More pain, less gain

When people talk about broadening the tax base they mean making poor people pay more.

Who thinks that’s a good thing?

Do as I say, on second thought …

Having taken my own advice, last night I turned off the TV, shut down my PC and picked up a book – and proceeded to read until an hour after I had intended to go to bed.

Oh well, it’s a start.

Don’t touch that dial

Does anyone even know what that means anymore?

If you are prone to insomnia and find yourself awake late at night and are tempted to flip channels just to see what is on, I would suggest that you resist the urge.

I intended to get to bed early last night, which would challenge my body’s tendency to keep me awake into the wee hours of the morning, but I live in hope. Between the cat lying on me and a certain lethargy brought on by little sleep the night before and a long day, I was too tired to get out the chair and drag myself to bed. So I kept the TV on and just looked to see what was on and found a local channel that showed old TV.

I got sucked in by Peter Gunn, watched an episode of Mission: Impossible and then watched the end of Double Indemnity. Yes, it was a foolish thing to do, but let it serve as a warning to you. When you think it might be a good idea to watch just one more thing, don’t. Turn off the TV. Just grab the remote and turn the TV off.

You should be reading instead anyway. So should I.

And no, it does not escape my notice that I am posting this late at night.

Keep looking up, no wait, duck and cover instead

I think I’ll start back blogging with one of my doomsayer posts.

Some people are planning to mine the asteroid belt, which is cool and not a bad idea. There are a lot of resources out there that can be used on Earth and in space and of course a lot of money to be made. The people planning this seem to have the resources, as in lots of money, and the knowledge to do it or to at least start a real effort to try. Yet no one seems to be worried about this.

Has no one read 60s and 70s science fiction?

Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

You know how the media love to play up any talk of an asteroid that comes close to the Earth? Those things can get pretty close just by chance. Well, when you can get a rocket to an asteroid you have the potential to then aim that asteroid. Earth is towards the bottom of the Sun’s gravity well relative to the asteroid belt. That means you can drop a really big rock on the Earth from out there.

OK, that’s all I wanted to say. Forget about it, just go back to what you were doing. There’s probably nothing to worry about.

For the record I think that mining the asteroid belt is a good idea and I am all in favor of space exploration. If our government is too short-sighted to keep it up then private industry will have to take over, but there are some things that need to be kept in mind when there are people and robots flying around out there.

Sorry I’ve been away for so long

Wow, it’s been more than a month. I was away so long they changed blogger and I have to figure out how to use it again.

Things got really hectic around here and I was short of usable time. Then I got sick. Then I broke a tooth and today I had root canal.

So I’ve been short of brain power and energy that I could free up for blogging, or for anything for that matter.

Maybe I’ll thrill everyone with a discussion of my dental adventures as they are on-going. Maybe not.

Watch this space, there is definitely more to come. This was only an extended hiatus due to unmanageable circumstances and nothing more. I will blog on.

Consider that a threat, a warning or a promise as you see fit.

Now who’s a socialist?

No one ever mentions that you can’t guarantee lower gas prices just by drilling.

The only way to guarantee lower gas prices is for the government to tell the oil companies they have to sell the oil in the US and then tell them how much they can charge for the gas.

Are the people who talk about drilling really advocating nationalizing the oil companies?

And so it goes

I got a call on Wednesday and I wonder how I came off to the person on the other end of the line. I had my car towed to a local repair shop that does adjustment work for my insurance company and the call related to that. I suppose some background info is in order. Let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

I rarely drive my car, but I do occasionally and sometimes I just start it and let it run for a while. This one time I went out and discovered that it was wet inside – as in the seats were wet, there was a puddle on the floor in the back, the condensation had made the mirror fall off of the windshield and the interior had acquired a rather extensive coating of mold.

There were no open or broken windows, but ever since my car was hit the trunk has leaked a little. Apparently that leak got a bit worse and all the rain we’ve had did some damage. I called my insurance company to see if they covered this sort of thing, they do, so off my car went to the shop to be examined.

I won’t be getting it back. An insurance rep called to tell me that my car was totaled because there was just no way to repair all the water damage. I think I said something like “Oh.” What I was thinking was “Oh shit.” I was a little addled because I had never gone through this before, I wasn’t really fully awake, I was looking around for a pencil and paper, and the amount the guy said they were going to give me was considerably more than I expected. It isn’t even enough for a down payment on a new car, which I can’t afford anyway, but it’s more than I expected considering the age and mileage. Overall the car was in good shape, but there is all that water and mold. So I was somewhat stunned.

I may have sounded like I thought it was, if not great, at least OK that I was going to get that money.

But it’s not OK. I loved that car. It wasn’t fancy but it handled well, it had held up great and I had spent a lot of time commuting in it. It was comfortable and dependable and I suspect that were it not for being hit I could have kept it for another 10 years. It only had 150k miles on it.

I couldn’t afford the upkeep on it. I couldn’t even afford the deductible just to get it fixed. But I wanted my car back. I fully expected it to be back sometime next week after a thorough cleaning and maybe having the trunk sprayed with some sort of heavy duty sealant. There was little of luxury about it, but it was my car.

It’s nice to get something for it but I’d rather have the car. Sure, we still have a car and since we aren’t both commuting in different directions we don’t need two cars anymore, but this was my car. Now that I think about it it’s been more than thirty years since I haven’t had a car of my own. I’ll probably save money, and there are certainly things much worse than not having a second car that didn’t get used much.

This is by far not the worst problem to have. It isn’t even close to being my worst problem, but the car came in handy at times and it was nice as a backup.

Besides, like I said, it was my car.

It may be silly, but I’ll miss it.