George Ure

All kinds of computer treachery around here this morning…report prepared in skeleton form for later this week was twisted up into this morning’s and there’s been a flash sent out from government computer experts to businesses to keep an eye on things for a malware attack.  Server hasn’t been cl;earing cached data proper…all kinds of baldness inspiring crap going on.

Not like I’m alone though…

Sony Pictures is coming back up to normal operations after a devastating attack that left a lot of its operations exposed….

Oil and Energy Wars

We note that Russia is giving up on plans for a southern gas pipeline project, and while blaming Europe in the process, there is likely more to this.

The Wall St. Journal this morning report, for example, that Russia looks to be headed into a recession in 2015 and that’s the kind of thing that the West might look at with some satisfaction, in that it’s Russia punitive actions have really started to bite and bite hard.

The Global Game

Is pretty much unchanged this morning on the interest rate front. India is apparently looking to ease rates perhaps next year.  That might make for something of an economic rally.

There’s also a report that RBA (Australia) may lower rates next year, as well.  The problem with this is that such a decline would only reinforce what oil prices have been telling us:  Global deflation, not inflation is the big problem now.

This has tremendous implications for investors in things like precious metals:  Don’t dismiss our long-standing belief that as the world’s economies go into their last-gasp death throes that gold could sink well under $1,000 before printing money goes absolutely crazy in a few years.

Commodity prices have stabilized going into the open and there has been oil trading back up to the $68 range, but that doesn’t eliminate the “rig lay down” issue covered in Monday’s report.  Below a certain level ($60-$75 and we could argue that all day) putting in new rigs doesn’t make sense.

As one reader noted, when you hear ads on the radio to bring new investors into the oil and gas exploration business with hype about owning an oil well, you can almost bet more downside is out there.

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MY brother-in-law who lives in his own apartment on the property with us, and who is retired military (SF & Rangers) is getting the wanderlust again, and so are we.

I’ve been eyeing a weather window next week where we might be able to pick up some strong tail winds out of Texas and head west to Arizona to do some high country flying.  Panama has been half eyeing homes out in the Las Vegas area because none of us are exactly “retirement material.”

The house is approaching ideal but that doesn’t leave much to do.  A couple of days with a small dozer to put in a small lake, raise some fresh water shrimp and put in pasture for some beefs might work.  Time in the garden, too….but to what end?  We look for ends – great adventures as just such things to us tumbleweed types…

Travel and adventure is what life’s about.  Growing up in Arizona, both Elaine and Panama like to get out and hike.  And t’other day when we were talking about it, Panama mentioned how he wanted to be back in the West again, so he could pull off the highway (wherever) and just go hiking as he did in his earlier days.

In his military career, I thought he would have gotten his fill of hiking, especially after hiking 600 miles from Turkey toward Europe to catch up with his unit.  They’d been out practicing “go to ground” and he did it, umm, a little too well.  When no one could find him, they simply left. 

That’s the short version of the hike, but he’d had others. In our discussion, the idea of “pulling off the road and being able to walk for 10 miles…” came up.

Sadly. I told him of our most recent 6,000 miles drive a couple of months ago.  “Even in places where you’d think you could get out and hike,” I explained “There’s really not much of anywhere to do it.  Even in the wilds of southern Wyoming, heading west on I-80 toward Salt Lake from Fort Collins and Loveland, most every foot of land is now fenced, at least along the road.”

To be sure, that’s a stretch, but over 2/3rd’s of Wyoming looks fenced from the freeways, at least.  And if you park your car by the edge of the road, it’s likely not to be there if you return in much more than 3-4 hours.  Police don’t want derelicts left by the road, so it becomes a tag ‘em & bag ‘em.

Not at all like camping trips in the 1950’s when barbed wire was rare in the BC interior where we waded through brush to fly fish pristine lakes.

We’ve seen some places where you can still get out and walk, like West Texas, but even here the art of exploring is quickly fading.  For one thing, if you do it within a hundred miles of the border you’re likely to stumble into either CBP units or weed walkers and coyotes.

Up north, Utah and Wyoming, if you can find a break in the barbed wire, there’s still a lot of public land around, but access to the public is being systematically denied.  Access permits, fees, scheduling of hikes (as in the Sierra)…it’s all a gigantic change from open/natural to confining around the edges.

Worse, I hear from friends and relatives up north, that barbed wire sales are still brisk in places like the northern wilds of British Columbia and even Southeast Alaska.  Time was when a salmon troller, of the sort that used to work the 34-40 foot double-enders out of Seattle’s fisherman’s terminal back in the day, could simply winter-over in Southeast Alaska. Ever see a Columbia River Bowpicker?

The hardier, and single Alaska fishermen used to  pull into an inviting cove in the lee of an island, go ashore and build a woodpile, keep the small marine wood stove on the boat going more or less continuously.  For food, there was plenty in the cove, the case or three of Del Monte fruit cocktail would last until you went off to the nearest settlement for provisions.

Storms would come through, blow themselves out, and there was big game if you wanted to clear and smoke it.  Halibut and other seafood was easier.

Point is, back then America had a frontier.  I don’t know where the frontier is, except Southeast Alaska.  There are big open areas in the upper reaches of the Yukon, too, but places to explore without wearing thermal everything?  Ha!

Between privatizations, keeping the public off public lands, and septic requirements for boats, life at the fringe is getting to be just a damn nuisance.  Regulations galore and that means inspections and permissions….

The problem is people.  We have too many of ‘em.

In 1970 there were 3.7 billion people in the world.  I’d been out of high school for several years bv then.  A man like Panama, who’s a bit older than me, remembers the world as about 3-billion people and damn few of them were out trying to hike “public” or just vacant lands around Arizona’s Mogollon rim, or even once you got outside of Tucson 10 miles.  Hell, even I remember that one.

Today, world population is just a shade under 7.3 billion people.  And population is still growing by 75-million a year. 

To put that into perspective, that would be like adding everyone in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Houston (16.7 million) and doing it 4 1/2 times.  That’s why world ends badly, more’n likely.

In the short time I’ve been alive, enough people have been born such that if they could be stood on each other’s head, their combined height about be the distance from where you’re standing all the way to the moon 17-times over.

So I just thought I’d mention this morning that growth in small dribs and drabs in person victory over some obstacle, or other.  But in larger doses, it becomes cancerous.

Back when the world population was much smaller  (a mere 1.6 billion people) Joshua Slocum sailed a small boat named the Spray around the world alone, becoming the world’s first solo circumnavigator.

In 1899 he published his account of the epic voyage in Sailing Alone Around the World, first serialized in The Century Magazine and then in several book-length editions. Reviewers received the slightly anachronistic age-of-sail adventure story enthusiastically. Arthur Ransome went so far as to declare, “Boys who do not like this book ought to be drowned at once.”^[16] In his review, Sir Edwin Arnold wrote, “I do not hesitate to call it the most extraordinary book ever published.”

Adventuring, at least on the scale of Slocum, or those wintering over trollers and gill-netters in Southeast Alaska are part of a dying breed.

The poet Robert Service, himself a veteran of the Yukon (where he was a bank teller, not explorer) did manage nonetheless to capture the gist of it in his “The Men Who Don’t Fit In.”

   There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,

    A race that can’t stay still;

   So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

    And they roam the world at will.

   They range the field and they rove the flood,

    And they climb the mountain’s crest;

   Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

    And they don’t know how to rest.

   If they just went straight they might go far;

    They are strong and brave and true;

   But they’re always tired of the things that are,

    And they want the strange and new.

   They say:  “Could I find my proper groove,

    What a deep mark I would make!”

   So they chop and change, and each fresh move

    Is only a fresh mistake.

   And each forgets, as he strips and runs

    With a brilliant, fitful pace,

   It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones

    Who win in the lifelong race.

   And each forgets that his youth has fled,

    Forgets that his prime is past,

   Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,

    In the glare of the truth at last.

   He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;

    He has just done things by half.

   Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,

    And now is the time to laugh.

   Ha, ha!  He is one of the Legion Lost;

    He was never meant to win;

   He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;

    He’s a man who won’t fit in.

Seems a bit odd to be writing a farewell to the Frontier.  After all, there always is one.

But the frontier of today is a line of code, an algorithm, a compiler, or may be app.

Something’s lost though, something old school and irreplaceable.   The difference between cold saltwater spray in the face when it’s 40-degrees out and the wind’s piped up to 25 out of the northwest, and having a breakthrough insight into a coding problem is a difference of day and night.

Technology is taking us to the land of non-physicality and I don’t like it.

Worth mentioning to the new generations that don’t write.  In fact, the whole idea of adventuring can be seen sinking into the horizon when it was reported last month that children in Finland will no longer be taught to write.  Instead, they will master keyboarding and mousing.

In Engineering terms, this begins to set up society for a massive epic fail:  When the power goes, so will the people.

And that is why adventuring matters.  It’s the natural reservoir from which human persistence springs.

Climate Note

Reader Ray H. who sends me sometimes daily critiques of my thought processes (don’t tell him but there are none), mentioned this about climate change:

[You wrote]

Is Earth warming? Yes. It from cutting down rainforests and burning off vegetation that used to cause more vertical air mass rising, which in turn brought rains and staved off desertification?

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I have shared a good bit of common sense, plus a bit of out-there a ways (relative to the mainstream) ideas worth considering from colleague Bruce down in  Vilacabamba, Loja,  Ecuador.  That part of Ecuador is particularly attractive to Americans, especially those who seek a bit more privacy and less regulation when by comparison the USA has long ago slipped its constitutional moorings and is ominously drifting toward being the world’s first techno police state, if we aren’t already.

I received a very kind email from another Vilacabama resident, which is reassuring on many fronts.  First it demonstrates that while UrbanSurvival readers may be a bit scarce (until market panic hits) we have a disproportionately large following in this part of Ecuador.  Perhaps there’s a statistical link between reading Urban, eating super-healthy natural foods, and sleeping in clear mountain air that keeps people sane.

The second thing it teaches us is that sane people even in obscure places are beginning to grok the huge problem of growth.  To wit:

Dear George:

I am a longtime daily reader and a paid subscriber to Peoplenomics, and appreciate very much your efforts to keep us informed.

You have mentioned several times your “faithful correspondent Bruce” in Ecuador. I happen to be his neighbor in this South American Shangri La. May I add a few of my own words to his about this most unusual hamlet in which we live.

Our Andean hidden-away village, its origins lost in the mist of Pre-Incan history, has always been known as “The Valley of The Old Ones”, with its mountain people reportedly living longer and healthier than most other populations in the outside world. Even today it continues to grace its inhabitants (local, indigenous and expat alike) with abundant glacial water, unpolluted air, clean locally grown food and a relatively uncontaminated environment. 

While we don’t have chemtrails and governmental mind control technologies invading our lives, we do have an increasing amount of electromagnetic radiation from cell towers and WiFi routers. What happens when human population centers are flooded with massive amounts of powerful wireless microwave radiation? Well, nobody really knows ….. yet.

But we will soon.

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This being primo shopping time, we will keep today’s report short, sweet (or semi-sweet, as the case may be) and to the point.

A number of readers have expressed concern with my outlook on civil disorder, particularly when I referred to the “business” of it in Friday’s UrbanSurvival report.

So this morning a reality check:  What would the American economy look like without corrections corporations, lawyers police cars, prisons, deportations, TSA, criminal drug families, rehabs and all the rest of how we “Monetize Crime” and turn it into one of America’s most important economic sectors.

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Millions of people (including us) did online shopping on Turkey Day rather than wait for the click festival and parking brawls of Black Friday.  The rest of our holiday giving will be made as wire transfers and checks.

When I write that, it sounds like a big deal, but the average transfer size is $100 with a larger check to the local food bank.

There are no numbers to speak of yet – the real deal on that will come out next week, and this morning the market is worried about whether protests over Ferguson will continue or spread.  Fear is about, so look for the online e-tailers to make out like bandits.

As we have opined previously, much of Ferguson has nothing to do with “justice for Brown” so much as it’s a chance for would-be revolutionaries to try out their street corner organizing skills, something America has about had it up to here with. 

As an Associated Press story reveals, Brown’s hands were not up, at least above shoulder height.  But unlike some of the protesters, they actually took the time to read the facts.

I’ve even had my liberal friends calling me to argue that it’s too easy for police to justify shooting of a civilian in Missouri.  That may be, and in which case it’s time for their legislature to address the problem, no doubt.  But underlying it is the matter of “rule of law” and is America going to be intimidated by latter day lynch mobs. 

If it wasn’t Brown’s death, it would have been something else.  There is a class of people in ‘Merica who are spoiling for a fight over just about anything.  So they will line up for the free lunch.

Yet the terrible truth is, suggested one reader, that if we pulled out the police and fire services that put their lives on the line in Ferguson (and elsewhere) and just left the community to show us how enlightened they are, many more square blocks would have been burned to the ground.

Another reader asked:

“Why do these people insist on burning down their own neighborhoods.  Can you please answer that?”

The answer is simple, I wrote back,”Because when they do, we build them new ones.’ 

It’s part of America’s Do-Over industry.  You have to understand how dissention and war is an industry.  In order to keep a country motivated, you need periodic wars to build a national mindset.  Adolph Hitler made this point in his second book – the one following Mein Kampf – the one that no one but me seems to have read.

It works at all kinds of levels, too:  We could have left Japan in ruins to fend for themselves after WW II, or the whole of Europe, too.  But we didn’t and the reason is part altruistic and part blood and guts finance.  The bloody hands of finance are simple enough:  It’s a chance for Americans to get a better style of life while “committing rebuilding.”  Thank you Sony, Honda, Toyota, and Nissan.  And Kubota.

To be sure, I might be accused of racism for having a decent memory, but when I use the term “revolutionaries” to describe the outside agitators who have gone to Ferguson (and elsewhere) to incite, there is ample support in the literature to back up my contention.

For example, in a forward-looking paper in 1996, a scholar in the Foreign Military Studies group of the US Army made some very good observations:

Many misunderstood the LA Riot of 1992 as predominantly a race riot. As witnessed by the California National Guard Field Commander, the riots were seen as a case study in urban warfare.¹⁰ The Guard’s counter-riot operations tell of the increasingly dangerous nature of military and police operations in the urban environment.

Black gangs (Bloods and Crips) met a few days before the riots to establish a truce so that they could devote their efforts toward killing Los Angeles police. The riots allowed them to assert their influence on the streets.¹¹ Later (on about 7 or 8 May, during the transition to normalcy), the organized gangs circulated a document calling for $3.726 billion to be spent on a Bloods/Crips law enforcement program, an educational program, a Los Angeles urban renewal program, and a human welfare program. The gangs suggested that Drug Lords would reinvest their funds in the city, and they would provide matching funds for AIDS research and awareness. “Meet these demands and the targeting of police officers will stop,” the gangs advised. By no means were the LA rioters all from black Bloods and Crips gangs. Over half of those arrested during the riots were Hispanics, and over a thousand of those were illegal immigrants, attesting to the inter-ethnic dynamic of the riot.¹²

The paper “Combat in Cities: The LA Riots and Operation Rio” is still available online, here, and is worth a read.

When I contend that the aftermath of Ferguson is one part local rage and five parts revolutionaries trying to get a foothold, the only item up for discussion is whether the FergRevs get traction.

If you wanted to toss in one or two parts white guilt, that’d be fine, too.  But to attempt to derail (ironically timed) Black Friday shopping, as this report suggests, may be yet-another desperation move by the would-be revolutionaries in an attempt to make Brown more than what it is:  A tragedy in Ferguson, MO.

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While this will be a fairly short column this morning, there are a number of important items that come up for discussion that warrant your attention.  We’ll get to the high-holy uses of leftover turkey in a moment.

On the more important list is doing a half-dozen Amygdala clicks first.

“What?”

Oh, yeah.  Maybe I don’t mention it often enough, but if you want to really be a Superman (or Superwoman) (or a Super-Can’t-Quite-Be-Sure What which is now fashionable) there are about a half-dozen ways to turn-on your brain, connect higher and lower selves and toss off the chains of turkey lethargy.

One fine book on the topic of Amygdala clicking is Neil Slade’s Tickle Your Amygdala which runs about $20-bucks on Amazon, although you can find lessons and discussions of it on YouTube over here.

On Slade’s website over here, you can find additional how-to information.  But if you wonder how I can get up at 0-dark-thirty every morning and be in a great (not to mention productive) mood, here it is.

The set up for all this is that you need to have decent nutrition and a good deal of sleep in order to be well-rested and ready to “turn on your brain.” 

OK, the second part is your vitamin regimen.  While I take (and have tried) literally dozens of vitamins as part of con centration experiments, the one vitamin taken twice a day is something called  NOW Foods Adam Superior Men’s Multi, 90 Softgels while Elaine takes  Now Foods Eve, Women’s Multi Vitamin, Softgels, 180-Count.

On either one of these, two per day will get you just about all the nutrition you need, although for us, additional vitamins for eyes, blueberry extract for its anti-aging properties and other things we can go into some other time, are good reinforcers. . 

Last, but not least, is my favorite brain-charger:  Huperzine –A gives you almost Adderall powers of concentration and recall.   And example ($17 bucks worth of example) is Source Naturals Huperzine A, 200mcg, 120 Tablets.

Don’t mean to start off on a health kick the day after turkey, but this and a couple of cups of half-caf and you should be well on your way to taking over the world.

Send us a small province when you get done.

Seriously:  Slade, some good vitamins, and some practice.  That could be all that stands in your way to greatness so I highly recommend it, all ages, all IQs. PG-13, and member FDIC.

(Re)Ode to 13 Coins:  The SST Sandwich

Now we get around to the truly important part of this morning’s  report, although giving “smart for Christmas”: isn’t a bad thing.  Most people are already over-stocked on stupid…

What follows is the one best way to use up whatever is left in the way of turkey, based on a “sandwich” which used to be served by 13 Coins, a 24-hour restaurant in Seattle, catawampus  from the Seattle Times building, which serves as a kind of mecca for the broadcasters, writers, and theatrical types who made Seattle a happin’ place in the 1970’s and 80’s.  Still is, come to think of it.

‘Coins is still one of the top 5 late night food joints in the country and with good reason:  If you sit at the counter, you can watch the flaming cooking of your meal on the big gas stoves (and gas fired broiler ) of the sort most people can only dream of having at home.

It was here that the SST Sandwich was developed – at about the same time Boeing was building a mock-up of what might have been an American supersonic transport to complete with the Concorde. I always wondered if the selection of turkey as its main ingredient was so much a matter of taste or an aeronautical or economic assessment…

By far, the SST is the best use of turkey I’ve ever seen – and to my palate it is almost as good as fresh roasted turkey with all the fixin’s.  Maybe better, too, since if you can find precooked turkey in a deli, there’s little kitchen mess. Anyone can make good food in an unlimited kitchen with clean up staff.  When it’s me and/or Elaine and KitchenAid, it’s a different equation.

The inventor of the SST used a Béchamel sauce (white sauce) but for those of us who scored above average in the laziness department, I find a can of Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup works almost as well as is a lazy-man’s substitute.

Also, in the original SST, if memory serves, the toast points had the crust cut off, but again, this seemed like an awful amount additional work that could be dispensed with.  I mention this to make sure you get the flavor of the original dish.

Buttering the toast points?  That’s up to you and your cardiologist.

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Call me a damn fool (the line usually goes around the block) but this morning I got up early and started working on my 2014 taxes.  One reason?  I’m one of those people banks must hate because I still get paper monthly statements and cancelled checks.

Since a reader sent me a note, I thought I’d explain a bit.  But first the note:

“ummmm…..and how much time did you waste writing that e-mail to the bank?  ….and how much time did all of us waste reading it? …and why are you still writing CHECKS?!!???!!???

I haven’t written a check since I moved to the PRC 5 years ago………..I don’t even know anyone who uses them over here.

Regards,

Expatriated

I trust computers, the internet and the Russians and/or the Chinese not to preemptively strike us with cyber attacks or EMP, about as far as I can throw them.  It’s hackers galore out there.

And, when comes to the Sand People who are trying to hack American interests in case they can’t find a head to slice off, it ain’t politically correct, but I don’t trust them, either.

Since  I don’t trust people, I don’t trust banks. Haven’t since the 2007-2009 collapse.

So hell yes, I write checks.

In courts of law, there are still people who remember about “wet signatures” and other niceties of law and custom.  I NEVER want to be in a position to where someone could accuse me of Photoshopping a phony check.  And I never can be:  I have my original check, the banks real stampy stuff on the back of it, and I meticulously write what the check is for.

To be sure, there’s been this simmering deal about whether real estate transactions recorded electronically are valid.  Seems, so, but depends where, who, which judge, and all that.  Electronics, like people can be fooled and we all remember MERS.

First thing this morning (after shower and coffee) will be a run to town to take care of the annual property taxes,  It will all be paid for on one check, but the parcel ID’s are noted on the check and along with a copy of the payment receipt, the whole thing being scanned, I’ve got a solid “evidence trail” that the money has been paid as due.

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Black Friday Deal announcements are flying thicker than the snow in Buffalo, this week.  I’d remind you that it used to mean something else, no, not Bellevue Fire Department.

Already, investors can hear the tiny hooves beating on the roof…a cute acoustical trick on a glass-topped high-rise.

And St. Nick?  Jolly as ever with his “Ho, ho, ho, Happy Earnings Amass!”

This morning, I’ve got an early Christmas to get you in the mood:  Music for the News this fine frosty start to a 3.5 day workweek, which is really what we oughta  have year-round.

In keeping with the mood of the season, we have asked our musical librarian to join us this morning (who looks sort of like Elaine, but with go-go boots at this ungodly hour on a Monday?) and pull some tunes to accompany this morning’s servings of depressing SameOMeal for breakfast.

Ready to dig in, then?

Iran Talks Fail

Ah, but George Claus pulls this oldie out of the bag to summarize John Q. Public’s take on the Iran talks in general.  Click here and Dancer will play it for you…

Naturally, the talks yielding bupkis leads Israel to threaten to attack Iran and then them a thing about glass-making.  Dancer, cue up a fitting musical ditty…ah here we go…

Economic Prospects

Tomorrow, the Case Shiller/S&P/Dow Jones, and a parade of other PR departments will be out with the monthly housing report.  Dancer suggests a House is not a Home.  (Dancer’s been into the eggnog a bit earlier than usual this year.  Still, there’s a reindeer shortage because we haven’t opened the Canadian border fearing fallout from the Antlerslan movement.

Futures are up just a tad and Dancer offers this Beatles tune as consolation for the dyed-in-the-fur bears.

On a more serious note, the EU will be looking at data this week showing what Santa-George has been telling you:  No real growth since 2009.

Dancer figures this is why ECB boss Mario has been singing Spinal Tap.

Speaking of Tunes

Mr.

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In one of the great twists of history (or irony), we arrive this week at the peculiar time of year when a religion founded on a savior gets geared us to be a savior of a different sort:  Saving the Economy.

For those who don’t know it, the reason Black Friday is called what it is because of the old financial term “In the Black.”   As opposed to “In the red.”

Many consumer products companies operate “In the Red: (losing money) until this time of year.  In shopping mall leases, for example, it’s not uncommon to have one rental rate for other parts of the year and a differential, higher rate for November and December.  In some leases, there’s even some juice for the mall owners – a bonus if sales hit some threshold, which is why you might here shopping center ads starting any old day, now, if they haven’t already.

The whole point of such ads is to get you down to the shopping center, where presumably you’ll wade through horrific traffic (things like flaring tempers over a primo parking slot are not uncommon) in order to pull out the credit card and load up on useless crap.

Not everything is useless: New phones and lingerie are two that come to mind.

Christmas season shopping is something we don’t do much of around here, anymore.  Somewhere out in the storage room we’ve got a lighted 12”-high ceramic tree that will suffice if we’re not too lazy to dig it out.  Seemed like too much work last year.

As for the Big Gifts?  Waiting for Christmas is for kids.  There’s no point waiting when a click can produce most goods in two days and time you can really afford it.  Most families we know don’t have any more money at this time of the year, so other than entertaining the kids, the big presents for mom or dad are more likely around landmark birthdays.

What’s more, although there has been a pretty good attack on Christianity all ‘round, with many crusaders forgetting that things like the Pledge of Allegiance remind us to be “One Nation, under God…”  the blowback is this:  If you attack Christmas, you also attack revenue.  Ooops~

With a GDP coming in around $17.5 trillion for the year, against accumulated public debt of $17.966 trillion means we are about 2.4% bankrupt as a country.  We haven’t learned a damn thing from the Housing Bubble collapse, so it will happen again…Not much reason for a merry anything, if you ask me.

A little resurgence of Believers at the checkout stands, buying big ticket items, could certainly help matters.  But with holiday-specific decorations banned many locales, nativity scenes cast as inappropriate for public places, and too many Christmas lights an affront to the conservationists, who’s in the mood to spend?  God help you if you have a liberal HOA that tells you what you can do with your own property this time of year.

Around here, we’re not planning to buy a single thing this year for one another.  $100 checks for each of the kids, a bigger one for the local Food Bank, but the real things of value we already have:  Each other, health, and no mortgage.  Gifts that keep on giving.

Tomorrow, I’ll go down to the county office complex in town with a check for another year’s worth of property taxes.  That’ll end our spending for the year, except for food and unless the car conks out.

The whole point of most religions was summed up in that great line from the movie “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”  “Be Excellent to One Another.”

It’s the one gift that can’t be handed down by government decree, won’t show up on Amazon or  at the mall.   It can’t be wrapped, nor is it particularly durable as divorce rates show.  It’s something that can be hoarded, saved up, put away, or resold.  Yet as those wiser than me have said, if you have all that click and mall stuff and you don’t have this, you ain’t got squat.

If you do have this one precious thing, none of the other stuff much matters, as it pales in comparison on any sane value scale.

The great conundrum of ‘Merica gets worse every year.  The sales hype becomes ever-more shrill as millions get twisted up into forgetting that “excellence to one another” is the point.  It’s the point in public, in government, and in private behind closed doors.

It may be what Common Core intends, but excellence to one another must be modeled, not storyfied.  Ruin enough families and there goes the modeled behavior part, eh?

This weekend, we talked about something I call the “Invention Horizon.”  It has application during the Christmas season. 

While each religion markets (often in exclusionary ways), underneath it all is this “excellence” gem…that’s the concept worth holding onto and sharing.

And if – as the anti-religionists demand – we do minimize the trees and wreaths and such, are we not fools for throwing the Baby out with the credit card receipts?

Seems to me that if we’re ever to advance off this lousy rock, we need to step back for a moment and embrace best of class human values and begin to generalize Christmas carols into what we might label People Carols…songs about the core values that transcend cultures.  *(I’d nominate this song from Bill & Ted’s as an example.)

Unfortunately, we aren’t yet able to cross that divide, except when it comes to a few bits of lyric in pop songs…but maybe that’s enough.  Well, at least it’s a start anyway.

As for Christmas saving the economy?  Yeah, might happen once again.

Ask me on December 6th.  That’s because there’s been a big increase in dream content over at the National Dream Center site that seems to be referencing of “employment” and the next employment report is due December 5th..  A week from Black Friday.

Three plus weeks of lead time on a news story?  Yeah, what a hoot, but remember there was about that much time on the last “biggie” like this – the Dallas/Houston worries that preceded the Ebola panic in what’s feeling like the same way.

But don’t mind the introspective Monday around here.  Just jump in the Cars and spend like there’s no tomorrow because, guess what happens on this track?

Just in is a press release come in from the Gallup Poll folks:

Gallup’s November measure of the total amount Americans expect to spend on Christmas gifts suggests U.S. retail spending this holiday season will increase by roughly 3%, better than last year but still below pre-recession levels.

Take it as you will.

Banks Have Got to be Kidding

Had a note pop up in the inbox from my Big National Bank we do business with. All because last week  I called their automated service (which was screwed up) so I ended up talking with a human.  Simple check order.

That should have been the end of the story. 

But then four days later this weekend up pops:

Tell Us What You Think   – Your Call on November 17

I politely told them:

Dear Big Bank:

Please note that I called and ordered checks on Nov. 17 (arrived before your email, by the way).  Then on Nov. 21 you ask me about my phone call experience.  I got to the email on the 22nd as you work for me, I don’t work for you.

Let me see:  The events took 10-minutes instead of 2.  Wasted 8 minutes of my time.  At my age, 8 minutes is a big deal. 

Since my time is worth $100 and hour (a bit overpriced, but what isn’t these days?) you wasted $13.33 of my time. 

We’ve had this time-wasting discussion before so I won’t hold my breath waiting for the compensatory deposit.

Let me get to the point, however:  I am 65.9 years old.  This means I have been around for how long? 24,053 days roughly.

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