Richard II Message to Peasants

 

When Richard II was asked by the peasants to fulfill his oath as made to Wat Tyler at the famous meeting in London, he replied: 

 

 “You will remain in bondage, not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live… we will strive with mind, strength and goods to suppress you so that the rigour of your servitude will be an example to posterity."

 

Our politicians have the same intent, but they are not as forthright and as eloquent as Richard II.

 

The death of Wat Tyler 1381

What the words really mean to the poor

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To the poor the words mean something else.

When someone tells you about a housing authority or talks about punctuation or suggests you find a job on the internet, what they are really saying is fuck you.

Why Poverty is Like a Disease

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https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why-poverty-is-like-a-disease

Who Shall Pass or Fail the Test?

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In another post, see here, I described a test I was playing on various friends and acquaintances.

For those of you who wonder how to pass the test, and need a cheat sheet, here is a short list of some of the answers, any one of which will suffice to pass the test:

Express concern and ask how you can help.

Offer to buy lunch or loan your friend $100

Suggest a friend you know who might need someone of his skills (i.e. to get a job).

Offer to pay for something that might help (e.g. internet access or a phone bill or water bill).

Offer him or her a place to stay for a week or a month.

Offer to drive him or her somewhere.

Offer to introduce him or her to someone who might be able to help (e.g. get into school, get a part time job, whatever).

Make them feel welcome or in some way try to lesson the shame when you do any of the above on behalf of your friend.

Things you can do to automatically fail the test include:

Say you dont have the time to hear this right now.

Offer to have them committed for their own good.

Insult them.

Tell them to fuck off.

Make fun of them either to their face or behind their back (they will always know, trust me).

Fail to offer to help them get a job even though they know you have done that for others.

None of these lists are exhaustive.

[It saddens me to report that this test, which has in fact been in progress for several years has been passed by only a few people.  There are a few themes that I have noticed, in particular that some people who I have been in relationships with are particularly uncaring, but I guess that is not a total surprise even if it is a disappointment.  Others, it turns out, who in some sense truly owe me nothing, if anything one might say that I owe them for their courtesy to me over the years and their contributions to my life however accidental, have turned out to be very generous.  This is hardly an observation that will be new to the careful observer of mammalian biped behavior]

Definition: All But Homeless

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I am sometimes guilty of using my own sub-language, or jargon. I think most writers do at one time or another. Its hard to get a new word or term defined and accepted but the Germans, or those who speak the Germanic languages do not care. They create and use compound words with speed and facility.

Sidewalk, rocketship, doorknob, jailbait, idiot-sh*t-for-brains, etc.

I have needed a term for someone who is essentially but not quite homeless for quite a while.

If “homeless” refers to someone who is chronically unemployed and does not have the money, or for some reason the capability, to have a place to sleep, to take a shower, to keep their stuff, and to cook a meal, we call that person homeless.

I define “all-but-homeless” as someone who would be homeless, except that their friends or family is putting them up somewhere.

This might be “couch surfing”, but couch surfing has a different feeling to it. “Couch surfing” suggests someone who is 20 something and who is able to mooch on a friend for a week or a month while they are looking for work. It has a healthy, youthful feel to it. It does not suggest the helplessness of homelessness.

An “all-but-homeless” person is someone who has tried for years to make a living, who has learned new skills, worked hard, is older than is trendy, but still cant figure out how to pay the rent. He or she is now a burden on their friends or family or both but doesnt want to be and is somewhat ashamed of it.

They are certainly better off than a “homeless” person but they are far from living a healthy, actualized life. They can not travel, can not afford medical care, can not afford new clothes, can not afford to go to conferences or go on vacation. They are in a prison of poverty and can not work their way out. Maybe they are a victim of their own decisions, maybe they have a disability whether acknowledged or unacknowledged, maybe they are a victim of government policies, maybe they are just unlucky, or maybe it is a combination of some of these or something else entirely. They are certainly better off than someone who is homeless, but that is about all you can say about it.

Surfair: The Free Market is Here For the Rich

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For the first time in years, a web page actually gave me an ad that I *intentionally* clicked on, www.surfair.com, and boy am I impressed.

All you can fly in CA from private airports for one monthly fee. Let the poor suffer, the free market is here for the rich to see that they are not inconvenienced. If I had the money I would certainly do this. The poor deserve to suffer, they are scum, that is why they are poor.

www.surfair.com

Be Prepared! 2017 and Power Sockets For the Poor

Welcome to 2017! If you have not noticed, the politics of the season has taken its toll on Global Wahrman, as it has on the world at large. I am a wreck. Its hard to maintain a cynical and despairing view of the future when you think things really *are* going to hell in a handbasket (whatever that may mean).

I wish I could promise that there would be less politics, or less despair, going forward into 2017 but I dont want to make promises I can not keep. But if there is one thing we learn from the double tragedy of Carrie and Debbie Fisher, it is to make good use of the time we have, while we still can. Thats Carpet Diem to you Latin scholars, or “Seize the Carpet”.

Now on to our information content for the day.

We are starting a new series of posts on where you can find available power sockets to charge your consumer electronics devices when the power company (which is merely a cutout for the local and federal government, by the way) turns off your power for the sin of not having any money. No mon, no fun, as whores are alleged to say. So the Boy Scouts say (and I presume the Girl Scouts as well) “Be Prepared!”.

First, infrastructure, then public locations where it seems you can get a charge.

1. Infrastructure.

First, I recommend buying one of those mini power strip like things so that you can use one socket and yet charge 3 or 4 devices. Remember, you are going to share with your fellow homeless and disenfranchised, there is no need to hog both sockets (or whatever is available). Second, there are these devices that screw in where a lightbulb is and turns it into a combination lightbulb socket and power socket. It costs about $3.00 at your local hardware store. I have not used mine yet, but its nice to have. Third, I have bought a lovely $15.00 extended USB battery that extends the life of my Smartphone battery by about 2X and is enough to get me through a heavy night of texting and email. Fourth, I have created a nice little bag that contains my laptop and all the above paraphenalia. I know where it is. When the power goes out, I know where to find it. Its all ready to go.

Now, where to go?

2. Locations

Although I am going to specify places in beautiful, peaceful Escondido, California, these are intended to be placeholders for your own search.

First, my local public library is all set up for people like me and their electronics devices. They have WIFI and plentiful sockets. They are open six days a week, roughly 10AM - 6PM and Sunday, 11 AM to - 5PM. Its a good choice if you happen to fit their schedule.

Second, the local Starbucks is an excellent fallback position. The one here at Mission and Center City Parkway is open from 4AM to 10 PM 7 days a week. Not so bad. You need to expect to buy something, coffee or ice tea, for example, and nurse it while you are there charging. They have excellent WIFI.  No sleeping! 

Third, there used to be power sockets outside stores and buildings but I guess they are gone with the wind. But if you watch your local homeless people, they will point you in the right direction. I just met this elderly woman shivering outside my CVS at Felicita and Center City Parkway who had found two sockets and was charging away.  As you face the front door, it is on the right, around the corner, behind the video renting machine.

What a nice person. What a shame she must also be a bad person, because only a bad person could be poor in America.

When Starbucks Is Not Only for Coffee

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As I have mentioned before, one advantage of my extreme poverty is that it allows me to see other parts of my community that I would not otherwise see.

So recently when I did my little 9 day experiment without electric power, and therefore without an internet connection except through my smartphone, I researched where it was I could charge my various batteries and get high speed internet. To my surprise the local library is really well set up to accomodate people who need to charge their devices and provides free WIFI, although admittedly its bandwidth seemed limited on occassion, that was probably because so many people were trying to use it at once. Very quickly you start to recognize the people who are in a similar situation to yourself, people who are so poor that they need to charge their electric appliances somewhere and maybe use the Internet.

But the library closes by 6 PM most evenings and is not open on Sunday, so that is when the famous Starbucks option comes into play. Starbucks is open from about 4 AM to 10 PM or later every day of the week.

I went there three times, bought about $5.00 worth of stuff (ice tea and a great cheesecake thing) and charged three devices and used their WIFI. It was a great experience each time.

There were two other groups that I noticed as well. First, at least in my community, Starbucks has become the go to place for High School students to go study with their friends. They buy coffee or tea and work on their homework together.

The other group was represented by two individuals, myself and a black man of roughly my age. He was also there to charge his smartphone and I noticed him on two different occasions. On one of those occasions he also fell asleep in his seat and one of the staff woke him up, explaining that he could not sleep there. Which seems reasonable to me.

If I end up going truly homeless but have enough money to buy some tea or coffee, then no doubt you will see me at Starbucks as well.

  

Personal Power Conservation Notes

I dont write about shit like this so that people who hate me can use it to make fun of me. I already know what you think. I write it so that others who are in distress may, occassionally, read about my experience and get some useful information from it. Who knows what the odds are of this. I think that they are small, but w.t.f. why not try a little idealism now and then?

I have been able to get my gas and power bill down from roughly $150 / month to less than $50/month. I am told that these are very good figures, but its all still baffling to me. Someone who is not working can afford none of this and yet they have to live even if the rich fly their widebody jets around. Supposedly there is a utilities program under the name of 211 that I have yet to try.

But for those of you who are interested in lowering your power bill and / or have no income, here are some notes on what is necessary to get the numbers down by 2/3rds.

1. Enroll in your power company's “CARE” program. This gets you somewhere between a 20 to 30 percent discount on your bill. You need to watch this one, as it tends to reset to off.

2. Unplug your washer and dryer and use the laundromat. Yes that will cost you between $10 to $20 per visit (including detergent), but at least it wont be a surprise at the end of the month.

3. Turn off your heat and air conditioning. I live in Southern California. The heat is oppressive and it gets cold at night. But the pipes wont freeze and its time to realize that you are worthless garbage because you are poor, and you can wear a fucking sweater to keep warm.

4. Replace all the curly lights with LEDs, available at Walmart for roughly $3.00 per light.

5. Unplug all unknown electronics devices, period. Trace all power lines and if you do not need it, dont use it. Remember, if it is plugged in it is probably using power whether there is a light glowing or not.

6. Turn all computers onto maximum power savings. Wait for the fucking disk to spin up.

7. Only run your workstation when you need it, and then turn it off. Never run it overnight.

8. Turn down the temperature on your water heater, assuming you still have gas.

9. Dont use the electric oven and rarely use the electric stove. Use your outdoors propane stove where you can. It may or may not save money in the long run, but in the short run it will save on your electricity bill and let you keep the lights on.

Remember what we are trying to achieve here. We are trying to keep lights on and the ability to charge our smartphones and run some of our computers. Everything else is and should be optional.

Working From My Smartphone: Water and Power

As part of the continuing effort to live within my means, I decided that when SDGE (San Diego Gas and Electric) turned off my power this time, I would just keep it off and spend the money otherwise sent to them to continue to build up my “no power” infrastructure and see how it went. This is going to be much more detail than most of you will be interested in, so feel free to skip to the end.

The power went off the Wednesday morning after Trump was elected. At the end of 9 days, I called SDGE and made a deal. Here is what I learned in these 9 days.

1. No Power Infrastructure

I bought a $20 solar water shower, and spent at least as much money installing it. But it is installed, and the next time that the gas and power goes off (but the water stays on), I will have warm showers at least some of the time. The rest of the time I will have cold water “towel” showers.

I bought a $40 propane camping stove, and I have now built a place for it. It does just what I need. As the reviews say, it pretty much has two settings: full off and full on. I have to stay there and watch it when I cook, as otherwise it will blast whatever is being cooked into charcoal. I have to wear gloves or I will burn the shit out of myself. But it works fine and I can have hot food when the power is off. I plan to continue to use it even when the power is on to see how this affects my lifestyle and energy bills.

I bought a second, larger ice chest for $40 and split my food between the two chests. I try to keep things out of the water, this means an internal strainer for the fruits/vegetables and a container for things like cheese. With two ice chests, I need to spend $4-$8 every 3 days or so to keep things cool. They also require maintenance every few days basically to drain the water.

I bought a $15 external battery for my smartphone. It makes all the difference in terms of smartphone usage especially at night.

I bought a $20 power inverter for my car and used it to charge my laptop. It also depleted my battery and I needed to rejoin AAA to get a charge. This costs $70 these days. No more charging my laptop from my car and no more charging my phone from the car unless the engine is running.

I bought $10 in batteries and would need to do that about every other week. I bought two very cheap “miners” headset LED flashlights and they are my preferred go to lighting solution.

I either go to the Escondido Library if it is open to charge my devices, or on days or times when it is closed, I go to Starbucks and pay $5 for something and use their facilities. In both cases there is unsecured WIFI that I can use. The nearest 24 hour cafe is an hour away in San Diego.

I was able to turn my smartphone into a tethered hotspot. However, I also needed to increase my data plan from $40 a month to $60 and it may go up from there.

2. Productivity

My producitivity went to hell. A lot of my writing and work has to happen when I think about it, not when I have managed to get to the library and to Starbucks. I have severe insomnia and I need to be able to work from home and without a charged laptop I can not do that.

3. Mental State

I am severely challenged to end this situation (unemployment, living in isolation) and I need to be productive to do so. The despair caused by living in a dark house and not getting work done was and is dangerous. Furthermore, it greatly increased my requirements for medication way beyond the normal and that is not sustainable.

4. SDGE Cooperation

One more time, SDGE was helpful in making a deal to get the power on. I have reduced my monthly nut to under $50/month for gas and electric, the problem has always been the back bill.

Another time I will discuss how I got my bill down as far as I have.

Hillary Clinton and the Welfare Reform Disaster

My little personal review of the systems of support for the poor in America (really in California) has been unexpectedly interesting.

It turns out that if you are poor, you can be quite sure that the US and California State governments will not help you have shelter or keep the power on. It will help you eat and get medical care, as long as you dont mind being homeless and completely impoverished.

Furthermore, it may be that there was never really any support except for women with children, anyway. I am not sure about that, but whatever there may have been, was destroyed by the Republicans with the help of none other than Pres. Bill Clinton with the so called Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, which you can read about at the link below.

One of the worst aspects of this so-called "reform" is that welfare is now run by the states, which allows the Republicans to further demean and attack the poor.  In many states, drug tests are required and only counseling is provided, when what is needed is money, pure and simple. What arrogant swine the politicians of America are.

And how little respect I have for the Democratic party for their role in this abomination. When I refer to the Democrats as being "compromised", their participation in this sort of thing is what I am referring to.

What this means is that if you are poor in America, you are fucked. Thats the way people seem to want it, but it is not the way I want it. The government has gone out of its way to destroy employment in this country, and to see that their rich friends do well. They can damn well provide a basic subsistance amount without limitation to those of us who did not happen to benefit from their corrupt and egregious economic policies.

Oh yes, not only did Hillary round up votes for this offensive bill in Congress, but she also allegedly encouraged her husband to vote for it. And she has never disavowed her support for this so-called "reform".

Remind me again why the presidency of  Hillary Clinton is going to be heaven on earth?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_Responsibility_and_Work_Opportunity_Act

Working From My Smartphone Part 5

This is a continuation of a series of posts on the latest economic disaster. You can read part 4 of this series here.

The good news is that the power is on, the water stayed on, the Internet is on.

However, this situation is not sustainable. The problem is, this situation was never sustainable. In fact, the biggest mistake was, in hindsight, to believe that learning new skills, talking to people, doing little projects, and so forth would result in a solution. It hasnt, and it wont.

People's advice is interesting, although not very helpful. Their advice reveals that either they do not know much about my background or, even worse, that they hold me in contempt. I also find it fascinating that people must think that I am stupid, that somehow they can think about this situation for 5 minutes and recommend fabulous financial or career ideas that somehow I have not already thought of.  I have been in this hell for 10 years, friends, whether you noticed or not.

How you can help is not to advise me on things I already know, but on things you know better than anyone. People or startups you think I should work with (and who you introduce me to).  How to get into the right graduate program.  The best way, based on your own personal experience, to start a business in money laundering, international arms sales, or other criminal activity supported by our government policies.  Always based on your own experience, your knowledge, your wisdom, who you know.

I am cleaning the place up, and trying to find a way out. As part of that I am talking to more friends, even though it clearly just exposes me to more criticism, more contempt, and more derision. Probably a few people do actually care, but there is not much that they can do.  Trust me when I say that mere money is not what I am looking for (unless of course you want to give me a lot of money, that might be ok.)

Special thanks to a few friends for their generosity. Extra special thanks to one former employer, who will not be named here, who happens to have had some experience with the system of public assistance in California. He is a wealth of information, none of which you can learn from the Internet.

One advantage of not having power or the internet at home was that it got me out of the house and out into the city, such as it is. I can not tell you how much I hate being isolated here.

Implications of the 270 Riverside Drive Experience

As readers of this blog know well, no event is random, and no situation should be assumed to be without consequence but all of them should be analyzed and re-analyzed for their deeper meaning and for clues to our mysterious future and probable doom.

In this search for meaning in our pointless lives, sometimes the use of the Esoteric Knowledge is necessary but sometimes it is not. In this case, no esoteric knowledge is required to see our stark choices. The future is only too clear.

First review my little post about my former living conditions at 270 Riverside Drive to understand the situation. Now lets ask some questions about what living there might have meant.

At the time I was living there, I was vaguely aware of how lucky I was and that this was a situation that would be hard to recreate were it to ever go away, which inevitably it must. In part that was mixed in with my conclusion that living there also allowed me to live in Manhattan which was itself quite a blessing. But beyond that, what did it mean?

What was really going on, I conclude in retrospect, is that through an artifact of the ancient rent control laws of Manhattan, themselves left over from a more Socialist period when, briefly, the living conditions of the poor and disenfranchised were a concern, however modest, of our political elite. Through a series of lucky breaks, I had been permitted to live in a situation that I could otherwise never afford. But even more important, this was a living situation that I also did not deserve.

This is where the lower animals deserve to live

You see, in America, it is only the rich who are permitted to live in a way that their life is enhanced and ennobled. The rest of the population, by the very definition of being not-rich, are a lower animal form who are unworthy of any of this. They should live in dreary poverty, stupid stucco dingbats, or endlessly similar suburban housing, where they can pay inflated rents and mortgages, buy from chain supermarkets, and live out what is left of their so-called lives as servants of the rich.

The kind of lifestyle I had when at 270 RSD was thus completely anomalous and should not be allowed to occur and in general it does not. My choices now are to live in poverty and despair or in some way prove myself by making in excess of many tens of millions of dollars, no doubt through entrepreneurial activity or, to judge from the history of great fortunes in America, through various types of theft, crime or amoral and sociopathic behavior.

This does not seem like such a hard lesson to learn, but somehow it is.

On Getting A Security Clearance

A colleague of mine from the old days who, to my amazement, occasionally reads my blog, wanted to make very sure that I knew that there was no way I could ever get a security clearance, not even SECRET.

This disturbed me for reasons that I will explain below, and so I researched the topic to the extent that one can on the Internet, and I am happy to say that he is probably wrong, at least for the reasons that he thought. He might however be right for other reasons and this I will describe below.

You may not consider it interesting to wonder who can and can not get a clearance but I do, even though I have no particular expectation or desire to handle or know classified information. I am, you see, a *fan* of the world of intelligence, I have very little desire to be *in* it. It is a difficult world to be in for reasons we will only touch on here. I much prefer to *speculate* about national security matters than to actually *know* for sure what is going on. Speculation is fun, but actual knowledge implies a very serious responsibility. And the more you are involved the more it will affect your life. 

But if I am to ever work in place like the RAND Corporation again, which is doubtful, one needs to get at least a SECRET clearance, even though you are unlikely to handle SECRET material, and that is how the issue came up. The reasons for this are several, but it is not because one will necessarily be handling SECRET material. In fact, when I worked at RAND in my youth I only once handled SECRET material and that occasion could have been easily avoided. Trust me, it was no big deal. The primary reason for needing a clearance is because you are required to be around people and facility that does or may handle such material, and you need to be able to be in those areas without having an escort by your side at all times. 

So lets get our cards on the table. Some people at RAND thought I did a lot of drugs when I went into computer animation and visual effects. I did not. But I certainly was around quite a few people who did drugs, and I suffered from an undiagnosed disorder which made me appear to the uninitiated as though I was on drugs, i.e. I had severe ADHD which was not being treated. I am not going to go over this in great detail, frankly it bores me, most people already have their minds made up, and most people are not capable of understanding the issues anyway.

But what drugs I did do were minor, and stopped as soon as I got decent medical care, which did not happen in LA, only in NY. IMHO, there is no decent medical care in S. California.

The point is, none of this keeps one from getting a security clearance today. You have to not be doing illegal drugs today, and for several years. And there may be a judgment call here on the part of the investigators about certain aspects of your use at the time. However, there is nothing there that makes me particularly concerned. I used drugs to medicate a medical condition, when it was properly diagnosed and treated, all illegal drugs went away.

But there are other judgment calls that could interfere and I want to mention them to you today.

What they are really looking for with the basic security clearance is a somewhat boring individual who fits in with the system and feels that the system is pretty darn good. If you do not file taxes because you are impoverished, that may not be you. If you think your doctors are only concerned about themselves and money and that the medical system is fundamentally screwed up, that may not be you. If you think that the poor are treated badly in this country and that the legal system and government is designed to exalt the rich and disenfranchise the poor, and that there is gross state-enforced inequality of opportunity, that may not be you.

But the law and regulations on security clearances are not explicit on these points. And theoretically one should not be denied a security clearance for holding a belief that is outside some conservative belief system.

So, am I eligible for a security clearance? Without doubt, I *think* I am. But it is certainly *possible* I could be denied one. It is possible *anyone* could be denied one. And then one would have to appeal.

What would happen if I was suddenly exposed to a classified program that obviously violated the rights of Americans, or violated the law, or was outside the system designed to approve such projects? The answer is that I would work within the system to get such a project changed or terminated. I would not do an unauthorized disclosure under any circumstances. If it were not possible to correct the situation, then I would resign from the project and find something else to do. I think that it is very unlikely that I would ever have to deal with such an issue, however.

To the extent that one can figure out such things by what is published online, I believe that I am eligible for a security clearance.

Besides with the disaster that is or was Ed Snowden, I would think that the whole security clearance system would be up for reconsideration and that they would be much better off with people like me. Just my opinion.

For what that is worth.

Patents and the Poor

I came up with an idea that should be patented. It is not a great idea, in fact it is mostly a humorous idea, but it is certainly a patentable idea. I have searched and, amazingly, no one has patented it yet.

Patents are not what most Americans seem to think a patent is. A patent does not keep anyone from using an idea, the way the stupid and hysterical children of SIGGRAPH seemed to think when PIXAR patented something a few years ago. A patent, at most, allows you to spend a lot of money to try and defend an idea from being used by other people.

But a patent is many other things as well, and one of those things is contributing proof to who had an idea when. If, for example, I had patented my performance animation idea when I had it, rather then just doing demonstrations with it, then when former employees or partners who later claimed I had nothing to do with the idea tried to steal it, they would have had much less success.

But everyone has a different idea of what a patent is for and what it is not for.  Please do not lecture me about it, I have heard quite enough.  I think I know more about it than you do. I already know that without a lot of money you can not defend it. I know that most patents do not make money.  I know all this. Patents are a tool of business, generally very big business.  But it has other purposes as well as long as you are modest in your expectations. And as my readers know, I am a very modest person.  What I am looking for is credibility.

A patent, once accepted, is published for all time. It will be there in several hundred years, and people will know where to look for it.

But a patent costs money, anywhere between $5,000 to $100K depending on how you go about it.  So the poor are just not in the game it would seem.

That is the American Way.

Or is it?  Surely those of us who believe in the "free market" to allocate scarce resources can come up with a better way?  A way to use the otherwise crass invisible hand to create a new, better patent handjob as it were and create a more equitable society?

One thought is to give everyone a coupon for a "patent" that could be traded on the free market and allow those who want to have more than their normally allowed one patent to have as many as they can afford, and yet allow even the most poor to get one patent by right of birth.

I hope you will support this plan for a patent coupon exchange with your elected representative(s) the next time you get together with him, her or it.

Thank you.

An Example Where the Rich can Help the Poor

If you took the two top Google people and took their combined 70 billion dollars and divided it up among the lowest 50,000,000 of our roughly 300,000,000 people, that would come out to roughly 1,400 $US per person. Now to someone who is destitute, that is a lot of money. And that is just two of the rich people!

What about the top two Google people? What are they left? Well, they may qualify for that $1,400 themselves, so they have nothing to complain about.

Besides, we can throw in free Lithic Fragmentation therapy, so they get two benefits from their otherwise worthless, jet-filled lives.

The Evil Chinese Conspiracy to Cripple American Wine Appreciation

It is the nature of the rise and fall of civilizations that the elites of the rising civilization by their very nature impose their aesthetics on the world. And that the aesthetics of the elites of the fading power must accommodate themselves to their new and impoverished position. That is the way of the world.

Therefore it is not a surprise that China's influence in the world in a variety of different areas of culture becomes more manifest as the years go by. Independent of that, America's influence could be predicted to decline, at least as far as its former middle class goes. The American elite will still go forward buying their racecars and whores, but the former middle class, now impoverished, must scale back its ambitions to consume to fit its new role in the globalized economy.

I am aware of four specific examples of this rise in Chinese influence, but two of these I only heard about in the last week. The four are: the impact of Chinese purchases for investment on real estate prices in North America, the role of the Chinese in the final extinction of the various remaining species of elephant, and the two surprises are the role of the Chinese in certain bizarre changes in elite car design in Germany and the spectacular changes in the prices of certain genre of French wine, in particular certain name brands from Bordeaux.

To get the first three out of the way so we can concentrate on wine, the following seems to be true. First, that the purchase of real estate for investment purposes and for bragging rights is resulting in a sustained demand and increased prices for real estate in certain prestige areas such as Manhattan, already expensive, and results in properties owned by the Chinese but not lived in. Second, and most unfortunate, Chinese traditional medicine has always made use of the ground up body parts of various endangered species. One in particular, the elephant, is being targetted for its ivory and this is leading to a catastrophic decrease in the remaining populations. The Chinese will probably be responsible for the final extinction of this wonderful animal after centuries of abuse by other cultures. The third, and actually quite odd, example is that (of course) the demand for elite automobiles has exploded in the Worker's Paradise and Mercedes in particular has been catering to this demand by changing their formerly understated and discreet design and making it wildly tacky, ostentatious, and even stupid in order to pander to the nouveau riche of Communist China.

Two of these examples are trivial, but the extinction of the elephant is a tragedy.

The fourth example was also a surprise to me because I have not been able to indulge my taste in French wine for many years. But I was going to a friend's house on Thanksgiving and I thought that this would be an opportunity to do so. What a surprise! Oh my!

To digress, I am a wine snob. When living in NY, one of my roommates was a Flamenco guitarist, and since you can not make a living at that, he also worked in the wine trade. I had him teach a class in the wines of Europe, and while we ventured into Italy and Spain, we mostly concentrated on red wine from the Bordeaux area. Wines in this area are highly esteemed by many groups and have been for many hundreds of years. But in one year in particular, the French government worked with industry to bring order out of chaos in conjunction with the planning for the Exposition of 1855, and at the request of Napoleon III, and as a result created the famous Classification of 1855 which ranked French wine from the Bordeaux region into five classes: the so called first growth wines through the fifth growth.

This classification has been very stable over the years with very few changes since 1855 and has in a sense become a self-fulfilling prophecy. A first and second growth winery will by definition be worth more, get more investment, and therefore be able to afford to make the changes necessary to maintain or increase the quality of their product.

Among the wines of this classification are some of the most famous wines in the world, including the wines of Chateau Lafite Rothschid, Chateau Mouton, Chateau Margaux and so forth. These wines of course commanded a premium price.

But there were some good deals among these classified Bordeaux and not all the great wines of France were out of reach of even the most modest of middle class American as long as they did a little homework to understand which vintages were worth buying and could plan a bit in advance. The more willing one was to plan in advance and make a modest investment, the better one would do.

Well those days are over, at least for certain name Chateau, and it is all because the Chinese have gone a little nutty, so some say, over certain of these wines.

For example, a well known and esteemed wine was the third wine of the Chateau Lafite Rothchild. This wine, the Carraudes de Lafite, was deliberately styled to be a well balanced, very drinkable wine, ready to drink as soon as it was on the market. Made from the vines that were not yet ready to contribute to the great vines of the estate, this wine was a fabulous wine that did not have to be kept for decades to be drinkable, would never be the very best wine, but was better than nearly any other red wine at a reasonable price. In the absence of the availability of something that has been around 20 years and commanding a high price at the last minute, one could pick up this wine of nearly any vintage and be very happy and pay no more than $35.00 a bottle.

So I look this wine up on the Internet and find it listed for $350.00 or so. I am confused. I wonder, maybe this is for a case (12 bottles) and not a single bottle?

No, the Chinese have gone nutty for Lafite and several other name brands and prices have gone up a factor of 10 or 20 in just the last few years.  A better bottle of wine which formerly went for a few hundred dollars, still expensive by any measure, will now sell for over $1,000 or even $2,000 a bottle.

Not all wines have exploded this much in price, but in general the wines of the Bordeaux region are for the most part, out of reach.

I just want to thank the Chinese for this little exercise in free market economics in the service of the rich and hope that they find the opportunity to choke on their wine and die.

Thanks again guys for reminding me how little I count for in the world.

I appreciate it.

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Classification of 1855

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bordeaux_Wine_Official_Classification_of_1855

Chateau Lafite Rothschild

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau_Lafite_Rothschild

Law Enforcement Provides Moral Instruction to the Poor

It does my heart good to see people of our society reach out to the poor and disenfranchised and help them in their misery.   When it is a public servant and they are taking unusual efforts, beyond the call of duty, to help our poor, to instruct them on how to live a better life, then that is truly inspirational, and is worth celebrating.

I know that there is a lot of misunderstanding out there about what our government, both federal and state, do to help the poor.  Many people tell me that the poor routinely use the system to make hundreds of thousands of dollars and drive their Cadillac to the welfare office.  Of course, no one in the world has ever seen these people but they know, they know, that they are out there.

Well, I am not so sure about the Cadillac, but I have personally witnessed the efforts our government makes and how the poor are helped with my own eyes.  One notable example happened just the other day.

I was waiting for my train to LA near the transit center in Oceanside California.   Oceanside is a beach town north of San Diego and famous for its location next to Camp Pendleton, the US Marine Corps Base. Oceanside is like most of N. San Diego County, it is very clean, very presentable, and very safe.  This is not a seedy transit area, and it is safe both day and night.

But there are homeless people everywhere in America, even Oceanside.

So while waiting for my train I came across a homeless person, a woman who was very old, very frail and very poor.   She looked like everyone's grandmother when she gets on in age.   She ought to be home with her cat, her television, knitting, and talking to a grandchild.  But this one was poor, she clearly had no place to live, no clean clothes, just rags, and a shopping cart.

She was being attended to by a pleasant, young man of perhaps 30 years of age, who was a member of the local police forces. He was seeing to it that this woman got the care she needed. Now what care might she need?  How about a place to sleep, some clean clothes, a shower and a hot meal?

No!   That is not what she needs, not at all.  What she needs to understand is that her circumstances in life, the tragedies and failures that have led her to being destitute, starving and desperate, were her fault because she lacked moral values.

The police officer was haranguing this poor miserable person, yelling at her, telling her what a bad person she was.  Because she was a thief!  She must have stolen that shopping cart to push her rags around in, she was a bad person!  Morally reprehensible!

He was not physically beating her up, but he was surely verbally beating her up, and for good reason. More than anything else in America, we hold private property to be sacred.  If anyone could just choose to take a shopping cart then pretty soon people would be stealing Porsche's and God only knows where it would go, but our society would collapse.

For those of you who care about these details, the homeless woman was white and the peace officer a nice looking, but very loud,  black man in uniform.  I mention this because it is the opposite of some of my fellow American's preconceptions about race in our society.

I was happy to see this desperate and frail woman was getting all the help that our society provides.  Forget about food, shelter, and that sort of thing.  If she wants to eat, she can grab old rotting food out of a garbage dumpster for all our government cares. What she needed right then was a lecture by a figure of authority who could throw her in jail, a large well-fed man with a gun and a stick, telling her that she was morally depraved.

Thats the kind of compassion and care that the poor and the homeless receive in this country in 2015.  It just makes me feel good about America when I see this sort of thing.

North County Transit and the Kindness of Strangers

A few nights ago, I came back from Los Angeles by train to Oceanside and discovered that I had left my car keys somewhere else. It was 8:30 at night and I was roughly 20 miles or $90.00 by taxi to get home.

It turns out that I got home by spending $6.00 on local transit and $10.00 for the final 3 miles. It took a few hours, but was otherwise pleasant and educational. But it would not have happened without the help of many of the other people on the poor trail home.

The North San Diego County Transit Authority (NCTA) runs all the buses and trains in the North County. Believe it or else, there is a light rail system that connects Oceanside (pop 180K) to Escondido (150K). How is it possible that these two communities are connected by train when in Los Angeles they can not connect Santa Monica to Los Angeles? Well I am here to tell you that they act that way down here out of fear, fear that they will turn out to be Los Angeles, that hunk of vile stinking shit, if they are not careful.

But even a train does not do people much good if it is not run and the fact is that all good white people in North County are home in bed by 8 PM in order to be able to get up at 5 AM when the rooster crows and they have to start plowing the back forty. And except for Friday night when they run it late for their teenagers, the last train east is at 8:33 PM.

So here I come wandering up at about 8:40 PM and all I see is an empty train station and one black guy hunched over his bike. So I say to him, I think we missed the last train. He looks at me. I say, I think we missed the last train. He says, where you going. I say Escondido. He says so am I. We have to take the 302/303 and then connect to the 305, he says. It takes about two hours.

Now I had been living in this here part of the world for a few years now and I can tell you that I had never been able to figure out the buses. I had not tried all that hard, it is true, but I had tried a few times to figure it out and I could not make heads or tails out of it.

But with some discussion with my new friend and his bicycle these are the things that I have learned which I write here so that the knowledge may not be lost. And to encourage others to use the system when it fits their lifestyle or circumstances.

1. Although the train stops about 8:30 PM, major segments of the bus system continues until about 11 PM or so on weekdays. After that, I think you are either walking, taking your bike, or staying over in a local motel or hotel lobby.

2. All the buses that I saw were new, clean, did not seem to be pumping out diesel or other shit, and were driven by nice people who spoke English, whatever their first language may have been.

3. Every bus I saw that night had room for two bicycles on a rack in the front. I do not know what would happen if a third bicyclist showed up, but that did not happen.

4. It is not self-explanatory, but once you know, you realize that the 302 bus goes from Oceanside to Vista. And that the 305 goes from Escondido to Vista and, although it does not say so, back again. And furthermore, that the 305 arrives at Vista a few minutes after the bus from Oceanside arrives at Vista.

5. Now, armed with that knowledge, and with the knowledge that the buses of the NCTA actually run on time, at most a minute or two late, you can take two buses and arrive at Escondio transit center.

6. But even better than that, I noticed that the bus to Escondido also stopped at Nordahl & Mission, which is several miles closer to my house.

7. Now I have to admit that the 302 in particular seemed to go in circles and that not everything was as speedy as it might be. It took about an hour to go the 7 miles from Oceanside to Vista but it took about 30 minutes to go the 12 or so miles from Vista to Escondido.

8. On top of that was a very nice, young, hip security guard at the Vista station who was extremely helpful.

9. I was also impressed that everyone was looking out for my interests, moneywise. Unlike my experience in Escondido where you are expected to pay like you were living in Manhattan or Beverly Hills, the people of the NCTA and their passengers made no such assumption, and worried whether I would have the 2 * $1.75 fare to get home.

Then as a footnote to all this, when I arrived at Nordahl & Mission expecting to have to walk the 2 plus miles home, I ran into a taxi cab, which never happens, and he took me home for $10 including one stop at the local mini-mall.

So there you have it.  It is not speedy, and the routes seem to be quirky as hell, but it does get you there and the people are very friendly.  Be prepared to walk the last mile or two, of course.

I really have to get over my “I hate buses” thing which I developed living in LA where the buses are dirty, slow, unfriendly and made me sick from the exhaust fumes.

Armed with my spare set of car keys, I am now setting off to walk to the train and see if my car is still there in Oceanside.

It's All So Easy When You Have Money

Reading the biography of George Orwell (aka Eric Blair) last night was very refreshing. The number of times he basically ran out of money, the number of times his relatives found him a job or an apartment, or he lived with his relatives while being rejected by publishers for being too left or not left enough, was morale building.

But more morale building than that was the realization this morning that I had no water, that indeed I had forgotten once again to pay my water bill, and that here in Hell, or Rincon del Diablo, the Devil's Place, not paying your bill is quite a sin. Yes, even in Hell you have to pay your bills.

Check out Orwell's military moustache from his time in India.  This is back when he was employed.

But this time, there was no concern because I had the one answer for all problems in America, in Hell and probably everywhere else. Do to my mysterious client, who may even read this blog, I had the silver bullet, the sine qua non, upon which our entire civilization is based. I had the money to get my water turned back on without pleading, or whining, or threatening.

When you have money, its all so easy. You call them up, talk to a pleasant human being (not an automated system), pay your bill online, they receive it at once, and schedule the technician for late morning or early afternoon.

I understand now, its all so clear. In America you just need money, and the more the better. Why had I not known this before?