MORNING
The red scooter is on the way out. Routine inspections shows the hand brake pistons are worn. Both were replaced at 5,500 miles, meaning that is their projected life span (the scooter now has just under 11,000 miles). These parts cost $45 each plus labor. Remember, this scooter brand new only costs $799. (The retail price has risen to $1199 since I bought this one, but still.) What’s more, this scooter has never given any warning when something is about to go. Every repair has left me stranded.
[Author's note 2015-07-19: Wrong. Improving finances over time--as I said it would--eventually got this scooter a reprieve, which included a new motor and new muffler, and it is still running fine at 15,000 miles. And in daily use.]
Money. What’s with all the world currencies against the American dollar? Funny how the only time they crow is on the rare occasions their funny money has a two-day run, like it is proof of their national superiority. There you have it—I’d rather watch exchange rates than TV sports. I’m also watching all the episodes of “Damages”, the lawyer-as-super-detective series. Face it, Hollywood (CA) scriptwriters do not understand women. The one female role whose not in a formal relationship but has an active sex life is always portrayed as kinky and a mental case hooked on hard drugs.
NOON
Ah, a callout. We like those. It is funny how often I get asked whether payment is cash or check. Pardon me? What’s a check? This one is to teach email. There are still people who are not on email. One thing I find is most people assume email is synonymous with the Internet. Not the same thing, no sirree. Email, like the Coast Guard and the lottery, all work using the Internet system, but they are separate from the World Wide Web. One big difference is that each user is usually identified as uniquely as possible before being allowed to log-on.
I got a [free evaluation] copy of Josh Pellicer’s “The Tao of Badass”, this is what he calls his tell-all eBooklet about picking up women. This is the guy mentioned last day because he appeared to be on the right track about getting a variety of women into the sack. What a joker he turned out to be. Yes, he did get a couple of the first moves right, but after that he’s in outer space. I’d be just as glad if he’d been able to follow up but the guy is just another deadbeat trying to sell other deadbeats his e-book.
Compared to Josh, I’m a regular Casanova. In the end, his techniques are no different than what doesn’t work for the bulk of other men who lack the ability to think the process through. Save your money, there is no magic to picking up women. Getting old is like finally having all the cash you want only to find there is nothing worthwhile to spend it on.
Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. Particularly hard hit will be those thousands of civil servants who worked all those years to bring the city to this point. Their unfunded pensions approach $10 billion. What’s the bets than every last one of them at some point said they were “just doin’ my job”? Were they, now? It sure looks like it. Could I have a show of hands how many of you out there really care if a meter maid or city manager winds up social security like the rest of us? Hello? Hello? Is this thing on?
The world as we know it has now lived through three complete “computer generations”. That is, people now reaching adulthood who were born and raised around computers. Whiz kids, you might say. But I would never say that. They think like an inbred pack of gimptards. They know it all until you ask one to show you something and you find out he is nothing but a lame gamer. I know there are exceptions, but I worked with computers for twenty years and never met one.
The empire in decline. Here is a short list of the more idiotic items invented by those so-called geniuses. I mean, these alone show you that the education system is failing, and because it does even produce educated dummies any more, it is failing miserably.
1. CD/DVD ROM trays that won’t open with the eject button.
2. Delete print job commands that won’t delete the print job.
3. “End Now” commands that will not work.
4. Keyboard “shortcuts” typos that cannot be un-done.
5. File view settings that have to be renewed for each folder.
6. “Airport” settings on your cell phone that enable themselves.
These are just the gimp stuff on a keyboard. The Internet has produced a complete crop of zeroes who sit around conceptualizing how to annoy others. Pop-ups, Viagra spam, and our favorite: when you pause a movie to let the buffer advance, the buffer stops, too. I mean, Jacob, Mason, and Ethan, if that is your mark in the world, you are doomed. I shouldn’t say that. The one thing that will save you is large numbers of equally ignorant contemporaries who buy into your stupidity. What? Those are the most popular “boy names” of 2013. Sad, isn’t it, calling your kid “Jacob”, when you could have gone full retard and called him “Poindexter”.
NIGHT
One culpability I will admit to (from my generation) is the legacy that created this mess, although I was not personally responsible. We trained these people while they were children that it was better to press on with new ideas rather than to fix the older ones that were not working properly. They quickly learn it is better to pursue the next iPad or iPod than to get the ones already built to function. My generation, but not me, did this with navy ships, spaceships, and relationships.
But I can get back at all these people by informing them that no matter how much they try: my generation had the best free sex. The seventies was the time for premarital, experimental, clean sex. Queers were in the closet, most women beginning college were virgins, the pill was so new [that] mores had not yet developed into the sleaze stage (which is okay for other women, but not the ones I date). Song lyrics concerned more than one topic, only 4% of high school girls were overweight, minorities behaved like minorities, and other than the post office or politics, there was no place in the entire world for imbecilic men.
Those were the days.
ADDENDUM
UPDATE: 2013-07-23. Camp Whitnay is in North Carolina. I had no idea there were so many Whitneys. I thought that was a lady singer from Texas.
Summer camp. Today I saw an Australian commercial for summer camp where the kid’s parents pick him up in an Audi. For a laugh, I thought I’d tell you about my one time at summer camp. But before we start, I’d like you to picture your summer camp. Canoes, horseback, sailing, the girls from across the lake. Great memories of making new friends your own age and having fun. Well, my camp was absolutely nothing like that. Let me tell you about Camp Whitnay.
“Rip-saw, Rip-saw, Rip-saw Bang!
We are the boys of the Whitnay gang.
Are we in it? Well, I guess.
Whitnay, Whitnay, yes-yes-yes!”
Whitnay was a bible camp. Because my mother had volunteered to be camp nurse for two weeks, I was informed I would be going to that camp with my two younger brothers, “Or else”. I packed my things from a long list of what had to be brought along, such as your own toothpaste. Whitnay was, after all, a summer camp and not some kind of goddam camp for the summer. If you get my meaning.
We had two bible lectures per day and attendance was obligatory at the evening campfire, where we sang hymns of praise and lots of “She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain”. You know how most camps have a bus pull up for a surprise visit to the chocolate factory in the next town? Whitnay’s version was a trip to a salt mine. A Sifto salt mine, and no, I’m not making this up. We got two souvenir mini-salt shakers each.
Other daily activities included shop, where we made little wooden crosses at the “rec center”. “Or else”. We had materials to work with such as muck, wood, and more muck. Potter’s clay they told us. One must not forget the scheduled hikes through the bush. One counselor would always act surprised to find a fallen white birch, where we could "strip bark pieces to write on without harming a living tree”. I wonder how many times that tree had been found by surprise.
I was twelve, so of course I was well into “making it” with girls, causing much anticipation when it (the co-ed wienie roast) was announced that instead of the evening greased watermelon dip in the frozen lake, the girls from Camp Hee-Hoo would be visiting. Until it was announced we were “hosts” and, as gentlemen, had to do the cooking and cleaning. What is wrong with this picture? (Whitnay, that's what.) The girls arrived for chocolate and marshmallows, seated thirty feet away on the other side of the campfire, behind a row of burley camp counselors. The boys got the smoky side of the blaze. Some of the gals may have been good-looking, but I can only suppose.
We were obliged to write a letter home every day. These were collected by the staff and never seen again. After each meal, one of the 17 cabins was designated to wash the dishes, a most hated duty, as this took part of your make-believe free time. That was also when the candy truck came by, with its carefully controlled offerings, mostly licorice. You were allowed to spend “up to two dollars” every day but very few of the inmates at Whitnay had that kind of money back then.
The food was not bad, but the remainder of the daily diet was pep talks and bible lectures. The lucky kid got bitten by a bat on the second day and spent his two weeks in the local hospital, where the nurses took him to the zoo, amusement parks, and a go-kart track. It quickly got around their children’s ward had a daily ice cream ration. How the rest of us daydreamed of developing leukemia or leprosy. On the day we left, I went around and stuck wood putty in all the door locks. In retaliation for that segregated marshmallow event.
They are lucky I didn’t burn the place down.
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