mattress places are rip-offs, every one. Go to Wal*Mart with $20 and don't waste your time talking to salespeople.]
I gave up shopping after 4 hours. Maybe tomorrow. I got a good book, this one called The Ultra Rich. Chapters of boring details about rich people. I like it, because you get to listen to them whine about the problems of being rich. Here are some of my favorites: “Losing a primary caregiver (read servant) is like losing a parent.” “I keep my old money separate from what I earn.” “I can’t be late or the cook will get angry.” “At our family reunions we have to wear name tags.” Even the authors get caught up in the nonsense after just a few interviews. For example, it’s mentioned that one house had “a maid, but no butler.” Poor babies!
Many of them insist they can’t just walk away from the problems and start over again from scratch. They feel only poor people can do that. There is often some badly written catch phrase they quote to justify it all. “Money is just for keeping score.” Inheritance is still the biggest factor in personal wealth, followed by chains [of stores]. According to the text, chains (health clubs, media, food franchises) are extremely conservative users of corporate talent, and are easy to expand or contract very rapidly. Which I can see when compared to the bloated monopolistic management at headquarters.
So far, the only one [in the book] I can identify with is a Clayton Williams, from Texas. He waited on tables at night in college. He’s gone without. He still works with the hired hands. However, that’s but a partial empathy, for even when he talks about the bad times, it is plain he knew in advance he was never in any real danger of going completely broke thanks to family and connections.
Oh yes. The foam bed. Did I lie down on it to see how it felt? Of course not. I might have liked it.
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