They were on sale, so I bought a rake. Or make that I bought Wallace a rake, ha! Consider the circumstances. I wanted a closet rod. It is 53” wide and one-inch dowel is a standard 48”. Custom lengths and substitutes all seem to run in the $20 range. So I go over to garden tools and look at broom handles (actually shovel handles). They are only $4 each and come already varnished.
nbsp; The closet rod is shown here posed by a professional model. Note the tapered end. On the wood, not his nose. I did that with a jackknife; hey this is not Buckingham Palace. I’m a little past my boy scout days, but that handle would also make an excellent stave.Where does trivia meet research? I was looking at some new birdhouse designs. Did you know only 13% of North American birds are cavity nesters, the type that would use a birdhouse? That makes 85 species out of 650. (I didn’t get the name of the source, but it was a birdhouse book.) The other species build camouflaged nests on the ground or in trees.
That’s the trivia. The research is that the cavity nesters have a 60% success rate, while the non-cavity nesters run at 20% to 40%. So, Darwin, why are they the dominant numbers? My guess is a combination of lack of natural enemies and the process is still on-going. Pudding-Tat, you never heard that.
You want to know how bad the job situation is here? People are asking me for work. Then, I do look a lot like a supervisor, maybe it’s the bad haircut. But I mean people who know me that know I don’t own a company or anything. The only jobs in this town are working your behind off for minimum wage. There are simply no semi-skilled occupations to be had. All those jobs have been shipped overseas, even the ones that stopped in Mexico for ten years along the way.
All this is reminiscent of those 1980s and 1990s documentaries that showed people who used to work in factories now taking jobs as security guards or pizza delivery at a third their former income. Folks, I lived and worked through that same era and I can tell you in a lot of cases it is their own fault. I had my $25 sit-around job, but I didn’t use it to plunge into lifelong debt. I set aside a small portion to prepare for the worst by going to night school. To be fair, I set aside a larger portion to date women I met there, but that’s not the point.
I’ll say it again. I went to the biggest night school in town. I worked for a company with 15,000 employees. Yet in nine years I saw only 2 fellow employees on campus. The more common sight was a sneer in my direction for taking courses while they went on their daily trip to the stripper bar. The question is not how much compassion is going to trade hands here. At least they had a good example to follow. Next time I’ll charge admission.
Maybe some good will come of it, in that America may finally rid itself of “middle management”. I’ve had plenty to say about that crowd, all of it bad. Middle-management is the evil twin of the American Way, with those paste-board over-paid types and their idiotic “scientific management” theories. Hired into the office, never spending an hour doing the actual work. Inventing screwball reports and creating logjams of paperwork. If you get hired in America, you are going to be supervised whether you need it or not—some bozo’s job depends on it.
I’m enjoying my week off. No music and nothing at the shop. Fred’s been closing early. Who remembers the fabled condo on the corner? The one I like to use as a horror story? After years of sales efforts, still no restaurant on the ground floor and only a fifth of the lights are on in the residential part. Fred rounded the corner onto Dixie Hwy on his Harley just as a freight train was barreling down the corridor. The train hit the horns for the Hollywood crossing and Fred said, “It damn near knocked me on my ass.”
The condo by the railway tracks. No amount of soundproofing can shut out that kind of blast. It shakes the rafters. That is one busy railroad, at least one train every other hour, sometimes more. With the raised roadbed of the Florida East Coast, that puts the train whistle just about the right height to maximize the Doppler effect. Maybe I’ll get the measurement for you.
Another sign of the times. The Feds have lowered the prime rate to 0.75%. Gee, what happens when it hits 0%? Can they dare let that happen and allow people to figure out what a rip-off the banks are? (“Well, if the bank gets the money for free, why am I still paying 15% for a consumer loan?”) I’ll make the Feds a deal here in writing: You take your “this note is legal tender” bills and replace them with the proper “will pay to the bearer on demand” bills and then you pay me 20% to take your money. Then we can talk. But until then, don’t waste my time with your nutcase economic theories. The best thing the government could do for the country is go home and make room for the real leaders of American society: Game show hosts.
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