Funding the Cause

Or: Making the best of it (11/18/12)

The Elder and the Younger are both of an age where, in my humble opinion, they need to have computers available for their homework and other such nonsense. So, I am faced with a funding dilemma that may well be a blessing in disguise.

The old warhorse Pentium-powered Compaq which I have been using to produce this screed was purchased on sale for $299.00 approximately five years ago. The network card just gave up the ghost, and as this card is not replaceable, the computer is now an excellent word processor. This also leaves me with no way to hook to the Internet at my preferred working location of the kitchen table.

I have the new Dell laptop purchased a year ago, but the Youngest uses that for his homework and is now a traveling computer, going back and forth between the two households. The Eldest has his own little convertible tablet, but he is truly loathe to allow sharing by any others. Finally, there is the behemoth tower hooked to the plasma which is a gaming terminal for WOW and other such wasters of time. It definitely cannot be taken to the table for my use.

Now, in the salad days, I would have toddled down to the Dell store and purchased a replacement. But even cheap computers aren't so cheap and shelling out $300.00 to $500.00 for a device primarily used for the occasional post to a not-very-well-read blog seems to be a bit of a waste.

So, here I am, plugging away in LibreOffice Writer, creating an HTML document to be posted in the near future. I get to sit down at the table, write to my heart's content (and my reader's dismay) and not really have any differences in my lifestyle other than an odd little bit where I take the computer and plug it in to charge it, check to see if there are upgrades to the OS (thank you Linux Mint) are available, and do a mail fetch.

Now, the point of this excess of detail is pretty damn simple. What is described in the above paragraphs is not in any way, shape, or form a difficult process. What is also implied is that a lot of folks would have gone the other way, went out and bought a new computer in order to save themselves a very minimal effort and inconvenience.

When I think about it, this is the core of our problems here in the Western world. We are just too damn lazy. I place myself in that group, so please don't accuse my of hypocrisy, I am fully aware of my myriad faults, but the core of this post is to point out that the laziness, and its handmaiden "convenience" are not our best cultural attributes.

We are also getting poorer as a country. Despite the protestations of the impassioned, the rich getting richer is not the issue, the money being hoarded by the wealthy is ephemeral paper, kind of a consensual hallucination or inside joke, signifying status but in a pinch, worthless.

Nope, we are becoming poorer because in our last little oil-fueled orgy of self-gratification (or as I call it, the last twenty-five years of my life) we burned too much the fuel that runs things and used too much of the resources needed to keep the party going.

We are going to be getting poorer. No way around it. We will be poorer in real terms, as we won't be able to go out and buy something every time a notion strikes us, the real costs of everything will increase (read here inflation and/or wage deflation) until their cost to consumer matches the scarcity of resource.

Our lives will change, we will work longer into our declining years, and current retirements will be changed radically. Our dreams of old-age leisure are built upon paper wealth. As the resources underlying this paper wealth are currently being depleted, the value of the paper wealth itself will become progressively more attuned to its real worth (do your really think that Apple is worth $600+ a share?). The golf and the travel will gradually fade away, and the current retirees will find themselves in the standard condition of old people everywhere. Worried and tight with money.

Maybe I dwell to much on all this, It really won't change my life all that much. I know that I will work until I am seventy or so. I will become poorer like the rest of the country and weather the process with as much style as I can manage. I will watch political charlatans come and go, promising things that they cannot deliver. I will endure.

testing.

Testing Testing 1, 2, 3

Hostile Saviors

Found this picture here.   I was giggling so hard at the end of the posting that I nearly old-manned myself.
I was looking for a picture to have at the top of the posting about how, as Americans, we are currently absolutely dependent on the Chinese and the Arabs to support the ideas that "the American lifestyle is not negotiable”.  This little blog came up and what was I to do.  I have a feeling that it is all a bunch of shit by a snot nosed brat of a middle manager, replete with delusions of grandeur, but it might actually be true which makes it that much richer.

Irony

Maybe it is just me, but in light of current events, I find it screamingly funny that General Petraus' biography was titled "All In" by it author,

But I am known for my sophomoric sense of humor.

An Odd Election

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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I have been spending a little time watching the post mortems on the election.  Out here in doomerland there is a strange and sullen vibe going around.  Now, lets get to the main point of this.  In the eyes of a majority of doomers (my non-Nate-Silver estimate is around 55% of total doomers) are basically glued to old patterns of race identification and are in varying stages of annoyance/anger that some uppity nigger still has the gall to be in the White House in a capacity other than that of a house servant.

Then there are the significant minority of doomers who make a mental hegira to Galt’s Gulch every year (Non-Nate Silver rates this at around 40% with such a significant overlap with the above group that it probably should be a subset rather than a separate category)

Add to this the gun nuts who populate our little community (around 65%, with 50% overlap with the above two categories) and you are looking at an odd demographic where I kind of fit in.  I am out of touch with around 75% of the prepper/doomer population, which is a small (around 10%) faction of a increasingly odd general population.

So, what do I write about and why the hell should I care?

Maybe I’ll take a long nap.

Happy Veterans Day.