The picture of the palm is supposed to be that of Obama I got from a Russian site. What's interesting about it to me is the over-sized omen of impetuosity. His mouth is faster than his good sense. He's already made some policy mistakes he had to back down from. So far this trait hasn't cost him anything big, but there is a big gap between his life line and his head line, and more than likely, divine intervention notwithstanding, that gap ain't going away. This guy is a Leo trying to come across as his opposite sign Aquarius. His leadership might be spotty and inconvenient.
Buying a new TV with a digital tuner installed on the motherboard won't help lousy over-the-air digital reception. The people got screwed by the government by the change to digital. They gotta buy the same thing they were getting free, and despite their being forced to pay for it or do without, they still have to suffer through all the commercial spam. Have you ever gotten the feeling in between the highly touted commercial-free programs on PBS that you're being played with by all the rich organizations and foundations that sponsor it's supposedly public-funded programming. It's the American Way!
I studied the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching for three decades on a daily basis. To say I was obsessed might be putting it mildly. There are several instructive sayings in this book qua Book of Changes about how to get money from the populace without having them jump the broom with some sort of Bastille Day as an irate response to your thievery. Wise men don't deny it's out and out thievery. It's just a matter of whether or when you get caught red-handed at it. A little something called political expediency. The road to hell that's paved with good intentions?
I missed out by probably 5-10 years being raised in a television dominated culture. The generations who were around before television sets were in practically every home listened to radio programs just as avidly. It was the only media that connected us to the "outside world" in real-time. Radio provided us with an audio delusion we used to make up pictures in our minds. Radio was one step away from having to make up audio and video like with books. In my parent's house, our radio listening was restricted, but we could read books any time we liked.
When I joined the Navy at the age of eighteen years old there was only one television broadcast station within reach of my hometown, and very few people owned television sets with antennas that would receive the broadcasts of that one station. It was a miracle just like all the other miracles that constantly bombard us with "a better way."
The "better way" of television lay in it's ability to get more money from the populace. I don't know the real story, but the present economic situation seems to be about people not spending their money and keeping it in circulation. They get it outta the banks who then have no money to loan to entrepreneurs who come up with successful ways of getting the masses or great unwashed to spend the money they ain't earned yet.
That's the kind of money I like spending foolishly the best. Future money. Money I haven't even gotten outta bed for yet. I love living in the Land Of Yet. I'm truly a Yeti, heart and soul. Credit cards came into being during my life time, and they might be gone before I'm dead. I'm just happy I misused them as if the world owed me a living while they were still a fad. It's worked out for me like it has, but I may change yet.
Debit cards appear to be the coming way of doing things. You gotta have the money in the bank before the services you intend to buy get delivered hat-in-hand. I can use my debit card just like I used to use credit cards, but having to have the money up front keeps me honest. I just hate that. Don't you?
Having to pay as you go is the opposite of belonging to a labor union. The union guarantees you as job as long as there is one, and to protect the job so you don't have to be good at it to make a living. That's what happened to Detroit. Everybody became more incendiary about the money and left making the product to people who only worked to pay their bills.
One of the best things to come along after I had wasted my chance to get a college degree was learning how to weld at a very high level of mastery. I had to prove I could do it before getting hired on any of the job sites I went to. After I got the job I had to keep it by dint of those very same skills. Eventually, when I got older and blinder and more arrogant I couldn't make a living that way any more, but for the time that I did I seem smugly pleased with myself.
Does it really matter how a person becomes smugly pleased with how they're doing what they do? When it got to the point with my pipe-welding that I couldn't satisfactorily please the hand that fed me I got un-smug damned fast. At least about welding. '-)
