One year ago today: April 7, 2018, no more special rules.
Five years ago today: April 7, 2014, I need a solo trip.
Nine years ago today: April 7, 2010, perceptions and realities.
Random years ago today: April 7, 2011, cotton eye, not eyed.
Gimme that calendar. Looks like I have been out of town a month. What could go wrong? Let’s pick one thing and report that. Okay, last Sunday, Agt. R, the last Mr. Nice Guy, gives a lady a ride home in his truck. Her car got repossessed. Now myself, I don’t usually hang around with such folks, being that auto repo is merely one symptom of a far larger series of you-don’t-wanna-knows. Last Friday she comes by wanting a ride again. He can’t, he’s got to go to work. So, she stole the truck. That’s the beater of a truck we use to haul the hot dog cart. Piece of junk, and she steals it. Wait, there’s more.
Here’s a picture of the truck exactly a year ago, hauling the red scooter in for a brake job. The best things on the truck are the tires, which I had set up a budget for. This is the same truck that got the brick through the windshield a month after that. Shown here is the new windshield. I’ll see if I can get you the video, apparently as she stole the truck, she barely got missed being hit. That is a busy street and even I don’t like backing out of any driveway in that neighborhood.
Isn’t it amazing how long it sometimes takes for people to realize why I do things so differently. Last year I showed him the system to keep four pieces of paperwork on such things as auto insurance. He didn’t, but most people don’t. My way takes around ten minutes per day, a half-hour once a week, and an hour at the end of each month. Sure, that eats up my time, that’s better than wasting it. Another phone call later reveals he had left $135 in the truck from a landscaping job. They got the theft on the neighbor’s video cam, but we learned from JZ’s loss over two years ago what kind of priority the police attach to car theft.
That’s another thing that needs cleaning up is the police way of doing business. Over the years they’ve adapted to solving crimes that make them look good. For a comical view of how that works, watch the video “Identity Thief”. While I’m against any depiction of grossly fat women as fun and rollie-pollie, this movie is a scathing denunciation of police procedure. They go after the guy knowing he is innocent because they have his ID. Read today’s addendum about that. They can’t and won’t help because the crime is taking place in some other jurisdiction. Yeah, watch how fast those facile excuses disappear when the victim is a policeman.
Lunch.
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We took a tour of the marina this afternoon. Here’s some of the wildlife, which got the dogs all geared up. Careful, you two chumps, this turkey could probably take both of you easy. This ain't the stuffed turkey at the visitor's center. That’s the marina I would have gone to on the weekend if they’d had the brainpower to post a sign. It turns out there are two separate roads with the same name and my first choice was the wrong one. Because it had the biggest sign.
To the southwest of the lake is a small Latino settlement. I stopped at probably the only bakery that did not have café con leche. I mentally noted a half dozen tire and repair shops, where my command of Spanish ensures a decent cash price that is always less than half of retail. Oh, in case I didn’t mention it, last evening I stopped at the Double E for Karaoke. There were nine women in the place, turns out four of them work there and were off duty. They all took a shine to me and hopefully nobody gets in dutch when I tell you I had free drinks all night. An hour late I brought the dogs inside, an instant hit. Back to today, it turned out not a leisurely trip. The roads aren’t arteries but there was somebody riding my bumper almost the entire drive.
Immediately before turning back north, I spotted a Goodwill. I hit the book section and picked up four books, intending to buy only three. What’s with that? Well, you see, Goodwill has dreadfully slow checkouts. Five minutes to shop, ten minutes to get through the lineups. It isn’t always the line that is slow, I have a tendency to get there on retard day. Yes, yes, I know, empathy blah-blah. Can it, I don’t want to hear it. By retarded, I do not mean people with Down’s Syndrome. I mean people who by choice are incredibly stupid, uneducated, and uncaring. You see, in the USA, these people are invariably on welfare, so they are far from destitute.
They are fully aware they are holding up other people, and that is retarded. Worst case scenario is when both the customer and the clerk both have IQs below 95. And I finish reading one book by the time my turn arrives. Voila. As a side note, yes, I have had those people give me disdainful looks because it is obvious why I brought the extra book. Like the phone company, they feel you have an obligation to pay attention to them when they are going out of their way to inconvenience you. Does anybody out there think I’m kidding?
ADDENDUM
Positive identification. It sounds like a wonderful thing. The authorities can positively identify all criminals and dead bodies and missing persons. But you had better think twice. Is it such a wonderful thing to have positive identification when the complete power to use it or abuse it in the hands of the state? If you believe so, you are putting a lot of faith in the state to do right. Now might be a good time to look back over their performance record.
I’m old enough to know when a Social Security Number was a secret to be used only for taxpayer identification. Today, the tax department is the most powerful and dangerous of government agencies. The political left doesn’t sic the CIA on their opponents, they call the IRS. Even Presidents fear an audit. Have you ever noticed there are no visible dissidents in this country, yet we all know they must be out there? It wasn’t the FBI that finally got Al Capone.
Fingerprinting was once only for crime investigation, the police had to get a warrant to take your prints or they were not admissible, and the prints of innocent people were destroyed afterward. Today, mass fingerprinting is mandatory for everything from military service to opening a bank account. There was talk of printing babies at birth, which was halted only by the advent of DNA testing and other biometric developments. Cameras in airplane seats, heartbeat monitors at the banks, voice recognition, and Ford wants to put these sensors in your car.
Ask yourself if the odd identification of a crime victim is justification to turn over your complete identify to squadrons of strangers to do who-knows-what with. You only think you have nothing to hide. The FBI to this day operates on the J. Edgar Hoover’s premise that you can get something on anybody. There is nothing positive about this brand of identification, it erodes privacy. The authorities already have all the power needed to identify anybody, it is only their shameless inefficiency that makes them want more.
So you know what you are up against, Carnegie University is developing a camera that can scan the irises of entire crowds from a distance of 40 feet. London has security cameras on every corner now being linked to facial recognition software, further linked to cameras in Chicago, Moscow, and New York. When you pass through the Dubai airport, your picture is taken 80 times. India’s Aadhaar system begun in 2009 now has all 1.3 billion residents on file, ostensibly for access to “social services”. But may Vishnu help you if you lose that card, for when the card disappears, rumor has it so do you.
