One year ago today: October 13, 2016, it’s Run Jason Run Day!
Five years ago today: October 13, 2012, the secret formula.
Nine years ago today: October 13, 2008, the asinine scam.
Random years ago today: October 13, 2009, they want their goat back.
Wondering what to do for the day is not a regular question around here. But I’m looking for an excuse not to work on the floor, so I’m open to suggestion. Tell you what, the sun comes up in a couple of hours, so I’ll clean up the area and call it a day. To make sure, I’ll hop in the car and drive somewhere. I read the social calendar in the area and nothing but quilting clubs, yoga with chairs, and rigged auctions. I’m in the mood for live theater, so drop back later and see what I got to. Take a look at this EarthPorn site showing unusual bird nests. It could make your day.
That swings the mood back to my contention that things like electricity and cable TV are luxuries, not necessities. Maybe I should not say contention, but more like a marked difference of opinion on the issue. She did not inform me of the growing electric bill until the notice came for the deposit.
That is why you get this picture of the propane light in my bathroom. This is from last March. Power outages are a way of life in Florida. I’ve lived through winters without electricity where we ran out of lamp wicks and #21 gas mantels. The only store that had them was sold out by February on the worst years. I’m equipped to get by without electric, but I concede that others have no such capabilities. As you’ve guessed, there is a little more to this than there is. Only a little more, but enough to get me to do something I haven’t for decades—go for a long car ride and think.
Yep, I took the Taurus down to Arcadia, radio off, pondering the situation. That mortgage fund has to get hit, but that rears up the situation where if she cannot pay off that mortgage early, she is not going to have a house to disconnect the power from. The mortgage fund it is, but unless the electric bills start coming to me first, I will bow out of the situation. Don’t underestimate my ability to budget myself and other out of any difficulty. It only works when everyone does what I say.
Natural History Museum, London
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The mortgage fund it is and I had fun in Arcadia, sort of. First, you should be aware I have power of attorney over all bank accounts that I administer. This is not unusual, with my fifty-year history of complete honesty. What is unusual is the ritual with which I will write checks. Most people have never seen this, they just fire off a check whenever they need one. With me, it is a five-step process, which includes deducting it from available funds for at least a 24-hour cooling off period. Myself, I have only written maybe 250 checks in my whole life. I do not like them or believe in them, but this is a personal viewpoint.
Many are amused when they see the actual check being written because it is, for me, such a solemn occasion. The books are updated and the check and addressed envelope, if any, are carefully scanned. They find the ritual a bit cute but it impresses upon them once and for all that checks are money and I handle them like money. It’s a lesson few of them forget. Tell you what, I can do better than that, here’s censored true copy of my check log. I’ve written a total of 263 checks in my life.
This is borderline material for me to be revealing, so be a sport and look at it for a moment longer than usual. This is why you don’t ever agree to let anyone see your bank account. This isn’t my bank account. There is a lot of information that can be gleaned. For example, deposits are always on the first of the month. This could mean a pension or a ploy to make it seem like a pension. The amounts are always identical, which contributes to that illusion, if it is an illusion. It would appear this account draws no interest. Sometime after July 1 this year, I wrote two checks, numbers 262 and 263. Ah, but did I write the checks, or were they blanks required for direct deposit?
And for your information, whether or not you agreed to it, whether or not you borrowed any money, the credit system, insurance companies, credit collectors, other banks, and the government can and do have access to all transactions in your name and they don’t need a warrant. The Constitution forbids this activity, but that’s back to what’s unlawful and what’s illegal. It is unlawful to search your private papers, so the system makes bank records the legal property of the bank. Now they are looking at the banks records. Sneaky, but effective.
“Alcohol doesn’t solve problems,
but neither does milk.”
~ Anon.
You know, I used to get in the car and drive for hours. It was private time to think, until I moved to Florida and a monitor revealed it was too stressful, but that’s another story. I’m fine out in the countryside and that’s partly why I drove to Arcadia and back. Arcadia, the town that started it all back around 2014, arbitrarily picked off a map. It’s a prison and farming town. That’s where I met Dave, the harmony singer. It’s a two-bar town and JZ and I have been in one of them, where Dave is the late shift server. I had dropped in alone the first time, driving the batbike, and when he said he could sing harmony, I put it to the test.
It was enlightening, that people could be so naïve in this wired-in world. He doesn’t suspect a thing but he has that rash attitude that the only people who want privacy have something to hide. Well, I believe I have finally met an example of a man who is such a do-nothing nobody that he really doesn’t have anything to hide. And he brags that he raised his kids the same way. However, he goes overboard when he says other people “should” have nothing to hide and that their right to do so must be removed. He’s not a fanatic, but I asked him if he drew his curtains at night and he said no. I asked if he closed the door when he was in the bathroom. He didn’t answer.
By this time, all six patrons in the joint were in on the conversation. We had one rule, nobody brings up religion. I was only there twenty minutes, but it became clear that everybody in the place except me and the bartender had recently been released from prison. Other than that, it could have been a pub anywhere in the country. One thing they all agreed on is that they are never going back in there. That could be taken several ways.
Finished thinking, I listened to one of those legal call-in talk shows on the car radio. The ones where they can only answer the most basic questions that suggest you are an idiot for not knowing already, or advise you to come in to their office. When you think about it, the same situation exists without the radio program. Anyway, I’m reaching a conclusion about the people from the Tampa area when they get around to retirement planning. First, they wait until they are 58 years old, duh, and their planning consists of sniffing around to find out if they qualify for any government handouts.
ADDENDUM
I finished the Bobby Darin DVD and it has a great sound track. Tell you what, to be fair, I will at least give a genuine listen to his non-jazz hits. The movie was corny enough to gag me, but do remember I lived through the heyday of the wretched pickup line. I’ve seen them work, though not for the reasons the users thought they did. The guy had a few hits I’d listen to so let’s see if anything appeals to me this late in life. I mean, forty years ago you would never hear me playing any Jimmy Buffet or Charlie Pride, so don’t rule anything out.
Still, that’s enough Darin for one day, so I’m taking the evening off to read up on solar sails. These are the big net-like screens that are perhaps our best shot at interstellar travel. The article I’m reading is from Analog. The concept is easy to grasp, you put up the sail and push it along through space with a microwave beam from a planetary or moon base. In reality, the application is an incredible challenge. It says here the beam must hit the sail at precisely the right angle to be effective. It is reflected and a tiny bit of force pushes the sail. But it is very tiny indeed.
Then the seventh paragraph blew me away. Last year, the SETI people announced that they have detected over twenty “fast radio bursts” from really distant sources, as in three billion light-years out there. The bursts have no afterglow and are single non-repeating events at exactly the best frequency for solar sails, 1 GHz. Don’t get your hopes up, as there are several major flaws in the way. I knew that radio waves in space travel at slightly different speeds depending on frequency, but I was surprised to know this can be measured and calculated back to the source. I agree with the article that mankind will not be building anything like a beam of that size for a long, long time.
But I would be happy if the SETI people discovered some intelligent pattern in the flashes. I would interpret that as a sure sign that life will be found Mars. And I’ve looked forward to that my entire life. Because it completely falsifies all religion, although I suspect they’ve all got prepared scripts just in case.
Last Laugh
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