One year ago today: February 14, 2014, Churchill's sold.
Five years ago today: February 14, 2010,
I accurately "call" bingo five years in advance.
MORNING
Studying the military aspects of history is not the same as studying war, hence I don’t know that much about what is going on in today’s battles. So I took a look at the situation in the Ukraine. Hopeless, it is like Britain and Northern Ireland. One side has been there so long [they think] it has become their permanent possession, the other side is saying go back where you come from or else. Add in a little post-communist logic and a dash of Ukrainian stubbornness, before long the missiles are flying.
During the German invasion of WWII, huge numbers of Soviet troops in the south surrendered, but it is not often reported that most of these were Ukrainian nationalists. They were hoping to fight with the Germans against the Russians. But Germany kind of missed the boat on that opportunity. Now, I hear talk of America arming the Ukraine, but the Ukrainians have not forgotten “Operation Keelhaul”, where refugees were clubbed back into Russia. Many of the Ukrainians forced back into Russian hands had left before the wars and revolution and had never been Russian citizens.
Sites of this forced extradition include New York and Toronto, so no blaming the British alone. They often beat POWs unconscious before loading them into trucks, to be executed by the Soviet firing squads “within earshot”. So you'll know, at then end of WWII, Stalin had 5,000 American prisoners, including pilots crash landed in Siberia after bombing raids on Japan. These were essentially held hostage unless the western allies "repatriated" anti-soviet internees.
Most Americans know or care little this war. Their instincts are two-fold. One, stay out of the other man’s fight. Two, side with the underdog.
NOON
“After all, what is reality anyway? Nothin’ but a collective hunch” --Jane Wagner. (Okay, who is Jane Wagner, anyway? She is the wife of Lily Tomlin, who turns 76 this year.)
There you have it. A couple months back I gave away my box of expensive RJ-45 jacks. Those are the 8-pin ends you see on netowrk cables. Worth around $1.60 apiece, they were kept around here since we closed the computer shop. When was that? Back in 2009. Now I have the Radio Shack tool to connect them and I tore this place apart before I remembered I think I gave them to Fred.
That’s the exciting part of the day so far, guys. Missing plugs. So let’s look at the Fag Rag, a.k.a. the Miami Herald. It says here the guy that shot our sniper hero is claiming insanity. He has to be nuts to think anybody is buying that angle. Then again, the incident did happen on a shooting range.
So, can people who won’t let their kids get vaccinated upset your schedule? Sure, there have been cases of outbreaks in Europe traced back to Americans traveling with infected children. Such parents are like tax collectors, you cannot choose to ignore them just because they are selfish bastards. All we need is a ban on tourism as a result. I’ve never had mumps or measles. If I catch it from a child carrier, can I sue the parents? I would certainly try. It is illegal to knowingly spread disease.
And once again, the Herald announced soaring house prices. Up 4.7%, with claims that the average house price in Miami is now $246,000. Again, that’s because the bank won’t lend money on anything cheaper. Not when they can get federal money at 1% and invest it at 3%.
How about the stock market, with the Dow Jones at 18,019.35? I guess the crowd over there has not heard about the recession going on since 2006 and the fall in America’s position as the world’s top economy. But collapse has been predicted so long and so often that who listens anymore? And silver, which is supposed to ratio out to gold at 16:1 and has been at 70:1 for how many years now? Put another way, silver should cost 1/16ths as much as gold, or $70 per ounce. Instead it is $17 per ounce. The market is clearly being run by total crooks.
That leads to some trivia. The reason for the 16:1 ratio (sometimes 17:1) is because that is the amount of silver to gold present in the Earth’s crust. How they determine this, I haven’t the foggiest. How Long is a Chinaman’s name.
AFTERNOON
I’m staying home where it is warm. But I'm cranky, because I had planned on an evening out. But I did stop at Jimbos II last evening after the bicycle theft. So, let’s see what I have to say when I’m in a grouchy mood.
Mainly, though, I don’t like her act. She is the ultimate clone rock star. Every move, every show, copied from somebody else. Mind you, you could say that is a talent, too. But it isn’t original, so thank you, I’d rather see the real thing. Clones can kiss my RRR.
All I’ve got to say to people who get on stage and say they are sponsored by so and so is--get off the stage. Only useless messages need to be sponsored. If you think that’s an attitude, you should have heard this guy last evening. He figured the room was a bunch of rookies because none of them wanted to play pool with him. Duh. Did I mention, the overhead TV was on the “serve beer in your underwear” channel? Seriously, there is a show about dumpy middle-aged housewives who bartend wearing string bikinis. Flabby thighs and all.
But you have to love the twerps that justify it saying these women are making money. Gee, we thought it was free. Thanks for enlightening us. And we all thought women worked for nothing. I made the mistake of dating a woman without a job just once in my life. (She quit her job without telling me after she moved in.) You know, when I think about it, I must know a thing or two because this society is designed to make men exactly like me into payers of alimony and child support.
Another item that irks me is women who have met nothing but goofs in their lives. They somehow attract duds, but the real problem is they lose the ability to distinguish good men. Hence, their manner brings out the worst in every man they meet and their cycle continues. That, guys, is why I never go out with women I meet in bars. Never, not even once. Those who do are plain stoopid. Ordinary plain stoopid. As for the women, never in my life has a woman had the chance to tell me no a second time. I'm completely comfortable with ignoring women who underestimated me when we first met. It takes a certain mentality to underestimate me, not in general, but in certain areas that spell the woman is a bad risk to start with.
There, how am I doing so far? It helps to bear in mind there is a good reason I laugh at others in this sarcastic way. During my formative years, I was exposed to older “hippies”, who had some pretty radical views. I noticed as they aged, some of them got absorbed into the system, others who bucked it had far more interesting lives. To this day, I still see a huge difference between these lifestyles. It still amazes me how people who obey every rule in the system manage to make such ordinary mistakes.
Nor am I lenient toward people who live “paycheck to paycheck”. If you look closely, the payment problems they have are over color TVs and good times. Not rent and food. I’ve lived my life on the stage, not in the audience. It is only the audience that thinks therefore the stage misses the point. Nonsense. On stage you see everything. At forty, you see the thirty-year-old waitresses behind the bar hiking up their jeans and it is gross if you ask me.
The forty-plus crowd present was playing millennium-age music on the juke box. I’ll listen to the Bloodhounds, as long as somebody else is spending the money. In all, I was at the pub for two hours. More and more of the old gang is showing up, but it is two miles from the old location. Not walking distance.
NIGHT
I composed a long letter to Elliott concerning my decision last year to stop consuming GMO foods. I would stress that my reasons were entirely my own health. I am not about to join any anti-Monsanto protests. While I disagree with their corporate methods, such as suing diaries that advertise they DON’T use rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone), I feel as before that consumption is a personal issue.
As for my health, my weight has stabilized, but there are too many factors involved to thank diet alone. The only Monsanto-laced product I have on the premises is Carnation evaporated milk, and I’m waffling on that.
So you’ll know, corn is heavily subsidized with your tax dollars to make it the cheapest grain in the world. This drives real corn-growers out of business and forces food manufacturers to use corn or they cannot compete. I am against any form of farm or agricultural subsidy.
From the e-mail of Dan Lewis, those interested in case studies that dispel popular myths, try reading What Makes Us Happy?”. This study covers the lives of 288 men from the 1930s to today. The conclusion is there is no universal formula for happiness.
The results were no surprise to me. I’ve been saying for nearly a half century that all the major problems in my life have been caused by uninvited strangers trying to force me to do things their way without paying me. Seems I was more right about that than even I imagined. No matter how little you let others count, they still impose on your life by sheer numbers. (But after reading the article, I concluded I must be happier than 99% of everybody. I’m okay with not having overwhelming social and financial problems on a daily basis.)
That was JZ on the phone, he threw out his back lifting a 300 lb. safe onto his truck bed. That’s my buddy, will not admit he is far older than when I had my heart attack. He’s tough, but he’s never been all that limber. Not that you have to be to lug metal, but it’s still a young man’s occupation. Note that he helps out with Valentine’s at the family business like I used to. But, it is family, so while it is nice for the extra bucks, in the long run it isn’t a paying job.
That doesn’t apply to the business, where an entire two year’s profit is often made in one day. It is not uncommon for a florist to make six figures on Feb. 14. Now JZ made the deliveries, my old job, so I have a good idea what he pulled in. And that means we should get out of town for a day or two. Maybe back up to Ft. Meyers Beach. He still thinks you need a thousand each to party on the coast. Last year, it cost us $381 between us, including two $100 nights at the Lanai Kai.
The one thing agreed is we need a major planning session to flip a property. The difference is we’ve waited so long that I no longer need a partner. Wallace, you old fool! Anyway, there are a number of properties with a four year payout that I’ve identified. I insist that anything I invest in must require no more than two months of renovations, and can then be rented in the $1,200 range for as many months as required to get our asking price. And that price is at least $46,000 more than I paid for the place.
But for me, four years is taking a titanic risk with my heart condition. Hence, a partner is necessary and that makes it a business trip. Standby for news on that one.
ADDENDUM
Exercise, the brain kind. I am due to buy a 2015 Almanac to continue my now secondary study of navigation. That’s not likely to change until I meet a gal with a yacht. This got me to thinking. About the sun, Ken, not the girl and the boat. What is the Almanac? Well, follow along with me here, since this isn’t in the book. I know the sun is highest in the sky on June 21, so let me call that the beginning of the year.
I know it will sink lower each day until December 21, then start rising again. I don’t have my Almanac here, so stop me if I make any mistakes. Deal? From grade school, I remember the inclination of the Earth off its orbital plane is 23-1/2°. I’ll bet you a dollar that’s what those tropic lines are in the atlas, the limit of the sun’s apparent rise and fall from the equator. You know, Capricorn and Cancer. Together, that is a total of 47°. Thus, if I measured the sun at noon, over year, it would appear to rise and fall a total of 47°.
Again, work with me, I have no book in front of me, just a bowl of porridge. Thus, over a year, I would measure the noon sun 365 times. And a quarter of a day until leap year. That must be the reason I have to buy a new Almanac every year. Why, those sneaky English publishers. I learned the Almanac publishes the sun's [calculated] position every hour and then you refer to a small table at the back to offset for minutes and seconds. So, how many hour-times are in an annual Almanac?
Well, they don’t know if you are in Edmonton or Easter Island*, so they would include all 24 hours, remind me to check that later. Assume 24. Long-hand tells me that is 8,760 ground points every 365 days. Navigationalists call it GP for “geographic position”. It is the single point on the Earth’s surface where the sun is directly overhead at any given moment. Put another way, 8,760 hours in a year. So, if I measure the sun’s altitude at noon today, where should I find it at noon tomorrow? That would match the distance the ground point moved.
Allow me. If the sun moves 47° up and down per year, then it moves 47/365ths as much per day. Or 0.1287ths of a degree. That’s kind of small, so let’s look at a week. Almost a degree. But in thirty days, that’s 3.91° and anyone can measure that. What? Okay, anyone but with a brain I meant, Hector. Now go play outside with the penguins.
The point is, one learned the formulas, it should be possible to make your own Almanac, at least as far as the Sun (a proper noun in this usage) is concerned. That’s all for now, but I will check to see when I get home. There should be 8,760 hourly figures, a 47° annual spread, and around 4° between monthly readings.
Happy Valentine’s Day and whaddaya mean there’s no such word as “navigationalists”. There is now.
*and don't think you can tell either if all you got to go on is being surrounded by large rock-heads.
Last Laugh
In this weather I say just let him go.
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