One year ago today: May 14, 2013, I read silver wrong.
Five years ago today: May 14, 2009, computer talk, outdated.
THIS ONE
Winter Haven. What a great mini-holiday, as usual I slept more soundly than ever. Let’s wrap up the trip details so you’ll know what gives if you decide to ride the rails. Do you like this photo? It’s one of those “blues” album covers. Blues singers and guitar players love abandoned barns, no-tell motels, and railways to nowhere. The yellow tinge to this picture is an accurate presentation of the view, it comes from the tint of the Amtrak window glass.
I timed my trips to get into town in broad daylight, but with only two trains a day each direction, that isn’t always possible. There are a lot of minorities on the train but Amtrak security seems to be airtight and there is no smoking anywhere.
Alright, I’m riding the train when I should be home practicing. I tend to forget the tunes I don’t listen to much, and the Doors are a candidate for that. Except for the shining organ introduction to “Light My Fire” the rest of that song and the rest of their music is pretty boring as far as I’m concerned. Please, don’t tell me they made big money, that is a different subject. Did they really record 84 songs, or was it the same two songs 42 times each? I’ve never taken the brain-squirming drugs essential to identify with Doors lyrics. Yes, they had a great keyboard player, even if he did belong in a symphony orchestra elsewhere.
I finally re-wrote the bass line to “Riders on the Storm”. All versions on-line are wrong, mostly they are wrong because they are written by guitar players. The Amtrak passenger cars are relatively quiet and I could hear the bass better than I expected (via headphones). That is definitely keyboard bass which most guitarists cannot play, they only think they can. My definition of a total guitar douche is the gimptard who thinks “finger” bass is something special. That only aficionados like him can even begin to hear the musical purity of it all. Gag me.
I even read the Amtrak travel magazine. They offer tours but at prices to startle those who consider the train a budget travel option. This issue showed ads for rehab centers, a model wearing a hat shaped like the Eiffel Tower, and a list of celebrity vegans. I only recognized four of the bunch, one of whom was Oprah. The others were Bill Clinton, Howard Stern, and Paul McCartney.
Maybe it’s true you are what you eat. I, for one, always did consider Oprah to be some kind of vegetable. Have you ever heard her trying to sound educated? It’s even funnier than that uber-racist Whoopie Goldberg trying to take on Ann Coulter. Gee, Ann, tell us what you know about being black. Pause, wait for cue card. Audience applauds. Still, Whoopie, that’s a cute move for a woman who so closely resembles the cushion she was named after.
The magazine also advertises a smart basketball, the 94Fifty. For the non-sports types like myself, the 94Fifty has something to do with the dimensions of a basketball court. Hey, selling to jocks always entails keeping things in low gear. The basketball contains sensors that detect and analyze your dribbles. All for $299. See it at your nearest Apple store. It’s probably the cheapest thing in the place.
Speaking of things sold to jocks, I finally found out what those purple foam plastic things were that I cut up to hold my resistors and spare parts. They are called “yoga blocks” and they ain’t cheap. Well, these ones are now. Guess what else is expensive? The extra drain by the new air conditioner was causing burned fuses. We had the repairman over and he traced it back to the FPL meter. We took the cover off and the last service interval was 1961. It needs replacing, which is slated for Friday. So it lasted more than fifty years. Guess what else is electrical? The scooter wiring. I’ve got another burned headlamp, a new bulb under the tail-light, and a new flasher to remind me to cancel the signal lights. All this seems pretty routine compared to y’day’s train trip.
However, the $99,000 price tag was exceptionally high for the area. I found 16 listings with better than 3 bedrooms two baths for less than $100,000, including the little mansion shown here. Depending on response, I may show more photos [of this mansion] tomorrow. I have not seen this myself, only the adverts, but I could easily drive to Winter Haven. Anyway, here is what I else found, statistically.
In my range, the average house price was $63,758.82. That’s $22,120 per bedroom or $30,108 per bathroom. If I live another ten years, one bedroom is only $184 per month, a lot less than I’m paying here. But I’d rather have a cottage. With big trees in the front yard. I don’t want to die in a mansion that either gets grabbed by the government or some heir sells for half what I paid. I got some feedback over my article on Canada (Vancouver) houses selling for more than castles in Europe. Here, play this game called Crack Shack or Mansion?. You might not get it unless you know the situation in Canada.
And remember, the Canadian market lags the US by 15 years. The bubble here burst in 2006. It also means when the crash happens in Canada, the average house owner who gets caught will be 68, not 53.
[Author's note: the references to The Doors exactly one year ago today is coincidence. The blogs are not written on the basis of dates. Much of the material is written as a journal, which is why some entries are considerably longer than others. Many are written to jog my memory. Unlike those who lead the most basic of lives, I like to record things that remind me of things I might other wise forget--that's due to sheer volume, Glen, not dementia. Consider the alternative, which is what really happens to people who don't record their lives. They forget everything, and when they die, so does everybody else. My detractors best remember, I have a journal--so never, ever change your story. Ahem.]
ADDENDUM
Who is Dallas Smallwood? He’s another symbol of what is wrong with law enforcement in America. There are crooked politicians everywhere, Russian mafia money buying houses in Sunny Isles, and stolen Medicare payments routed to Cuba by the hundred millions—and what are the police doing? Tracking down people like Dallas who escaped from jail 40 years ago and has led a quiet and law-abiding life since. Leave the guy alone, you azzholes. However, the significance here is the increasing number of ancient cases now appearing in the newspapers. There seems to be an instance of these stale-dated arrests every month now. Always white, always male, always on a completely cold case crime or warrant.
America is different than any other country that got to this stage in history, that is, where the government is divorced from reality. There are guns in America. Lots of them. The authorities are scared enough to want a file, any file, on every person, right from day one. In a way I’m okay with that because the people most affected will be the dorks who “have nothing to hide”, for they willingly gave up information without protest—and worse, they called down the non-dorks who didn’t want their lives cataloged.
Those with the biggest mouths will suffer the most. It is a known fact, at least in this blog, that those who oppose privacy are those with something terrible to hide. (There are exceptions, but I’ve never met one.) They are vainly hoping the police will get too bogged down sweating the small stuff to look into the pasts of “cooperators”. Well, I got news for that crowd. Mark my words, this spate of locating “criminals” will soon be turned on locating “suspects”. Big difference. I warned people long ago there would eventually be a major shift from people being on a suspect list to people on a list being suspect.
Now we'll see who didn’t listen.
The justification will initially be something the authorities will claim as noble, say to collect X billion dollars in unpaid fines. Who would object even to themselves getting nabbed for an outstanding fine as long as everybody else is nailed too--and don’t think for a second the government doesn’t know most people are stupid enough to fall for that. The time to stay off those lists was, like me, twenty years ago. Voter lists, utility bills, phone bills, I can think of fifty lists I’m not on. To those who disagree with my theory, have them say it again when their turn comes up. If they still can.
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