One year ago today: November 28, 2015, silver hits a low.
Five years ago today: November 28, 2011, the dodo barrier.
Nine years ago today: November 28, 2007, the girl from where?
Random years ago today: November 28, 2003, play match the photo.
MORNING
Did you miss me? Must have been all that fun you were having with the family over this holiday weekend. Darn, sorry I missed it. Instead, here is the batbike in front of the Terrace Café y’day. I mean right in front, I’ve told you before how lucky I am getting parking spots at the door. Except in Florida, where they prevent that with “valley” parking. Ain’t nobody else driving my baby. This is the place Trent and I went babe-hunting, er, I mean, for brunch a few weeks ago. It’s a swank joint.
Have you ever talked to a communist? It is as amazing how they have an “anti-you” perspective on everything, although I am not specifically stating that Patsie and the Hippie are communists on that count. Rather, I’m talking only about people with enough education to understand that their condition has been categorized. I suppose that works both ways because the communists think we’re nuts. I’ve talked to arch-commies who thought I was insane because I had the warped idea that people who worked harder or longer should get paid more. But enough about my family.
I already closed the books on that wonderful excursion y’day. I could not find the roads on the map, remember, or I’d tell you the route. The best news is the batbike again proves its economy. The entire trip coast $29.70 plus gas, but including the museum admission and tip at the Terrace. It almost made me forget being pissed off at the bank, where I had to make a return trip this morning. And it’s colder today. I’m sensitive to cold, or rather it’s more of an aversion. I’m okay once I get in the water or on the road.
But wouldn’t it be nice if somebody invented a people dryer, like they have hand dryers. Instead, it blows warm dry air. So you don’t need a towel, you just kind of stand in the booth or even the shower stall. I’d buy that. I don’t enjoy a brisk rub-down with a towel, even a heated towel because you can’t get everywhere at once.
And while the bank situation has me miffed, let me spew off about something else. Dictionary.com has declared “xenophobia” as Word of the Year. Maybe so, but the word has taken on a wrong context, similar to the word “paranoia”. You see, the same dictionary defines xenophobia as the fear or hatred of foreign cultures or people. It is misapplied to people who merely dislike foreigners. I can dislike something without either fearing or hating it. I don’t want my children to be more Mexican or Ethiopian yet I don’t fear or hate either nationality. But I do have a morbid loathing for those who would force those cultures upon anyone against their natural will, no matter how ill-defendable that will may be. I don't want my children to be anything like most people I've met.
Montenegro.
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NOON
Statistics gets a little deep for most people, but stay with me. It’s a book I bought at the Goodwill in the south end. It’s titled “Improbable”. I’ve already found it fantastic—but that is due to my background in stats. It was one of the courses where I got many of the highest marks in my life, however, I’ve never really cared for the topic. That’s correct, one of the subjects in which I get nearly perfect marks doesn’t interest me. The book does.
There is an exact reason for that, it is called “expected value”. I concluded it would be too boring to write about why I did that, until now. Consider that the odds of the Earth being wiped out by a meteor are 1 million to one. The odds of winning the Powerball are 120 million to one. With handing you a lecture, this calculation is the expected value, and that’s the reason I don’t buy until the payout was bigger than the odds of losing, which are 119,999,999 to one.
[Author’s note: the book begins with a quip that since the Powerball was begun in 1997, around 50 people have beat those odds. That makes them among “the luckiest and wealthiest people on the planet”. I think you can see why I’m already enjoying this paperback.
Allow me this opportunity to point out that my mark in statistics was the highest EVER to come out of the major west coast school I attended, and this record has so far stood for 29 years. My mark of 99% would have been better but for a debatable answer. This kind of mark, while common in east coast schools which are more profit-driven, out west it is usually only attainable by geniuses, which I am not.]
The book also gives some intriguing details (I’m impressed) about government agencies and operations, including the STR. This is the “Science and Technology Research” department, which is a massive spy agency. It reputedly began during the Reagan administration to monitor all new inventions and developments worldwide. Note that the book only says these operations as representative, it does not even suggest they are for real. All inventions worldwide which show any potential are passed off to friendly mega-corporations to ensure that no country ever becomes more advanced than the US of A. These are the folks you can thank for turning the Internet into one gigantic surveillance device. What’s the “bets” they’ve already talked to President Trump?
VERY IMPORTANT CONCEPT
Who remembers Arcadia, our first out-of-town jaunt to discover how these house auctions worked? We discovered, alright. Foremost, they are not auctions in any honest sense of the word, but you knew that. The entire system is dysfunctional, but primarily what you need to know is that the party ostensibly selling the property has an agent planted in the room with a “reserve bid” you are not allowed to know in advance.
It dawned on me therein lies a vulnerability. You see, the rules require you put up a deposit of 5% on each house you bid on. So the trip was not wasted in that I formulated a plan. Who remembers that plan? Nobody? Well, time to dig up those math skills some thought you’d never use. Let me give you some figures. All you really need to know is that if I had a budget of, say, $10,000, that figure represents 5% of $200,000. My tactic involves manipulating that 5%.
At the next auction, the bank expects, as usual, to pick up, say, five houses for a “reserve bid” of $1,000 each. So they get all five houses for a total of $5,000. Unless, unless, there was somebody bidding against them. What if that person had no intention of buying all five houses, rather to drive the price of each individual house up past $10,000. Strategy/counter-strategy. Now, instead of $5,000, the same houses cost the bank $50,000. And what if that persistent bidder had the resources to keep doing this until, say, the bank allowed him to actually purchase a $200,000 house for the said $10,000.
Ah, I know what some are thinking, but no, the limit is $10,000 beeee-caaaawww-uzz the bank could put you out of business by simply allowing you to overbid once. There is a time limit to come up with the other 95% of the money and if the bank suspects you don’t have it, they’ll force a default. That brings into play another one of those self-serving rules they’ve worked into the system over the years—the right to bar you from further auctions for being “insincere”. Like their stooge system is so sincere to start with, right? The other rule: it ain’t illegal when the bank does it.
Show of hands. Does anybody out there know of somebody with a budget of $10,000? Maybe some budget whiz who is planning on starting a business. The question remains, why has nobody else done this? Go figure, if I picked up a $200,000 house for ten grand, I would quickly flip it for $100,000 and make beeline for the next auction. What is stopping others from doing this? As with the auction, there may be only one way to find out.
AFTERNOON
Ha, can you see these Libtards, demanding a recount of votes—but only in the states where Trump won. It sounds like their death rattle. We’ll always have Libtards because we’ll always have people who know more about what’s right for you than you do. What’s next? Will they demand sanity tests for anyone who didn’t vote for their shill? The Liberal mentality is easy to follow, they want the taxpayer to be separated from his money before all else.
Same with places like California. They can’t begin to pretend they can carry their own weight. Hold back the money and watch how fast they convert. As for Oregon and Washington, same thing. Just wait. I’ve lived in these states and they’ve been overrun in the past thirty years by social rejects from California. Coming in there and buying up the countryside with their LA drug money, calling everybody who objects a redneck. Just wait these Liberals out, their economic base is not self-funding. They are a form of welfare recipient, a parasite that requires a host. Just hold your breath long enough and they’ll cave.
NIGHT
Here’s a nice shot of a restored Cadillac at the museum. (The object under the engine compartment is a tray to catch oil drips.) Even before the war, flying airplanes was an expensive enough hobby that only national governments and the Cadillac set could afford it. So the display is fitting. Here’s a tale from the trailer court. I heard that a private individual built a replica of the “Flyer” and took it out to Kitty Hawk on the 100th anniversary of the first flight. He used a similar catapult and flew the contraption 28 times.
During this day trip I passed several road signs for towns I’ve never heard of. First let me say that unless you really get out in the toonies, there are no small towns left in America. If they’ve survived the demographic transition, the smallest of towns now have their condos and satellite dishes. And the obligatory eyesore of a gated community on the outskirts. At the other extreme, there are towns I know exist but aren’t on the charts. The example I’ve chosen is Mascotte, a town regularly heard of on the radio. Described as beautiful, I cannot find it on the road map.
Now we know thanks to the IRS there are no towns under the radar and no real houses back in the woods. If you get an Atlas, you can follow the area I’m referring to quite easily. Highway 4 goes from Tampa to Orlando, and it is the area to the north of that road. Until you get directly west of Orlando, you see a blank spot on the maps. But there are lots of small paved roads through the area. I drove down a few y’day. Hence, the road signs just mentioned.
The once before I’ve seen road signs pointing to nowhere was the single trip I took in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. I stopped, climbed on the roof of my Ford Maverick, and as far as I could see with binoculars over that treeless prairie, there were no towns. And I was on the Trans-Canada Highway.
I must go exploring in that area of Florida. There is something down those roads because they are kept up and there was traffic. If you find the town marked “Eva” on the maps, that’s a good idea of where I was on this excursion, although I was never in Eva proper. South of Highway 4, where I live, the area is much more built up. And Jesus, you should see what the real estate sites are saying this place is now worth.
That museum was so much fun, here’s another shot. This is the Grumman Duck. Grumman is another manufacturer who could not survive without government contracts, but they had their day during WWII. This is the plane that got famous rescuing downed pilots, but its original purpose was to “spot” for the fleet.
That entailed launching the plane off a catapult and later recovering it with a crane when it landed on the pontoon. That arrangement worked a bit until radar came along and put an end to that nonsense. I cannot think off hand of a single major battle where these airplanes did what they were intended. But that hull arrangement made for a “two-storey” interior and must have been a welcome enough sight to anybody in the drink.
Last Laugh
Seems legit.
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