January 5, 2022

Yesteryear
One year ago today: January 5, 2021, talkin’ politics.
Five years ago today: January 5, 2017, how I steal licks.
Nine years ago today: January 5, 2013, whichever is longer.
Random years ago today: January 5, 2008, coffee & sandwiches.

           In a rare stretch where I overslept, I’m on my third coffee and wondering what the big hoopla is about some Gettr exec being outed as anti-Trump. I don’t follow that media because theye censor, not because of who does the deed. But as one comment says, at the clean end of every shitty stick, you’ve find a Jew stirring it. I took one look at Gettr in July and pegged an idiot honeypot from the word go. Just identify yourseld, then you can say anything you want, ha-ha.

           But not if you are National Geographic, or the sad rag that nowadays passes for it. They just published an article that Rittenhouse used his inherited white power to murder two black men. That should be good for another $250 million. And rumor has it Trump canceled his Jan. 6 press conference when it became obvious he was to be treated as a political candidate rather than a private citizen like he is. We love to see the GOP uniparty shills sweat and the RINOS. They are so scared shitless of Trump, a year after he left office, they are still trying to pin something on him.

           Mulberry, Florida. Don’t say you’ve ever lived in a nothing town until you visit Mulberry. It is a few miles south of Lakeland, which is probably it’s most redeeming quality. That’s where they have that catastrophe called the Phosphate Museum. But they have a Thrift I like and today I found two matching exterior light fixtures, complete with automatic on-off. Four bucks each, the boxes were ragged, but inside brand new in shrink wrap. Oh boy, another project that will waste me time, but so what. Retail on these at Home Depot is $45 apiece.
           The final steps of setting up our office are complete, including tax numbers and an 800 answering service. That, I admit, I’ve never used, but the Reb swears by them. I have the save aversion to phones that I have for television, which is a good thing and anybody who tells you different is selling something. She says the 800 answers with a message, which she is professional at, or forward the call, or keep a log, basically meaning they’ve put a computer on the other end. My last direct exposure to 800 numbers was 1996, when I left the telecom industry to play bass full time—you might say.
           The price on these lines has also fallen. Ours is $9.95 per month for 500 minutes. I said to the Reb, if we ever do business on a scale that can get me on the phone more than 500 minutes annually, upgrade all you want.

Picture of the day.
1951 Packard Caribbean Kustom.
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           Needing the down time, I took this afternoon off. Got a haircut. Went more thrift shopping. Look what I found for $4, a real aluminum carpenter’s roofing square. I say real because these older models weigh twice as much as the crap on the shelves these days. This one has some weird numbers stamped on the metal, which I intend to decipher. Not the roofing slope numbers, I’ll get you pictures by tomorrow anyway.

           Bradford is up to his old tricks, now says he wants to hear me play before he decides. It can only mean he wants ammunition that things are not perfect when he wants something done his own way. Fine, the reason for the change, and he isn’t the only one, is he belongs to the largest group of Polk County musicians. The ones who are all talk and no action. I don’t have a lot to compare it too, but I would not be surprised the prevailing attitude has changed from starting their own band to taking over one that’s already doing actual work. After all, I doubt there has been a successful true band startup in Polk this century.

           Yep, the Brits sized up the Jan 6 antics right. The Trump cancellation of his scheduled press meeting cost them dearly. Trump may seem to be affecting his own popularity by pushing the vaccine, although he’s more like saying he’s had it and that it is not unsafe. That’s a far cry from forcing anyone. But, the Brits point out, by doing so Trump ensures that the failure of the vaccines blamed on Democrats, not any resistance spawned by himself.
           Trump has them in a vice. To “succeed”, the Democrats have to squeeze the public even more with mandates, masks, forced jabs, inane programs, and lockouts, all of which alienate the unvaxxed. Yet, the Democrats cannot possibly win another election without getting the unvaxxed to vote for them. That’s a very effective method, Mr. Trump. Watch the Bidenistas try to claim their mid-term losses are normal. They spent a fortune planning to set him up over this event, remember, they failed miserably trying to convince America an insurrection consists of 400 people taking cell phone pictures.

ADDENDUM
           Isn’t that something. When I set up a new computer, I have a standard set of files that are copied, installed, whatever, and one of them is my NERO disk burner. It has disappeared, along with the original disk. That won’t do, I’ll have to find them today, it’s blog backup time. Some might say not to worrry, Google keeps everything forever, but that will be the day I trust ‘em. Up again at 4:00AM, I got another set of books set up, it’s coming back to me. And I watched the story of Baby Doe Tabor, which I had never heard of before reading it in one of those history fact books, saying she froze to death.

           The video takes the theme of rags and riches, but overlooks the important message. That poverty is too often the result of the refusal to learn from mistakes. I can thus be very unforgiving of poor people who come into money long enough to learn, but never do. A curious connection is that I never saw many cases of this until my long-term bingo gig of blog fame. People there who were injured by everything from busses to trains would get settlements of twelve or fifteen thousand dollars and be broke again in less than a year.

           Sure, there are contributing factors like being raised wrong, but dammit, that is part of the refusal to learn. I shudder to think what might have happened to me if I’d listened to my parent’s advice, so I know what I’m talking about here. For the record, I’ve received three small lump sums in my life, also in the range mentioned. The difference is, if you include this cabin, I still have every cent of that money plus gains on the investments. Rule number one when you get cash, do not tell anybody.            Another important plan to have ready is a place you can store that money, where most people would think of a bank. But even that depends on how you got the money. I was raised to think you grow up, you go to work for a paycheck. You pay your taxes, then your bills, and what is left over is your spending money. Exactly the formula for failure. In the long run, there will never be anything left over because that is how the system is geared.

           But I like the short video for what it unwitting does not reveal. How the first wife fell out of favor, these women never seem to adapt to changes for the better. Or how Horace, the cheater, fell for all the 1800s status symbols. If I wanted to do good for people, the last thing I’d build or donate is a damn opera house. There is a vivid message about men as well, how even if they get the riches they dream of, they still wind up with tarts and prostitutes because they don’t adapt either. Even in her posed photos, Baby Doe looks mousy to me, but she was loyal to Horace, refusing lucrative offers once she was a widow. This link came up on my silver feed, making me more interested in how Horace lost his fortune.

           It boils down to the simplest reason. He mortgaged all his property to speculate without keeping a nest egg. Only stupid people do that. Sure enough, when one wild investment crumbled, the creditors swooped in and soon Horace had to take a job. He also learned the tough lesson about making new friends among other rich men, who did attend his funeral, mind you.

           The video never gets to the silver crisis, but by now we’re watching Baby Doe. Rumor is on his deathbed, he told her to get the silver mine back in production. She spent more than 30 years losing that deal and a good deal of her sanity as well. Again, at work is that peasant refusal to learn from mistakes. Hang on, now she’s writing a journal, it’s 1927 and this gets my notice again. Ah, dang, it’s about visions and such, not the pointedly and precisely accurate but acerbic surgical analysis this blog places on many topics. She really had issues with anybody having a long, narrow head.

           The first wife, Augusta, did well. I’d say because after the divorce she had learned to rules of the game. She never remarried. As with most tales from the era, the dime store novels took the stories to another level and too much of that treatment became history. I doubt either woman went without for long until they were no good for that any more. As for Baby Doe spending her last years in atonement and repentance, we are not told what for. She was divorced, Doe was her ex-husband’s last name.
           They had a daughter, “Silver Dollar” who apparently a real looker, see photo. Problem is, when the money ran out, she went east to become a narcotic and what millennials call a “sex worker”. She was found scalded to death in a flophouse in 1925. Is there a millennial euphemism for that, too? She left a note identifying a man as her killer, who was released for lack of evidence. [Insert Kennedy joke here.] The map shows on my last cross-country motorcycle tour, I passed within 40 miles of Leadville, never heard of it until now. Second biggest city in Colorado, I’ll keep it in mind, I always did like traveling through mountains, but not necessarily living near them.

Last Laugh