One year ago today: August 24, 2014, new guitar player?
Five years ago today: August 24, 2010, asshole heaven, click here.
Six years ago today: August 24, 2009, ordinary microscopes.
MORNING
I watched some documentaries on Necker Island. That’s the private island at the eastern edge of the Caribbean, owned by Branson, a rare type of individual in that he got rich without brains, without working, without ever inventing or innovating one single new idea of this how. You gotta love the guy. Oh, you can say he “worked”, but I don’t recall seeing him next to me at that lumber mill in Montana in the 70s.
Actually, I was checking up on his daughter, Holly, who didn’t really turn out all that pretty. These videos are produced with an eye to convincing us that rich people have more fun than we do, but I get a totally different message. If you look closely at all depictions of Necker Island, you may notice the things I do.
No library, no laboratory, no nothing even remotely intellectual-based. Not even a bass guitar in sight. As if rich people need to get away from thinking in order to have a good time. Lots of pool tables, parasailing, and other gronk no-brainer activities up the ying-yang. I also notice there are no fat people and you can tell the guests and staff apart, um, by, um, looking.
As just stated, we are supposed to think that, say, billards, is more fun when you are paying $2,167 per person per day. I find that kind of notion odd, since once you like doing something it is natural to find the least, not the most, expensive way of doing it. I’m saying if you truly enjoy drinking coffee, you don’t seek out the highest prices in town. Unless, of course, it is not really the coffee you are after. Gotcha!
NOON
Okay, here is a picture of Necker Island. It’s named after some Dutchman, Nechert or something like that. Fifty years ago, the place was so full of mosquitoes and venomous snakes that a team practicing survival techniques had to be rescued themselves. But, it was for sale for $6 million and Branson was the only bidder with $180,000. It has since been manicured and, like Florida, all the coconut trees have been imported.
I was floored to hear NPR actually address a real problem and seek real solutions. In this case, it is the rise in telemarket calls originating overseas. Finally, a topic that has relevance, I could barely believe it. I kept waiting for NPR to work in the queer-is-okay angle they so dearly love, but for once, they stayed in focus here. Apparently, there is now research for a telephone option that includes a button that forwards the call to a central investigation agency.
Oh, and speaking of queers, they have succeeded in having the national psychiatric groups redefine “orientation” to encompass not just “physical”, but now “emotional” and “romantic” attraction as well. Gee, pretty soon, they hope, we will all be one big happy family. You know, the kind of family that never asks if they can have seconds and never calls unless they need to make bail.
And another cute euphemism has got to be the talies (Taliban) who have coaxed the media into changing their war casualties from “terrorists” to “drone victims”.
AFTERNOON
Here’s a house near Arcadia than JZ and I drove right past a little over a month ago. It was for sale for $260,000. And this morning it is back on the market at $139,000. Makes you wonder what happened. It is only of interest because we were there, it is not something I could afford. It has a spiral staircase. This is not original condition, it has been extensively restored.
What’s this, the stock market falls 1,000 points? That’s good, another shakeup is just what the system needs. This is not a record drop as claimed by Fox. It should be remembered that Fox won a court case in Tampa last February where they proved they are not obligated to report the truth in their news broadcasting. Besides, a thousand points is less than 3% of the market, and a bear market needs to drop 20% or more. The shock is that for the first time the market dropped over 100 points in less than two minutes.
That should be a wakeup call to those who think that market crashes historically take a full day or more. I instantly checked silver prices to note they have dropped to $14.80 per ounce. I’ll be alert to see what gives with this so-called market correction. Trump has more than once stated that curbs are due for hedge fund managers who create nothing.
Having said that, decades ago I discovered that stock market dips operate on the principle of last in, first out. Those who get stung the worst are those who just invested. It’s a kind of leverage that devastates newcomers. A ten percent dip in the entire economy would not hurt me, but it would wipe out a lot of the very investors who contributed to or caused the six year market rise since 2009. I was stung several times when younger because I had no yet learned it takes lots of other, extra money to support even the best of investments.
Put another way, while I don’t have a record of successful great investment, the ones I do make never have to “sell at a loss” because they are protected from the urges and surges that cause others to make mistakes. Yes, I made plenty of bad moves that could largely have been avoided if I’d known even one trustworthy adult who could have given me a little coaching.
I grew up in an atmosphere where you could not ask anybody for advice on how to make money—they would all tell you to “work hard”. Which every kid already knows doesn’t work. The only socially acceptable way to “make money using your brains” was to “become a doctor”. Of all the hundreds of kids I grew up with going to eight different schools, only two of them ever became doctors. And even then, only after tremendous parental pressure. One was a farmer’s son, the other’s father owned a gas station.
Curious factoid: although these guys never knew each other, they were, at different towns and times, both in my scout troop. On the other hand, around 15 people I grew up with became lawyers. That group has two things in common. One, they got the hell out of those small towns. And two, the had families that paid for those educations.
FYI: That was the same era I lived nearly a month in an abandoned car down by the river, seven miles from my aunt’s three-story mansion. She had let me crash there a few days, giving me toast and coffee in the morning. Less food than you’d give a stray dog. (I found out years later she was perfectly aware my parents were intentionally holding back the money they’d promised me for school.)
She nagged so bad, I moved into the old car. I walked through a hole in the fence to get to classes and that was one cold winter. But I knew the minute I dropped out [of university], I’d never get a job that paid enough to allow me to return—which is precisely what happened. I never graduated until I was in my 30s, which was far too late, career-wise. And far too late to sue my family for the money. I never asked for even a free penny, I had worked four years for that money without being paid.
None of this, by the way, is any secret back home.
EVENING
While I’m recalling my childhood, there was a tale my mother told of her other sister who went “to the city” and found some nylon stockings on sale for half price, or some other bargain. So she bought twenty pairs. When she got home, she opened the packages to find they all “had the seams up the front. Watching my father pretend he could shop was even funnier. A freezer full of unshucked corn on the cob.
Last, the authorities called my neighbor came the road and confiscated his big drone. That's the big drone, not the little one shown here. And he always did like to fly it very near said road. I always told him not to post pictures of the big drone on Facebook. Now he believes me. The batteries alone were $1,700 each. Plus, downtown and the beach are now no-fly zones, and the Florida government is going to start requiring licenses for electric bicycles.
Why? So that drunk [bicycle] riders will be subject to DWI law and the associated huge fines. It’s all about the money.
ADDENDUM
Get ready for some trivia and such, I’m grounded by last week’s surgery. That means reading, an activity not much in vogue in Florida. Normally the symptoms leave within 24 hours, but this time they must have known I wanted to get some work done. And in a few hours they are doing my other leg. So, it’s long hours of sitting around. Worse, the bakery is still on holidays in Europe so I may have to patronize the Panera.
Those who believe that people get older and wiser should have to spend an afternoon at the Panera. For now, I’m stuck home with a good book and some Red Nex music in the background. Well, sort of Red Nex because I’m listening to youTube versions. And youTube has really gone downhill. Like the Millennials who post. Follow their thinking, “A computer monitor looks like a television screen and therefore that means it must contain annoying advertisements.”
That is how Millennials think and draw associations.
So they post their totally indoctrinated crap, actually thinking they are smart and progressive. I mean, they can’t tolerate things being posted for free—that is so last century. And talk about brainwashed, those boys. Pornography is just another form of entertainment and AIDS is just another disease, so it is okay to lump everything together and call themselves “tolerant”. And call those who disagree racist. Or how do they pronounce it? “Ray-sis”.
And too indoctrinated to understand they are giving away the last refuge on Earth.
Last Laugh
Return Home
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