One year ago today: June 14, 2016, the birdfeeder, Mark I.
Five years ago today: June 14, 2012, the one I almost bought.
Nine years ago today: June 14, 2008, now it costs him a dollar.
Random years ago today: June 14, 2010, my old office.
I’ve been away from Miami a few months. I forgot what a dork-prick you have to be to survive in Miami, particularly on the roadways. Miami, since 2000, has degenerated around 70% of the way to being another Third World hellhole. It’s the same old story, it just takes one bad apple to force everyone into being bad—and Miami welcomes these bad apples with open arms and a welfare check, as long as they can set foot on land. Usually, the worst abusers of rights are those who just ran away from a worker’s paradise. The basic Miami Bill of Rights gives you three entitlements. They are the rights to ignorance, inconsideration, and food stamps.
This is typical of the areas into which the hordes of unskilled immigrants migrate into shortly after they get to America and realized the streets are not paved with gold. But they can get their chunk of the dream by going on welfare and doing this type of work under the table.
And before you plan to vacation in South Florida, remember this decline is permanent and irreversible. The few places that you might want to visit that are still clean and family friendly are nowhere near Miami and unbearably expensive. Hint, don’t look on a map and think, gee, here’s a beautiful area just 50 miles from Miami. If you have to drive through Miami traffic to get there, trust me, it is 50 miles you’ll not care to travel again.
Perfect timing.
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When you see it. I went over to Target to get some bath towels, and article I usually buy new while traveling. Then I get home with a nice set. While shopping, I found these battery powered letters selling for $12 each. I was thinking about how they could be adapted for advertising and the answer is not cheaply enough. Then I saw the Millennial graffiti, can you spot it? If not, are you sure you’re reading the right blog? This one is for smart people who like their learning and amusement combined.
Next I get a call from JZ. He was swing a pickaxe and I’ve warned him before about how he does it. Sure enough, he connected with his shin bone. Myself, I think he should have it x-rayed and probed. I had him describe the sound it made and I think he has himself a hairline fracture or at least a chunk of bone damage. He swings the axe toward himself instead of strictly down at the ground with knees bent. As usual consensus took over and he’s agreed to go in only if more than a bruise develops. That’s all I need is another worker in a cast.
My vote was for an evening reading a good book and I found a small box of high school texts JZ had kept for some reason. The insects had been dining on the binding glue. He appears to have taken extensive courses concerning the islands of Hawaii. While he’s never been there, I was able to identify most pictures and fill in the parts the publisher left out. Like how the Hawaiians to this day consider the burying of war dead in the crater at Diamond Head as nothing but repugnant.
Most interesting to me was the chapters on how the island flora and fauna developed in such isolation. Canoe trees were very rare, nothing grew that large. I have traveled around Oahu and was awed by the near vertical watercourses carved by weather patterns. And how the insects were mostly flightless. These books were too old to draw any but the more obvious theories about wind and water-borne seeds. Lots of plants with spores. Hawaii is not the remotest of islands, but it is not in any natural migration path.
For the duration, I’ll be driving the Fusion 250 until these repairs are done. If you are ever going to get a scooter, this is the standard to compare. The Fusion was also marketed as the Helix and the Spazio (in Europe). While it is no longer manufactured, at least that I know of, they still apparently make them in Japan.
It has all the features you want. Automatic, trunk, glove box, and it is one smooth ride. I was around when Honda cars began to displace the jalopies sold by Ford and Chev and this scooter put the same kind of squeeze on other “mo-ped” type scooters of the day. Before the Fusion, everything, even the highly-touted Italian imports, were more or less overpriced junk.
“There are two kinds of people in the world:
Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.”
I told JZ about how I find magazines these days to be shallow, he doesn’t know because he is not a magazine-reader. Unlike my place, with hundreds of every topic from woodworking to recipes, he hasn’t any. Next thing you know, I’m reading textbooks from the WWII-era. Did you know I have a theory why the articles have gone downhill? If you think I’ve just been griping, then read on about what is behind my attitude. First, take a look at this 1898 news headline. It was a fake. And we’ve come full circle.
Before 1990, or more realistically, before cable TV and the Internet, most people got their news from the newspaper or a few daily TV broadcasts. Papers, even the overly liberal “criminal rights” publications like the New York Times, would still make a good effort to stick to presenting the unadorned facts. TV was dominated by three networks. (CBS, NBC, and ABC.) This gave people little choice and they would quickly prefer the ones that provided the most accurate news and the most popular regularly scheduled programming.
That sounds like a stale phrase, “regularly scheduled”, but the impact was enormous. A single winning show like Walt Disney Presents or Bonanza could have over half the country tuning in regularly. And a special program like the moon landing could dominate the planet. You can’t have that any more. When cable TV arrived, you now had hundreds of channels, some of which were news only. In that kind of market, no individual channel could garner more than a few percent of the viewers, and this brought a similar problem to magazines and newspapers. Competition became fierce.
How could they keep in business? Spectacularism, that’s how. A hundred years earlier, that’s how newspapers were sold. Big, sensational stories and shocking editorial. That sordid temptation has always been there, but for now, follow the money. Now that people had a choice, a strange thing happened over at the publishing operations. Those companies found that their main source of income was no longer selling their newspapers. It now became advertising revenue. What mattered shifted from good articles to articles that attracted the readership that advertisers wanted. The strings were now being pulled by the likes of Sony and Hertz, those hardy champions of telling the total truth.
You see, before 1990, to get me to buy a magazine, the articles had to be written with some appeal. I want facts, new information, and knowledgeable content. I don’t care about the scientist’s home life or the shortage of funding for LGBT research teams. Then along comes the Internet and the magazine now has to attract readership any way it can. And there are very few magazines who could advertise products aimed at somebody like me. I don’t lease cars or buy jewelry. I tear out the pages of medical side-effects and throw away the subscription cards.
That still does not explain the drop in quality because the segments of society the magazines are now appealing to are not that large. Ah, but the impact is large. While the queers are a minority, you have an entire generation of millennials who have been indoctrinated that it is important to appear tolerant in public. Now they don’t fool me because know when they go home, they cuss the paint off the walls. But in public, they will do anything to present themselves as open-minded. In fact, they are so closed-minded that a magazine can trick them into buying a copy just to prove they are liberal.
And the rest of us get burned on the deal because the cover still suggests there are quality articles inside. But like Paul McCartney, these magazines are just living off the reputation of their glory days.
ADDENDUM
I went home early and found a movie. Or I mean, it was a recorded TV show that I’d never seen before. It was called “Death Valley Days”, a title I vaguely recall. I watched two episodes while reading a Reader’s Digest. That publication has also gone cheesy but back to the video. I found the production and storylines quite impressive. Better quality than most and the fight scenes were a tad less fake.
What struck me was how short all the actresses were in those days. The idea must have been to make the cowboys look taller. But most impressive to me were the natural blondes. Ah, those were the golden era of the westerns. You just knew under all those frills was something worth keeping for life.
Not like these days. When everything is fake.
Last, I stopped for a brew at the old club. Nothing has changed except the barmaids get older faster than the club. Agt. R is bogged down with the wedding plans so I’ll visit tomorrow, but no wedding. I would not know anyone on the invitation list. The names also show I’m the only one who can’t speak the language, either. So it’s a quick hello, meet the little woman, and head back to my Fortress of Solitude.
On the return to JZ’s, I had to tank up. I pulled off the freeway near Bird Road (40th Street SW) and the area has complete gone downhill. The only station I could find had only regular gas, meaning I had to put the horrible grade of fuel into my baby. Not happy.
Last Laugh
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