While there, a guy came buy with a beautiful nearly new 180cc and he needed rent money. If I’d had the $600 I might have bought it on the spot. But surprise me, the shop didn’t have the cash either. That bike will flip in one day for a $400 profit. But the seller didn’t seem to grasp it was rent week for everyone else, not just him. Florida. It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity. Don’t be fooled by this nice clean engine compartment. Once I got in there, I found the head gasket is blowing oil, not bad, but not good either. Replacing that gasket, well, I saw a guy do it once and you have to remove the floorboards. That wasn’t a pretty sight and takes a full eight hours. Off topic, but most of my electronics tools don’t work on the scooter, usually due to cramped working spaces.
Let’s talk money. Another quality to having a fiscal year end for one’s own finances is how it reveals anything overlooked or off kilter. I found plenty this time around which is better than it sounds. While I could not afford much in the Dark Ages (2008 thru 2010), nor did anything suffer from complete neglect. Nothing was broken down via abandonment or negligence. Most of what needs attention this time eased because I'd done the labor part. Most problems are predictable and that is why I dislike crisis management.
From my “no-but-I-read-the-comic” department, I finally have a copy of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and I’m on chapter 7. Stowe has an engaging style, subtle while putting the point across. The entire issue of slavery is clouded by modern disinformation on certain key points. Slavery is wrong, but it is also wrong to believe a lot of the nonsense distorted by a hundred years time.
Let’s take one, just one normally ignored factor. Agriculture is not a year-round proposition. It is basically several weeks or months of intense labor and long periods of waiting. Not idleness, but mundane waiting. Yet, there are no accounts of starvation or economic troughs in the south. That means the slave owners recognized their obligation to keep large numbers of people (35+% of the population) in food, clothing, and shelter all year round, a major financial commitment.
Things were not so kindly in the Union, which had English-style industrial labor. North of Dixie, when a factory hand was turned out, the employer could care less about how the worker fared until the next production cycle needed him back. Therefore, it is wrong to completely characterize the situation in the south as driven solely by cruelty. Such a system would collapse without needing a Lincoln to come along, invade, and cook up noble-sounding reasons along the way.
For those who aren’t aware of it, the south had a schedule to free all the slaves before the Civil War began. So that you know, the Emancipation Proclamation freed only the southern slaves, not the slaves in the north. Like the ones owned by Union Generals Sherman and Grant. Didn’t know that, did ya? What’s more, any southern state that agreed to rejoin the Union before the 1863 deadline would be allowed to keep its slaves. Freedom, my eye. The Civil War was, like the majority of wars, fought over money and nothing else.
Boca Raton it is, probably for a day on Thursday. Silver is acting funny again but nothing happens here during November. By the way, all bets, promises, and double-dares always expire on November 15, so if you have a challenge, now would be the time to speak up. I wonder who, or what, is keeping silver at the same price year after year.
Being that I’m operating in a television news vacuum, I read some more. I see in New York they evacuated a homeless guy. Very funny. Watching the highly invasive jury duty selection process, I wonder why they don’t make the task a condition of welfare, old people, and food stamps. Not only do these people have a greater sense of social justice than most judges, they are so more like peers than the poor stiff missing work.
I met two women in two days. The first at the library, in the book sale section. Doy, how she went on about “things getting back to normal”. She wanted real people with real lives who lived right. Apparently because all her grandkids were messed up on the Internet. The next lady, well, if she’d had a personality there might have been a chance of a one night stand. I was gasping for a way out (having accidentally sat down next to her). You know the type, got nothing but expects everything. And me, the guy least likely to play all his cards from day one.
