February 15, 2014

           Today’s post starts on the next paragraph. But an opening night is always such an event that it takes first place. Above the fold, above the salt, type of thing. This evening, Jag & I opened to an empty room. The only people present were the barkeep and the janitor. That gives you a good flash into what has been happening to the economy in these parts. There is no typo above, the band is referred to as “Jag & I”, ampersand included. We played just over an hour when finally a few folks turned up for bingo. I’ll give more information later, so read on.

           What adventures will today bring? One man’s boredom is another man’s excitement, wasn’t it Josef Stalin who said that? Alaine and I were e-chatting. That’s like a combination of e-mail and chat, see. I coined the word because I can. I think she should retire. Personally, I think no job is worth it, though that’s a judgment. Retirement isn’t a financial goal, no matter what the pundits tell you. Retirement is a compromise. My decision was relatively easy because I kept good records and knew what to expect.
           At 40, I realized I was not materially ahead for working hard. Although I’d obeyed all the rules and made no major mistakes, the system behaved as if it was designed to stomp on you every time you got a little bit ahead. I didn’t say it was, I said it behaved as if it was. I’m talking net effect here. Every time you got something, another thing came along and swiped it. Years later I realized what was happening was the baby boom. I was smack in the middle of an era where masses of yuppies were discovering the same avenues and investments as I was, and the system was moving in to close the loopholes. You never get ahead
           Income taxes alone made certain of that. I calculated I would have to live to be 150-ish to attain what society was telling me constituted a happy and contented retirement. But I had not yet even started a family. Odd, I thought as I looked around me, people who never planned a thing were getting married and having more children than they could possibly afford. That’s a matter in which my parents had considerable experience. That got me to thinking.
           But what made me decide was Harry, good old Sgt. Garcia, that fat kid friend of RofR. I noted that he had a house paid for (by daddy) and a small enough monthly stipend to not work. No, he was not rich, but he never worked. He devoted his life to pursuing little projects of interest—any one of which had the potential to make him far wealthier than my working for a living. When I last saw him in 1994, nothing had panned out. Yet he could look back on a life of relaxed enjoyment, sampling what the world had to offer.
           The one job he had, teaching on a cruise ship university, sent him to St. Petersburg and Reykjavik. So, I decided the same was possible for me on a much smaller scale. If I was never going to get rich, why work? Find the minimum level of existence that I could tolerate and begin taking it easy. The welfare mentality. (I’ve done much better than that, but you get my point.) So what if I’m not rich, I’m not wasting my life trying to be, either.
           Did you see that article today about the man who collected nude photos of women from disgruntled boyfriends, posted them on his website, and charged the women $250 to remove them? He was charged with something, but I can’t figure out what. Not blackmail, since he acquired the photos legally and they were already in the public domain. It’s not like he took the photos on the sly or the boyfriend didn’t have consent. What crime was committed? Tell you what, for just $50, I’ll guarantee I will not mention your name on this blog again, but what is there already stays. Freedom of the press. And I qualify as the press under any reasonable standard.

           No, I did not do a conclusive study on corn. But like I said, after the first day or two, I’d read enough. I chucked it out. And here are the replacements. It was a chore to find products without corn in the mixture. That includes most cereals and anything canned in syrup. Ix-nay on Raiman noodles and such, plus any sauce or gravy mixes. Here is what I’ve got, which incidentally is the equivalent of about a month’s supply of emergency rations. No, it would not be a varied diet but if that bothers anyone, let ‘em starve.
           It is not the whole story, because utilities and water will probably disappear about the same time. What you see here is just the dry goods. I have enough camp fuel to boil plenty of rainwater. Chances are I’d stretch this into an extra week, as it would take that long before my local supplies ran out. Take it for granted the ATMs will also fail, and I would be one of the few people with enough hard money to buy another month’s food supply if it came to that. No, most people do not have a month’s food supply on hand.
           You want to know about the gig. This evening came about because our Saturday practice that was canceled. Jag got stranded in Boca. By the time he arrived, I was packing for the gig, so we met up there and our new band is now officially on the road. We have just two hours of material and some of it needs work. It’s just as well we didn’t wait, as the show went well for what we did and the sound was pretty darn good. I mean also, it was clear. We definitely have a natural “coffeehouse” setting coupled with a presentation that is tight-and-bright. What paid off well was the several hours we spent learning to recover from errors. Most bands don’t practice this to their chagrin.
           What did we learn? In any order, we found out we need to work on chord transitions and perk up the rhythms as we played in unison a little too much. There were a few dead spots that were only obvious at volume. We need twice as much material. The cue cards I printed up have to be larger for stage work. I forgot too many lyrics and Jag reverted to a comping beat under pressure. Both are solved by targeted practice.
           Good news was the sound, we really sound like we’ve been together a much longer time. The chops were well rehearsed so we did not experience any challenges playing long stretches of a single chord—something amateurs do terribly. We need more fills. In all, live stage work is a precious lesson and it is fortunate to have a user-friendly joint like Jimbos to conduct the acid test. Yes, we made money. Good money. And that is likely a glimmer of what’s to come. Darn tootin’ I would thumb my nose at any other guitarist who said my idea wouldn’t work, especially the few who said no worthwhile guitar player would ever “lower” himself to just playing rhythm. If you want to meet these guitarists, go knock on their doors. Trust me, they’ll be at home.

ADDENDUM
           In answer to why I looked at the Panama Canal y’day, it is part of an overall learning project about container shipping. I had almost invested in shipping containers in the early 90s, but smelled a rat when the company began selling fractional shares. Like Brazilian gold mines, percents don’t always end at 100. Sure enough, the company, based in Richmond, BC, Canada went belly-up when it was found they were selling more containers than they possessed. However, I learned plenty about the container business and I’ll share some of it with you.

           First, take a look at this shipping container. This is a common sight in some areas, an old unit converted into living quarters. Laugh if you must, but I have seen these stacked four high and across with interiors that bordered on luxurious. They frame the interior and add a layer of insulation. Locally, they made cheap construction site offices. After all, you just know they are going to fit on a truck. But let’s get back to boxes, ships, and canals.
           My reasoning is that if somebody will spend billions to get container ships through the Panama canal, those ships probably come from China. In particular, Shanghai has built an enormous deep sea port some twenty miles out into the ocean. And they are buying shipyards in Greece, where presumably there is know-how to build even larger ships than used by Maersk. From my years of importing dog wigs (don’t ask) I handily calculated that the cross-Pacific fee charged by the ships is $1,000 per container. So big ships make big sense. The types of containers are dry, wet, tunnel, open-side, open-top, insulated, and flat-rack. Also, the clever investor has already noticed that demand for these containers is not influenced by the stock market or oil prices. And it is not affected by government instability. That’s more than enough to make me look, but not enough to get me to invest. Yet.
           Mind you, if you trust the people running North America as much as I do, you would also prefer to have at least part of your investments well out of arm’s reach (harm’s reach?) when the time comes. The middle of the ocean sounds good—and I understand the natural tendency to resist buying into something you may never see. At the end of 2012 (most current data) there were 160 ships that could handle over 10,000 containers each and 50 ports that could accommodate them. You may not know it, but containers have revolutionized cargo shipping since WWII, when docks did what was known as “break bulk”. Now the containers are loaded directly onto trucks. There is a reason dockworkers hate containers.
           This raises a fearsome issue. Imagine the cost if even on ship carrying 10,000 containers met with disaster. That would have a significant impact on the economy and might even wipe out a small country. That’s a lot of eggs in one basket. Yet, shipping remains by far the cheapest way to move things around the world, and this has been true since ancient times. Almost everything around you right now, your computer, your shirt, even the pencil in your desk, has arrived by container. The demand is there, but it is also elastic—you could lose that shirt.
           How do containers compare? Well, I’m skittish about taking investment advice from conventional brokers, the New York type who deal in paper. And a banker will always tell you a house is a good investment—for him, it is. In the case of shipping containers, the profit is more dependent on asset management than cooking the books, and monitoring management is relatively easy. But you want some hard numbers. Okay, be patient.
           The cheapest NEW container, a twenty-footer, and the only type a beginner should invest in, has a price tag of $39,000 USD. This you turn around and lease to a company like Pacific Tycoon. They insure and manage the container and pay you 1% per month, or $390. (I think if you own less than five containers, the payout is quarterly.) The containers usually last twenty years. At this time, I have no intention of investing. I remember when they cost $9,100 new.
Um, you can buy used containers on eBay for $1,000. But the big shipping companies have agreed between themselves to not lease anything used except from existing customers. New customers have no option but to buy new or the container management companies will have nothing to do with you. Slick, but it guarantees them a supply of new manufacture.