November 29, 2017

Yesteryear
One year ago today: November 29, 2016, emerging norms . . .
Five years ago today: November 29, 2012, i-n-s-i-d-e j-o-b.
Nine years ago today: November 29, 2008, call me Grumpy.
Random years ago today: November 29, 2013, leaving Memphis.

           Twenty-four hours in Dade and I’m already longing to get back home. The number of jerk-faces in southern Florida is constant. The place has long since adjusted itself to being a non-stop progression of desperate losers, a crawling ant-heap of sub-mediocre peons. They’ve never learned to drive or even to be polite unless there is money involved. You can easily got days on end without ever seeing a slim, pretty woman because there aren’t any.

           I regularly fast for that cholesterol program I’m on, four more years, by the way. They want me around as one of, if not the, most successful guinea pig they’ve got. I know, the trips to Miami were intended to be once every quarter (year) instead of monthly, but consider this an adjustment phase. People tend to forget that I’m new at most everything I do and I never seem to get a lot of the help that was promised. Until then, I have to travel to Miami whenever it is required.

           Here’s a shot of a cassette tape dropping into the Taurus entertainment console. These tapes are my substitute for the CD player that wasn’t there. The deck has never been used but it will be now. And I’ll tell you why. All southern Florida radio stations suck in some way. The worst aspect is how Spanish-language stations crowd out everything else. When you are on the road for any length of time, a Spanish station will interfere with anything you want to hear. Every time.

           Audio books to the rescue. Here’s my progress report so far. Shop the thrifts and you’ll often find a trove of these in the book section. Stick with buying only those that are brand new in the original wrapping. It makes sense not to put used tapes into a player that is permanently built into the dashboard of your car. If possible, try to find best-seller tales, since the Sci-Fi usually contains more fiction than science and the New Age garbage is bat-guano crazy. Careful of misleading titles that are really Hebrew and Catholic proselytizing—don’t return them to the thrift, throw them out. Same with those motivational tapes; you are doing the next guy a favor.

           The tapes can be corny but even that beats the best of the Miami shigga-booga radio stations. On this trip, I listened to two audio books. One was a worn out theme by Jonathan Kellerman, “Private Eyes”, the old rich lady who gets taken by quack therapists. It was from 1978, when the media were still green at pushing the theme that not only were queers “misunderstood” but it was entirely your fault.
           Hollywood had not yet polished up the argument that most homos were losers not because they were underperformers, but because the poor little things lived in constant fear of being exposed. Although this makes them no different than others who indulge in aberrant behavior, you are supposed to feel really guilty or at the very least, something along those lines.

Picture of the day.
Mt. Ranier shadow.
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           The second audio book was "The Street Lawyer”, the literarily predictable fable about the big city attorney who quits to help the homeless and finds fulfillment serving stale donuts to single mothers. This one is by Grisham, so the quality is there but he’s suck-holing the entire time to the liberal left. No mention that the lawyer could have done much more for the homeless by staying a corporate hack and donating his salary to the shelters, but that theme doesn’t usually sell second-hand audio tapes. What? Me? Heck, I shovel them all off the shelf for 25 cents each and sort them out later. Kind of like I do with women who can’t sing and dance. Give them an honest chance to make good, but don’t expect me to get to chapter two with some dame whose biggest ambition in life is to become a housewife.

           Grisham, we know, is more tuned to the movie-rights style of prose than actually inventing any inspiring new themes or characters. But his background as an attorney serves him well for plot twists, confronting landlords, or dealing with those pesky police detectives and their systemic lack of search warrants. This book covers the gamut of liberal side reasoning over how poor people are blameless for their situation. After all, in liberal theory at least, nobody sets out to become a loser. Ergo the things they do to become what they are don’t count, see? You don’t see? Well, that makes you an insensitive redneck racist, and probably a chauvinist and a few other things, but let’s get back to the story.

           I have a theory that as one gets poorer and poorer, there are actually fewer ways to screw up. A rich man, particularly a self-made one, is constantly aware of how tenuous his hold on the money is. He’s aware that for himself, and certainly for his family, there are a thousand things he has to watch out for.
           Now a poor person has but three. Don’t steal, don’t take drugs, and if you are female, don’t get pregnant. All else are variations on these themes. Gambling is trying to steal from the casino, for example, and booze is a drug, so no going ape over minor definitions here. Nor am I talking from some ivory tower. I’ve lived on the streets and I know precisely what it takes to get out of there.
           One could always maintain I was never really down and out or I could not have extricated myself, but that is nonsense. I had to deal with contemporaries who were just a vicious and greedy—and I had no race or gender card to play when I was hopelessly outnumbered. I know as well as anyone what it is like to be forced to live wrongly because you are surrounded by losers who will pounce if you try to improve your lot. Remember Bobby whose adopted sons who would complain about the sound of the electric piano keys when I practiced with headphones. That’s the kind of grunt I had to deal with the first half of my life.

           “The Street Lawyer” runs the entire checklist. The guy’s wife files for divorce over his lost income, yadda-yadda. When he phones the materialistic bitch the following Thursday, a man answers to say she is in the shower. Our lawyer sues his old firm and wins millions, then converts them to charity work. There are profiles on a number of the homeless people who he takes on as clients, all of them predictable. The one drastic treatment that would probably work is never brought up—removing these people from the core of the cities. They require that environment to become what they are and live like they do. But we can’t tread on their “rights”. The existing anti-poverty programs only succeed in one thing: creating more poverty. Think about it.
           While valid points are brought up, the facts are annoyingly twisted. Fine, if somebody wants to help the poor and dedicate their time and money to it. However, to compel others to do so against their will is the finest argument I know of against income tax. I think most people are like me, you have to take care of number one. I don’t believe the driven person who becomes a professional does so out of concern for the plights of others. I don’t blame them if they view those around them has quitters who get what they bargained for.
           Sure, not everyone has the opportunity to become a hotshot, but that is a separate issue. What could have become of me if I’d had supportive family? I worked not for self-realization, but because I was born so poor I had to forego a planned career and take the highest paying jobs I could get my hands on. It’s not like I didn’t know which careers paid the big bucks, but it isn’t intelligence and high marks that get you into those faculties ahead of the rich and privileged. I didn’t drop out in my twenties and return in my thirties because I had the option. But thank God, I was in such poverty in my late teens and early twenties that I had the sense not to get married.

           [Author's note: for the record, I was surrounded by people identical to me except they failed to stick with those jobs until they worked their way out of them. Some people I know should read that last sentence twice. It was hardly the ideal situation for anyone with ambition, but it's not like a got any lucky breaks. Note that I do not have any corresponding respect or admiration for those who work such jobs for life. That's also a form of losing and most of them do it because they plunged into debt..
           I worked with as many low-grade losers as anybody, people who would never help you, people who would stab you in the back twice if they thought they could get an extra dollar out of it. And I stuck with it until I got myself the infrastructure that is still in place today. The one most people got for free when they were born. You know what I mean.]

ADDENDUM
           Mostly business today and it was 50 miles away. Good, I need the odd reminder of why I was the first of my gang to clear out of Miami. It’s so multi-culturalized the place is disgusting. Two and a quarter hours to go that distance—on the freeway, my friends, on the freeway. I grew up in an America where you didn’t even have to lock your door. And you can bet your ass it was not people like me who turned the place into the balkanized ghettos of today. These days in Miami, don’t you dare to take your eyes off any valuables.

           It works like so. Instead of letting in skilled, English-speaking immigrants, the kind of people who built this country, they let in millions of grunts from the poorest places. Countries that have no traditions of human rights or freedoms. Countries ten times older than America but have never produced a Jefferson or Franklin, but plenty of despots and emperors. Like China. These people arrive with the impression they can get rich only to find they don’t have the needed job skills to do so. They drift into minimum wage occupations where English isn’t needed and within one generation, they are on welfare programs that were designed for our own people.

           It’s revolting to hear liberals claim there is “no proof” these unskilled immigrants go on welfare. They go on welfare by the millions. It is a third world dream come true. Sit around, twenty to a household, watching soaps in their own language. Walk into any welfare or social security office and observe for one hour before challenging what I say. I have never yet met a liberal who has done this and stayed a liberal.


Last Laugh

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