[Author’s note: While striving to be as forward-looking as possible on technology and information, this blog is essentially a journal, that is, focused on the past. Where there is a prediction, it is well into the future and as we’ve seen, usually right. It’s a fact the housing bubble, pension collapse, invasion of privacy and identity theft were all predicted here 15 years in advance. No word yet on the Russian-Chinese war of 2015, though, because nobody has thought of it yet. My point is that today is the end of an era in my lifetime. It would not have done to say anything earlier, for all was planning and prediction. Today is the turning point where the biggest changes for me are now to enjoy what is left. So stick around for the ride. One of the signs was taking on robots ten months ago. This was something impossible the way things were before. It’s not like my lifestyle will instantly evolve, but shall we say the hard part is over.]
What a memorable day, in a roundabout way. It is the last day of the last fiscal period I planned in 2004. This new budget made allowances for my bad health and so was quite different from the original 1996 flow of events (in which I should by now have been a half-millionaire). And, may I add, 1996 was a realistic workable strike at the target, not some Kenora moose juice. So, did my plans work out? Yes and no. We are bang on the money, but 6 months late over all. Put another way, I have only been back in the game six months now.
I like to brag that no idiot could take me, but there is one entire gang of them that could have screwed me for a good chunk of my present income. Wallace and family—if they had only been capable of keeping their word, I would have been morally obligated to keep mine! But there are black sheep in every family and Wallace fell prey to Patsy who has no concept of honesty. By now, I might actually have been paying them most of the rent they demanded. As long as I was present, the old place was a bargain, but she tried to kick me while I was down and out. What fools they be.
It was cold with a brisk breeze, so I was indoors at home and the library. That is not synonymous with sitting around watching cable. I was up to much different, arranging a guitar-fest for December 16. It may be a dead night, it may be only regulars, but I figure if the musicians aren’t booked for the season by then, they might as well show up. Ray-B called with a disturbing report: apparently many of the big union retirement funds are being investigated for “Madoff-like” activity. Investigated, what an ominous word, don’t you think?
Eddie, sometimes knows as Electric Eddie for his e-mail handle, wants to invite Dirk to the show. I’m not too keen on that. Dirk may be a nice guy, but he is totally infected with guitar-think. Not just that, but I have never seen him actually play rhythm because he is constantly riffing off. It’s the equivalent of a piano player who only knows the fancy parts of twenty songs and wants to play only those over and over. The other major symptom is the “follow me” attitude, and he does have it something fierce, to the extent he believes it the natural order of things.
There is something else that others may not remember, but Dirk turned my one open mic show at Jimbos into a farce five years ago. In those days, I worked until 4:00 PM and when I go there, they had been set up—and drinking—since noon. By then, all the easy standards were gone and Dirk was in his prime, acting surprised when nobody knew obscure tunes by his heroes, what, you call yourselves musicians and you don’t know this one?. I’ll have to think about that. Either way, there will be only three singers on stage and that should keep a will keep a tight rein on things.
I did something as American as Whopper Wednesday. That Ural sidecar was still advertised, now marked down to $4,000. My logic is pure Americana. The banks won’t lend you money for a used motorcycle, few have that much room on their credit card, and nobody has that kind of liquid cash a month before Xmas. What the heck, here's another custom sidecar.
So I waved a considerably lower amount of dollars under their noses. Real hundred dollar bills, I had the bank give me brand new bills with consecutive serial numbers. The seller begged me to wait until Monday. I conceded. But that is the future, and you never know. Remember that real estate agent I had talked down to $41,000 when on the fifth no-show, the other buyer actually arrived with the $61,000 asking price in cash. That house sold four years later for $310,000.
