This is a McD’s carton I received today. It is cardboard. This is why I don’t place much store in ecological studies. These boxes have gone full cycle. They were originally cardboad, but that cut down trees. They they were styrofoam, which created landfill. Then pressed paper. Maybe I missed some others, as I’m not the greatest fast-food patron. And here we are, right back to cardboard. I just hope it isn’t “recycled”.
That’s why I smile when I hear a band does not do any country, or any blues. My new band tends to spice up their older material with classic rock riffs. It is so occasional, I need time know when to do those rock fills. Today, I can report great progress, if only because I no longer have to play cautiously. What we are working on now is more complicated musically. The guys apparently like what I’m doing. Egad, I’ve only begun to adapt—up to now I was intent on just learning their massive song list. Twice as long as your song list.
For a weird movie, watch “Cleaner”. It is on Crackle. (I am working diligently on a method to block Crackle ads. Why? Because they advertise free and when you pollute with ads, it isn’t free.) Years ago, we used to have a crime scene cleanup crew bring their computers to the shop. These guys were paid some serious money. I thought about it, but after the first half hour of “Cleaner” I’ve certainly changed my mind. This movie is somewhat predictable but a great novel angle on the cop movie. Great acting, believable, realistic.
But those Crackle ads have to go. If there’s a way, I’ll find it. They are, in the end, just pop-ups and therefore subject to blocking. Thus, they are in cahoots with those who write the blocking code, so typical of today’s programming mindset. Can’t invent or create anything, so start a little money-making measure-countermeasure racket.
What’s the most expensive drink you ever had? I got you beat. I had some business during the day, then bingo at night. I instinctively tucked the bingo singles inside a fold of my other cash. On the return home, I stopped at My Buddy’s Place, and why not, I earned it. As I entered the only spot open was right next to this industrial strength fan. I ordered a Bud, when it arrived, I opened my wad and in a moment, the slipstream started peeling $20’s off my fingers, right out the door, and across the road.
This went on for about a second before I got my grip back, so nobody saw how many bills were lost. But lost they are. If I told you the truth about that neighborhood [across the road], some azzhole would call me a racist, so I won’t say a word.
The bingo take had not yet been tallied, meaning the total [lost here] will never be known. But that $90 bottle of wine I bought atop a revolving restaurant in 1981 pales by comparison. Everybody present saw the twenties fly away which ensures the embarrassment factor will peak at 10 out of 10 for at least the rest of the month. The club had just installed that propeller earlier today to combat the heat wave. Trust me, those twenties were gone, gone, gone. Schadenfreude types, this should make your week.
ADDENDUM
Poverty. While there really is no such thing in America, there is the condition of poverty by comparison—others have things that you do not. According to Huff, a family of four living on less than $23,000 annually is poor. Taking things back to my day with those numbers means the poverty level was $5,448 per year, which sounds about right. My parent’s income was, at the time, more than double that, at $11,488 annually. We were not poor. Yet, my upbringing had all the elements of poverty except lack of food. We had, as I used to put it in my teens, “enough food to put the goddam Polish army through World War III”. But nothing, not one thing else.
And as long as there was food on the table, you were just an ungrateful little bastard.
[Author's note 2022: The above numbers are wrong by converting some numbers to old dollars. While you still would not want to raise a family of four on five grand per year, the error here is my parents income. It was seven times the poverty level, not twice. My error, and I have not double-checked these numbers.]
So I read today that 80% of adult Americans are now facing something called “near poverty”. I wonder, could that mean having plenty of food, but nothing else? And you want WHO to feel sorry for them? I am prepared to feel as sorry for them as I just know they would have felt sorry for me had they’d known their turn was coming. It was about such “poor” that Romney asked, “Why don’t they just go buy more money?
By now you’ve figured out I’m not the guy they should be asking for a handout. People deserve nothing who spent a lifetime looking out for themselves, toeing the party line, and criticizing anyone who dared to complain. They started it. They simply need to learn some valuable lessons and it would be wrong to prevent that. The new term [for what they are going through] is “experiencing economic insecurity”. That’s so sweet, such a nice way to put it.
I take this “poverty event” to mean for once in their lives, those people are going to have to learn how to survive on their own merits, and they can hardly be expected to like it. They turned a blind eye on immigration that progressively took away the very part-time jobs they now need to survive. They endorsed a massive welfare society that will not help them now because they are the wrong color. They used credit to create a bubble that left them living in housing they can’t afford to live in.
These were not the caring, public-minded, sensitive Hippy-types we were told made up the population. These were cold-blooded Yuppies who built upscale playgrounds for their children with other people’s taxes, who voted that others to pick up the tab, who supported a system that stifled opportunity for any but their own kind. I was there and saw it with my own two eyes.
So it is indeed interesting to hear they can’t keep their $400,000 houses. That there are no jobs to help them support themselves in retirement. That there are no dollars left for working-class welfare. Just why do you suppose that is? But they got their food stamps. Food? That has a familiar ring. Why would anyone in their right mind give help to some ungrateful little bastard who’s got enough food to put the Polish . . . oh, I better not say that. It has no relevance in this day and age.
When I hear these tales of people who worked their whole lives winding up on the skids with nothing to show for it, I tell them what they said themselves when they had the chance to make changes, "None of my business."
