One year ago today: February 18, 2016, the Internet is sick.
Five years ago today: February 18, 2012, stealing an idea from Adolph.
Nine years ago today: February 18, 2008, I learn “Spider’s & Snakes”.
Random years ago today: February 18, 2014, the Miami Navy.
MORNING
Here’s the batbike on a materials run this morning, you can see the two concrete tubes. A 12” and and an 8”, I get you some pictures in position and you can imagine how I’m approaching the task. This sidecar load is what I mean about adventure. It builds on itself. Now I have the only cabin in Florida that was renovated by motorcycle. See how it adds to a long line of firsts? It’s like the academy awards, if you don’t win, create a new category. This is the best cabin in Florida ever renovated by a sidecar-driving bass player bloggist who bakes his own quiche.
You don’t have to be a history prof to see how nothing really new has been invented since the computer. Everybody’s waiting for the next big thing. There’s history repeating itself. One guy invents a steam engine and there’s an industrial revolution. Another guy commercializes electricity and there’s another spurt. Then comes the internal combustion engine, it changes everything. And, in my lifetime, the era of the computer. But since then, what?
The rocket did not transform space travel. Nuclear power did not hand us cheap luxury. Nanotech is still science fiction. DNA research is glacial at best. Come on, you “greatest generation”, what’s with the lack of results? Get the rag out. Where’s all the stupendous consequences of being wired? It’s like we now have the same mass of stupidity but somehow they think they have up-voted it legit. Anyone who doesn’t go with their flow is a Nazi racist. But I still don’t see anything new. It’s like once the computer became a toy, all inventiveness shriveled up. I didn’t invent anything either, but at least I tried. People with entitlements don’t try. Even their music is sincerely bland.
There was only one thing left to do. Haul out the bass and play some old music, back from the days when you could tell the tunes apart. Ha, for that matter, I’ll tell you how I was up late learning a song I don’t particularly like. I think it was on the “Help” album (I don’t follow albums) that Ringo sang “Act Naturally”. Or tried to sing it. Anyway, if you know the song, you’ll recall most of the guitar riffs are played on the lower end of the fretboard, which makes it a contender for a bass solo.
So I flew at it, working out all the little guitar nuances onto the bass. A lot of work for a tune I haven’t played in ten years and that I can’t really sing. With this type of music, what I do is learn a killer bass line, then go back and find spaces where I can enhance that bass line with any decoration in the music that I can imitate. Doesn’t have to be guitar parts, any will do. So what happens is you get a bass line that punches in the little hooks and riffs that the human mind tends to say will be left out, particularly if there are only two people on stage.
Or as Ray-B would put it, I’m playing lead on the bass. However, by that token, I could say he is constantly playing bass on the lead—but not doing as good a job of it. Because he doesn’t admit that is what he’s doing and he really can’t play bass. I tried to point out a million other guitar players are doing the same thing. The fact is, his best hope was to try things my way. I disagree I’m playing lead, because what I’m really doing is following my own rule. You can play anything you want but you cannot leave out any of your part or try to change the character of the song. I’m not missing any bass notes when I play the riffs, if you listen close, I’m doing double-duty. Sort of doing on bass what Chet Atkins did with guitar, playing both parts.
And the guitar player is free to do the same—provided he doesn’t stop playing rhythm. Ray-B has a unique way of chording and using the CAGED system to do fills that is ideal for duo work. It’s the old story, however. Once a guitarist can solo, he’s 90% useless for band work until he wakes up later in life, too old to catch up. Unlike bass players, who never age, the opportunity window for guitar players slams shut at around 32. That’s when they enter their second musical childhood. They resurface two or three decades later, with a worn out song list and some crazy concept they can front a band with it.
So there, I said it. And you should hear me play “Act Naturally” now. If you listen to the original, I play every part, including the intro, the fills, the break, the ending, on bass. I don’t just leave out the non-bass parts, like some guitar players do with non-guitar parts. I know a boatload of guitar players who just leave the intros off the song. Then years later when you ask them not to do that, they can’t. I’ve never yet met a guitarist who knows how to come in off the fifth. You have to explain it to them in baby-talk and that isn’t really the bass player’s job.
Put another way, you cannot play in a band with me without learning the stuff you don’t already know. The snag is, most guitar players already know it all, and they can tell you once that happens (usually around age 26), you don’t need to learn anything after that.
320 lb. woman
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NOON
Ugh, have you seen that gross ad with the model showing her stretch marks? No link, no way. She’s happy with her body, she says, but she would say that, wouldn’t she? I have no problem with these “real” woman ads with the fat, the ugly, the pregnant, and the old. But what I don’t like is when they put these ads in the same place where the sexy ones used to be. That part of the bullshit, we don’t need.
I was in the east end later and stopped to stroll around this sci-fi celebration. The idea was to dress up like your superhero or favorite alien. My camera failed and I got this one shot out of fifty, a transformer car. Missing are Superman, Wonder Woman, and a host of Ghostbusters. Those were abundant for the same reason as the movie—the costumes are cheap and available at any painting supply store.
Things were already packing up when I arrived, but I walked two blocks and back, seeing around 1,200 people. And you know, not one good-looking woman. Some may say there’s one right there in my picture, but I guess they like the sumo wrestler look. She’s pretty, and no doubt has a great personality, but I was looking for the goods. It just happens to be the top story from what I got of the experience. They say 30,000 people attended, but that would probably not have improved the ratio.
AFTERNOON
Let’s talk politics, which I cannot do because I know so little of the subject, but I can talk economics in the identical fashion. Trump is pushing for term limits, I hope so intensely that he does that. I’ve lived through the era of the rise of the career politician, and change will never come from within. I don’t find it all strange how the yuppie hippie class never objected to this development of a ruling class until they got old and found out how little they’d be getting back. I grew up in the time period where anybody who spoke of reform was labeled a redneck, etc.
These type of programs are pushed through by career politicians. The more people on welfare, the more voters born into government dependency. Their plan, at least until Trump came along, was to endlessly argue against enforcing the law until so many immigrants arrived they could outvote the white conservative Americans. Each pol pushed for his pet programs, which, when added up together, produced a horrifically inefficient system. There are something like 600 different government agencies that hand out welfare. Also, the government goes through pains to disguise the fact that Social Security is welfare by telling people it is a type of “savings” plan.
And young women are not on welfare because of pregnancy. It’s the other way around, they are pregnant because of welfare. The US is not as bad as some places (right, Canada?) but the cost to society goes far beyond dishing these women out a monthly welfare check. Their kids are educated, protected, and inoculated at public expense. They get free housing. The minimum $960 welfare check is just their spending money—probably more than most of you who work.
The whole veteran’s hospital system is a farce. The reason you hear of veterans who face long waiting lists is the same story you hear about socialized medicine anywhere else in the world. The main reason the veteran has no hospital bed is because they are all being taken up by family members. That’s correct, the veteran’s family members get free medical—and since 1923, any medical condition, not just those resulting from combat duty, qualify for the free ride. They are getting exactly what they voted for.
The solution is to do a New Zealand. They chucked out all but a few government subsidies in the 80s. And it turned the country around. Thousands of the world’s rich are not fleeing to New Zealand as a haven of safety, stability, and growth. They don’t allow no Third Worlders in there, and those on welfare are basically there by choice. And New Zealand welfare is a gut-stretching ordeal, subject to review at regular and random intervals.
The last barrier is taxation. America has it all wrong. For all the bad things people say about a flat tax, it is the only one that will work. You get rid of all other taxes and charge a 10% sales tax on everything except food. Oh, I know the Keynesian crowd will argue that is bad for the economy because it discourages people from spending. But that is only true if people run out of money. Issue them credit cards and watch them go insane. People with credit cards are already stupid, so let them also go crazy.
What, you say you know lots of people with credit cards who are not stupid? Do you now?
“Don’t argue with the guy who’s packing your parachute.”
NIGHT
It was in 1979 that I calculated there are no true investments left in America. I had searched for five years to find any method or combination of methods that could dig me out of poverty. I found nothing except that working for a living was not the answer. All the classic examples, you’ve seen them, of the couple that buys a balanced portfolio of bonds, metals, blue chips, and slowly, over a lifetime builds up to a comfortable retirement. Bullshit. The best plan for success in America, or Canada, is to come from an already well-to-do family. It is the single determinant that counts, the only sure-fire path to riches and comfort. And, as Ann [Coulter] would say, a few exceptions do not change the statistic.
In that era, annual inflation was 10%, I think in 1979 itself it was 13%. But that is only the inflation that the government admits to, not by any means the truth. So, over the twenty years, the couple would need to make $34,000 to break even. They are actually only up $1,000 inflated dollars. That’s hardly going to get them that home in Florida. But now the bad news.
If they went from $10,000 to $35,000, they are taxed on the entire $15,000. I’ll wager anyone who had the wherewithal to have that much money back then was already in the highest tax bracket, let’s round it off at 33%. Ignoring capital gains tax which favors the already rich, that means on the $15,000 paper gain, they paid $5,000 of it in tax. They have only $30,000, a net loss after inflation. There were a lot of people stung by this. I was not one of them.
By late 1982, I had begun to calculate not forward to retirement, but backwards from retirement. At the time this was unconventional wisdom, thank you. Now, we are on familiar territory. Those who’ve read much of my commentary on retirement recognize the pattern right down to today. What if, instead of futilely cobbling together $10,000 to watch the numbers go up while the value goes down, I could arrange my affairs to have the same AMOUNT of money left over as the sheeple? I would then spare myself a life of senseless toil. I don’t have the time to begin to tell you how I did it, but I’ll quickly run over the basics for you.
First rule, deal in cash only if you can. Not just get rid of credit and debit cards, too. Do not establish any kind of buying pattern that others can monitor and calculate against you. This is not theory, you are being constantly profiled by companies that are out to separate you from your money. I take my cash out of the ATM in equal amounts. If I need twice as much, I make two withdrawals on the same session, so nothing can be garnered from reading my bank statement. Of course, I don’t just mean that one statement. I mean how you live your entire financial life. Realize you are at war and quit feeding the enemy your secrets.
Next, write your budget down. Again, there is more to it than appears. When you write it down, it must be in the “accounting formula” method. I won’t elaborate, but the formula is BB + TI – TO = EB. Each time there is a transaction, you have to write out the full formula so you have an ending balance. Tell, you what, let me see what is in my household budget account right at this very moment. Stand by.
Here we go. This month, February 2017, I have spent of my household budget, $21.80 on coffee, $26.00 on gasoline, and $30.89 on non-food household. I spent $97.36 on everything else like phone, stamps, thrift purchases, etc. Utilities & services are a budgeted $140. This is not a lean budget, if you look around here, I have everything I could possibly need. The biggest positive is that there is no TV. Ah, here it is. I have $302.92 left to last me ten days. That is disposable. All groceries, books, entertainment, travel, and tools are taken care of separately. Hmmm, maybe I should take the motorcycle out for a run, that’s entertainment money can’t buy.
[Author’s note: for me $302.92 is a lot of groceries and entertainment. Since I tend to cook from scratch, I buy the best ingredients, yet on average, it costs me just $5.52 per day to eat this well. And I know per shopping trip, I pick up just $8.49 worth of goods. Usually organic, non-GMO, no beef, and ho HFCS—or as it will soon be labeled, “corn sugar”. You’ll buy it because it is cheap and it is cheap because you pay taxes for farm subsidies to make it cheap.]
The third item I’ll mention is my “pension equivalent”, if you’ve been around enough, you’ll know this already. If I went the classical route, they say you now require $2 million to retire in comfort and security. Well, I reject the security crap, anybody with $2 big ones is a natural first target for every seedy bureaucrat from the DC sewers. So, isolate comfort, we are shooting for comfort only. Of the $2 million, let’s make the wild presumption you are able to invest it for a 3% after-inflation return of $60,000. We know if you add up all the taxes you pay, house tax, gasoline tax, income tax, sales tax, that comes to half, so now you have $30,000 for yourself. This works out to an income of less than $580 per week.
My goal, now listen closely, was to calculate how I could get half that amount, $290 per week, but without busting my ass for a lifetime to chase the $2 million. Now, $290 per week is a far more attainable and realistic than the other number. Once I realized this, it was an easy task to turn the formula around and calculate what I needed to have the equivalent of a huge nest egg, that is, the pension equivalent. And while all the numbers in these last two paragraphs are fictitious, all I can tell you is I’ve done much better than that and I have just as much “security” as any dodo who trusts the system. In fact, more, because I could meet my goal standing on the street corner with a guitar.
As for quality of life, you be the judge. Do I live a life that is worth writing about? Again, you decide, but if you do, you also invite comparison. And I get really nasty with comparison.
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