June 20, 2016

Yesteryear
One year ago today: June 20, 2015, my $800 flat tire.
Five years ago today: June 20, 2011, my first 555 circuit.
Nine years ago today: June 20, 2007, the “Blue Crows” experiment.
Random years ago today: June 20, 2008, the bookcase-door.

MORNING
           Ignoring how the silver market is become destabilized and going directly to the important matters, I’m preparing to run the batbike up to Lakeland. There remains the problem of ground transportation up there, since the red scooter is needed here on a daily basis. The curious reader should stick around and see how that plays out. By deft and adroit management of money contemporary resources, a process JZ calls “admenstruation”, because he’s not as good at it as I am, which I never fail to point out when he says it that neither is anybody else, everything at the new place is back on schedule.

           Why, just look at this rendering I had done for my new living room. I had a professional interior architect draw up some plans. These folks can do just wonders with a place. How can you tell this is my place? Easy. No TV. My bass amp is behind that altar thingee dead center.

           Now just in case some wise-ass ever comes along and asks whatever happened to Wallace’s $18,000, take a look at that marble statue on the far left. His cash is the little mat under the statue on the pedestal. Bwaaaa-ha-ha-ha!
           Fact is, within the next ten or eleven days, everything will proceed [as planned], which includes the new accounts, the hydraulic jacks, the termite tent, all building supplies, and the infrastructure to transport, store, and utilize same. This is the equivalent of stating everything is back on budget. And if I find the bedroom roof is just unfinished king or fink rafters, I’m tempted to put in two skylights. On top of all this expense, add around $400 worth of new tools for the job. Not bad, I’d say. It’s hell on my treasury, but not bad since it will produce victory.

Wiki picture of the day.
“Blind Men Examining an Elephant”.
NOON
           Alright, here’s your silver diagram. The yellow arrows point to my unsubstantiated theory of the banks going ballistic to manipulate the price back down below $16 per ounce. But the price keeps busting back upwards toward $18, see. The banksters are running out of tricks, every day that Hong Kong market with the real silver just will not behave. And one time, that price is going to bust through that ceiling, at which time you’ll hear from me. Hey, look at that graph, if they don’t know something funny is going on, they are living on Jupiter.

           What’s intriguing me is what will set off the next crisis. That’s your formula, crisis after crisis until one of them decides to not just go away after a little posturing by the respective governments. The one I’m watching now is Brexit, the withdrawal of the British from the European Union. Say, if you’d ever like to see a sordid document, read that European agreement. It makes the Treaty of Versailles seem like a bicycle bill of sale.

+++ Ig Nobel Prize Winners +++
           Bart Knols: Biology, 2006. Bart (that’s his real name) is the dude who researched that anopheles, the malaria mosquito, is “equally attracted” to the aroma of limburger cheese and human feet. Or as Bart prefers it stated, “odour-mediated host-seeking behavior”, and it only took him 213 pages to say so.
           In un-related news, Bill Gates has yet to release any video of his laser that homes in on the distinctive wing hum of the “murderous mosquito”.
+++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++ +++
NIGHT
           I spent the rest of the day in meetings and boardroom in lovely downtown Lakeland. And, I was right, this country is moving in the direction of federalized, militarized government departments whose sole task is to keep an updated file on every person. Then, when push comes to shove, the government will refer to “their” records rather than the law books. Form after form that required filling out with required fields that have nothing to do with the property. It’s all about getting you on a file. Thank goodness I have a private company.

           Now let’s talk about hidden fees, or those fees that are only revealed once you are too far into something to get away without losing your money and your time. Here is a picture of that gal you chatted up in 2007 with her extra fees now added on. When you get something for nothing, this is usually how it looks.
           Things have changed since I last bought property. The system is now like the rest of the world. There are all manner of documents and extra fees that crop up only after you reach the very end of the process and long after you can balk or cancel out. That, my fellow citizens, is the hallmark of the total corruption in the system. I got hit for $457.06 in various fees before I actually got the deed to the ranch--and it would have been much higher if there had been a mortgage involved.

           Thus, I promptly turned the entire matter over to a private management company with their own fee schedule and now I will be content to remain flat-busted broke for the rest of this month. Trivia, the average American adult gets snagged for $942 per year in hidden charges. When you consider the fees I just paid were not hidden per se, but tacked on at the last possible moment (when I appeared at the courthouse for my deed), that total is probably far higher.
           More trivia. Of the $942, a large chunk is referred to as the “grocery shrink ray”. Long-term blog readers may recall that the first of these scams, the 11 oz. “pound” of coffee, was first reported here long before any of the majors picked up the story. Then, there’s Starbucks.


Last Laugh

++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Return Home
++++++++++++++++++++++++++