New Tires!

Something as simple as mounting a set of tires has become far more complex.

We finally arrived in Maine, and the tires I ordered for the truck were safely in my brother-in-law's barn.  We took them to a local tire warehouse and they mounted and balanced them for $30 each, including tax and tire disposal fee - as well as reprogramming the tire pressure sensors.

That is the first conundrum for modern car owners - the tire pressure sensors.  They have some sort of battery in them and wear out, apparently, over time, and need to be replaced.  If so, you have to dismount the wheel and at least break the bead on the tire (take it halfway off) to get at the sensor.  Then you remount the tire, put it back on the car and program the new sensor.

So the conundrum.  Do you replace the sensors when you replace the tires?  The tire warehouse place offered to do this, replacing the FoMoCo brand tire sensors with "generic" ones that needed to be programmed to the correct frequency for that make, model, and year truck.  Cost was $50 a wheel, or $200 overall.  Ouch.

If you don't replace the sensors and they go bad, you have to go back and pay more to have the wheels taken off and the sensors replaced, than you would have, just replacing the sensors when you change tires.

A friend of mine has a nice Mercedes and he was letting me drive it.  I noticed the tire sensor light was on, and he explained that he put new tires on it a few years ago, and didn't change the sensors out.  He went back to the dealer and they wanted $200 (or more) to un-mount the tires and install new sensors.  He took a pass.  For a car that is driven 5,000 miles a year or less, the sensors may wear out - the batteries go dead - and they will need to be replaced even though the tires are just fine.

So.... do I replace them or not?   The laws that mandated "TPMS" sensors required they last five years.  Many last about 7-10 years.  So we'll just have to wait and see, I guess.  I may regret not replacing the sensors when I did.  But on the other hand, the "generic" sensors they were offering were guaranteed only for four years.  I should have ordered OEM sensors when I bought the tires.

Why do we have these sensors?  They are mandated by law today, much as seatbelts were back in the mid-1960's and backup cameras for SUVs and trucks today.  The problem was - and is - that people have no idea how to check tire pressures on their car, which is essential.  As a result, tires with slow leaks lose air, and tire load capacity is non-linearly dependent on tire pressure.  Drop from 35 pounds to 25 pounds and you have less than half the load carrying capacity on that tire.  The sidewalls flex, heat up, and eventually the tire blows out.

Back in the day, every gas station had tire pumps, and the "full service" stations would check your tire pressure, oil level (because all cars burned oil back then, even when new) as well as radiator fluid and battery acid levels.   But car owners knew to check tire pressures regularly.  In the days of tube tires and later on, bias-ply tubeless, blowouts were common, so you kept an eye on things.

Radial tires and improved tire technology made tire leaks a thing of the past.  In the days of bias-ply tires (i.e., until the early 1970's) you might get 30,000 miles, tops, out of a set of quality tires - and one or more of them would be patched with a plug before they wore out - as nails and screws and such easily penetrated those tires.

Enter the radial era, and you can get 50,000 miles or more out of a set of quality tires, without ever having a nail or other problem.  Tires are just better made, so we become complacent.  People aren't educated about car care anymore - we abolished driver's ed, which usually taught these things.

I recall back in the 1990's being at the Mobil station on South Washington Street in Old Town (now gone) and a young woman was pulling away from the pump with a tire that clearly had no more than 10 psi in it.  I called to her and said "hey, you should put some air in that!" and she said, "mind your own business!" and pulled out onto the beltway doing over 50 mph on the on-ramp.  A blowout was a certainty.

About the same time was the "Firestone" tire scandal.  Ford Explorers of that era would tend to roll over if a tire blew out, particularly if the driver panicked and sawed at the wheel.  The tires would blow out because they ran low on air because the drivers never checked their tire pressure (and the recommended tire pressure of 26 psi didn't leave a lot of wiggle-room if you lost air, as all tires do, over time)  And as our car fleet nationwide skewed more and more toward tippy SUVS and pickup trucks, well, the problem got worse and worse.  A blowout in your low-slung Pontiac of 1962 wasn't a big deal, but on an SUV that rides a foot off the ground, it is a serious issue.

So, we have TPMS mandated because we make shitty choices in car purchases - buying jacked-up SUVs so we can "see out" and pretend we are serious off-roaders, when in fact, we are not.   Our driving skills get worse and worse, and because cars are better made, we don't take care of them as well as we used to.

Ahead of me in line at the tire place was a young couple with a cute dog, which I petted while I talked to them.  The car was a leased Hyundai, and we were talking about cars and he made some derogatory comment about KIAs - until I reminded him that it was the same company as Hyundai (which he apparently didn't know - a real car guy!).  Anyway, his lease was up in November and he was hoping to put off putting tires on the car until he turned the car in.  He bought "tire insurance" from the dealer which meant that if the tires were bald upon turn-in, he wouldn't be charged for it.  So he was driving on two front tires that were down to the wear bars, and one of them went flat.

I looked at the tires and was amazed - these were in fact Michelin's.  I asked him how many miles he had on the car, and he said he had only 30,000 miles (because, you know, lease).   I jokingly said, "you must do a lot of burnouts!" and his wife nodded and even the tire guys (who apparently knew him) all joked that he "left rubber" everywhere he went - in a Hyundai!   He already went through two tires and now he needed the other two replaced.  What a silly waste of money - showing off by beating on your own car.  Why not just set fire to $100 bills like the rap stars do?  Dumb.

But both of them had leased cars and we were talking about the "car shortage."  I believe that so many of these "shortages" are being engineered now, as people accept higher prices on the premise of "it's the pandemic and all" and thus give an opportunity for marketers to charge higher prices.  Well, that and inflation.  The problem with leasing cars today (in addition to all the underlying problems) is that when you turn your car in, the dealer might not have much in stock for you to choose from.  So you are stuck leasing a brown car with a green interior, whether you like it or not, at a price over sticker.

Sure, you can choose not to re-lease a car, but then the dealer socks you with "back-end" charges for "wear and tear" and over-mileage and whatnot (which are forgiven only if you lease or buy another car from them).  And even if you go to another dealer, the situation is the same - selection sucks and prices are through the roof.  Used car?  Same deal.  You are now forced to buy a car at a time and place not of your choosing and as a result, are not in a position to bargain.

Those of us who bought our cars, well, we can decide to wait for this panic to end and the fake "shortages" to go away, which they will, over time.  Unless you wreck your car, you have the option of keeping what is already in your garage, and as I have noted before, often the best used-car value is already parked in your driveway.

I felt sorry for these kids. Kids - they were in their late 20's!   But they were going from lease to lease, and like junkies, they couldn't stop.  They were convinced that buying a used car was out of the question ("too unreliable!") and given the way they treated their own cars, well, I could see why they thought this way.   After all, it is a given that people just beat the crap out of their cars, right?

Well, not exactly.  In the Northeast, I see a lot of horrible driving habits.  Flooring it all the way to a stop sign and then slamming on the brakes once you are in the crosswalk (flinging your passengers into their seatbelt shoulder harnesses) seems to be the norm, as is running said stop sign without fully stopping or even looking both ways.  Tailgating (which scours the paint off the front of your car) seems to be the norm.

I was driving to the kayak launch area - a 0.3 mile ride from our campground, on a narrow road with pedestrians and cyclists on it.  Speed limit was 25 mph.  Some guy from Massachusetts was in a real hurry to cover those three-tenths of a mile and tailgated me the whole way - he was doing at least 45 before he pulled up on us.  What was the point?  The road ends in ocean in a minute or so.  The ocean will still be there, too.  There are a lot of angry drivers up here, it seems.

Which brings us back to our topic.  TPMS sensors, backup cameras, self-parking, lane control, and so on and so forth - they are all signs of technological prowess, but also signs that as a nation, we have forgotten how to drive. Eventually, robotic cars will be a thing, not because we want them, but because by then, no one will know how to drive.  Quite frankly, it frightens me to ride with some friends - their lane control (and speed control) is atrocious and they speed and run stop signs and cross the center line.  They suck and yet they are in such a hurry all the time, with no particular place to go or any reason to get there ten seconds earlier.

Some readers claim that this "AI" thing will take over the world and control our lives. I sincerely doubt that - what we call "AI" is hardly intelligent, but merely keyword searching, without context.  Maybe the folks at Planetir can collect all sorts of data about you, they still really can't get into your head or even predict what you are going to do next.  So far, it seems the only can tell what you did.  Yes, we are getting lots of ads for tires these days, a month after I bought them.  AI - the future?  More like the past!

But if the robots take over, it won't be because they have to hunt us down like in The Terminator, but because we willingly hand over our lives to them.   And in fact, this process already has begun - and began....

...when we stopped checking our tire pressure.

Sympathy is a Poor Way of Distributing Charity!

If you want charity money, be sure to have a good press agent.

A reader writes:

The topic of some of your recent posts; the story that just keeps on giving. It's quite ridiculous, really:

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/20/palantir-ceo-gives-180000-to-new-hampshire-hermit.html

I am curious too as to what he will do with it. Nothing good, I assure you. I have a sister-in-law that can't help but give $10 or $20 to every "homeless" person she sees and cannot understand that she is only contributing to the problem.

This illustrates a problem with charity - all kinds of charity - in this country.  We give money to causes and people we think are sympathetic - or pathetic - instead of giving money based on real needs.  So someone who has a "go fund me" page gets a million bucks, such as the bus attendant in Rochester who was mocked by kids one day - and now is retired with a million bucks as a result.  Is that a fair way of dispersing charity?

Or take the shoeless beggar.  A great gag - no shoes!  But it turns out he has shoes, and an apartment, and government assistance and so on - because in America, even the homeless have a cell phone and a Facebook page.   But at Christmas time, it made for a heart-warming story, and the clueless plebes throw money at him.   Meanwhile, some homeless child, beaten and abused by his own parents, isn't given squat, because his backstory isn't heartwarming, it's horrifying.

Or take the two homeless women living in a tent near Union Station in DC.  They had an advocate set up a go-fund-me page and voila! - they have a pile of dough now.   But how to spend it?

Badly, I suspect, which is why their advocate isn't just handing them a pile of $20 bills, but rather trying to use the money to get them an apartment and otherwise control their lives.  And that's what you have to do with a lot of feral humans - control their lives - because they basically can't control themselves.

How will things turn out for our Hobbit dude?  Well, if the movie Reversal of Fortune is any indication, the money may be long-gone in a matter of months.  Like lottery winners, people who are handed large sums of money, who have no experience or poor skills in handling money, tend to spend it rather quickly.   Most people are this way, which is why we get our money in tiny paychecks instead of one lump sum.  It's for the best, really.

But the Charity Effect doesn't just apply to individuals, but to causes and programs.  Diseases that have sympathetic poster-children (and children, not some old fuck with one foot in the grave) get money for research. "Jerry's Kids" had their own telethon, and while it is a good cause, there are likely dozens, if not hundreds of other diseases that deserve research and a cure, that don't get at much attention.  We all love to hear the story about the kid who has his "dream wish" come true and is visited by Batman while he undergoes Chemo.  But how many thousands, tens of thousands, nay millions of children here in the US and worldwide don't get such wishes?   We are selective with our charity and give to those we perceive to be weak and helpless, which is a natural instinct.

Speaking of which, make sure if you are donating to charity, that it is a legit charity.  A friend of mine gave me a car blanket to use in the car (Mr. See gets cold) that she bought at a garage sale for ten cents.  It said "Child Wish Network" or something like that on it, and I googled it, and it turns out these folks have been a nightmare for the real Make-A-Wish foundation, by soliciting for money from people by using similar names to the legit charity.   And this sort of thing goes on - a lot - all the time, and often it isn't even illegal.  So you throw money at a trendy-sounding charity, only to realize you just made a payment on someone else's Porsche.

Even "legit" charities, such as United Way, have had their shares of scandals, tainting the reputation of the entire organization.  Fortunately, that guy went to jail.  Others, well, they get away with it.

So what is the answer?  Beats me.  Only that perhaps giving money to individual people based on their sob story of how awful their lives are, is probably the worst way to go about it.   Because people lie - like a rug - particularly if they are mentally ill, drug addicts, or both.  And such people are not heartwarming - they are as dangerous, or can be, as a rabid dog.  Taking a homeless person into your home is a recipe for disaster, perhaps even your demise.

Pity and feeling sorry for someone is a dangerous emotion.  And donating money based on emotional reactions is probably a sign you are donating money to the wrong person.  Yet, every charity, even the legitimate ones, use photos of scrawny children with dirt-smeared faces to get you to whip out that checkbook.  They're baiting you.  And baiting should not be a means of generating charity.

But they all do it.  The politcos send me e-mails making the argument that unless I donate $10 before midnight tonight they are going to lose the 2022 election, which is more than a year away.  Unless I donate $25 before Tuesday, the Republicans will overturn election laws in 11 States!  I am not sure how $25 is going to change that - I doubt you could lobby those same Republicans and get them to change their minds much.  It's a done deal, really, and they are using these current events to get us to donate, using fear as a motivator.  Same shit, different day - using emotional arguments to get us to open our wallets.

Maybe that is the underlying factor in all of this - and neatly ties it in with the subject of this blog.  Any financial transaction that you enter into because of emotional factors, is probably a shitty transaction.  If people can get you to think emotionally, they can get you to stop thinking.  It is said that the poor and lower classes donate more to charity than the wealthy.  And if you think about this for a second, it makes sense.  The poor tend to think emotionally, or more precisely, people who think emotionally end up poor because they are easily manipulated and make poor choices.

You can sell a car to a poor person by putting racing stripes and a loud muffler on it and telling them it is a the "sporty" model and will make them more macho.  Or jack up a pickup truck and put big tires on poorly-made Chinese rims, and lower-class men will buy them in droves (and park them on the sidewalk in front of the Library of Congress).  The poor don't lack money - it just passes through their hands in large amounts.  They cannot hang on to any of it because they are easily swayed by emotions.

So it's not just charities - real or fake - that harvest money from the poor, it is everyone.  But what about this "Planatir" guy?  Surely he's rich, right?  He should be more logical in his thinking!  He should donate to a homeless shelter or something, right?  Well, it turns out, he is thinking logically.  By donating what is a trivial sum to him, he gets far more than that in free publicity. Far more.   Now people think he is a cool dude, and when he goes all Jeff Bezos on us, he can trot out his charitable works as an example of why he is a benevolent Billionaire.

It goes back to the problem with charity, as noted by Oscar Wilde - a few capitalists handing out shiny dimes to orphans (as Rockefeller did) doesn't make up for the sharp practice of those same capitalists who exploit labor and run their competitors into the ground.

The problem is, of course, that Mr. Wilde's solution to this problem was socialism - nationalize charity so that efficiently-run government agencies can hand out your money to worthy causes and people in a value-neutral manner.  Sounds great, other than government can be inefficient at times, and often unfair in how they do business. And even in socialist countries, there are always beggars and panhandlers and charities - and charity scammers.  So I am not sure that is an answer, either.

For me, personally, I just get suspicious of anyone whose heart-tugging story is told in the press, because they often tell only one side of the story.  It seems to me also that Social Media makes this all the worse.  In addition to making these stories go viral, they use the techniques of damning and shaming to get everyone on-board to be sympathetic to the character in question and not to ask questions about whether it is appropriate to intervene in what is, essentially, a local matter that we don't know the details of.

The reader's sister-in-law must have a lot of money to hand out $20 bills like that.  Sadly, as the reader notes, this ends up adding to the problem.  We recently went to the beach and there was a small lobster shack at the beach selling fried clams and french fries.  They had a big sign explaining why feeding seagulls was a bad idea - they will get aggressive and steal your food.   But like clockwork, one grandpa decided to dump his french fries on the sand so his grandchildren could see the disease-infested flying rats up close. "Let's feed the birds!  They need our help!"

Within 20 minutes, the beach was swarmed with gulls, shitting on people's beach blankets and in three instances I could see near me, taking food right out of the hands of screaming women and children.  It was like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds.

Sadly, humans are no different, and they will "swarm" to wherever they figure they can live for free and get handouts.   You relax laws about vagrancy, as they have in California, and you end up with people living in tents and shitting on the sidewalk.   It isn't the "high price of housing" that is keeping these folks in tents, it is the easy money made begging or stealing and the availability of drugs.

So what is the answer?  Again, beats me.  There are things in this world which defy simple solutions - which are usually always the wrong answers to complex problems.  I think on a personal level, it pays to be astute and pull at the threads of these stories before you send off your hard-earned money to someone who may - but likely may not - deserve it.  After all, if you give away all your money, aren't you just creating another person in need?

I hope the reader's sister-in-law doesn't fall into that trap.  I've seen it happen - people ending up poor in retirement not only because they spent large, but because they gave away huge sums of money to charity or churches or people, oftentimes for the worst reasons imaginable - to aggrandize themselves as being "better than other people" because they care and you don't.

Yes, the motivations of altruism are often more evil than the woes of the world that altruism is supposedly going to fix.

I am not too worried about Hobbit dude - he's a grown-up, for chrissakes, and 20 years older than I am.  When you are grown-up, you are expected to take care of yourself - and make rational choices.  If you don't, no one will feel sorry for you.  Well, that is, unless you have a gofundme page!

Woodstock

The event that defined a generation, or just shit that happened?

I was up in the middle of the night, with my mind racing.  Your body does this on occasion, usually if you have a heavy meal late at night.  Mark makes a mean meatloaf.  Anyway, for some reason, I was recalling Woodstock, or at least my memories of that era.  I was only about 10 years old at the time, so I didn't go.  My older brother and sister (and a friend of theirs) went, but they might as well not have gone.  My other brother and I stayed home.  We didn't miss much.

Like so much of that era - or any era - a mythology has arisen about it.   If you listen to some baby boomers, they will tell you that everyone was protesting injustice and they were all on the side of righteousness.  But of course, not everyone was protesting, as I noted before.  Yes, there were "Young Republicans" even back then - perhaps even more than today.  But clean-cut young kids who looked like they were 40 didn't get much press back then.  Click-bait didn't exist then, but the old saying was, they would print anything to sell newspapers.  And scaring old people with stories about hippies sold a lot of newspapers back then.

But if  you were young back then, and living on the East coast, well, Woodsotck was a big deal.  I remember my brother holding a poster advertising the event (no doubt a relic worth a lot, today!) and trying to persuade my parents to let them go.  Not surprisingly, my folks, particularly my Dad, wasn't so keen on letting the kids take our old rusted-out 1965 Mustang to a drug-fueled orgy.  But he eventually agreed to let them go.

On the day they were to leave, I was taking pictures, and I have a black-and-white photo of my brothers and sister and their friend Danny, as well as a friend of mine.  The younger people were all acting like spaz kids - my next oldest brother holding a toy gun he made from a 2x4 and a piece of steel pipe.  My sister was wearing one of those flowing hippie dresses, and their friend Danny had daring shoulder-length hair.  Yea, long hair was a controversial thing back then - today only conservatives wear it.  How odd.

Anyway, being stoners, they decided to bring a stash of pot with them.  And being stoners, they thought it would be clever to hide it in the glove compartment (who would look there?) where my Dad easily found it.  He lectured them and made them promise not to do drugs at Woodstock, and stupidly, once out of range of parental authority, they kept that promise, which sort of shaped their experience there.

Of course, I didn't find out about that until later.  My sister didn't share her pot secrets with me until I was 13 years old, at which point she felt it was wise to turn me on to marijuana to "mellow" me out.  Like I said, we were pretty spaz kids.  Most are.  But I digress.

Anyway, they got there and had to park by the side of the road, as the event was so poorly planned, there was no parking provided.  They got to the "gate" and found it was torn down - people just walked in and didn't pay.  I am sure my siblings felt like chumps for buying tickets.

They found a spot and set up my Dad's old army tent, which was a pair of heavy canvas shelter halves, which sucked as a tent and was pretty useless for anything else.  It leaked water when it rained, to the point where just sleeping in the rain was a better option.  It probably wouldn't have been so bad if the canvas had been treated or we had real tent poles and stakes.  My Dad being cheap, always said, "you can cut your own stakes from tree limbs with your boy scout knife!" and you know how well that worked out.

Today, you can go to WalMart and buy a nice tent for $99.  Well, you could before the Pandemic, anyway.  But back then, shit was expensive, and most tents were heavy canvas and made-in-usa and thus very pricey as they used union labor.  Maybe we make less money today, in terms of inflation, but it buys a lot of cheap shit from China, effectively making us wealthier.  Well, it did, before inflation made the $15 minimum wage a moot point.  What's next for the unions, $30 "living wage"?  Because that's where we're headed right now.

Anyway, if you recall anything about Woodstock, it rained and rained like a sumbitch.   They sat there, in their tent, getting soaking wet, and not high, and barely able to hear the music.  What little food they brought with them was "shared" by others, and in the middle of the night, my sister was alarmed to find a smelly hippy had wormed his way into her sleeping bag and hoping to worm his way into something else.   She screamed and my brother woke up and politely asked this potential Manson-family member to leave, and fortunately he did, because my brother was all of 90 pounds wet, and in no position to challenge the guy if he refused.

Well, the next day, they left.  It was still raining and there was mud everywhere and my sister was tired of shitting in the woods.  Probably not being high didn't help, but then again, it might have made it a lot worse.  They came home, tail between their legs, just before the sun came out and the music started again.

Oh, and when they got back to where they had abandoned the Mustang, they discovered some "share the wealth" hippy decided to "share" their 8-track tape player, right out of the car!

Of course, if you ask them about it today (or in my sister's case, before she died) they tell a different story.   "Yea, I was at Woodstock..." my brother would say with a faraway look in his eyes, as if he were recounting a war story.  "You had to be there to understand.  A million people, the defining moment of our generation..."

Bullshit.

It was, in reality, a very poorly planned event, with few toilets or fresh water, no food, no infrastructure, not even a place to park.   People were assaulted, raped, and even killed.  Drug overdoses were common.  And the few volunteers manning the medical tent were quickly overwhelmed.  It was an example of why "share the wealth" and hippy planning just don't work.

Years later, they had an anniversary celebration at Woodstock, and it was an interesting contrast.  Having decades to prepare, you'd think this time around it would have those portable bathrooms and booths selling Chardonnay and medical marijuana as well as rain-forest-friendly treats.  But no, it was about as poorly planned as the original.  A riot broke out, apparently, toward the end.  So much for peace, love, and music.  I guess the world has changed since those days - or has it?

And no, I didn't go.  I don't have romantic notions about the hippy movement.  I was at Oshkosh at the time, and the contrast was interesting.  Hosting over a million people .every year, the folks at Oshkosh had it all planned out, from food vendors, to RV sites, to shower houses, bathrooms, parking, and of course, airplanes.   You can't just invite a million people to your house and bring a bag of Doritos and hope Jesus shows up to do his fishes-and-loaves bit.  That never works out.

Did Woodstock change the world?  Did it end the Vietnam war?  Hardly.  The war wound down in the successive years, until we finally realized we were spending billions of dollars propping up an unpopular regime whose own people were not willing to fight for.  We left, tail between our legs and vowed never to do that again.  And we never did, either! The End.

Thoughts about "sharing the wealth" quickly evaporated when people realized that a few freeloaders wanted a free ride off someone else's labor.  Once hippies made a few dollars, well, they changed their minds about a lot of things.  And that's OK, too.  You can change your mind about things - particularly about bad ideas, like Communism.  Hippies became Yuppies and then Boomers and now they own and control everything and pretty much mucked it all up like their forebears' did.

What got me started on this was a comic I was reading.  Like I said, most of these online funnies are funny, but too many of them dwell on negative things.  It is assumed that everyone is depressed and unhappy, for example, or seeing a therapist.  Maybe Charles Shulz is to blame for this - he started the whole trend of comic characters having existential crises.  But another theme always harped upon (as assume to be background noise to daily life) is that "this generation" got the raw end of the stick and will never, ever own a home or have a fully-funded retirement or a decent job or healthcare. So we might as well share the wealth.

It is an interesting thought, and when you look back at the boomer generation in their prime days, well, they pretty much thought the same thing - that the system was stacked against them, they would never have the lifestyle their parents had, and so on and so forth. Of course, they were mostly rejecting materialism instead of merely not being able to find it. When they changed their minds about these things, well, like every other generation before them, they took charge.

And I have no doubt that the next generation will do the same thing.  Is their world lesser than that of the previous generations?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  I am sure many a millennial or generation-Z or whatever would have felt like they were in the middle-ages if they had to grow up in 1975 - with no smart phones, no cable television, no internet, and no video games.  Then again, our generation would probably have revolted at the era our parents lived in, with hand-cranked record players playing scratchy 78 rpm records and only the radio to entertain you.  They got polio, we got the vaccine.  And today, people can get a vaccine if they chose to.  Some don't.  That's not my problem.

Are houses more expensive today than in the past?  Of course - in a world of finite land and a population growing exponentially, it is a mathematical certainty that housing will become more dear.  I could never afford to own the lake house my parents had - or even pay the taxes on it - even though I made, in real terms, more money than my Dad did.   But come to think of it, it was a stretch for them to afford it - my Mother drove a Vega and a succession of cheap cars, and we scrimped a lot, because the fancy house was indeed a budget-buster.   Today?  Our generation assumes that if you have a fancy house, you have the fancy cars to go with it.  We have a lot more, in real terms than generations past.

And the price of housing has always been dear.  The myth being spread today is that "back in the day" you could buy a house for a dollar, if you saved up your nickels.  It is like the old gag that some old-timers like to use - "I remember when Pepsi was a nickel!" they say, not realizing that a nickel back then is the equivalent of a buck today.   So yea, $30,000 for a house sounds cheap and all, until you realize that the average schmuck made maybe $5000 a year if they were lucky, and yes, they had a mortgage and it ate up much of their income.

(But of course, we are in the middle of an anomaly - another real estate bubble.  It is just like the last one in 2008, but different.  Eventually the Fed will have to raise interest rates, and even an increase of 1% in mortgage rates can cause housing prices to drop by 10% or more.  This not to say that housing prices will fall and stay low, only that the inflated values today are not likely to continue.  Buying now "before you get priced out of the market forever!" is a bad idea - and was a bad idea back in 2006, too).

Bear in mind, though, that while "they aren't making any more" land, there is a lot of it about, and every day, a new housing development is started and new houses are built.  Eventually supply and demand even out, even if there are instances where one outweighs the other.

But what about global warming?  The war on terror?  Well, there are always shit-storms going on in the world.  When I was a kid, you could not see across Pittsburgh, the pollution was so bad.  Rivers in Ohio caught fire from all the toxic waste dumped in them.  Smog blanketed Los Angeles - and many other cites as well.   We enacted pollution control laws and emissions from factories, houses, and cars have dropped precipitously.  We burned a hole in the ozone layer and managed to get most of the nations of the world to agree to stop using chemicals that did that.  We have made progress and can make more.

The sad thing is, of course, is that Mother Nature may make a correction before we have a chance to. When one animal over-populates its environmental niche, either it has to adapt to a new niche, or something culls the herd.  You know, things like pandemics or the like.  The fundamental cause of global warming is just too many damn people on the planet.   And while many like to blame the West for the problem, things like the Pacific garbage patch are caused mostly by developing countries, which are still burning coal.  Cities in China today look like Pittsburgh in 1965.

Every generation has its crosses to bear.  When I was a kid, it was "duck and cover" because the Rooskies were going to drop the big one.  Our parents had to go off to fight Nazzies.  There is always some crises in the world.   Eventually, these things are sorted out - and often there is much bloodshed and strife involved.   You can either hide under your bed and hope it all goes away, or confront it.

OK, this is a long way from Woodstock.  But I think I had a point.  If you thought that Woodstock was a fantastic drug-and-sex-fueled party, well, it might have been for a few folks.  But for many more, it was just a muddy nightmare, even as they try to reinvent it in their minds as some sort of generational watershed event.

We need to stop romanticizing the past, because let's face it, the past sucked.  I mean, the cell service in 1975 was one bar, at best!

Sometimes it pays to put these things in perspective.  Woodstock was just stupid, period.

Following The Rules?

People who play by the rules often come in second - or do they?

In my last few postings, I was noting how it seems our society lauds rule-breakers as either being sympathetic characters or as bad-ass outlaws we all admire.  It is a weird message our society sends!  When I grew up, as a Boy Scout, we were told to memorize the Scout code, help little old ladies across the street, "do a good deed daily" and be brave, clean, and reverent.  Suckers!

Meanwhile, society tells us that the bad-boy who is hot-wiring cars gets all the girls, because they like that whiff of danger about him (and perhaps his pheromones).  You play by the rules, and you lose, or so it seems.

I mentioned before how we laud the mafia in so many movies and television shows.  When I was a kid, the cops were heroes (that was a long time ago, wasn't it?) and the criminals were bad guys who were caught every 22 minutes - before the show ended.  Rarely were the "bad guys" shown as getting away with it - or worse yet, shown as the real heroes.   All that has changed.

Worse yet, are the shows and news programs that depict the bad guys as "victims" - of society, their upbringing, the school system, the prison system, or the mental health care system.  And many "bad boys" do just that - but usually only after they get caught doing something bad.  "It ain't my fault!  I'm a victim of society!"

And yes, this seems unfair to the rest of us, who often were subject to greater injustices and merely shrugged them off or learned that injustice is part of life.   I meet people who faced heroic odds and still succeeded in life, despite being raised in poverty and privation.   I wonder how they feel when someone who comes from a cushy all-white suburb with good schools plays the "victim" card.

Playing by the rules is for chumps, they say.  Save money over a 30- or 40-year working life?  Dumb!  You either make a killing on Gamestop or forgetaboutit!   That's how all the big playas do it - right?  Well, not exactly.  Some, like Jeff Bezos, built up a juggernaut empire, one book at a time, over 20 years or more.  Others, like these IPO clowns, sell you the dream of success, by selling you their shares for wildly over-inflated prices.

But overall, I don't think such people ever really get ahead in life, or if they do, the success is short-lived, as are their lives.  Some hard-core criminals really think that way, I guess - that they expect to die in a hail of bullets, so it might as well be limousines, champagne and hookers until then.   In reading Feast of the Goat, it was interesting to me that the dictator Trujillo progressively boxed himself into a corner, not only with the US and the West in general, but also with fellow members of the OAS.  Rather than compromise, he rode it (and his country) all the way down, until he was assassinated.  And he felt, apparently (according to the book) that he would rather die in the saddle than fade away.   The Dominican Republic paid for that decision again and again over the last 60 years.

Some folks have a hard time believing this Epstein character killed himself in prison - believing instead in dark conspiracies.  He was silenced before he could talk!  (Never mind his victims have all talked, at great length).  He was spirited out and living in luxury in Argentina! (Never mind that all his money has been confiscated).  The idea that someone in jail would kill themselves just seems irrational to some folks.  Yet, if you talk to police officers, you realize it happens - more often than you think.  Even a simple arrest for a DUI can put someone on a suicide watch.  People get profoundly depressed and see no way out - so they try to kill themselves.

Or perhaps Epstein, like Trujillo, figured he had a good time in life, got away with what he did for as long as he could, and decided to check out.  And odd way of looking at life, but there you have it.

Again, I got feedback on my "Bling Rims" posting from a wanna-be home-boy who posited that growing up in the ghetto, he didn't expect to live past 30, so why save money?  Blow it all on bling, enjoy the ride, and avoid the rest home!  I suspect he will end up outliving his money, however, rather than being a "playa."

It only seems like these sorts of folks "win" at life sometimes.  The gangsters live large - but not for very long.  The mobsters make millions, before they rat each other out (so much for the "code of silence") and end up in prison.  There rarely is a "happily ever after" for career criminals, only because when you make crime a career, the odds of getting caught become larger with every passing day and every successive crime.   And of course, the odds of being killed by a fellow criminal increase over time as well.  Few retire from a life of crime.

The same is true of "victims."   The people who "game the system" by claiming false disability benefits never make out well.  It is a shitty consolation prize in life - getting a pittance from the government in order to not have to work.  You don't so much get ahead, but remain in stasis like so many folks who are some sort of government assistance.    It is like couponing - if it was that lucrative, What's the Name of Your Yacht?  And no, couponers generally don't have yachts, nor do these people who play the victim or sympathy card.

So yes, it seems unfair to the rest of us.  We work hard, play by the rules and try to get ahead the legitimate way, and it seems like, sometimes, that the bad guys are winning or the people who game the system are coming out ahead.  And sometimes they do - but only for a short while.  And maybe once in a great while, they actually succeed.  But few do, and the efforts involved in not following the rules often exceed the effort to just play the game the way you should.

But of course, the media paints a different story.   A reader writes asking whether the numerous stories about "Sqatter Dude" aren't designed as click-bait from two angles - half the people click on the story so they can be "outraged" that our greedy society won't let someone live for free on someone else's land, while the other half clicks on the story to be "outraged" that he is getting away with it for so long - or perhaps to laugh at him for being such a dork.  No matter how you slice it, the media gets its clicks with these "human interest" pieces.  And yes, I got sucked into the story as well - and clicked and got outraged, a little, anyway.   I am not outraged at him, so much as I am disgusted by a media that makes heroes out of imbeciles.

So yea, I guess we will always have television shows and movies that glamorize crime and sympathetic stories in the press about those "less fortunate" than ourselves because they squandered their fortune.   And these stories and movies and shows exist because we watch them, either to root for Tony Soprano or the latest victim-du-jour, or to be horrified by it all.

And no, no one is going to make a movie or write a book about your life and how you played by the rules and kept your head down and did the right thing.  On the other hand, you very well might end up happy in life - if you let yourself be so.  One problem with this adulation of bad-boys and self-proclaimed victims is that people let it get to them and end up depressed.  Why should I bother trying to play by the rules when so many are cheating!  The system is rigged!  I might as well file for a bogus disability claim!  If you watch enough media, you may end up thinking this, because the media lauds criminals these days and profiles self-proclaimed victims.  The "silent majority" of people who just do their jobs and not make a fuss, are never heard from or heard about.

Happiness comes from within, and it certainly doesn't come from comparing yourself to others, or obsessing about the injustices in the world.  And yet, when I meet unhappy people, which is to say, about half the population in the richest country in the world, that's all I hear about from them - how the other guy has it so good, and how the bad guys are getting away with murder.

These are the people who have bumper stickers on their cars that say, "If You're Not Outraged, You're Not Paying Attention!" And to them, being "Outraged" means being chronically depressed, and "Paying Attention" means watching endless cable TV news.  Left or Right, it makes no difference.  People just give up on their own lives to dedicate themselves to a "cause" - often a pointless cause like Antifartism or Qanonsense.   This in turn, feeds a downward spiral of depression, which they treat by engaging in more bizarreness.  Pretty soon, they're victims, too!

It's a shitty way to live, quite frankly.  And this is why unplugging from the 24//7 media is the first and most important step in getting ahead in life.

Weekends Don't Exist

 People have no concept of what time is really like.

We are finding plenty of places to camp in Maine, even on the water, sometimes with no reservations, or reserving only a few days in advance. How is this possible?  With all the "CoVid Campers" out there in their shiny new rigs, surely places must be full to capacity!

And they are.  On the weekends.

We are spending the weekends parked in Mark's brother's yard, so we don't have to fight the crowds.  And it is funny, if you go to a campground on the weekend, it is jammed with people - every site full.  But by Sunday morning, many are packing up to leave, and by Monday afternoon, the place is a ghost town.

I mentioned before time-shifting as a way of enjoying life more.  When you do the opposite of what others are doing, you find out that the world is not such a crowded place after all.  But sadly, we live as lemmings, all sleeping at the same time, all working at the same time, all recreating at the same time.  It isn't until you either live off-schedule (working nights, for example) that you realize there is another world out there.

The calendar and the clock are constructs.  How we divide days into weeks and months and years is somewhat arbitrary.  There is no secret special reason why January 1st is when it is - other than it was roughly correlated to the Winter Solstice and even then was off by nearly a couple of weeks.

As I noted before, one reason I believe religion became popular early on, is that most religions offered a day off - the sabbath - where you didn't have to work.  This was appealing to peoples who were forced to work seven days a week.   It is funny, but some religions, such as Othodox Judasim, forbid "work" on the sabbath, and some interpret this to mean you cannot even turn on or off a light switch.  I am told that some Orthodox Jews have a Goyim friend who comes by and does the switches for them, if they needed a light turned off.  I was programming the clock on our stove and noticed it has a "Sabbath Mode" for Orthodox Jews.  I didn't explore this, but I guess it is some way of turning the darn thing off, one day a week.

Well, eventually, the Sabbath became the Weekend, and the rest is history.  And yes, when I was young, the only time I had off was the weekend, or two-weeks' vacation time (or sick leave) and one would scramble to enjoy those brief respites from work.  The sad thing was, some years, every weekend it would rain, and during the week there would be beautiful weather.  Sort of sucked, when you are young and want to go water-skiing.

Of course, I was not happy with that state of affairs, and tried to structure my life otherwise.  At the Patent Office, they offered us the opportunity to work 10 hours a day and take one day a week off - Monday, Wednesday, or Friday.  Most chose Monday or Friday, so they could have three-day weekends, which was at least a little better than two days - at least you have one day that is sort of quiet.

But as I started working from home and being self-employed, the entire concept of weekends went away.  We found ourselves forgetting what day of the week it was - or even what time it was.  You have to stop yourself from calling a client at 9PM at night on a Sunday - check your watch and calendar first!

This meant, however, that we could take time off when we wanted to, not when the calendar dictated.  Nice day out?  Time for time off!  Pouring rain?  Time to go back to work!  And over time, we got used to this, and worked when we wanted to work, played when we wanted to play.  It was a pretty good system.

But of course, now we're retired, and to us, the weekend isn't something to look forward to, but something to dread.  It is the time when the roads are crowded, the campgrounds are crowded, the stores are crowded and the restaurants are crowded and the service is slow.

I guess there are reasons why we live this way.  If everyone took their own weekends "whenever" then it would be hard to get business done.  Before the smart phone and the Internet, people had to keep regular office hours, so that we could work together and communicate with one another.  So I guess we had to all work at the same time, sleep at the same time, and so on and so forth.  And in a less crowded world, I guess that worked, too.

But maybe, going forward, we will move - or are moving - to a new form of working and recreation, where the "weekend" if not abolished, at least becomes less important.  And already we are seeing this.  I run into a lot of people who are in RVs and working - on days when they want to work.  The world has caught up to what I have been doing for the last 20 years or so.

But it is funny, how people say silly things like how a Monday "feels different" than a Sunday or a Wednesday - when they are artificial constructs of man.  The days of the week don't exist - they are just labels and an ordering system we have imposed on time - and time cares naught about it.

So what does this have to do with finances?  Well, a lot, actually.  Because the vast majority of humanity still are slaves to the calendar and the clock, it means that you can save a considerable amount of hassle and time by time-shifting your life.  Restaurants offer better deals on Tuesdays than they do on Saturdays - they offer discounts to draw in customers during a slow day.  Lodging places often offer better deals for weekdays versus weekends.  Grocery stores are less crowded and the selection often better during the week (particularly just before the weekend, not after).  Just about everything is more pleasant.

As I noted before, when we lived in the DC area, it seemed so crowded and busy - if you lived according to the calendar.  Everyone commuted to work at the same time, went out to eat at the same time, and clogged Route 50 to the eastern shore every weekend.  Once we were liberated from the calendar, Alexandria, Virginia seemed like a small, Southern town with little traffic.  The beltway was never backed up, and Route 50 was a pleasant drive, not a miles-long traffic jam.

What got me started on this was reading restaurant reviews online (I know, a waste of time, right?) for a local clam and lobster shack.  The reviews were mostly positive but the few one-star reviews all had something in common - they were reviews from people who tried to get a table for a party of six or more, on a busy weekend night.  They all complained about waiting for tables and slow service.  Meanwhile, the folks who popped in for a late lunch on a Wednesday, said they had a delightful time.  Funny how that works, eh?