A reader email get’s us started on this morning’s physical fitness rant, since we’re through the turkey and now all that remains is a Christmas leg of pork with all the Danish family trimmings and perhaps some of that most hazardous material of all: Citronfromage.
“How can you event think about food after this weekend?” you’re screaming. “Back on point!” Oh, yeah…er….
“Hi George,
Hope you had a nice Thanksgiving weekend! My two lovely daughters spent the weekend with me; quite a blessing, to be sure.
Anyway, I overheard a conversation at the end of my jazzercise class on Saturday morning (Hey, what can I say? I’m single again and it’s my estrogen fix for the week; much cheaper than dating crazy women with tons of baggage…Besides, it’s actually pretty fun!). Well, the conversation centered around economics and, of course, I had to jump in. Turns out that one of the women has a friend who owns a trucking company and was talking to her about the mothballed container ships in Singapore and the CSX freight trains mothballed here in the states due to lack of demand (but you knew that).
What I hadn’t heard was that trash hauling was down 31% in New York City. Now, that sums it up in a nutshell, don’t you think?”
Hmmm…let me go through my handy guide to trite writing: “Waist makes haste!” – no, that won’t work.
In all seriousness (or nearly so) it has me wondering whether some of the big trash companies like Waste Management might not get a little silver lining from poorer times.
Just thinking through my own ‘trash’ weekend: Thought the garbage would be picked up on Saturday, since that was what happened last time around. But no, as the old Zen master said, “Change is inevitable”. The trash was picked up on Friday when my can wasn’t wheeled out to the road (a half block-long driving is a great thing and a curse…in this case, the latter).
Even had it come on Saturday, I was so tired, I would have missed Dion’s drive-by – Dion being the miracle worker who makes garbage contents disappear.
This eventually (and circuitously, I think you’ll agree) gets me to wondering how many people know their garbage men/persons and trash haulers by name? If you don’t, they’re actually regular humans who work at a different sort of trade.
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As long as we’re on topic with exercise, I might as well confess to getting Elaine’s Christmas present early: a Nintendo Wii game console
Naturally, with a house still in remodel mode, a shop full of projects, a car that could stand a good hand wash, 10-acres of goat field to mow and burn deadfall on, a spring garden to prep, yada, yada, yada, I wouldn’t think I’d need more exercise. More appropriate would be something like a pry bar to get me out from behind the keyboard.
But the balance board – that’s an interesting add-on since that seems to allow for all kinds of activities (with the remote motion sensors and another numbchuck and so on…I figure the golf game I got to go with it all – so I could tune up my game in the event the Mogambo Guru or president Obama ever take me up on my gene4rous offer for a round of golf at the local course (M-Th rates only, I’m not made of dough) would be a cost-saver.
Then I noticed what I’d bought: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10
Mr. Doodles is Back
The mysterious contributor Mr. Doodles is back:
“Hi George – hope you had a fine Tom Turkey Day and are well rested (chuckle, probably not hey? me neither).
Done reading about the ME shenanigans – interesting – think I have seen this movie before [sailor sidebar: the America's Cup is slated for a DoG (deed of gift) match in February - SUI Defender Alinghi is still appealing to reinstate RAK (aka: top of the tent) Emirate as the venue - potential course could include disputed island in the Straits of Hormuz] http://www.cupinfo.com
I have been doodling again – took a LT Comp / SPX chart, to merge with the LT Nikkei – sized each base chart to one decade in horizontal axis and hand traced the Nikkei 225 to overlay on the US Index (composite).
When one aligns the peaks (Nikkei 1990 / SPX-Comp 2000) there is a pretty striking correlation … I knew this, figure you know this, but … hadn’t taken the time to do it right (overlay) in past.
Wanted to send the result below. Comments welcome / wanted, not OK too. Same ole – share with anyone you like – no attribution please (anon preferred).
Oodles of noodles on doodles, I’d say.
The WuJo files: Missing Time
Here’s one that ought to get you into the Cyber Monday as an X-Files episode mood:
“George, Felt compelled to write in and share an experience I just had with my daughter yesterday, Saturday, where we literally lost an hour, with absolutely no explanation. I was hosting a Thanksgiving potluck that night for a fairly sizeable group. I had the day organized around my daughter’s mid day singing and piano lessons. She was to be finished at 1:30 PM, and I expected to be home no later than 2:15 pm. No stops and we have this routine down pat. I had mentally outlined all the last minute dishes, cleaning and reorganizing necessary to be done starting at 2:30 in order to be ready by 6 pm when guests were to arrive. HOWEVER, when we walked in the door and I looked at the clock, it said 3:30pm. I was so shocked I just stood there, speechless. I asked my daughter what her watch said, same thing. A neighbor stopped by shortly after and I was babbling about a lost hour, and how was I going to be ready with that lost hour! I am still puzzling it, and though it happened, I have absolutely no mental connection to any conscious awareness of it happening.
Which brings me to a similar but somewhat different experience I had while driving into work about 5 years ago. It took awhile for this memory to come back to me, but after reading some of your comments, and those of other readers a couple of weeks back, it slowly did. I was in the right in-bound lane, of a 2 lane road, approaching a just turned red light, on our one main road into and out of town, (Juneau). There was not a car any where within sight in the in-bound 2 lanes. All of a sudden, out of nowhere, (and I mean one nano second it’s not there, the next it is!) a red car appeared in the left lane, just slightly ahead of me, slowing down for the light. I was so stunned, I about ran off the road. I only had my daughter to talk to, who was about 6 at the time, and while I struggled to retain some calmness for her sake, I was completely shaken by this experience. The circumstances surrounding this road is that it is up against a channel of Sea water on the right side, and there is a huge and deep impassable median in between the in-bound and out-bound lanes. How this car got there, and where it came from will be forever a mystery to me.
While at the time these things happen, it is terribly disconcerting, and I do feel like being in an episode of the Twilight Zone, I have never felt fear or as if something bad had gone on. Just wonderment that something like that can be experienced, and a bit of dismay that I cannot understand it better.
Well, it is nice to know I am not alone with these moments, which reading your daily site really helped with, as when I have tried to explain them to friends, family, or colleagues, while I think they want to believe me, it sounds so out there that only my reputation saves me from being a laughing stock, I suspect.”
Let me offer three possibilities for you: Aliens are abducting you periodically (check for implants, watch for odd nose bleeds and so forth). Second: The Multiverse may just happen to re-synch more often at places you frequent (in which case, don’t come visit, sorry). Or third – and my leading candidate: Aliens like Turkey – not strawberry ice cream as reported. Did you count drumsticks and dinner rolls?
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Send your comments to george@ure.net
The UrbanSurvival Mall:
Peoplenomics This Week
Fingerprints of the PTB
Don’t know if you have noticed the same disturbing trend I have, but when one sits back on a cool morning with no work to think about and reflect over a hot cuppa joe, I get a growing sense that less and less of what’s being ‘piped’ into human melodramatic consciousness can be trusted. It starts as a feeling, but when I started start to add up all the Big Lies of the past few years, the number became impressive; 9/11, the supposed naturally occurring flu, the ‘need to war’, and more recently, climategate. This week, we review a few of these Big Lies and ask an almost impossible question: “Why?” The answers are few, but we can at least begin framing a large and potentially life-altering answer set.
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Maxa-Cookie Manager
Been a while since I’ve updated you on how many cookies and web bugs have been removed from my main computer by the Maxa Cookie Manager from Maxa Tools: 1,602 web bugs and 54,131 cookies so far. It’s amazing.
Take it for a free test drive by downloading it. To upgrade to full functionality will set you back $35 bucks, but Christmas is coming… Is your privacy worth it?
Once you try it out, click the upgrade button (!) on the upper right hand side for the $35 unlock to get it to remove even those nasty and highly intrusive ‘non-browser specific’ cookies. Bonus: You computer may run faster.
Attn: Mac Drivers: MCM does support the Safari Browser, but that does not mean it is compatible with Mac OS. Maxa-Tools only support the Windows world….so far. Given Jens and the other engineers time…
“Live on $10,000″ A Year
With another round of layoffs due to start later this month…a round which will start to axe many of the middle managers who have managed to avoid the HR grenades…might I suggest a preemptive tactical move? Voluntarily dropping your lifestyle back a bit, since we’re all being marched down that road by either circumstances or some out-of-control-PTB types who write checks to Washington lobby and to anti-reformers in California! A good starting point, at least if you’ve still got $10-bucks is my e-book “How to Live on #10,000 a Year…or less!”
It’s an automatic download. It’s written in an information dense style: The whole thing runs about 65 pages, but it gives you a vision of how to not only live on the cheap, but also how to migrate up the economic foodchain if you have a little hustle left… Click here for the index and details.
MyGroPonics
My commodity broker JB Slear and I have written a simple book to get you started on high density hydroponics. It’s an example of how someone with a little creativity, access to a few ‘dollar stores’ and willing to try out some new farming techniques can grow an amazing amount of produce sin a very small space – like even an apartment balcony (if it gets some sunlight). Sound interesting? It’s just $10 bucks here…
Pass It On
The business model of this website is base Simply click here and send a link to this site to everyone on your distro list…Nothing more dangerous than sharp, clear-thinking upstarts who ask a lot of questions, eh? Unless you believe WTC-7 fell over on its own, of course….
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Last week’s report is here. For back issues of this site, click here. (Goes back to 1997!)