One year ago today: September 26, 2017, remember Bushnell adultery radio?
Five years ago today: September 26, 2013, 10,000 types.
Nine years ago today: September 27, 2009, That's findiit.org, not dot com.
Random years ago today: September 26, 2009, the missing post.
Here’s the target location for Wednesdays. The local farmer’s market. Unlike out west, all of these booths are operated by people over 50 years old, which I’ll get to again in a moment. In Spokane, half the vendors would be under 25, though I’ve not been in Spokane since 1998. I carefully observed the food vendors, there is one with a tent and a cart half the size of ours who is selling hotdogs. He’s got a low-end price of $3, but other than that, everything is over $5. I’ve been at this place before and I have never seen anyone buy anything there. If you try to just stroll past, the vendors try to engage you in conversation. Not my style.
I few days back I commented on this generation’s lack of accomplishment. I wanted to explain what brought that on. News feeds. I’m entertained by millennials saying none of it is their fault. The reason they, as a group, have achieved so little is because the system is broken. And they didn’t break it. Ha! I wonder if they know what they sound like. I think every generation feels that way, but somehow they managed to invent and innovate. This caught my attention and I have some observations to share.
They are trying to lay the blame on the Yuppie generation, but not the yuppie puppies, the hipsters or Gen X. That’s who grabbed all the resources and burned the fossil fuels and polluted the planet, yadda-yadda. So the blaming stops at the point the school system becomes hopelessly liberalized. They don’t want to be pointing the finger at their own. What is the worst thing about a slanted liberal education? They have to distort history to make their points.
So they don’t know their history. Actually, that is also revealed in the way they code computers. They don’t seem to know the mistakes they make were solved decades ago, if they’d care to look. Take their example of fossil fuels. It took just one generation to change from whale oil to petroleum. Did that solve a problem or create one? However, that is not my point. It is that the oil had been around millions of years and was considered a water pollutant. Until somebody went up against the entrenched whale oil industry and figured out how to refine the petroleum. Those who lack the skills to invent anything can hardly appreciate the difficulty of the undertaking, and that explains a lot.
It’s easy to point at old people, because I did it myself when I was young. It was them that started wars and messed things up, some by action, others by inaction. If there were problems that needed attention, all I asked was to be left out of the equation. But no, I had to pay taxes for undeclared wars, and taxes for foreign students education who were infinitely wealthier than I was, and taxes to feed people who were directly responsible for their own squalor. It’s not like any one generation is solely responsible for the human condition. But that’s what the millennials are posting, including a strange thread I don’t understand whereby they claim the Yuppies are cowards because they are afraid to die. That’s pretty screwball thinking, there, you guys.
Furthermore, it is amusing how so many of them are of the identical opinions. In my day, not even the radicals exhibited such conformity. I was and still am against the system, but at least my reasons are my own—and they did not stop me from taking advantage of what I could. That’s a trait missing in people who say all the opportunities were used up before they arrived. They just have a harder time spotting them because, I sermonize, they all think alike. And in my opinion, that is the result of indoctrination. I’ll keep an eye on this movement, see if it flies or peters out.
Something else to watch is that broad who reported attempted rape 30-40 years ago. Sorry, the names mean nothing to me. The judge guy or something, but the point here is her timing. Anyway, it looks like they are going to let some expert on these crimes question her. Ooops! She wasn’t ready for that. I hope that she gets exposed. Not because the crime did or didn’t happen, but because she waited until the guy became famous to say a word. This disgusting practice has to be shamed, then outlawed.
Besides, show me the man who amounted to anything that wasn’t at least a little pushy about sex back in college. In my school days, 90% of women practiced “sexual brinkmanship”, the old look-but-don’t-touch ploy that today is applied mostly at stripper bars. It was a tactic that didn’t work so well for the brand of women who went binge drinking with the frat boys.
Northern Idaho.
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Glory be, we got a straight answer out of a government office. Agt. R walked into the county office, which I first asked him to do back in June, and the lady told him to conduct business in Polk County, all we need is a “tax receipt” and to come back in four days because the price is going down by $22. I’ve had the check ready since the 18th, but I didn’t have the straight answer. It’s probably more prudent to say I think we got the right information. The implication is what I figured out last week, just get any license, right or wrong, and see who says anything. The permit is really a tax exemption number.
That’s where this picture comes in. It was part of a panel displayed a few weeks ago [while] describing our less than grand opening. This view has generated hundreds of hits, my explanation is that it symbolizes what American business starts are up against these days. This drift toward complexity has been going on as long as I can remember, you’ll never convince me it is not deliberate. It is policy, this making law so convoluted that you need a lawyer. Well, all I know is we have a license to do business in Polk, we have a health inspection on the way, everything on the cart works in tip-top condition, and we have $2 million of insurance. Other carts are lucky to have any one of those.
Let me get the approximate total costs to start up this $800 hotdog cart, presuming next Monday is a go. Here we go, $1,443 in equipment, which includes the cart, repairs, burners, but not any deposits or cash reserves. Add $1,661 in fees, licenses, inspections, etc. So, if things had gone as perfectly as described in the hotdog advertising, we could technically have been up and running for $3,104. If we’d skipped the paperwork and took the same risks as what appears to be commonplace around here, we could have done it for half that amount. We bought $172 in food supplies, most of which is in the freezer.
There is another $1,146 in cash reserves, a $250 float, that $477 trailer hitch, and sundry items that represent assets that tie money up without spending it. Man, it was a chore to explain that to some people. The money is there, but you cannot spend it. The total money attached to this project is what I predicted it would be in the beginning, $7,310. Almost ten times what I paid for the cart. A chunk of it is capitalized expenses, and I’ll tell you what those are. The instant the cart became a reality, certain activities suddenly transformed into expenses. Such as my daily tip to the coffee shop to use the Internet, a portion of the gasoline and phone bills, along with all cleaning, office, and absolutely anything remotely connected to running the business. How long before the paper products around my house begin to take on a rather ‘Dennys’ look?
[Author’s note: Denny’s is a classic chain of American restaurants.]
It’s the nature of the beast. My bank is 14 miles away. That trip is now a write-off because I’ve changed what little personal banking I do to coincide with business trips. All legit under American tax law. I stress however, that even the money not spent yet is unavailable and it had to come from somewhere. The alternative would be scrambling around for operating capital like the others, and good luck to anybody who runs a business like that. That’s why you hear those ads for instant loans. You might say there are only bad times if you refuse to think about them in advance. Nobody wants to be the boss on payday.
ADDENDUM
Now this does not mean that everything is going fine. To get the permit, you must provide a lot of information that I would rather not provide. You must have a phone in your own name and you must provide an e-mail address. If you don’t have an e-mail, you have to go get one. And we all love section 8, Tangible Personal Property. You must list the value of all property to be used in the business that physically exists. Evidently they intend to watch if that change too much. You must also declare if you have or ever had any other tax numbers. And they want addresses. Your home, the business, any post boxes, and a list of any addresses that you currently receive mail for any purpose.
So what’s with the picture? That’s me learning to test the disinfectant solution. You see the symbolism? Testing the water? For those who have not done it, you dip the litmus paper I’m holding into the solution and compare the color to the patches on the side of the bottle. This is 100 ppm, the desired strength for utensils and wiping down counters. Use before handling any government forms. People often wonder why I never went into the civil service. Well, you see, I found out my parents were married. To each other.
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