One year ago today: October 22, 2017, no place to sit.
Five years ago today: October 22, 2013, 70 mile test run.
Nine years ago today: October 22, 2009, a generic day.
Random years ago today: October 22, 2010, it's worth a shot.
Early this AM I caught myself in a relapse from the days I was born poor. Let me explain something. There are two ways to be poor, which are your own fault and not your own fault. If you are poor because you are lazy, incompetent, unskilled, etc, that is your own fault and the welfare system will help you forever. It creates a permanent subclass of single mothers, cheats, and listless office clerks. But if it is not your own fault, good luck. You are expected to make it big because of the persistent Horatio Alger myth. The reality is the system forces the working poor to regularly make decisions that they know to be bad. This gets them the indignant finger wags from the rich all the way down to the mildly poor. It stems from the old English attitude that poverty is the result of bad habits.
It’s hard to find my .38mm bass picks in Polk, so I got the thinnest Dunlops I could. Guitar picks are now 80¢ apiece, what inflation. But while there, I met the hottie behind the counter, she plays bass with a pick. Smooth all over, I like that. I would like to hear her play, though it could never be. I mean, a chick at the music store? When she told me about the pick, I knew she was no ex-guitar doof. If nothing else, she’s gone against the grain and everything I’ve told you about my search for a rhythmist works in reverse. If I had someone who played bass to my, you’d think I was an excellent duo guitarist for unambiguous reasons.
The surprise of the day is that leak in the bathroom I mentioned got away longer that I thought Before I found it. To the tune of 60,000 gallons. Around 20 days, I figure, as my monthly usage is rarely more than 12,000. Ouch, that’s going to cost me a few hundred bucks, but at least I know it wasn’t what I thought before I covered it back up. JZ was on the phone saying how could I let it go blah-blah. I told him it’s not like I lie under the house watching for these things. His own brother got hit for a lot more, so get off my case. We plan to hit the clubs but just one night. I’m back here by Thursday at the latest.
To get the grand prize, you need all six numbers plus the 7th “megabucks” number, in this ticket the 01 at the end. That’s what makes the odds 302 million to one. The study showed that by paying out larger jackpots less often, this style of gambling would create a feeding frenzy. And it works like a charm. Some 15 people have so far beaten some of the worst odds in the universe and won this game. But the odds are beyond chance, someday some quantum computer may figure out how that was even possible. You might think with billions of tickets sold and only 302 million combinations, somebody has got to win.
Wrong. In fact, these jackpots grow as nobody wins. It is illegal to buy all 302 million and in the draw that led up to this one, only 57% of the possible combinations were sold. Looking from the outside in, that means there was a 43% chance nobody would win. After federal taxes the average payout of $1.6 billion is 905 million, you would not join the ranks of the billionaires. However, let’s presume you are a dummy and the best help you could hire got you an annual average return of 10%, after taxes, or $90.5 million per year. Rounding for convenience, that’s $7.5 million per month, $350,000 per 5 day work week, and based on 40/hrs per week, $43,500 per hour. That’s as much as 5,800 schmeebs earning minimum wage, which is something like $7.50 per hour these days.
[Author’s note: be reminded, however, that in America, it was never intended for anyone to try to live on minimum wage. Nor was it intended that anyone try to retire on their social security. These were safety nets established for other purposes. They represent how democracies create their own welfare state. Every government program turns out in the end to have the opposite effect than intended.
I could probably have cured cancer by now if I’d not had to spend half my life getting started. You can guess what kind of poor I was born, and yes, I’m aware it is all relative. America is the second best land in the world to be poor, provided you are, governmentally, the correct breed of poor.]
It’s true, most Americans alive today were born so comfortable that they have lost track of what is important in life. Don’t worry, however, the upcoming crop of X, Y, and millennials are due for a woeful shock back into reality and the whole shebang starts over. It’s world history. But for now, it’s shameful how these people attach themselves to popular causes instead of the fundamentals that are poisoning the entire system. They’ll parade for animal rights while ignoring the homeless shelters. (Animals are stray through no fault of their own, possibly?)
Now I hear that some LBGT group is promoting legislation to prevent straight actors from playing homo roles in the movies. What’s the matter, are they getting too “realistic” for comfort? Another explanation is those who pretend to be homo to keep their jobs fear what may happen if people learn what faking looks like. That would be royal payback time, because then whenever a homo spoke up against the situation, you could tell him he’s “afraid” of you. Or go try unemployment because he “might like it”.
Treating myself, I got a 3” plush memory foam mattress for half price this morning. It’s expanding in the cPod camper, a 48-hour process. I opted for the luxury gel foam breathable model. The headroom is lessened but if you’ve every slept in a car, this is still better. Then I got home and crawled under the building to run the washing machine cable and connect up the display wall overhead. That is the light I was concerned about having to run a 100’ of cable.
I cheated a little by running the cable first and measuring amps later. Since it is unlikely I would ever have that light on when the rest of the circuit is in use, I tapped off the line to the west bedroom heater. You might use a heater a couple days per year. Anyway, I measured the drain with all the outlets in use and it is well below 15 amps. (The circuit is wired for 20 amps, but split circuits are no longer recommended. Probably a maintenance issue.)
Kathmandu.
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We lost money. The important thing is that I know exactly why and how much. Take heed, most small business operators don’t really know if they are making a profit. In that sense, they are like salesmen, who base t[Photo delayed]oo much on total sales rather than what they took home. On paper, we made $16, but in fact it was not so. I scooped the money and put it in the kitty. Agt. R is finally catching on to how the income and expenses are tracked separately. Like most, he sees it by the event, rather than by the period. Um, maybe an example is due here.
Agt. R has trouble with the concept that we are liable for sales tax even when we lose money.
I think it’s a setup. The aggressive code enforcer targeted two of Agt. R’s neighbors. Agt. R says that is coincidence, but you know how far that gets with me. I think not. There were complaints about the enforcer seeking white guys and avoiding ethnics and women. Agt. R could not even operate a computer, the source of the complaint, but nothing stops the enforcer from suspecting that. To me, it’s a bit much that the neighbors are an ethnic, a woman, and across the street from Agt. R. I’m out of the picture because everybody knows guys my age don’t know dick about computers.
Note how I refer to the code enforcer, not the code inspector. He don’t inspect nothing, he’s out there on the warpath looking for trouble he’s bound to find. I say again I doubt anybody in this city would have voted for this situation had they known. The previous man was an inspector, apparently assisting people with advice and mainly on the lookout for safety violations. Code has become, over time, less concerned with safety and more toward setting standards to which contractors and professionals were expected to comply. There was nothing unsafe about my porch at all. It was above code, in every aspect and I have the photos to prove it. The stop work order had nothing to do with code or safety because he never inspected a thing. It was all about power.
Not that I need more reasons to regret not learning the guitar, but the guy at the club last Saturday was terrible. Not only did he strum badly, his song list was wonky. He was 25 years my junior with hair dyed dark and what sort of saved him was that he could pick a lot of the riffs, which I cannot. (I can fake them on bass, however.) He ran out of good material by mid-third set, the usual tip-off he’d taken lessons. The thing is, he played a lot of material from my demographic. It was twenty and more years out of date for his age group. Another thing he skimmed by with was the crowd was drunk by 10:30PM.
I know some conclusion-jumping nimrod is going to suggest that music was his show. Wrong. If he was doing a tribute he would have chosen different songs. Instead, his list was consistently the guitar crap that was taught during that era. He was straining his limits to play material like “Lodi” and “Wake Up Little Suzie” which have not been on my song lists in 30-some years. Fact is, I could strum the bass better than he could the guitar. Wake up what? Well yeah, okay, but that’s because it was on the Hippie’s list, not mine.
ADDENDUM
Sure, I’m aware of how a journal like this documents the development of my personality along with my health and business outlook. Its not just you, sometimes I have to wonder what I wrote or what’s happened to my priorities. Here I am, one good day and I’m planning to conquer the world. Saturday kind of kick-started my system, ramped me up a notch, energy-wise. I don’t mean the gung-ho variety. It’s that core energy that is lost from a serious medical condition, I wrote a lot about it fifteen years ago. There’s a term for it, though I don’t know how it must seem to anyone who has not experienced it. No, I’m not going to enter the marathon. I will be watching closely to anymore changes.
This morning I awoke naturally at 4:12AM. There, see elements of my old style in my writing? I grabbed coffee, don’t you love my K-cup maker, and I’m waiting three hours for it to get light. Meanwhile, I’m sketching out two plans for the food cart. I was also outdoor for the single longest continual period in years that day. From 7:00AM to 3:30PM in the Florida sun. Even when I work in the yard, I’ll take a break every other hour. Right now I’m sifting through the facts, that I did a hotdog solo gig. This is separate from before, where I considered only the team effort.
And the salient fact is, except for delivery of a few accessories I could not find in the morning darkness, I did operate that food cart by myself all day long. That was not supposed to happen for quite some time. What’s focal here is that when Agt. R runs the cart, he is likely to need some kind of assistance. He complicates things with boiled peanuts and four types of hotdogs in another four combinations. Great, if he plans to knock himself out. The bottom line is I feel he’s making work where it does not contribute to our margins in a cause-and-effect manner. That’s at least partially likely to the fact I have a complete set of accurate books to go by while he has shown a reluctance to even go over the reports.
Hence, I will plan but not execute at this time a scenario of operating the cart myself with the barest offerings. In my opinion that is the way to be. Two hotdogs, regular and Polish. Three brands of soda. Six brands of chips (they are packed that way). I’ll still consider the coffee and such, but the concept here is the bare minimum I can manage on my own. The goal is one trip, everything operational stowed on the cart, with the food and water inside the station wagon, coolers across the back seat. Where possible, leave the unit hitched up.
Very little went wrong that first day, I know that. Remember the Robot Club mantra: you have two months to get five years experience (times varied for the situation). This picture conveys what I have in mind, it’s likely what you would do in the same place. The cart, one umbrella, one table with condiments. The ice supply will be in one of the backseat coolers. The one thing the cart can’t do is hold and display the sodas. This would make for a cramped packing of the car, but I’m not done thinking. I’ve never used the roof rack, things like that.
The changes are there if you look for them. A year ago I would not have considered clambering up to the roof rack. Add up those eentsy elements and she raises the odds that the plan I just described could become more than the daydream we all have at some point. The reason Agt. R was not there Saturday was his day job. I regard that with foreboding. So far I’ve measured the car and mapped out where I could store enough supplies over here, I call it the abbreviated plan. I would have a backup generator, which I’m budgeting for by early December. Something with a ten hour run-time, so I still get my beauty rest.
That fenced area, the lizgarden, in my back yard is completely invisible from the street and the air. The north boundary of my property is and ideal spot to store the cart, as there is a privacy fence already in place. Over at Agt. R’s, we had to build one so I have the technology. I’ve also decided to register the cart over in Hollywood instead of here. I’ve long since noticed how the authorities avoid paperwork by picking mostly on their own. Plus, I want straight answers about registering vehicles to a company name. That turns out to be another of those bureaucratic “it depends” scenarios.
It is a cat-and-mouse situation. People regularly form a company to keep their name off the billboards, not as a secret, just a simple layer away from the meddlesome. The bureaucrats are out to countermand that any way they can. I see the need for keeping records, but not the need to publicize them. If you cannot remain anonymous, neither should those who look at your files. I can think of perfectly legal reasons a person may want to be left alone; I can think of no reason that legitimizes those intent on preventing it.
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