Welcome 2012; it is 66 outside and rising. A scooter day if I’ve ever seen one. Is the world’s final year going out with a bang? Or will the media par usual just milk this one dry? Thank goodness the Internet is here to save us all. I got home by 9:00 PM last night and stayed in, my preferred activity for that holiday eve. That habit will only change if I get booked for a gig—and I’m working on that.
Here’s a concept car on display at Sawgrass Mills. I was out there this morning to visit Books-a-Million. That was a disappointment. Not only have they closed the coffee shop, they’ve taken the same path as Borders in eliminating a wide selection, replaced by volume. Cookbooks, baby books, gift and toy sections. Even the magazine section has fewer topics, but up to forty magazines each on topics like gardening or weight lifting.Not one book on electronics and the entire science section seems geared toward shaping attitude instead of providing knowledge. Like books that teach teens how to conduct “scientific” experiments on eliminating racism. There was no Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, Nuts & Volts, or Backwoodsman, although I didn’t check if they were sold out. I stayed an hour but the joint has really gone downhill.
I am encountering a term often enough to watch for it: “social accounting”, or “social economics”. It is meant to contrast it from classical accounting, the system whereby a nation’s productivity is measured in dollars by formulas and statistics. A book on the topic I have only skimmed is “The Coming Jobs War” and one I have read, “Stupid White Men”, state the new relevance of the problem better than I can. For unknown reasons, I have a feeling what both those books have to say will be coming home to roost in 2012.
I’ve additionally been seeing referrals to a second “country music” club or pub or location of some kind having opened up in the area. But no data. Is it in Broward? There really is only one country place, the Roundup. And that place is totally focused on alcohol. Beer pong, ladies drink free, champagne bash. Read their ads. I hope the new place is a walk-in, with no cover charge.
Now for my resolutions, which can be summed up by reaffirming that I am not anything like my family. I do not come from a family of people who are like me. My brothers and sisters are dismally unintelligent and my parents were considerably less than ordinary. My siblings were all struggling B minus students (marks 22 percentage points lower in every academic subject).
Not one of them ever amounted to anything but working class, although my parents were fairly high union wage earners. They are individually and collectively an uneducated lot, it is said I have, with my MBA, more real education than all of them put together. Other than two weeks annual holidays, none have ever traveled for the sake of adventure and experience.
They are completely unversed in history and the arts, and you are out of luck for any conversation other than matters of local gossip. Don’t ask for advice or they’ll give. They speak English only, have never written anything, and have ever completed a major project or run any business. None has ever voluntarily read a book for advanced knowledge or for pleasure.
On important issues, my family and I are complete opposites. I could care less what strangers think (unless that stranger is a sexy blonde single woman). I am indifferent to peer pressure, television, fads, and the opinions of the faceless masses. My family has a blinding obsession with their “reputation” among people they’ve never met, something I can’t explain except that both my parents were that way.
I never embraced the daily fits of envy and petty jealousy that ruled their lives. This placed us at constant odds, but then I never grew up accepting such behavior as normal. The two types of individuals in my family are those who did the work and those who took the credit. You can decide which is which.
Furthermore, I highly respect the private property of others, I believe that people, even children, should be paid on an individual basis when they work, and I deem that the only way change people’s minds is through quiet good example. I believe no one deserves respect unless they earn it, I consider stupidity a conscious choice, and I accept that all freedoms are self-limiting.
I’ve stood by these principles my entire life, so I trust 2012 will see me through another successful year with these very resolutions I made—and kept—so long ago.
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