One year ago today: July 27, 2018, squealing liberals.
Five years ago today: July 27, 2014, $179.15.
Nine years ago today: July 27, 2010, on surface knowledge.
Random years ago today: July 27, 2007, cake & coffee.
This morning in Winter Haven picking up supplies. This included an hour in the ReStore, and sadly, the day of the real bargains seems gone. Everything useful there has been priced up to around 70% of what you’d pay retail. As a rule, that price is too risky to chance on certain items, like electronics. I mean, at least one person’s already found some reason for not wanting it. Not that there is anything technically wrong with this change, bit it is discerned as wrong. Here’s an example.
These plates were in the electrical section and priced at 80¢. Retail at the big box lumber stores, they are only 47¢. So there you go. It’s easy to follow the logic when the next nearest place to buy plates is on the other side of the lake. Most people wouldn’t consider it deliberate, but this sinister practice is a chapter in accounting school. IIndulging in this sort of pricing goes against customer expectations. Any weasel in the last hundred years could have resorted to this tactic, but the average business had too much pride.
Thrifts are perceived to have a business model that doesn’t concern itself with what others are selling for, in that Thrift inventory is donated. Consumer perception was that Thrifts should price what is a fair margin over their operating costs and not try to maximize profit utilizing mercantile selfishness. To me, this is the outcome of several generations of liberal indoctrination. In before 1980, one got ahead by inventing or improving a product or service. After 1980, the work ethic declined. This blog called it “cell-phone marketing”, where they lack the wherewithal to make the pie bigger, so they resort to grabbing a bigger slice for themselves. As slick as it is myopic.
It works in the short run, until everybody starts doing it. Go to a small business or trade show nowadays. It’s disgusting. No real mom & pop stands (just startup kits for sale), nothing new. One scam booth after another. Cell phone contracts, cable TV plans, home refinancing schemes, credit loans, million-dollar franchises. I mean truly disgusting. One might say these hipsters, millennials, and ass-enders have no choice—but that overlooks the hard fact that they were repeatedly warned from day one that if they didn’t smarten, they would wind up in this humiliating situation.
Don’t blame the schools, the changeover away from work-hard-work-smart was well underway by the time I graduated. But you were expected to have the brains to reject liberalism and wealth redistribution schemes. Only bad people would buy into that shit, expecting later to vote themselves some free money. I was called a redneck and money-hungry and capitalistic by the majority. Thus, I view all people living in debt-poverty as not really suffering.. They are getting exactly what they bargained for. Living in a luxury house and a half-million in debt. Here is the reality of the life they’ve created—the fine print about credit card interest.
It’s the modern form of slavery. Look at those interest rates. What’s worse is how they are applied. Need a cash advance? That’ll be 27.24%. Very few working people can afford that, the news reports the average household has $8,000 in credit card debt. That means for me, somebody out there is carrying $16,000. What’s the annua; interest on that? It’s $2,918, or $243 per month. That money is gone. More than my entire entertainment budget, and I go out any time I want without planning or worry.
Yet these dough-heads are so indoctrinated they view owning a credit card as a status symbol. Jesus H. Christ, they call themselves the smartest generation and the banksters already have them eating out of their hands. In my day, it was considered tacky to get married in a rented suit. Now, you not only rent it, but do so with a credit card. It’s too bad so many of them can’t read because the writing is on the wall. You know the funniest part? If you point out to these types what a hell they’ve made, they come back saying they had no choice, that everybody was doing it.
Wrong. Not everybody. Some of them lived in a trailer court for ten years and saved up their money. To be exact, eleven years and twenty-three days. When you do that, you subconsciously build the infrastructure necessary for progress. After a few years (it takes time) you begin to realize just how voraciously liberal society is trying to take that away from you for the benefit of the lazy.
That’s a bridge.
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The vanity wiring is in, taking the usual three times longer than new construction. Here is a panel of views of the parts that matter. I carefully paced the effort to use my brains and back instead of my ticker. I’m gaining some wee faith that I could sustain some actual hard work for an hour or two in the upcoming future. The salient items here are how I had to peel away the plastic to run the wiring, a result of poor planning. And running the wires around that corner post was not fun. Neither was having to cut a notching into the header beam, but relax, that beam has a solid core, not some plywood filler.
Black soap. They didn’t have my brand and the label said “activated charcoal”. Really? I recognized the brand so I bought one. Ha, it is not only the slipperiest soap, it leaves an aroma of licorice, which I happen to somewhat like. A bit of a treat, really. I even found time to work the crossword and read an article on license plate theory. Huh? That is correct, there has been sizeable studies on the mix of alphabet and number combinations. The huge number of combinations is familiar but that’s only one aspect. Consider the following.
I’ve always been a champion (and possibly the originator) of the 27-letter alphabet theory. That’s where the space between words is considered just another letter. I balked at the complications by this stage, but apparently the police are less likely to stop you if your plate has any two, but not three consecutive same numbers or letters. Take the generic plate ABC 123 as a basis for comparison. If your number is AGG 123 or ABC 881, you are less likely to get speeding tickets or even pulled over. However, if you have any three consecutive “numbers”, like HHH 123 or ABC 666, you are asking for trouble. So don’t be first in line to get AAA 111 some year. You might wind up in Sing Sing. Or worse. In Atlanta, Georgia.
ADDENDUM
I managed an hour of music today. When learning to sing, I struggled with the lyrics, which I don’t have to do this time. What’s challenging is learning the long pieces that have UNM bass lines. It’s an uncommon bass player joke, where a song has a simple and tedious bass part. You learn it and play it “until next Monday”. I’m learning the songs, but if I don’t play them a day or two, I have trouble guessing which is which. The solution is to play with charts, not to delay until I memorize things.
I’ll return this plate for exchange next time I’m in Winter Haven, a 22 mile round trip. By the way, this plate is light almond and it was in a box and bin labeled ivory. I didn’t check, but what a pity one should have to.
What, some people didn’t like my crack about Atlanta? Tough. It is a blight on the highway system and suffers the same problem as south Florida. Freeways are supposed to be limited access to keep speeds high. They didn’t limit it enough and locals use the freeways for commuting. The result is constant traffic jams. Want to speed up traffic? Shut down nine out of every ten exits. Sure, the commuters will howl because that’s what people do when you throw the problems they create back at them. But they’ll find other ways to get to work. Eventually.
My music completion index today is 32.448%
And I’m going to drill that Last Dance abortion of a song into my head. I finally listened to the lyrics It’s another of those man-made set-ups this blog has pointed out over the years. Remember? Oklahoma trailer courts and tornadoes. Mexican buses and bad breaks. Add guitar players and street hookers. At least, that’s what I think it is about, since I listened in sections, unable to remain awake the whole song. Something about party dresses and hotel rooms.
I should consider the opposite tack from just fast-learning the tune. Write a novel bass progression. But the same effort produces much better outcomes when applied to other songs, so that’s improbable. Now I better see the link with guitar players and that song. Maybe it’s part of a seamy side of the the guitar-player subculture we’re not supposed to know about. I know what music does for my scoring average. Maybe the link is what happens to some musicians who, because they are what they are, can’t get it for free. I mean, if you’re not getting any, I don’t see how climbing on stage and singing about whores as a great career move.
Nor does it help that the bass in the original is slightly off-key. My life would be easier if Petty had stuck that song in his chute instead of inflicting it on the few decent bass players of our era.
