One year ago today: June 20, 2018, ice ages & swamps.
Five years ago today: June 20, 2014, hell, promote the guy.
Nine years ago today: June 20, 2010, the peasant mentality.
Random years ago today: June 20, 2008, some security code
July 1 and thereafter, don’t even touch your phone in the car in Tennessee. That includes flip-phones, despite the fact those have an excellent safety record and do not require much by way of eyes off the road. While the law says you cannot “hold” the phone, the street-wise say even touching the screen could net you a $50 fine. Single-tap GPS commands are allowed, as are emergency calls. There were some 24,500 distracted driver crashes in Tennessee last year. Makes you wonder if the problem is really the phones. For unstated reasons, the county of Shelby (surrounds Memphis) has twice as many crashes as second place. Maybe something in the water?
The museum is in Germantown, which until recently was mostly a slummy tough neighborhood. It’s parking lots and flea markets now, we did a walking tour of the entire area. The museum is new, so you get a lot of replicas except for the Civil War section, which has everything from cannons to canteens. No shortage of that paraphernalia in these parts. There are temporary and permanent exhibits, so check first. To see everything involves a lot of walking with only a few places to sit down. The one we chose had a video on quilt making that, sore footsies or not, we got up and walked away from it. Not that I have anything against quilts.
Other items of note were various fashions, old wooden canoes, a touring car and a shaft drive bicycle. To really take it in, I’d plan at least two separate trips. We were there only two hours and were both tired. One thing I wish these museums could get over is the whole slavery thing. Nobody under 70 years old has any realistic comprehension of the issue, only what they’ve been told, most of it bunk. And they’ve been told often enough already. Time to move on. Far too many of the exhibits carried plaques explaining the connection to slavery and not enough about the display. We wound up ignoring or walking past the galleries that pushed the stuff. It’s a museum tour, dammit, not some civil rights march. Keep the agenda focused.
Pencils.
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There’s a farmer’s market next to the museum, we took a stroll through it for coffee. I wanted a salad, she’s herbivore, and somehow we found probably the only market with nothing organic. She’s been there before and reports it’s always like that so it made no difference we got there so late in the day. We found the food kiosk, the coffee was not so great either. By now we’d walked a few miles and found ourselves smack in rush hour. There’s one food I have never found enticing enough to go out on my own and that is Mexican. The Reb lived in LA six years longer than I did back in the day and developed a preference for it.
Well, besides that, I mean. We wound up in the old part of Germantown for this aprés-museum snack. The food certainly is colorful. However, this picture is a bit misleading in that it looks like a table full of food. It’s really two small side orders with the standard complimentary sides and condiments. My plate being shared is a chickamunga thing,
We passed a billboard announcing a Johnny Cash restaurant and bar opening soon. For me, that’s a must-see. When I went on-line to fact-check a few things, I saw something new to me. It was food pictures on web pages with tags in the corner saying “buy photo”. This, folks, is the trend of what is wrong in America these days. Countless special interest groups screaming for their own “rights” and to hell with yours. I know there are other points of view on this one, but I’ll tell you how it comes across to me. It steps over the line of somebody just selling a picture.
I could care less if they open a shop or sell paintings on the sidewalk. The concept at work here is do they have the right to come into my space, be it my home or my computer, and start telling me what I can or can’t do? Do they have the right to hang paintings on my wall and wave price tags in my face? My computer is not their property, nor is anything I do with it. Yet here they are. My solution has always been the same, that if they want the right to dictate how other people behave, then create their own private space that people opt into. And more importantly, leave other spaces alone.
You’ve likely seen these for-sale buttons before, to me it is new—and that’s part of my point. They’re exhibiting a total lack of respect for my intentions and they are not going to get any respect back. Because I was looking for a Mexican restaurant menu, not shopping for food pictures. It’s not the picture for sale that’s important here, it’s the concept of does the seller have the right to do as he pleases even if it displeases others? My answer is no, because freedom is self-limiting. It means you can only do something if you give others the right to do the same. Telling me what I can look at on my computer is the initial step to lop-siding that balance. Expect resistance.
ADDENDUM
So, the much-hyped free opsys, Linux, is showing itself to be no better than MicroSoft for shoving unwanted features and versions on its user base. While recognizing the need for progress, all too often the “new” is just a swindle and a way to get nefarious code into the homes of the unsuspecting. Take MicroSoft Windows—not a single new or improved feature at the user level since the 1990s. But so much mysterious code that they’ve been chucked out of some countries.
And pay for movies is equally greedy. They are following the route of cable TV, which was originally sold as commercial-free. As a matter of record, if you look back in history, you will find very little mention of cable having no commercials. It’s almost as if the story has been glossed over by the cable people. I know certain programs were definitely commercial-free, but my point here is not that cable is or was ever without commercials, but that it was sold that way. Most initial users who signed up believed, wrongly as it turned out, that they were paying in order to be rid of advertising. Myself, I spotted the commercials first time and have never subscribed to cable TV.
I believe that advertising is the one remaining American industry that needs severe regulating. It has become intrusive and annoying. It is ugly and distracting. It should be changed to an opt-in service within tight parameters.
Buried down here is a story I’m not sure is happy, but it is supposed to be. Ah, read on and decide on your own. It concerns a book that mentions by name the guy that got my job. This was the stock broker (not really but think of it as that) position with the two-year apprenticeship that as forestalled by my heart attack. He was ten years younger than me, and he was famous locally for having a two-million-dollar year in 2012. I can’t say that should have been me because I would have been stone cold dead. I can’t mention the book or him by name for reasons, but I did not like the light cast upon what was done. By 2003, the only opportunities left for most of us were in the field of financial manipulation.
Not only do I understand all the funny math behind bonds and derivatives and their ratings, I can program the formulas. My take is that if a person can wade into that complexity and make a fortune at it, that’s his business. If it turns out later others have varying perspectives on what is ethical, let them tackle the problem at source—the inequality of opportunity in America. Most people willingly work hard to get ahead but matters have changed to ensure that is not enough. You also have to pay your dues to the system, which is pretty much something most Americans live in denial over.
This selling out, it’s called, has diluted the American dream and ensured most people will never cross over that financial line that divides those who take from those forced to give. I mean that in the sense that I don’t think any poor person has ever consciously decided they want or prefer to spend their lives on the brink of perpetual hardships because the bills are always due. Making money is only part of the hurdle, as most workers in this country actually make plenty of money if they applied it right. This application is not taught in the schools and is constantly, mind you subtly, derided by every aspect of the pervasive credit card industry.
