Honestly, I have been trying so hard to be good lately.
Every time I click on the "send," button I feel guilty. "There I go again, filling up my contacts mailboxes with unwanted opinions."
Every now and then, an exasperated recipient of my night-owl rants will send me an email asking me to please delete them from my distribution list. And I promptly honour their request(s.) Others send me subtle hints... like the one I got the other day pointing to several online resources which provide help to alcoholics. (Thanks for that one ;-)
I am sure many others are just too polite to do that, mutter in their minds - "oh, another emotive spasm from that a**hole Wienhold," before they click on the "X" button.
Really folks, if this stuff is of no interest to you just tell me to delete you from my list. I have no desire to bother anyone who is really not interested in what I have to say.
Well, one guy did piss me off a bit. He is supposed to be a "financial advisor." I have made some education investments for my kids through him which have gone down about 44% last time I checked. Almost ten years down the drain. (some say the best time to get into the stock market is when pessimism is at it's highest level. C'mon folks... buy some mutual funds.... push those prices up.)
He told me he was "too busy," to read my rants. I replied that I wished he had been a bit busier looking after my kid's investments before they went down in flames... and that research I have been doing since last November has convinced me that anyone who might have actually been paying attention should have seen it coming. (Like Ron Paul and Peter Schiff.)
But he was too busy I guess.
I am just a dumb cab driver but even I, me... (li'l ol' me) developed a dim awareness last year that something was in the works... which is why I sold my house.... didn't want to get caught in another recession which hits the cab business real hard - making it harder than ever to pay off a mortgage while real estate prices plumet (plumet? sounds French.) Plummet... I think I mean plummet.
Man I am glad I did that.
Then I almost did something terminally stupid. I was going to call my "financial advisor," and, yes.... (he he) ... take some of the money I got from my house and put it into mutual funds!!!! (he he he) That would have been around August of 2008.
"Buy, hold and prosper," is the motto. More like... get a financial advisor who will invest your money until it is all gone.
Instead I did something that might end up being even stupider. I put the money in the bank.
I have a little thing in my task bar that tracks the price of silver and gold. Last week I noticed gold was down to about $895 US an ounce at around 1:30 pm.
Then something funny happened. Within the next two hours I noticed the price rocketed back up to around $945 or $955.
When you see that happen you can't help but say to yourself... "Some kind of a bomb just went off somewhere."
Maybe terrorists blew up another pipeline.
Well, later that day I was at the gym and I was watching one of those news channels when I learned Ben Bernanke had waved his magic wand and announced the creation of $300 billion dollars out of thin air. (I later learned that the number is over a trillion with the purchase of a bunch of other worthless crap - mortgage backed securities or some such tripe - which will be guaranteed by America's children and those, yet, unborn.)
I can't help but believe that sooner or later... all of this newly created money is going to come back at us like a tsunami wave in the form of rising prices.
and that anyone stupid enough to be holding cash better buy a wheelbarrow now, before the price of wheelbarrows skyrockets along with the price of bread.
(and wheelbarrows will be strongly favoured as a means of creating "Green Jobs," as promised by our keepers.)
... but
that isn't what I wanted to rant about.
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I pulled into Filthy McNasty's last night to fish for a fare. The cops were there. They had parked their cars in such a way as to really impede access to the parking lot.
I figured, "Wow," must be something serious... maybe an assault or something. Maybe someone got hurt.
So I pulled into a spot around the side behind another cab. He had to leave with a fare a few minutes later.
Because the cops were blocking his exit I had to back up to allow the other cabbie to back up and go out the other way.
Yep. I figured something serious must be happening here.
When the other cabbie left I moved up to the front of the line. Curiously, the cops didn't seem to be too serious. I saw them having what seemed to be a cordial discussion amongst themselves and one or two of the bouncers.
It started to bug me.
Who, other than Hamilton's finest, would consider their work so critical that they would so rudely block the parking lot, unless a serious matter was being addressed?
Anyway, after a while...after the chatting and smiling etc. the cops finally started up their cars and left.
A short while later I got a fare from the place. I asked the guy what all the hassle was about. He told me someone at the bar was asked to leave and refused to cooperate. So the cops were called.
And then!!!!!!!! It turned out there was some question about the validity of the guy's ID.
The cops were rudely blocking the parking area (a female cop was there too.. I wished I was the other cop having such a good tme chatting with her.....) because some guy had posssibly fake ID.
Think about that the next time someone breaks into your house and the cops tell you there isn't much they can do. They are, ahem.... too busy. (like financial advisors?)
Or when you see them on those (all too few in my city) stretches of actually driveable roads... which instinctively beg you to press down a bit on the accelerator and really *drive* ... only to be snagged by a cop hiding behind the Canadian Tire building. With radar. To put a real hurt on your middle class existence through a fine and whopping big increase in your insurance rates. (if they would cut us some slack on those speed traps we could use the money to pay for the losses from the B&E's they are "too busy," to investigate.)
Or, when you are wondering why traffic is such a mess while you are trying to get home from work only to discover that the cops are (busy) blocking traffic so someone can film the movie "Hulk."
Well, I guess the police have their priorities.
And then, someone sends me this link... from cbcnews.ca....
"Undercover officer alleges XXX activity at porno theatre"
Who would have thunk? (!)
According to the report, "During a series of visits by police in uniform in 2008, Jarvie says officers witnessed sex acts, an overwhelming unpleasant pungent odour, puddles of body fluids and excrement, and even patrons smoking."
Egad!!! Even patrons smoking!
You know, based upon that description... I don't think this is an establishment I would want to patronize... unless I was out of smokes at the time.
It kind of begs the question... who would want to patronize an establishment with an unpleasant pungeant odour? Only to discover puddles of body fluids and excrement... (sex acts? Live? Hmmm.... )
unless he(she) was some kind of a weirdo... in need of a release....
Or an evil smoker looking for a venue, other than at home with the kids, to do the bad thing... since it's been banned everywhere else... (cough!)
or a (very busy) cop?
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