One year ago today: October 9, 2017, a nasty 105F
Five years ago today: October 9, 2013, innocence doesn't sell.
Nine years ago today: October 9, 2009, looking at cameras.
Random years ago today: October 9, 2010, $1,705 annually, that'd'be nice.
It’s now 6:59AM and pitch dark, but I confirm the good working weather is back. It also means I can take an early break until it is light enough to work. I’m a morning person, but that does not necessarily mean work and today I read an article on anthropology. The way they study primates in the past is showing itself to be quite off beam. One paragraph put it that basing anything on monkey, ape, chimp, behavior in a zoo is like studying human teens in a coed penal colony. I get it, I spent the happiest year of my teens in a university dorm. Paid for with government money, but that’s another tale from the trailer court. Anyway, I did not know that in the wild, organizational structure can change amongst primates depending on the availability of resources.
There are more like five or six different primate troop arrangements, one to match almost every habitat. The harems in the desert to the monogamist (in theory) nobility in Europe represent a direct linkage to resources. But the clincher is how humans who get rich in their own lifetimes can never quite make the behavioral changes to the upper classes. They are the newcomers, the noveau rich, the upstarts. And so it is with primates with one major exception. Primates don’t seek to change their environment and when placed in situation of more abundance, tend to seek back their old territory or equivalent. And rich people who lose their money seem inclined to retain their uppity habits.
I take this to mean I should be hanging out in some exclusive club over in Winter Haven. It’s the natural conclusion I’d reach reading such material. Maybe I’ll do that today, I have not been out socializing since Sunday, when I had a long and in-depth conversation with the owner of another club. I have something in common with the lady. She has a background like mine, except she seems to have made a lot more mistakes along the way. You might say every mistake and she’s free with that information. She has a teenage son who thinks he wants to marry a stripper, except he denies she is any such thing. You get the idea.
We got to talking over the hotdog cart. She was intrigued by my lack of urgency, which is on its way to becoming a legend in this town. I gather most people start businesses out of desperation; that is not the case for me. If I owned a bar, it would be because I wanted one, not needed one. We chatted for nearly two hours and seem to be in agreement on a wide spectrum. It’s sad in a way that we met so late in life when we could not start over. At one point in the distant past, she would most definitely have been my type. We found it amusing how we both saw how our lives diverge at age 24. She got married and I went back to evening school.
So, putting theses two events together, am I to draw the conclusion that both our similarities and differences are environmental? I was raised on minimal resources, but early on knew I never took on any of the poor-people mentality that all my siblings quickly reverted to. Maybe I’m the opposite social experiment, the one who thinks rich but lives poor without ever having made the actual transition? This and other pressing and essential questions answered if I live to be 90. Maybe.
Aha, it is 7:40AM and bright enough to drive the scooter. Later, alligator.
Location unknown.
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Please let this be another quiet day. I will get some wiring done later, but for now I sat back and listened to random radio. I finally landed on one of those financial how-to programs and it had me for an hour. It was some pre-recorded lecture about a guy who claims he can make you a millionaire if you do what he says. Of course, nobody can possibly do exactly as he says, but this guy was right on about early habit forming. He’s correct about what you get from your family, good habits or bad habits. I was the only one in my circle to ever own and operate my own business, in my case a paper route. It taught me that you cannot really succeed in business if everybody knows what you are doing. This radio guy never mentioned that salient point.
His assumption was that if you did not succeed, it was due to bad habits. He lacked any concept that maybe you had good habits but were stifled by the situation. Every time I saved up more than a few dollars, it was stolen or taken away. Thus, I learned not to save money and in that circumstance, it was a good habit, at least for me. He also presumed all greed was alike when there a countless variations. Take the competitive greed of my own family. Competitive? Yes, I’ll explain. If you plan to steal somebody’s money, let him get ahead until he has enough worth stealing. In my family, if you made a penny, they would jump for fear one of the others would jump first. It is not enough that they lose, others nearby that they can see must also lose. To coin a phrase.
Welcome to another photo of Florida’s most widely blogged microwave tower. You know this rig by now. What’s so bloggable? This photo was taken in color on a bright and cheerful day. Yet it came out looking like gloom. The clouds were actually bright yellow in the morning sun. The sky was blue. What does this mean? It’s an omen. That’s what it must be. Time to submit it to the National Enquirer as an alien invasion or global takeover by aliens. The ones bent on destroying “life as we know it”. Then again, maybe I just wanted to use the word ‘omen’ in a sentence.
Now, before I got caught up doing 100% of my own renovations, I had looked at a line dance club in Auburndale. I think that was 18 months ago. I’m squarely in that age category that signs up for dance lessons, but let’s not be too hasty with the stereotypes. One of the funnest things I ever did in my teens was learn to ballroom dance. And as an instructor (a successful one at that), I won’t be walking into anything with too many illusions. It’s just an idea whose time has come around for the second time in my life. Women always outnumber men in these classes, they necessarily have money, are hot to trot, and we all know what happens when I wear a suit and tie.
No promises, same as ever, but later today I’ll go on-line and take a look. Meanwhile, where is my video of “Shall We Dance”. I’ve seen the preview and it seems accurate enough to bring back the memories. But one of the memories is how in these dance studios, you only meet the women whose fault it wasn’t. Another thing I saw first hand was how many times an accomplished man would show up with a free coupon or free lesson, pick the sexiest broad in the place, and the two of them were never to be seen again. Maybe it is my turn. My Latin dances have frayed from memory, but I still do a dynamite swing, foxtrot and slow foxtrot.
I’ve also seen the many reasons and the changes in people over dance lessons. That’s not a misworded sentence. The lessons are often as profound as the dancing. If I go there to meet women, does that make me the hypocrite? It depends on how you look at it. I subscribe to that saying: my personality defines who I am, my attitude defines who you are. Most women I’ve ever danced with consider me to be just another guy. Only better-looking and considerably more plucky.
ADDENDUM
The magazine on shocking trials is a disappointment. Usually more information becomes available after the court cases and I was expecting at least a few upsetters. Nope, the articles mostly gloss over what was already known. It’s a shallow magazine for shallow minds, an Internet special. It has a few details but mostly rehashes the stories. As an instance, I know that the gloves were material evidence at the O.J. Simpson trial, but not why. Now I know they did not fit. But I recognized the name Shapiro as a detective on the case who became a crime author.
And some of the trials were covered in a contrived manner, often trying to tell both sides of the story, but that doesn’t work so well. Even when I was aware of the trials, I usually quit paying attention the instant the verdict was announced. And I did not know that Salem of witch-trial fame had changed its name to Danvers and the house of Lizzie Borden became a bed & breakfast in 1990. And I was unaware that the Lindberg baby was likely killed accidentally by a fall when one of the rungs of the ladder used in the kidnapping broke.
In the end, I paid ten bucks for a magazine with five bucks worth of content. To make up for it, I went out to Karaoke. My reign is over. The old club Karaoke has disappeared and replaced by many of the acts and situations that I introduced myself. Even Abe, the guy who could not front he variety show last wee is now in charge of productions.
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