Elaine had a call from her brother (Panama) who’s off the ranch for a little R&R in Las Vegas.
Just between us, if we had moved back to the Pacific Northwest, he’d been thinking about moving back to Las Vegas. He’d lived there for a number of years after getting out of the Army and retiring.
It was a happening place. But that was then and this is now.
His complaint? Something we’d seen, couldn’t believe our eyes, and just sort of blew off.
People are looking like absolute crap.
Not everyone, but the number of vastly overweight, under-dressed, asexual, ugly underbelly of human has gone way up. Meantime, the number of “beautiful people” has gone way down.
Even for dinner shows, he reported, the quality of people showing had sunk to abysmal levels from his previous life in Sin City: In place of suits and evening gowns, or at least that jacket and “little cocktail number” people were about as likely to show up in cut-offs and a top while proudly showing respect to no one.
We saw the same thing when we were through Vegas, what, a week ago? At the corner of the Strip and Flamingo (by Caesar’s) there was a red light and while we were looking at the Saturday afternoon jetsam of humanity I remember vaguely wondering “Where’s all the shorts and cut-offs come from…where did the Beautiful People go?”
Conclusions? There must have been some kind of Fashion Rapture when I wasn’t looking.
I know why I wouldn’t be chosen: Besides being 30-pounds north of the “beautiful people” cutoff limit on weight, I have a big mouth. But Elaine? Fit, Formed, and Polite….and she’s still here (for which I’m glad. obviously). But if there had really been a “Fashion Rapture” I’d be single again…know what I mean?
This gets me to thinking about money…but then again, everything I do seems to get around to money. I’m Patient Zero for Pecuniary Interested Disease (PID).
Somewhere in your life (if you’re over 20) you should have heard the saying that “If hemlines are going up, the market will soon follow. Conversely, if the hemlines are going down, the market will soon go that way, too.”
But when I look around the streets today, I have to ask myself a logical question: “Does that hemlines going up or down and the market to follow only apply to hemlines worn by females of the species?”
So if hemlines are going up, but the hemlines going up on worn by the trannies, I mean, how does that one score?
Or, is there some formula to be derived first. How about: “If 61% of straight women’s hemlines are going up, along with 27% of tranny hemlines, then the market will rise….”
The world of complexity is making me crazy. But we’ve gone from simple visual indicators (hemlines up, markets up) to a whole class of new formulas: If trannies do this, tops do that, and bottoms do this thing over here, and lesbians are doing that, then markets will go….this way or that!”
We have open Free To Air FTA TV out here on the range. I look at the people who are shown on Zimbabwe television (or Thailand TV) and what do I see? A kind of global uniformity of people dressing down.
I’m only three percent joking about deriving the market indicators from LGBT fashion, but quite seriously: There may be something to be said about global pictures of human gatherings looking universally less prosperous.
Somewhere along the line it’s as though the Political Correctness Police took the Fashion Police out back and beat the shit out of them and they have quit the force.
My sense is you can get a good sense of how world trends evolve by looking at the people. And what I saw in Las Vegas (a thought triggered by Panama’s call home) was that Beautiful People aren’t anymore.
We’ve been averaged down to overweight if fine, under-dressed if fine, slob-look is fine, and taken as an aggregate, this likely prints out economic future.
We’re screwed.
Bottle it up while it’s still possible: Sexy clothing, soft music, candlelight, the whole foreplay thing…all going away with the wham, bam, thank you…hold that thought while I post a selfie of us…
Say what you will about wanting to “be prosperous” if all it means is another idiot-branded T-shirt or another body mural tat or another piercing, we have genuinely lost our way and the anchor of public decorum is dragging us onto the windward shore of collapse.
First thing you know, Homeland Security will be able to spot reprobates like me easily enough:
“There…see him Billy? That guy…the one in the pressed white shirt…don’t he look like an extremist? Why, see…OMG get the SWAT team here! He has CREASES in his pants!”
Subs of Law Enforcement
Which gets me to…
Don’t know how we got on this other topic….was talking to my Consigliore last night. We were talking about crime, crime rates, and the criminal mentality. He then made a most interesting observation which I’ll poorly paraphrase.
“Back when I was doing Public Defender work, a bunch of us PD’s were always amazed at how people who were out on bail would actually show up to do their jail time.”
I asked if he was kidding? (No.)
I then explained that if I were ever to be convicted of a crime (which I don’t do, but let’s suppose) and I had gotten a bum conviction from some misapplication of law (like now allowing the law to be read to the jury, the jury being informed of nullification power, etc.) then I wouldn’t feel particularly compelled to show up to serve jail time.
“You’d be the outlier. Something like 99.5% of people convicted do show up to do their time…”
Wow. I have options…hell anyone has options. The best one is to simply “go to ground.” Change appearance, hair color, weight and so on. and since the US border leaks, heading for the tip of South America would seem like an option…not that I want to live out life as a mountain man ion the Andes, but as an alternative to living in a box? A box called the total surveillance state?
Like I said, I’m not the kind of fellow to “do crime” but if push came to shove I always like to have options and the most important is never playing by anyone else’s rules. Or is that just one too many episodes of Blacklist?
Toll of Modern Life
We made the mistake on our vacation of traveling on the E-740 – what I call “The Rich People’s Freeway” in Colorado. It’s a toll road. We got on and our bad.
I tried to find a place to pay cash and sure enough, there wasn’t any. Now 45-days or so later, here comes the bill.
So now I have a $10.40 bill to pay from the fancy total enforcement photo system and if I don’t pay, I won’t be able to register my car in Colorado. And they will tack on costs for this and that along their escalation path.
I’m sending the payment, requesting a jury trial. Predictably, they will hold that it is a civil penalty….and that government has a right to collect this civil penalty.
The financial statements make interesting reading, but one thing I’m not clear on with all these toll roads popping up like weeds around the country is whether state traffic laws (like speeding) for example, can be applied if I am (in effect) renting road use?
I have bigger fish to fry, but it’s how we lose our freedoms – one weasel-worded quasi-governmental “penalty” at a time. Eventually, state-friendly “corporations” end up owning the world and we’re all just tenants.
Related to, but a different angle than how your property can be seized without trial under forfeiture laws.
So pay under duress, is about all that can be done. Take more blood pressure meds and await our eventual permanent move to tax-free underground housing.
Maybe I’ll send them cash…just to screw up their system. Cash through the mail may be a bad idea, but if it gets turned down, then I can sick the Fed on them, as all paper money proclaims it is legal tender for all debts public and private. And I have to assume somewhere in-between, like toll agencies.
So now to have my local lawyer witness the mailing….or send signature required.
Franz Kafka has moved to Colorado. Who can afford these tolls if they don’t make $50K+? Ergo: Rich Roads.
On to the morning headlines next… write when you break-even…
George george@ure.net