The daily picture and it is barnacles. I’m the type that figures somebody would have, by now, figured out how to stop barnacles from growing on everything in the water, like Mike’s boat that you see here. He had to haul it up onto the trailer, because like parking your car, Florida makes moorage expensive. You’ll have to look closely, but that crust on the boat bottom is barnacles. Vile-smelling rotting barnacles.
Speaking of stenches, let’s talk about AT&T. I guess some people do not get it, so I must tell all once again. Yes, the phone company records EVERY call you make to any of their departments, word for word. That is why they always insist on you stating your name, even if you are dumb enough to buy that story they “like to know who they are talking to”, you should have guessed that one by now. Yes, the phone company gives your private phone information to telemarketers. The phone company’s privacy statement only says they will not SELL it to them, but they can give it away any time they please, and they do.In particular, the phone company runs their own telemarketing departments – but hey, that’s not considered selling by the squadrons of bald-faced liars that swell the phone company ranks. These telemarketers ring you up and tell you they are an “AT&T Vendor”, or likewise for your local phone company. This tricks you into believing they are making an official call. The scam is to verbally coerce you into “upgrading” your service by getting you to say “yes” to a series of misleading questions.
Sure enough, they got my client for an extra $231.50 since November. Not my fault, as I do not monitor the phone bills, but I was asked to look at it today. These telemarketers speak with a fake air of authority and ask you to “confirm” certain things, such as a recent order for DSL service in this case. (One caller tried it on me back in November 06, but I told him off.) They managed to slip through in January 07 when I wasn’t there, and tricked somebody into saying they were “satisfied with DSL Ultra service”. Did you spot the scam?
The scam is, nobody consciously ordered Ultra. I set up DSL Lite, at 256 KBS for $29.95 per month. Not DSL Ultra at 1.5 MPS for $79.95 per month. Don’t blame yourself if you have fallen for this rip-off. The phone company scripts are designed to fool anyone not totally familiar with their degenerate terminologies. You would probably have answered “yes” thinking they were asking about your existing grade of service. Wrong, it is a twist to claim you said you were “satisfied” with a more expensive connection and therefore must have ordered it. All quite barely legal. The scripts change somewhat in detail, but not the swindle. Three cheers for AT&T.
[Author's note 2016-06-25: rule of thumb: never talk to to phone company about service or surveys unless you are the party who initiated the call.]
So I came home and patted the cat for ten minutes. Then Cowboy Mike showed up for practice and we went over four new tunes. Not including a new suggestion by Mike called “Cowdonla”. This is, I figure, the Florida version of “Caledonia” by BB King. We shall see. One thing ironed out was the 10% for the PA. True, I know that my last band never had such a rule. Probably because the other guy kept 80%. I went over the computer process with Mike, about MP3s, file systems and how to rip CDs.
The goal was to cut down on the assumptions that computers make things so easy that the operator need not get paid much. I have not had time to comb my hair, or what is left of it. The tunes he thinks are free to download are not there. I had to explain that the people who are sharing music on the Internet are nowhere near Mike’s age-group. Most of them have never heard of the music he wants. Example, there is not a single offering of the Alman Brother’s hit “Blues By Midnight” to be found on Limewire.
What’s this? House sales are off by 26% from a year ago. Seems to be connected with a huge glut of overpriced units on the market. Personally, I hope this is a case of you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I would like to see house prices drop to 1/3 of what they are. For decades, the wealth of much of America (and Canada) has been built on perceived values created by juggling numbers. It would take just one shiver to bring the walls crashing down. I’m reminded of that story about the Kuwaiti stock exchange built totally on each man’s word of honor – until one man wanted to redeem a bond, and I believe he only wanted something like $26,000. Turns out nobody had the actual cash. Eight billion in “value” evaporated in the next month because it never really existed.
Let me describe the housing game. In earlier years, when the bank lent you money, they were concerned about your ability to pay it back. Then along came Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal housing people. Now, when the bank lent you a $200,000 mortgage, they turned around and sold it to the Feds for an instant profit. That profit was on paper, but that is how banks work in this country. Banks went crazy. Pretty soon, anybody with a six month work history could pile up lifelong debt obligations. Housing sales surged because of easy money. It worked great as long as all the baby boomers kept “upgrading”. Now, they will all try to sell and move south. Americans like to die in warm weather.
This “upgrading” process is a fascinating study in mass stupidity. Tradition shows that the top 5% make a killing, but let us look at the other 95% who don’t. Most people don’t have the arithmetic skill to do the math, but those flipping houses at a “profit” throughout their lives tended not to take the money and run. They essentially plowed the money back into a more expensive house with an even larger mortgage. This is why you have heard me often refer to the real estate market as a legalized Ponzi scheme. As long as the Feds provided enough new suckers to keep buying in at the bottom, up went the numbers.
Now the buy-in has become so expensive that even borrowed money can’t prop up the structure. What happens when the base of the pyramid collapses? I think we’ll find out in the next six months. There are just simply no new sources of money or schemes left untried this time around. I like the new bankruptcy laws that will require the majority to go on some orderly payment of debt program for the remainder of their working lives. Serves them right.
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